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Unix on PC's: After Reg nudged me into an orgy of postings on my fear and loathing of Microsoft taking over the internet, he asks about this.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but I'll try a brief, straight answer. As with anything in the unix world, the options are many. Mercifully, though, in the free Unix/PC world, there is a resonable degree of interoperability.
Both Linux and the *bsd variants are available as free downloads and as commercial products; there are companies that will provide support.
There is certainly nobody like microsoft behind the various free unix variants. If you want support at that level, the best option is Solaris from Sun.
My main consultant on these issues likes netBSD best; he claims it's closest to the classic BSD 4.* kernel.h, and will run binaries from most other variants, including Linux.
The thing about support here is that Unix and X are actually pretty mature software. There may not be a giant behind it like Microsoft pouring resources into NT, but the source is now generally available and the number of software people worldwide who know their way around the unix kernel well enough to enhance and maintain it is large.
Of course, Unix is starved for applications, particularly for the (relatively) cheap bread-and-butter MS Office type of stuff. Aside from Nav and successors, there is probably not much that the average Windows type would find to run on Unix that was both easily usable and affordable.
Cheers, Dan. |
