Why Unix?

• Structured and Powerful: Main components: shells, utilities, file system and kernel.
  
  
• Networking: Remote shells (ssh) to share CPUs and other hardware, NIS, NFS, etc..
  
  
• True Multi-user
  
  
• Stable: Crash of an application is much less likely to bring down the operating system.
  
  
• Reliable: Servers are often up for hundreds of days (years) compared with the regular reboots required with other systems.
  
  
• X window system: Very flexible.
  
  

Why Linux ?

• Free: Comes with a complete development environment, etc.
  
  
• Runs on PCs, Alphas, Sparcs, Macs, etc..