Which is the best Unix flavor to learn ?

Question

Which is the best Unix flavor to learn ?

Answer 1

IMO Centos is the best flavor to learn. Why? Because it is typically one patch behind Linux RedHat. From a corporate standpoint especially within the government side of the house. Most corporations buy RedHat licenses. Centos is free, so if you learn your way around Centos whenever you come in contact with RedHat you won't be as lost as you would if you were used to using something like Fedora or Ubuntu.

Answer 2

Tizio 008 is correct. Linux is a version of Unix, just like Solaris is a version of unix. Every version of unix has it's own peculiarities. If you learn one, you learn all to the 80%-90% level. Then, you study the specific version you will use. But, stay out of the D@m4 GUI. That is for windows, not Unix. The real power of Unix is in the command line.

Answer 3

True UNIX or Linux movement?



The only consumer OS being UNIX heritage is Apple's Mac OS X, look how polished it is. You can't even tell it is UNIX Mach underneath unless you found the Terminal. Not lesser version of Mac OS, the utter mess of lesser prompted Apple to use Mach, a BSD kernel I think.



Under Linux movement you have myriad of options, I would say a rooted Android tablet is best, look how polished it is. You can't even tell it is Linux until you actually code apps for it, sure you will want either major makes with Bluetooth and keyboard, or an unnamed Southern China make with USB hook up. Haven't seen Slackware for a decade but last I saw it it's good and easy as a grassroot stuff goes.

Answer 4

The Linux kernel is the most forgiving. For example -- and admittedly this is a security risk -- if you know root's password you can become superuser by calling su, while if you are in the /etc/sudoers file you can do administrative things like installing and removing software by invoking sudo. On most versions of UNIX you also have to be in the group wheel to do either. I'd say Debian or Fedora would be easiest to start with. Learn both and/or slax or Slackware then try other OSes. DragonflyBSD is actually a good, straightforward UNIX variant. NetBSD and OpenNAS (actually a networking distro) are also good.

Answer 5

At this point it's easier to learn a Unix-like OS such as Free-BSD or a Linux distro like Debian or Redhat.