Unix OS

Having worked over the last couple of years in a Unix environment, just beginner stuff, moving files around, working with security/permissions, and some simple shell scripts, I now fancy learning a bit more and gaining some more in depth knowledge.

For a start I have a spare HP Microserver, and would like to install a Unix based OS on it to start tinkering, but I have no idea what to download to install on it. Can anyone advise what a popular flavor of Unix might be the most popular and best to install, preferably one that is "available" in the usual places.

I have ordered a book called "Unix power tools" which seems very highly regarded according to the Amazon reviews.....probably way over my head, but I'd like to think I am still capable of expanding my knowledge a bit.

Anyone advise what should I be installing ?

Some wise words here mate..
I pulled them off a forum

Please notice that "Unix" is not an operating system - not in the sense of "Windows is an OS" or "Palm OS is an OS". Its an architecture, a design blueprint for building actual OSes. "Unix" specifies that there have to be certain features, certain interfaces, certain ways things work, etc.. In a narrower sense "Unix" describes the way the OS kernel works.

Depending on what you want to learn you will probably not be affected by the difference between "Linux" and "Unix", because (you said you are a beginner) the two work identically viewed from the outside. The differences are rather esoteric points in the kernel design, which will most likely not affect you at all.

Using different Unix flavours is a lot like driving different car models: yes, its different somehow, but basically a steering wheel is a steering wheel, a brake is a brake, the gear shift is similar to the gear shift in the other model, etc..

Many Unix dialects are not free at all and will either only run on very specific hardware (like AIX, which only runs on IBMs p-Series) and/or cost money.

The bottom line is: download a Linux distribution of your liking and as long as you don't have to learn some very very specific details about OS architecture you could use the terms "Unix" and "Linux" interchangeably, because any Unix will more or less work like Linux and vice versa.

You might be interested in reading the Rosetta Stone of Unix for some of the more obvious differences among the popular flavours of Unix.

I worked maintaining a Unix system for a digital comms switch for 15 years (Solaris) and I reckon you'd be better of sticking with Linux ..

I find my previous knowledge of Unix invaluable and totally interchangeable.. playing with SQL is fun too..

good luck

supe

Well our systems have been HPUX builds, but I guess its a case of same meat, different gravy.
Its things I have been unable to do on our systems due to not having root, being live boxes (ie you cant experiment on them), and having a unix team to do them for us, like mounting nfs and clusters I want to learn, adding users, installing software packages, things like that. I just loved being back on a command line interface in putty.

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Originally Posted by tronads

Well our systems have been HPUX builds, but I guess its a case of same meat, different gravy.

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Worked with AIX, HPUX and RedHat and they are much of a muchness. As far as Unix goes I liked some of the features of HPUX that weren't available in others, the OSI stack for instance, and the same with the others I guess. RHEL is good to use and easy to update and stuff and runs in VMs nicely.

I'd reccomend centos or Gentoo. There's so much more than just moving files around, you can have your prompt set red for production boxes, green for dev etc. read write permissions for the person, a group or everyone are you wanting to change anything in the kernel to support different things and so on http://www.linux.com/learn/docs/7261...ips-and-tricks gives an idea of some simple things that can be done. There's quite a few commands built in like ls isn't actually a built in command but cd is. You've opened a huge can of worms here.