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Higante

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UNIX in Microsoft or in other stuff?

I have seen a UNIX os, but I am not sure whether I should try to use this or not.  I was wondering if UNIX concepts had been used by Microsoft or other companies to develop their products.  Is Microsoft using UNIX technology in any way or form in their OS?  
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Irwin Santos
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YES
If you are using DOS (Disk Operating System) command line prompts, this are offshoots from UNIX.

If you like reading, hands on, are analytic, don't mind staying up all night long to work on UNIX, eat pizza and drink Coke.. then UNIX is FOR YOU!!! :-)
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Higante

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Do you know if Microsoft or other companies had used UNIX in making or probably develop their OS?  If so, Microsoft may be in the right track.  What do you think?
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PsiCop
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Unix mostly work on Shell scripts, and  windows work on .exe and .dll

Shell scripts are also very easy to understand (if u have a little programming knowledge) and u can easyly make ur own scripts.
Unix and i am refering to real UNIX will be out of yours and my budget forevever, *nix  ie linux and freebsd etc etc etc ad nauseum, are all releativly cheap to free and are great software, but lets not get Unix and linux confused again though,

windows utilises components of unix in lots of lil parts of its operating system, and associated programs, ie internet explorer and outlook, but as Psicop said windows is more closely related to VMS, the unix add ins come courtesy of the Novell suxs corporation who in the early days kissed mr gates a$$ on a regular basis

i dont like microsoft and no i dont like apple either

cheers
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So to reply to your later questions --
" Do you know if Microsoft or other companies had used UNIX in making or probably develop their OS?  If so, Microsoft may be in the right track.  What do you think?"

Yes to the first -- you said it very well, Microsoft "had used" unix in making and probably developing their OS.  As to being on the right track, if money defines "right", then yes, they are on the "right" track.

What I think is that windows is nothing more than a file explorer with a series of pretty icons on a desktop, so are graphical unixes too, including linux.  From the user perspective, they "look" similar, but now they are very different underneath at the code layer.  But when you strip them even further down to the very basic features of the OS that make up the essential commands (like files and directories), at that very lowest level, they are remarkably similar, still.
Higante.

I'm not really sure what you are asking for here when you say "I have seen a UNIX os, but I am not sure whether I should try to use this or not".

It all depends on WHAT you might intend using it for.  Are you just keen to experiment a little with different operating systems to see how they work(ed) to broaden your knowledge a bit or maybe just out of sheer curiosity?

Have you tried using one of the Linux distributions?
Linux is a free open-source operating system based on Unix and was originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers from around the globe.  There are loads of free versions based on offshoots of linux, for example Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com/) which can either be installed or run entirely from a bootable CD in its own environment (Live CD ISO Image: http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/5.10/).

http://www.ubuntu.com/download 

Other Distributions:
http://linux.about.com/od/dist/

Linux/Unix commands:
http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmd.htm

There are vendors (like SuSE Linux) who sell their entire operating system and a vast array of applications in one easy-to-install boxed CD package.

Linux is really Unix made easy by virtue of the fact that it provides a nice graphic interface that can be made to resemble Windows functionality to a fair degree, but underneath it still allows access to all the command line functions that Unix users are familiar with.  Linux distributions can also co-exist with MS Windows on separate partitions/drives in the same computer, so you can boot into either.  Additionally, there is a huge array of software written for Linux, and most of it is also open source (linked page is by no means an exhaustive list):
http://linux.about.com/od/soft/

I'm not sure if you already knew all this, or even if that's what you were asking or are interested to know, so just ignore my comment if it doesn't apply.
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windows was NOT "written to closely parallel its functionality to allow for an easy transition."
This is incorrect, sorry.  There was NO attempt to parallel -- the core DOS code was ADAPTED FROM existing unix commands, that is ALL.  After that, they diverged radically, there is no attempt to "parallel", the only similarity is in the core commands of DOS and UNIX.  This is to correct the point distribution for all future readers.
Thank you, Higante.

scrathcyboy.  Read my comment again before shooting it down.
Who said that Windows was written to parallel anything?
Microsoft allegedly (subject of historical debate hardly worth going into here) ripped off a load of ideas from other operating systems, but that's not what I said nor what I even intended to say or suggest.

What I DID say was that LINUX was written to closely parallel UNIX in functionality to allow for an easy transition.
Would you agree with that statement?
In reality, Linux was an extensive rewrite of Minix, which in turn was a "minimal unix clone".
Quote from Minix creator Andy Tanenbaum, 20 May 2004:
"MINIX clearly had a huge influence on Linux in many ways, from the layout of the file system to the names in the source tree, but I didn't think Linus had used any of my code. Linus also used MINIX as his development platform initially, but there was nothing wrong with that".

OK, so perhaps you might disagree that the similarities in functionality (I'm talking about working from the command line here) between Unix and Linux were not intentionally done to "allow for an easy transition" and that perhaps it was just coincidental.  That part was poorly described by me, and would be better explained by saying:
"Linux was written IN A WAY THAT closely parallels its command line functionality to Unix WHICH allows for an easy transition to it by those who are already familiar with Unix".  

PsiCop refers to "UNIX-Like" operating systems, which is a much better description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix-like

Anyway, let's not argue about this.

Higante.
Have you thought about using an "emulator" to get the feel for UNIX or Linux?

http://www.tech-faq.com/unix-emulator.shtml
http://www.cygwin.com/
http://cygwin.com/faq/faq-nochunks.html
http://dsl.ee.unsw.edu.au/dsl-cdrom/gnutools/cygwin/README.html
http://dsl.ee.unsw.edu.au/dsl-cdrom/gnutools/cygwin/install.html