Differences in different UNIX flavors

[f. halili]

I would like to get your insight about this.....

I was asked in an interview before,....
What are the differences between HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, etc..???

What is the better OS??

thanks
`fnhalili`

[Patrick Wallek]

Which is the "better" OS? That ranks right up there with a post from yesterday or the day before asking if a dba or sys-admin position is "better".

The answer you get will depend greatly on who you ask. I don't know that any of the unix OS's are any better than any other. Although on this board you will probably get an overwhelming majority saying that HP-UX is better. I personally like it better than any of the others, but it is also the one I work with the most and know the best. A fellow sys-admin works primarily with Solaris and he thinks it is easier to administer.

Each OS has its own quirks and each will have a little bit different way of doing some things. AIX has smit, HP-UX has SAM, I'm not sure what Solaris has along those lines. Solaris does not have JFS built in, you have to buy it separately. HP has some JFS functionality built in, but then they also offer the OnlineJFS product for more functionality, AIX, I believe, has a lot of the JFS functionality included with the OS.

Each has its own way of installing software: HP - swinstall, Solaris - pkgadd, etc.

To me, there is not any one "correct" answer to the question "Which is the better OS".

[Bruce Regittko_1]

Why, of course, HP-UX is the better OS! :)

Probably the best thing to do is to grab ahold of a general sys. admin. book and scan it for major differences. The one I like is Unix System Administration Handbook (3rd edition, the 2nd is somewhat out of date) by Evi Nemeth, et al.

If you want a quick comparison of commands, check out http://home.earthlink.net/~bhami/rosetta.html.

--Bruce

[Thomas J. Harrold]

Hi.

Also keep in mind that certain applications may be optimized differently for each flavor of Unix. For example, Informix typically runs faster on HP (since they develop on HP). DB2, probably runs more efficiently on an RS/6000, etc...

It's tough to make large generalizations, but I feel that HP is better at back-end data management, and HA. (MC/ServiceGuard is far superior to SunCluster, and a few of the other clustering packages)

Sun is a good choice if you are in the web development arena, since most software vendors write for Sun first, then port to other flavors.

If you have to integrate with IBM mainframes, IBM RS/6000's may be a better choice, because of the support issues, communications software, etc...

There are a lot of factors to consider.

-tjh

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

Hi,

The way i would approcah this question is, UNIX is a multi user operating system, the basic fundamentals are the same regardless of the UNIX platform used i.e. you have your hardware, then kernel , then shell and then your applications.

It depends on what applications you will be running that you decide what OS you will use.
i.e. if a small business say with 2-3 people then you may consider SCO UNIx, if middrange servers which require high availability you may consider HP /AIX /dynix . Certain applications may be platform specific.

HTH

[CHRIS_ANORUO · Accepted solution]

These links should be of great help:
http://www.unixguide.net/unixguide.shtml

http://my1.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x0292c3d7fb78d4118fef0090279cd0f9!1,00.html