-=> Quoting Adam Mead to All <=-
 AM> UNIX??? LINUX??? whats the difference!..
 Woah, chill!
 AM> i been in dos/win95 land too
 AM> long is linux like a windows for unix???
 AM> is unix like dos??? is.. is.. is... aaarrgghhhh!!
 AM> i aint got a clue where unix/linux comes to it!
 Hmm. You're reacting normally for a Win95 user who's sick of Win95. =)
 A few terms as per your message, in no particular order:
 Unix: a multi-tasking, multi-user, networking operating system that, on
 a large scale, pretty much runs the internet.  Original version put out
 by AT&T, other variants have popped up.
 Linux: a free variant of Unix, available for the 80x86 platform
 MKLinux: same as Linux, for the Motorola PowerPC platform
 IRIX: Unix for the SGI; SGI's primary operating system.
 Solaris/SunOS: Unix for the Sun; Sun Microsystem's primary operating
 system
 BSD: Berkeley Systems Design Unix; unknown platform
 FreeBSD: BSD Unix for free, available for the 80x86 platform.  Not much
 difference in operating, however with my own experience, is a devil to
 set up. =)
 X-Windows - the Unix GUI.  Helluva lot more stable than Win95. =)
 Anyone care to augment this? (Hey, maybe we can get some sort of
 glossary going...
 AM> 4: what linux version/whatever do i need???? which is best??
 Figure this:
 Slackware: has the latest everything, pretty easy to install
 Redhat: has the most stable everything, pretty easy to install
 Caldera OpenLinux: expensive, but has a bunch of their software bundled
 with it.  Never tried it.
 AM> 5: where do i get it from in the UK!?
 ...worst case, I can get the CD's and just airmail them if you don't
 want to spend the time downloading the entire slackware package.
 AM> 6: how much will it cost me???
 AM> 6: Does linux have a 'dos' type shell?? (no 'p' takers!.. i mean a
 AM> shell to the actulal system command line like with
 AM> windows/win95/os2..
 Yes.  It's primarily command line based.
 7: internet & Comms!!! what sort of support does it
 AM> have!!!
 TCP/IP built in, Netscape has version for it, Minicom is the prompt
 version of the terminal, Seyon is the gui terminal, setup for fidonet
 (ifmail, ifconfig) available.
 For mail, use Pine or Elm.  For news, there's rn (read news), but pine
 should work better once it's set up. =)
 FTP and telnet at the prompt without much thought.
 Need I go on?
... Light year -- Same great distance, only half the calories.
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]
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