[Nemeth10] 1.3. Friction between UNIX and Linux

1.3. Friction between UNIX and Linux

Because they are similar, this book covers both UNIX and Linux systems. Unfortunately, mentioning UNIX and Linux together in the same sentence can sometimes be like stepping into a political minefield, or perhaps blundering into a large patch of quicksand. But since the relationship between UNIX and Linux seems to engender some confusion as well as animosity, it’s hard to avoid staking out a position. Here is our perspective and our short version of the facts.

See the section starting on page 1264 for more of the history of UNIX and Linux.

Linux is a reimplementation and elaboration of the UNIX kernel. It conforms to the POSIX standard, runs on several hardware platforms, and is compatible with most existing UNIX software. It differs from many—but not all—variants of UNIX in that it is free, open source, and cooperatively developed. Linux includes technical advances that did not exist in UNIX, so it is more than just a UNIX clone. At the same time, traditional UNIX vendors have continued to refine their systems, so there are certainly areas in which commercial UNIX systems are superior to Linux.

Whatever the relative merits of the systems, Linux is a legally, developmentally, and historically distinct entity that cannot properly be referred to as “UNIX” or as a “version of UNIX.” To do so is to slight the work and innovation of the Linux community. At the same time, it’s somewhat misleading to insist that Linux is “not UNIX.” If your creation walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you may have invented a duck.

Schisms exist even within the Linux camp. It has been argued, with some justification, that referring to Linux distributions simply as “Linux” fails to acknowledge the work that went into the software that runs outside the kernel (which in fact constitutes the vast majority of software on an average system). Unfortunately, the most commonly suggested alternative, GNU/Linux, has its own political baggage and has been officially endorsed only by the Debian distribution. The Wikipedia entry for “GNU/Linux naming controversy” outlines the arguments on both sides.^[1] Interestingly, the use of open source software is now predominant even on most UNIX systems, but no one seems to be pushing for a GNU/UNIX designation just yet.^[2]

^[1] Since Wikipedia contains Linux information and must therefore refer to Linux frequently, the debate has particular relevance to Wikipedia itself. The discussion page for the Wikipedia article is also well worth reading.

^[2] After all, “GNU’s not UNIX!”

Linux software is UNIX software. Thanks largely to the GNU Project, most of the important software that gives UNIX systems their value has been developed under some form of open source model.^[3] The same code runs on Linux and non-Linux systems. The Apache web server, for example, doesn’t much care whether it’s running on Linux or Solaris. From the standpoint of applications and most administrative software, Linux is simply one of the best-supported and most widely available varieties of UNIX.

^[3] Several of our technical reviewers protested that we seem to be crediting GNU with the creation of most of the world’s free software. We are not! However, GNU has certainly done more than any other group to promote the idea of free software as a social enterprise and to structure ongoing debate about licensing terms and interactions between free and nonfree software.

It’s also worth noting that Linux is not the only free UNIX-like operating system in the world. OpenSolaris is free and open source, although its exact licensing terms have earned suspicious looks from some open source purists. FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD—all offshoots of the Berkeley Software Distribution from UC Berkeley—have ardent followers of their own. These OSes are generally comparable to Linux in their features and reliability, although they enjoy somewhat less support from third-party software vendors.

UNIX and Linux systems have both been used in production environments for many years, and they both work well.^[4] At this point, the choice between them has more to do with packaging, support, and institutional inertia than any real difference in quality or modernity.

^[4] We consider a “production” environment to be one that an organization relies on to accomplish real work (as opposed to testing, research, or development).

In this book, comments about “Linux” generally apply to Linux distributions but not to traditional UNIX variants. The meaning of “UNIX” is a bit more fluid, as we occasionally apply it to attributes shared by all UNIX derivatives, including Linux (e.g., “UNIX file permissions”). To avoid ambiguity, we usually say “UNIX and Linux” when we mean both.