UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Alright, so I'm interested in using Unix, but I have a couple of pretty basic questions:
1) What's the relationship between Linux and Unix? Are they one and the same, or completely different?
2) Can you use Unix on a laptop?
and
3) Where can you get Unix?
Thanks for listening.

1) and 3) are frequently asked questions. You may search on this forum for old posts on this.

2) Yes, though you may have better luck with BSD or (preferably) linux (somehow X-Windows does not work on my laptop on FreeBSD).

Thanks, I just realized as soon as I posted my message that 1 & 3 were probably FAQ, and thanks for help on number 2.

also number one can start some in depth discussions. for general usage? make sure you know what your compiling for and linux/{net,free,open}bsd and whathave you are all unix.

If you go linux on your laptop, might want to go the debain route, from my experience redhat doesnt play as well on laptops, be it with hardware detection, or in general. I've got way too many kernel panics with redhat then I ever have gotten with any other distro. Esp 7.1, god that was bug-filled!

One more noob question.
Which is downloading the files via ftp... sadly. I'm a complete Microsoft user and I'm pretty use to having files handed to me.

Right now I'm using Download Accelerator (because I use to use a 56 modem and haven't got over it) and when I enter the ftp I want to download from it prompts me for a user ID and password.

Nevermind... found jigdo...

Where did you download from?

In general, anonymous FTP download sites use "anonymous" as the username while your email address as the password. If it does not let you go in, it is either a private distribution site that is for certain internal members only or its public download quota has exceeded.

If you don't have CD-writer (like I don't have one) or are on a slow connection, probably you may find it easier to install Debian Linux or FreeBSD, for example. You can download and prepare a few 1.44MB installation disks, which you use to bootup the install to complete downloading the rest of the files needed (so you don't need to download a large volume of files that you don't need before installation). But these flavours are not as beginner-friendly as RH, SuSE or Mandrake for example so you may want to see if some cheap Linux CDs can be purchased in your neighbourhood. Downloading an entire distribution on 56k can take you a lot of time (and thus $$$$).

I would not suggest using anything but real FTP clients, like WS FTP or Smart FTP for downloading of files. IMO they are more reliable.