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Is Unix really a good OS as people 4
- Thread starter sarnath
- Start date
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2
- #2
CitrixEngineer
Technical User
YES.
OK, I guess you wanted quantification - but you don't say why you think it SuXoRs!
I'll give you 4 reasons UNIX is better than NT:
1) It's scalable. Even W2k Datacentre can only address 8 processors. Many flavours of UNIX can use 64 out of the box. A colleague of mine at Cray writes software for computers with 1,000 processors. You can't do that with NT.
2) It's secure. OK, W2k is getting better, but I'd rather have a Linux firewall than rely on an NT box to keep out the hackers.
3) It's reliable. Again, Windows 2000 stays up longer than older versions of Windows - but I've still had to implement monthly reboot cycles at most sites. I think the only time I reboot any of the UNIX boxes is a) after applying patches or b) following hardware failure.
4) As a programmer, you should know that UNIX is better to program for; Most *NIX programmers don't use the kludgy GUI-driven nightmares you need under Windows, and write small, efficient pieces of code that (generally) work within a few revisions. Let's see, the first reasonable version of Windows NT was version 1,381 - correct me if I'm wrong!
Why don't you like *NIX?
OK, I guess you wanted quantification - but you don't say why you think it SuXoRs!
I'll give you 4 reasons UNIX is better than NT:
1) It's scalable. Even W2k Datacentre can only address 8 processors. Many flavours of UNIX can use 64 out of the box. A colleague of mine at Cray writes software for computers with 1,000 processors. You can't do that with NT.
2) It's secure. OK, W2k is getting better, but I'd rather have a Linux firewall than rely on an NT box to keep out the hackers.
3) It's reliable. Again, Windows 2000 stays up longer than older versions of Windows - but I've still had to implement monthly reboot cycles at most sites. I think the only time I reboot any of the UNIX boxes is a) after applying patches or b) following hardware failure.
4) As a programmer, you should know that UNIX is better to program for; Most *NIX programmers don't use the kludgy GUI-driven nightmares you need under Windows, and write small, efficient pieces of code that (generally) work within a few revisions. Let's see, the first reasonable version of Windows NT was version 1,381 - correct me if I'm wrong!
Why don't you like *NIX?
- Thread starter
- #3
Oh great ! Quick reply !
These are reason why i dont like unix.
Unix is not commercialised.
lay-men can't understand it.
By all, its not comfortable to work with.
Unix is stable coz it's simple.
programmablity is the only one good thing bout it.
I certainly agree the unstablty of windows Flavours.
Windows is a commercial one. Nothing big can come out
of it. I dont like programming in windows. i just like
to click and get my jobs done.
But at the same time, i cant understand , why people
say unix is this, unix is that. For me, Unix is a normal
OS. Thats all. I myself work in an unix envmnt. I m familiar with Unix Internals also.
As far as OS design is concerned, any OS thats written
without considering the end-users comfortablity can't
commercialise..
IDHU EPDI IRUKKU ?
Expecting to see more comments on this.
Do not rejoice that ur code works.
it might be a special case of an error :-(
These are reason why i dont like unix.
Unix is not commercialised.
lay-men can't understand it.
By all, its not comfortable to work with.
Unix is stable coz it's simple.
programmablity is the only one good thing bout it.
I certainly agree the unstablty of windows Flavours.
Windows is a commercial one. Nothing big can come out
of it. I dont like programming in windows. i just like
to click and get my jobs done.
But at the same time, i cant understand , why people
say unix is this, unix is that. For me, Unix is a normal
OS. Thats all. I myself work in an unix envmnt. I m familiar with Unix Internals also.
As far as OS design is concerned, any OS thats written
without considering the end-users comfortablity can't
commercialise..
IDHU EPDI IRUKKU ?
Expecting to see more comments on this.
Do not rejoice that ur code works.
it might be a special case of an error :-(
Unqualified yes for the stability of the commercial versions.
Some are more difficult to work with than others and I won't touch some because of the complications created by hardware designers gone amuck, but once you know where the spider webs are hanging it is an attractive 30 year old.
I've had unix machines up for 5 year stretches. When somebody told me NT would reboot every 37 days I asked how anybody ever kept a machine up long enough to find the bug. I'm not bashing here, just commenting on original install prior to SP3.
Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
Some are more difficult to work with than others and I won't touch some because of the complications created by hardware designers gone amuck, but once you know where the spider webs are hanging it is an attractive 30 year old.
I've had unix machines up for 5 year stretches. When somebody told me NT would reboot every 37 days I asked how anybody ever kept a machine up long enough to find the bug. I'm not bashing here, just commenting on original install prior to SP3.
Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
My 10 year machine with one shutdown for a hardware fault ran for the 10 years without any administration. Owner logged on once a week for backup purposes, that was it. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
efair@atlnet.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
CitrixEngineer
Technical User
"Unix is not commercialised."
How so, when so many huge (and not so huge) companies use it for their mission-critical applications? Or do you mean commercialised in the sense that you can't play off-the-shelf games on it?
"lay-men can't understand it."
Tough. They're not meant to.
"By all, its not comfortable to work with."
Again, tough. UNIX is a real operating system, not a set of buttons plastered on top of a second-rate one.
...sorry - couldn't resist that!
What I mean is, why don't you find it comfortable? Because you're not familiar with it? It has a much steeper learning curve than Windows, but once you get into the nitty gritty of what it can do for you, you'll be hooked - I promise!
"Unix is stable coz it's simple."
Way out. UNIX is far from simple. Most UNIX systems are as compex as their admins have made them. Sometimes this has taken the admin 10, 20 or 30 years.
"programmablity is the only one good thing bout it."
Hmmm - some bed-time reading is called for!
I'm not trying to be confrontational - merely educational
I
How so, when so many huge (and not so huge) companies use it for their mission-critical applications? Or do you mean commercialised in the sense that you can't play off-the-shelf games on it?
"lay-men can't understand it."
Tough. They're not meant to.
"By all, its not comfortable to work with."
Again, tough. UNIX is a real operating system, not a set of buttons plastered on top of a second-rate one.
...sorry - couldn't resist that!
What I mean is, why don't you find it comfortable? Because you're not familiar with it? It has a much steeper learning curve than Windows, but once you get into the nitty gritty of what it can do for you, you'll be hooked - I promise!
"Unix is stable coz it's simple."
Way out. UNIX is far from simple. Most UNIX systems are as compex as their admins have made them. Sometimes this has taken the admin 10, 20 or 30 years.
"programmablity is the only one good thing bout it."
Hmmm - some bed-time reading is called for!
I'm not trying to be confrontational - merely educational
IA few points:
1. Disk volume management-- NT/W2K still tie you down to the naive system of referring to each disk by a drive letter, thus making disk management much more difficult. Imagine if you could move your whole C:\WINNT folder to a different hard drive or partition with just a few commands, without breaking one single application or corrupting the 'registry'. I know you've all had that problem when the 2GB partition you created for C:\ gets full, and you have to spend some major time upgrading your system.
2. The registry-- a great way to make everything on your system depend on one single file, thus also making it so that the more software you install on your system, the slower it performs. Everytime you start an application, the kernel has to search through that single large configuration file before continuing, so response time gradually slows as you install things.
Not so with Unix. Each application has its own configuration file, which doesn't have to interfere with the others in any way. Install a bazillion apps, your system will still respond quickly to any one app that you start.
3. The shell: Yes, people always say the shell doesn't matter in Windows. But if Windows actually had a decent command-line shell, with autocompletion of directory and filenames, decent scripting capability, advanced piping, etc... then you wouldn't even need to run the GUI, for performance-intensive server stuff. If you doubt me, spend some time learning the BASH shell, then maybe the Korn shell or the Z-shell. You can accomplish an amazing amount of programming and automation just using simple shell scripts, each one talking to the other. I know a Unix admin who can set up virtual hosting, email accounts, & aliases, DNS records, etc... for multiple domains, all run from one shell script. just make a list of domains and IP addresses, then run the script, which takes seconds.
4. The GUI: here is an area where Windows is still ahead, but only in terms of integration between software and interface, so that you can drag or paste objects from one application to another, etc... That only works when your whole system--OS and software--all comes from Microsoft. The Gnome and KDE people are working on ways to accomplish this, but it must be realized that the Unix world is about choice, meaning software may or may not support this or that window manager API, So there will be some complete GUI integration, but it will come from specific developers and vendors. I doubt it will ever be universal, although CORBA is an attempt at that.
The great thing about using a GUI in Unix is the tremendous range of choices you have, from lightweight (IceWM, Sawmill, Blackbox) to complete integrated desktops (Gnome, KDE), and many of these look decidedly cooler than Windows.
5. Standards: yes the biggest reason Windows won over Unix in the past was because it offered a way of standardizing interface, API, interworkability, etc... and at the time it was cheaper than the heavy-hitter Unixes. Now, however, I believe the new standards are being defined by such open formats as DHTML, XML, XHTML, etc... where it will matter a lot less exactly which OS you are using, as long as your software (browser?) supports a specific set of standards. Microsoft has been trying hard to undercut that by taking a perfectly good, mostly WC3-compliant browser (IE5) and adding all kinds of proprietary extensions in an attempt to sway developers of web-based systems. I hope more developers will see the purity of principle involved in coding to an open standard, but I know it can be difficult at times to make that decision. (I have been swayed by the dark side more than once ;-))
In fact, [assumes visionary stance] I look forward to the time when the GUI itself will be driven by an internal web-based approach, where every system will have its own internal webserver, thus making it possible to develop and to work remotely or locally without any shift in paradigm, or to distribute applications easily between different machines with different operating systems, or any number of great possibilities. Think with me here, people...
1. Disk volume management-- NT/W2K still tie you down to the naive system of referring to each disk by a drive letter, thus making disk management much more difficult. Imagine if you could move your whole C:\WINNT folder to a different hard drive or partition with just a few commands, without breaking one single application or corrupting the 'registry'. I know you've all had that problem when the 2GB partition you created for C:\ gets full, and you have to spend some major time upgrading your system.
2. The registry-- a great way to make everything on your system depend on one single file, thus also making it so that the more software you install on your system, the slower it performs. Everytime you start an application, the kernel has to search through that single large configuration file before continuing, so response time gradually slows as you install things.
Not so with Unix. Each application has its own configuration file, which doesn't have to interfere with the others in any way. Install a bazillion apps, your system will still respond quickly to any one app that you start.
3. The shell: Yes, people always say the shell doesn't matter in Windows. But if Windows actually had a decent command-line shell, with autocompletion of directory and filenames, decent scripting capability, advanced piping, etc... then you wouldn't even need to run the GUI, for performance-intensive server stuff. If you doubt me, spend some time learning the BASH shell, then maybe the Korn shell or the Z-shell. You can accomplish an amazing amount of programming and automation just using simple shell scripts, each one talking to the other. I know a Unix admin who can set up virtual hosting, email accounts, & aliases, DNS records, etc... for multiple domains, all run from one shell script. just make a list of domains and IP addresses, then run the script, which takes seconds.
4. The GUI: here is an area where Windows is still ahead, but only in terms of integration between software and interface, so that you can drag or paste objects from one application to another, etc... That only works when your whole system--OS and software--all comes from Microsoft. The Gnome and KDE people are working on ways to accomplish this, but it must be realized that the Unix world is about choice, meaning software may or may not support this or that window manager API, So there will be some complete GUI integration, but it will come from specific developers and vendors. I doubt it will ever be universal, although CORBA is an attempt at that.
The great thing about using a GUI in Unix is the tremendous range of choices you have, from lightweight (IceWM, Sawmill, Blackbox) to complete integrated desktops (Gnome, KDE), and many of these look decidedly cooler than Windows.
5. Standards: yes the biggest reason Windows won over Unix in the past was because it offered a way of standardizing interface, API, interworkability, etc... and at the time it was cheaper than the heavy-hitter Unixes. Now, however, I believe the new standards are being defined by such open formats as DHTML, XML, XHTML, etc... where it will matter a lot less exactly which OS you are using, as long as your software (browser?) supports a specific set of standards. Microsoft has been trying hard to undercut that by taking a perfectly good, mostly WC3-compliant browser (IE5) and adding all kinds of proprietary extensions in an attempt to sway developers of web-based systems. I hope more developers will see the purity of principle involved in coding to an open standard, but I know it can be difficult at times to make that decision. (I have been swayed by the dark side more than once ;-))
In fact, [assumes visionary stance] I look forward to the time when the GUI itself will be driven by an internal web-based approach, where every system will have its own internal webserver, thus making it possible to develop and to work remotely or locally without any shift in paradigm, or to distribute applications easily between different machines with different operating systems, or any number of great possibilities. Think with me here, people...
-
2
- #9
Does sarnath know that DOS has taken many OS concepts from Unix? He also needs to know that the Windows GUI is the work of Xerox PARC.
The original DOS code was bought by Microsoft from another company. Honestly, after having worked as a sysadmin for more than four years, i have lost confidence in the ability of Microsoft to produce ORIGINAL and DECENT code that runs, despite having some of the best talent in the world!! I know that this question is not a Unix vs Windows issue, so
let me come to the point.
On a broader perspective, i do accept that unix has got its own share of bugs, weaknesses and security holes. Still,
even if i am overworked and underpaid,
i love being an unix admin - the reason being that the
more deeper i go, the more knowledge and
understanding of an elegant OS i get. That's
why, when an interviewer asks me how can i rate myself on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best, i say that i rate myself at 3. Invariably, they ask me how come i rate myself so low, after performing so good in the interview. My answer? "Because, the more I learn Unix, the more I came to know what i dont know!".
Unix gives you the power - provided you know how to use it and benefit from it's flexible and powerful features.
It's a ocean - you need to know how to swim, to survive and enjoy
----
"lay-men cant understand it"
Unix was developed by AT&T Bell Labs, and was
not originally meant for end users. Thats why the commands are cryptic. Laymen CAN understand it, provided they are patient enough to study it properly and see the underlying beauty. The best way to learn
Unix is to learn the philosophy behind it.
"Unix is not commercialized"
Who said Unix is not commercialized???
Have you heard of Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, RedHat Linux ... (a hundred more ;-)?
"It is not comfortable to work with"
That is YOUR problem. You might have been
so used to the GUIs. Unix does provide GUIs too, if you care to look at them.
"Unix is stable coz it's simple"
This sounds stupid to me!!!
How does simplicity to do with stability?
There are many simpler OSes which ruined the
lives of sysadmins because of their instability and unpredictability :-|
Unix is stable, but not simple.
The designers had a VISION, of how an OS should be and NOT how to make money out of some piece of code sh!t@#@!.
"Programmability is the only good thing abt it"
It is a NECESSARY feature for any sensible OS, so that programmers can add features, and extend the functionality or tweak the OS itself.
----
I have experiemented with QNX, BeOS, Linux and love them too. After having said all this, i am not concluding that unix is THE BEST in the world. There are better ones too. What i do want to say is, that it is one of the most matured, sensible, flexible, powerful and stable operating systems according to me.
Sorry if i sound rude, i just cant resist!!
My two cents
The original DOS code was bought by Microsoft from another company. Honestly, after having worked as a sysadmin for more than four years, i have lost confidence in the ability of Microsoft to produce ORIGINAL and DECENT code that runs, despite having some of the best talent in the world!! I know that this question is not a Unix vs Windows issue, so
let me come to the point.
On a broader perspective, i do accept that unix has got its own share of bugs, weaknesses and security holes. Still,
even if i am overworked and underpaid,
i love being an unix admin - the reason being that the
more deeper i go, the more knowledge and
understanding of an elegant OS i get. That's
why, when an interviewer asks me how can i rate myself on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best, i say that i rate myself at 3. Invariably, they ask me how come i rate myself so low, after performing so good in the interview. My answer? "Because, the more I learn Unix, the more I came to know what i dont know!".
Unix gives you the power - provided you know how to use it and benefit from it's flexible and powerful features.
It's a ocean - you need to know how to swim, to survive and enjoy
----
"lay-men cant understand it"
Unix was developed by AT&T Bell Labs, and was
not originally meant for end users. Thats why the commands are cryptic. Laymen CAN understand it, provided they are patient enough to study it properly and see the underlying beauty. The best way to learn
Unix is to learn the philosophy behind it.
"Unix is not commercialized"
Who said Unix is not commercialized???
Have you heard of Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, RedHat Linux ... (a hundred more ;-)?
"It is not comfortable to work with"
That is YOUR problem. You might have been
so used to the GUIs. Unix does provide GUIs too, if you care to look at them.
"Unix is stable coz it's simple"
This sounds stupid to me!!!
How does simplicity to do with stability?
There are many simpler OSes which ruined the
lives of sysadmins because of their instability and unpredictability :-|
Unix is stable, but not simple.
The designers had a VISION, of how an OS should be and NOT how to make money out of some piece of code sh!t@#@!.
"Programmability is the only good thing abt it"
It is a NECESSARY feature for any sensible OS, so that programmers can add features, and extend the functionality or tweak the OS itself.
----
I have experiemented with QNX, BeOS, Linux and love them too. After having said all this, i am not concluding that unix is THE BEST in the world. There are better ones too. What i do want to say is, that it is one of the most matured, sensible, flexible, powerful and stable operating systems according to me.
Sorry if i sound rude, i just cant resist!!
My two cents
- Thread starter
- #10
Hi,
Thanx for the responses, guys. I think i had
provoked some unix lovers. sorry guys, i never meant
to hurt any1.
My point was that, unix could have been made more
user friendly. Thatzz it.
Do not rejoice that ur code works.
it might be a special case of an error :-(
Thanx for the responses, guys. I think i had
provoked some unix lovers. sorry guys, i never meant
to hurt any1.
My point was that, unix could have been made more
user friendly. Thatzz it.
Do not rejoice that ur code works.
it might be a special case of an error :-(
CitrixEngineer
Technical User
I think the only way you've provoked anyone is to make them wax lyrical about their systems!
UNIX is much more configurable than Windows, and hence more personal to its administrators. Most UNIX admins I've met (and the ones here don't seem to be too different) relish the opportunity to say why UNIX is so good.
Most MSCE guys like to tell you the opposite, because they can't figure out that command line (put those claws away!).
You can certainly make your UNIX/Linux system as friendly to you as you want it to be. Personally, I like it to be unfriendly to the outside world... ;-)
Install Windows 95 or better, the package said. So I installed Linux. And it was better... LOL
UNIX is much more configurable than Windows, and hence more personal to its administrators. Most UNIX admins I've met (and the ones here don't seem to be too different) relish the opportunity to say why UNIX is so good.
Most MSCE guys like to tell you the opposite, because they can't figure out that command line (put those claws away!).
You can certainly make your UNIX/Linux system as friendly to you as you want it to be. Personally, I like it to be unfriendly to the outside world... ;-)
Install Windows 95 or better, the package said. So I installed Linux. And it was better... LOL
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