Pros and Cons of Unix

[Rob Wehrli]

> David Demland wrote:
> 
> I am working on a paper for Grad school. I need to list the Pros and
> Cons of Unix. Any ideas where I can get some information?

Everything has "pros" and "cons," but it certainly matters how and with
what that you compare it.

BTW...I believe UNIX is the correct "representation."

I'd look for material by D. Ritchie as a good starting point.  Dennis,
better than anyone, should know its pros and cons.  I'd start really
focusing on figuring out what I'm going to compare to UNIX.  There are
so few reasonable choices, MS-DOS being the most obvious.  You really
can not and should not (IMHO) compare UNIX to MS Windows in any
form...UNIX is completely separated from its GUI and since NT 3.0, the
GUI was highly "integrated" into the "operating system," even though it
was all extremely modular, you just couldn't be separated from its GUI
in any commercial package before "Embedded Windows NT."

...and, comparing UNIX to MS-DOS is really more of a "How MS-DOS was
designed to be more like UNIX while NOT being UNIX" paper.  Of course,
you can't even compare "UNIX" to "MS-DOS" really, because there are many
flavors of UNIX and many flavors of DOS, and MS-DOS is just one flavor. 
Perhaps a "S5R4" paper versus "MS-DOS" is more of a one-to-one
match-up....


> 
> Thank you,
> 
> David Demland

I doubt that this helps much...

Take Care.

Rob!