<p>I'm currently majoring in Computer Science at a local community college. I haven't taken any programming courses yet until next semester so I was wondering, what is the relation between Unix & Computer Science? What exactly is it that makes it different than any other operating system? Why is it use in the programming industry? & how can I start to familiarize myself with Unix? </p>
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<p>Unix has a long, long history with computer science. The summary is that Unix/Linux are for “developers” because of flexibility and power, for two reasons 1) open source, so you (and the community) can modify the OS yourself, 2 ) the way applications work on Unix/Linux is such that it involves many small parts working together in modular and easily extensible ways which almost certainly does not apply to Windows/Mac because MSFT/Apple restrict access to the internals of the OS)</p>
<p>Also, Linux is based on Unix (obviously). Android OS has a Linux kernel. Mac OS X’s is based on Unix. iOS (iPhone operating system) is based on Unix. 90% of the world’s internet servers run Unix/Linux with Apache.</p>
<p><a href=“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix[/url]”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix</a></p>
<p>Thanks a lot Terenc. I knew that Unix was developer friendly, but didn’t know exactly to what extent. I also knew that Apple’s OS had ties to Unix, just didn’t know how broadly used it is. My only question is as computer science student whom is still taking General Ed. how can I appropriately introduce myself to Unix & Linux before I start programming courses? Also is any special hardware required to run Unix? I currently only have a 6 year desktop, will it be able to handle the OS? </p>
<p>Sent from my ADR6300 using CC</p>
<p>A basic command line based UNIX operating system requires very few resources. These systems were designed to run on computers decades ago, after all.</p>
<p>An easy way to get a working version is as follows: download Virtual Box, download Ubuntu (a widely used Linux distribution), and then use Virtual Box to create a VM and install Ubuntu into it. There are plenty of guides to help you through this process, though it isn’t particularly difficult.</p>
<p>From there, just play with it. From the terminal (command line), try navigating the directory structure, opening files, running programs, and installing programs.</p>
<p>Youtube is actually a great resource for learning things like this. You can hear the narrator and also see what they’re doing as they run through examples and accomplish specific tasks.</p>