Which UNIX version for beginners

Applications UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers
1

  1. I would like to know which UNIX version I should use as a beginner and from I can get it?

  2. How much hard disk space(drive space...in case of dual boot) does it require?

  3. Can I run it from USB or Live CD?

  4. Is there any need of installing UNIX if I have Linux... ie does Linux support UNIX commands or does it support some kind of UNIX patch so that I do not have to install UNIX and Linux separately as I already have Windows installed on my PC and I will definitely install Linux Ubuntu 10.10?

My PC Config :

Operating System Name : Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (build 7600), 64-bit
Version : 6.1
Build Number : 7600
Service Pack :
Common Controls Version : 5.82

Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66 GHz
RAM : 2 GB

Your answers would really help me as a beginner?

Regards
Arpit

2

Install a virtualization product such as VirtualBox or VMware Server, Free Virtualization Download for Virtual Server Consolidation on to Windows. You can then run Linux on a virtual machine inside a Window without having to dual boot. That will let you experiment with different Linux distros without having to mess about with dual booting.

3

Linux is mostly not a UNIX for copyright reasons... It does support a great many UNIX system calls and utilities. If anything the biggest difference is how they kept enhancing the utilities while on many "true" unix systems they adhere to the standard to the letter without even extending it.

Solaris [b]echo, for example, doesn't support the -n option, so Linux scripts using it won't work right on Solaris. And BSD sed doesn't support escape combinations like \n to mean a newline.

And a few utilities are radically different from their UNIX counterparts, like date. In Linux, the date command has become a very useful date conversion utility, whereas in plain UNIX it can only read and set dates. This behavior is very hard to replace, and is often badly missed on UNIX systems.

And so on. Many GNU versions of UNIX utilities like sed, awk, and so forth have been enhanced to have almost no arbitrary line limit, where UNIX versions often can't deal with lines longer than 1 or 2 kilobytes.

System configuration is another kettle of fish. Linux systems aren't configured the same way as a lot of UNIX systems, but then, the many different varieties of UNIX often don't agree with each other on that either.

So it's not really black and white. You'll learn a lot of UNIX architecture and utilities by using Linux, but might need to work a little more strictly when you try to take that knowledge to an OS that actually calls itself UNIX-compliant.

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4

If you want a free Unix operating system then you are limited to one of the BSD varieties, Solaris or one of the OpenSolaris derivations.