UNIX is a powerful operating system of choice for professional and business users. Many web server applications available on the Internet are intended to work on the UNIX platform. On the other hand, Microsoft Windows is a most demanding Graphical User Interface based operating system that replaces all the command line based functions with user-friendly screens. Microsoft introduced a series of versions with the latest features.
Difference between UNIX and Windows
Following are the basic key features comparing the UNIX and Windows operating system:
1. UNIX operating system is an open source code I.e the source code is free of cost available to the users to make the changes or modifications. This is not the case in regard to Windows operating system.2. UNIX operating system is more stable, more secure, and does more with fewer resources. Whereas Windows running multiple programs would be unstable with regular crashes.
3. UNIX is preferred over Windows because of its power, flexibility, and stability also.
Generally, the users are not comfortable with UNIX and need to learn UNIX especially. Whereas, in the case of Windows, the users with little experience of operating systems can work easily.
4. In UNIX, there is an in-built webmail subroutine known as 'Sendmail', whereas, in Windows, a separate software package is required to be purchased for email.
5. UNIX is case sensitive whereas Windows is not. In the Windows directory, you can have only one file named 'one'. The Windows calls the same file whether you type ONE, One, or any other combination of upper- and lowercase letters. Whereas in UNIX, you can have files in the same directory by that name mixing and matching the case(one, ONE, One, etc).
7. In Windows, after installation; the device driver packages provide an interactive GUI for configuring the devices.
But in UNIX, several ways are used to manage the device drivers. Some UNIX implementation allows for dynamic loading and unloading of drivers. However, the range of supported hardware for UNIX is smaller than Windows.
8. One key difference between UNIX and Windows is in the implementation of multiple users on the computer. On UNIX, when a user logs on, a shell process is started to service the user's commands. The UNIX operating system keeps track of users and their processes and prevents processes from interfering with one another. Because all the processes run on the server, the resource demands on the computer can grow quite large, especially with many users and large applications.
When the user logs on interactively in windows, the Win32 subsystem's Graphical Identification and Authentication dynamic-link library creates the initial process for that user, known as the user desktop. This desktop is where all user interaction or activity takes place. Only a particular instance of the logged-on user has access to the desktop. It also helps the user to control the computing environment. Other users are not intended to be able to log on to the computer at the same time.
9. In UNIX there is no distinction between files on a local hard drive partition, CD-ROM, floppy disk, or network file system. All of the files appear in one tree under the same root. If the user wants to work with CD-ROM or floppy disk then these are mounted on an empty directory and then appear as a per of the file system directory tree.
But the Windows file system can have many hierarchies; for example, a different file system for each partition, and these partitions are represented as alphabet letters like C: or D:
10. When items are deleted from the Windows desktop, they go into the Recycle Bin, from which you can recover them. UNIX offers no inherent recovery feature; however, some third party utilities replace the delete command with one that just copies the file into a hidden directory.
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