I've been tinkering with computers for some time now and I've heard here and there about this mysterious operating system "UNIX". What am I missing with regards to functionability, security, etc?

I have Windows XP and like many, it's just too big and sometimes unstable. To put it short, it's not ROBUST!

Can somebody clue me in?

Thanx...............>

search this site. this topic has been covered before and there is LOTS of information for you to find.

Unix is an OS that has been around for much longer then Windows. Because it has been worked on longer and has a much better layout, it is MUCH more stable, secure, and robust then windows. It is also faster. If you have a machine running windows and the same machine running unix, the unix machine will generally deliver more bang for the buck.

Now the down side! Because it is a different OS, windows programs (without a lot of emulation) will not run on a unix machine (and visa-versa!). The good news is that there are literally hundreds of thousands of programs, many of them free, to do the same type of work that your windows applcations did.

And one more point, Have you heard about Linux. Will Linux is just another flavor of Unix and Linux is free to download and install!!

I hope I didn't violate the rules about doing Windows <-> Unix compars. This is just personal observation. I use windows and unix machines at work and home and perfer windows for ease of use and unix when I need a stable platfrom.

yeah UNIX is very good, i am still learning myself, only real dissadvantage i have come across is windows applications like games not running on them without emulation!

but it isn't prone to viruses apparently, probs because no one is bothered to make a UNIX one as it's so hard to do (again heard this somewere :P )

Semper