UNIX dialects list

Advanced Oracle Utilities: The Definitive Reference by Rampant TechPress is written by top Oracle database experts (Bert Scalzo, Donald Burleson, and Steve Callan).  The following is an excerpt from the book.

Dialects of UNIX

Through the 1990s, UNIX continued to evolve and gain popularity as UNIX servers moved into mainstream data processing.  Many different unique dialects of UNIX have developed, each unique to each UNIX vendor, and today's Oracle professional must be fluent in many different dialects (often called flavors) of UNIX. With the demise of DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and its VMS operating system, Unix and its various flavors have become the dominant operating systems for the Oracle software.

 

One of the biggest problems for the Oracle DBA who wishes to work in the UNIX environment is that there has never been a single, unified UNIX product with total compatibility from one system to another. Most differences have arisen from different versions developed by three major early UNIX dialects - AT&T UNIX, Berkeley's BSD UNIX and Microsoft's XENIX product.  All of these Unix flavors are similar, but no two are exactly the same.

 

Today, the most popular dialects of UNIX include Hewlett-Packard UNIX (HPUX), IBM's UNIX (AIX), Sun UNIX (Solaris), and the popular Linux dialects (Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux). This book is geared toward all versions of Oracle8i and Oracle9i, Oracle 10g, and Oracle 11g, and included are dialects of UNIX like HP/UX, IBM's AIX, Sun's Solaris, and Oracle's unbreakable Linux. Some commands in IRIX, DEC-UNIX and UNIXWARE will also be shown.

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