Deciding on which flavor of Unix 4

[PepsiJoe]

Hey,
I would like to get some input as to the pros/cons of the different Unix's. I worked some with HP-Unix and AIX, however, not enough to decide as to which would be the best choice for me. (ie is there a better Unix for beginners)
I would appreciate your input.

Joe

 

[ayjaycee]

Depends what you want, really!

If you don't have a budget, then a Linux distribution, FreeBSD or Solaris offer zero-cost solutions ;-) TandA

http://www.tanda.f2s.com

One by one, the penguins steal my sanity.

 

[KenCunningham]

Having worked with most of the major flavours over the years, with the exception of HP-UX, I must plump for Solaris as perhaps the most stable and easily configurable I have come across. It does have it's annoyances (where's top? - elsewhere that's where!), but generally I have been impressed with it's reliability and robustness. Slicing and dicing disks is a doddle in Solaris, something I can't really say about some other unix flavours.

That said, Linux has been the coming thing for a couple of years now and is free - it's worth looking at, but to be quite honest I don't think I would yet trust it for 24/7 mission-critical operations (OK, shoot now!;-) ). Whatever you decide, have fun, and come back here with any queries. Hope this helps.

 

[rycamor]

I would trust FreeBSD for mission-critical apps any day. It is probably one of the most stable Unix systems out there. The only area where FreeBSD is defficient is in the lack of applications for massive scaleability, but I believe that is in the works.

FreeBSD is much more of a true Unix than Linux. The configuration and filesystem layout are much better organized than with Linux.

Linux is a little easier for beginners, but you can learn some bad habits. If you really want to learn Unix, try FreeBSD. It derives right from the original BSD Unix at Berkeley, so it shares many of the same concepts as the big commercial Unix systems.

 

[trunix]

What software applications do you want to run on your unix box ? Although in theory unix based software should run on any flavour of unix, this is rarely the case. Your software supplier will have certified his applications to run on various unix platforms - but not all. No matter how good an operating system is - unix or otherwise - its pretty useless if you cant get the software applications to run on it.

 

[lfoata]

If budget is not a factor, I would look at HP-UX on an HP box or SUN Solaris on a sun box. I have administered HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, SCO unix. Linux, True64 boxes ans even NCR boxes, and by far I find that HP and SUN have the best solutions.
If you are a beginner, HP-UX has the SAM interface that will help you do the admin job. Sun Solaris also has some interfaces, but not as complete as HP-UX.

 

[MikeLacey]

I can't disagree with any of that (apart from Ken, who seems to have lost his mind somewhere.... ) Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com
Email welcome if you're in a hurry or something -- but post in tek-tips as well please, and I will post my reply here as well.

 

[KenCunningham]

Must be something to do with Halloween! >:O> LOL

 

[beelatch]

Having administered Linux, SCO (OpenServer and UNIXWARE), DGUX, AIX, HPUX (before and after 10), Sun (SunOS and Solaris), IRIX (SGI) and Digital (OSF/1) over the past 17 years, I personally prefer HP. Sun is great for efficient networks (inventors of NFS, NIS, automounter,.....) but a bit cumbersome for newbies. IBM is too blue for me (UNIX their way). IRIX is the standard if you live in Hollywood. DEC is ...still there, but their Halloween costume is a Compaq called Tru64. Why use SCO when Linux is free, but support is another issue. HP is relatively easy, stable (5 9s), well integrated with apps like Oracle, with an top notch patching system. They all have their good points, but I try to stay mainstream for more opportunities, and to me that means Sun and HP; in a heterogenous environment you're likely to find both of them more often. If you want something for home (no cost) hello, Mr. Linux.

 

[jad]

If you are going the Sun route, go for Sun on a sparc ... yeah you pay for the hardware, but on the other hand if you are buying products that are 'solaris' compatible, they almost always mean purely sparc based ...

Oracle database runs on Intel (if you get the right version) but has a little bit of small print saying that it doesn't do multiple processors, and the designers/developers/other tools aren't ported to intel.
IBM DB2 runs only on sparc, even though when you talk to their support department they say that they openly support Solaris.
You cannot download shockwave flash players for Intel solaris (if you wanted them for web browser access) ...

I Personally love intel solaris, but it's support in the outside world is limited.

 

[MikeLacey]

I've used Dynix/PTX (Sequent), Solaris, SCO, HPUX - and the AiX.

To my surprise, after some initial gnashing of teeth and undignified use of language, it's quite good.

Yes - It's done the IBM way. Yes - It's a bit fiddly to learn its foibles but....

Then I went back to HPUX and remembered what a pain in the (*&^ it is to have to recompile the kernel each time you need a bit more shared memory or whatever. With AiX you don't have to do any of that, it copes rather nicely in fact.

There is a downside. It does a lot for you - kernel wise - and that's both a good and bad thing. You can't for instance, as far as I know, tell AiX to use a fixed size buffer cache which is useful for database servers.

As long as you do things the AiX way, and don't rail against it too much, it's a very useful OS. I never enjoyed having to recompile the kernal and reboot the box and didn't miss it.

I'm back with HPUX mostly now, which is fine but ho hum - back to the ocasional kernel fiddling.... Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com
Email welcome if you're in a hurry or something -- but post in tek-tips as well please, and I will post my reply here as well.

 

[jad]

since version 2 of Solaris ... some XX years ago ... the kernel has never been compilable ... if you upgraded from SunOS 4.X, which came with a C compiler for compiling the kernel,and you used this compiler in your everyday use, as a Development partner/small company type thing Sun gave you a 1 copy license to use their 'New' updated compiler ...

not recompiling the kernel has made it so that you don't hand out the source, and keep the hack and slash programmers from completely trashing their machines, passing patches to trash other machines, and all sorts of other misdemeaners (less virus attacks and cracks ... very few back doors)

just my 2 cents

 

[MikeLacey]

I didn't mean the whole kernel - I meant things like changing the size if the process table, the amount of shared memory available. This kind of thing is still needed but it tends to be hidden as "reconfigure kernel parameters and reboot" - but it's basically recompiling part of the kernel (not much) and relinking the executable. Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com
Email welcome if you're in a hurry or something -- but post in tek-tips as well please, and I will post my reply here as well.

 

[rycamor]

Yah, but you guys are missing the fun of compiling a whole kernel. There is nothing like the feeling of properly compiling a FreeBSD kernel to optimize it for a specific task (like my home DSL firewall ;-)). (and no, nothing needs to be compiled for general system resource limit changes, etc...)

In the open source world, you don't worry about hack & slash programmers, because it's their problem if they want to trash their box, and you can always check your source against the main source tree at FreeBSD.org. And the *BSD's have some of the lowest vulerability stats out there. Most of the past vulnerabilities were not critical, and easily patched or disabled.

 

[jad]

problem with hack and slash in opensource is that in the real world most users don't have a clue about the kernel, except a few small bits that they might have worked with ... if you asked a 'user' what OS to use and administer they wouldn't ask for linux ...

user: how do i set the IP address?
linux admin: first edit /etc/XXX/tcpip.conf then /etc/rc.d/XXX and the other /etc/rc.d files that seem associated,
edit the kernel makefile and make sure that TCPIP is turned on ... blah blah blah ...

(yeah i know this aint right, but it's not that far off

 

[rycamor]

Actually, it's much easier than that in FreeBSD. All you have to do is run /stand/sysinstall, and you have a nice console GUI that walks you through all standard configuration options. So it ain't mouse-driven, but it's still driven simply by making menu choices, and following instructions. How much easier can you get? It actually is possible to run a FreeBSD destkop, without ever editing a text file. And if you choose a nice "beginners" Linux distribution like Mandrake, it's even easier yet.

Yes, to run a well-tuned Unix server, you need to learn the text configuration files. But running a serious Unix server is not something that should be done by "most users". I think that pretty much applies to all *nix platforms. There is a big difference between desktop usage, and server administration.

 

[jad]

and a big difference to running a system than programming it ...

if you take windows NT (yuck) almost every system admin working with a purely NT based network will not understand why it does what it does, or how it does what it does just that to get it working you should do 'this and that' and follow the instructions.

the easier an OS is to work with this the more it will get passed around to the wide commercial user base for server management.

NT isn't good, but it's fairly easy to set up and use, you just have to remember to reboot it every week, and install a few Gb of memory and spare hard disk space and you don't have to worry unless the hardware fails.

The main difference is the apparent ease of use of NT.

 

[rycamor]

Yes, apparent ease of use, offset by the amount of time you have to spend downloading patches, installing and rebooting, and the amount of time fiddling with all the pretty widgets that you are not quite sure you understand, etc..., and the amount of time updating virus packages, and dealing with Code Red, and then calling the consultants in when you really screw up. All part of the "hidden cost" of computing the Microsoft way. (sorry, I've just seen this too many times)

I have set up small FreeBSD servers at a couple of clients' offices, for people who wouldn't even know what to do with an NT machine, and the great thing is, I can set it up and pretty much forget about it. I check the machines every couple months, just to make sure, and on a couple of them, I can log using SSH to check more often, but other than that, they just run themselves, and on much cheaper hardware than an NT server.

 

[PepsiJoe]

Thanks for all the responses. I decided on FreeBSD (just because). After beating my head against the wall (except for the pain, the colors were quite pretty!) for a few days I finally got most of the 4.4 installed (I was having problems with the media not being recognized, turns out that I burned the iso onto a cdrw and the cd unit in the machine I was converting was a cd r only, aaaaahhhh). Anyway to my question: I downloaded the 4.4 iso again, reburned a couple more discs, and still cannot get certain portions to install. The compatxx, and others still give me a media error, any ideas why most everything else installed from the cd, but these will not?