UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I understand that Unix and it's counterparts are OSs, but would it be possible to just install them to a single user account? I'm using a family computer, whose other users want nothing more complicated on the computer than Internet Explorer, but I want to install Ubuntu so I can easily host my Apache server right off the computer, since I'm currently having trouble with it on my Windows. Is is possible to just get that, or any Unix system, on a single Windows user account? Thank you in advance.

1. linux != unix
2. what windows account? i don't understand your problem?

If I understood you right, you want to run Ubuntu under Windows, right?

This Problem should be to be fixed easily, by running VMware!

Have a look at http://www.vmware.com/ .

Maybe you want to start the Server automatically, I don't really know how to realize under Windows, but I'm sure there are a lot of Man-Pages about this

While booting the Kernel in VMware in order to install Ubuntu you are able to select the Kernel mode "singleusermode" and that's it...

When you got troubles, just let me know by email me, or post here.



Greets and good Luck,

JP

Well, I'm sorry for not better clarifying my problem. I'm currently sick of Windows OS, and I've really wanted to try Ubuntu, a type of Unix OS, for a while. It really appeals to me, and I would just reboot the computer and install it, but this is a family computer. I do not have any other computers, and buying one is out of the question right now. After doing more research to my own question, I've discovered a way to do it, at least somewhat. I was wondering if this would work...

-Create a new partition and giving it a decent amount of space using fdisk,exe on the Windows start-up floppy.
-Install Ubuntu into the partition.

Now, I've found a program called GRUB which has a nice tutorial for multibooting like this, you can see it here. Once I have the OS installed and partitioned, then how do I separately boot up Ubuntu at start-up as opposed to Windows? Do I need to make any other partitions for Windows/Ubuntu?

EDIT: I've also just stumbled across some info in a LiveDisk. Does this disk just load up the OS when I put it in, and just run off that, like it's own contained OS? Does it keep hold of files, how exactly does it work?

yes, that's how it works. a live CD will enable you to boot the whole OS off a CD, but this has several obvious limitations. i would recommend that you shove your windows partition down a few gigabytes in size, create new partitions for your ubuntu (probably just one for your / and a swap partition as well) and you can dual boot, using a boot manager such as grub. Ubuntu has a disk partitioning tool as part of the installation process, and also automatically installs and configures grub for you. i think you should try to get a simple installation guide for ubuntu, print it out, and just go through the installation process from an ubuntu CD. back up your stuff on the computer first, just in case, though you shouldn't have any problems.

by the way, no linux systems are unix systems. they are, in fact, GNU systems. GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, and GNU is a term meant to describe an alternative OS, that is not Unix, which is Free and Open Source (which Unix is not). GNU systems are also (more or less) source code compatible (but not binary compatible) with Unix systems, since they use a lot of the same software design principles. (is that right? correct me if i'm wrong somebody, i know this is a touchy issue for some).

I'm uncertain why this distinction is reserved for linux. Almost nothing is UNIX these days if you're looking for binary compatibility(compatibility with what, I wonder?)

it's not reserved for linux. in fact as you say very few systems are actually Unix nowadays, however many systems are Unix based. Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and BSD were all based on Unix, which i believe was originally distributed as source code anyway, so binary compatibility for Unix could be considered to be irrelevant. BSD has since been rewritten (in that all the parts have been implemented from scratch) under the direction of the University of California i believe, this was deliberately so that it could not be said that there were any parts of Unix within BSD, for copyright reasons.

Stallman set up the FSF to produce an entire system (called GNU) which would be the same in function, but not implementation, to Unix. A lot of GNU software is now included in BSD and linux distributions, however i am not aware that GNU software (software from the FSF and its contributors) is part of the distributions from Solaris, HP, IBM et cetera.

Distributions containing GNU software can be described as eg: Debian GNU/Linux or whatever. In short, you can call it GNU if it contains FSF software. Stallman considers Linux distros to be GNU distros because, while utilising the Linux kernel, which is released under the FSF's own GNU GPL licence, along with added FSF GNU software, Linux distros realise Stallman's dream of a GNU system containing no proprietary Unix code.

This is why the term "GNU" is mainly applied to Linux systems, because most other Unix style systems do not contain GNU software.