Re: What is the difference to Gnu UnxUtils ?

[Bob Proulx]

Ben Stover wrote:
> there is another collection of unix utilities very, very similar to
> the CoreUtils one:
> GNU UnxUtils
> available from here:
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/
> What is the difference ?

The summary on that project page says it all.

  "Port of the most important GNU utilities to Windows"

It is not _another_ collection.  It _is_ GNU software which has been
ported and compiled for MS-Windows.

The GNU Project includes many components such as the coreutils project
which are part of the GNU Operating System.  The GNU System is an
operating system created entirely from free software.

Because it is free software people are free to study the source code
and to port it to other systems.  The unixutils on SourceForge appears
to be one of the (many) ports of GNU software to MS-Windows.  But
remember that GNU is designed to be a full operating system and is not
related to MS-Windows.

You can learn about the GNU Project here:

  http://www.gnu.org/

> Is e.g. one for Solaris the other more Linux oriented?

GNU software is, of course, GNU System oriented.

The UnxUtils on SourceForge appears to be specifically MS-Windows.

If you are looking for Solaris code then the latest stable source code
release should be the best available source for you.  GNU is all about
the freedom provided by the source code and therefore all about the
source.  GNU does not usually make precompiled binaries available.
However many different individuals and organizations do.  If you are
looking for precompiled binaries for Solaris I am sure that some could
recommend something if you asked.

> Which one has more capabilities ?
> Which one is more stable ?

They appear to be a port of selected GNU utilities to MS-Windows.
When I looked at the source bundle and I see this list of source files
from the GNU Project and other sources.

  bc-1.05         flex-2.5.4   help           ncompress-4.2.4  sh-utils-1.13
  bison-1.28      fsplit       id-utils-3.2d  patch-2.5        sharutils-4.1
  bzip2-0.9.0b    gawk-3.0.4   indent-2.2.0   plotmtv-1.4.1    shellutils-1.9.4
  bzip2-1.0.1     grep-2.4     indent-2.2.6   recode-3.5       tar-1.12
  diffutils-2.7   grep-2.5.1   jwhois-2.4.1   recode-3.6       textutils-2.0
  file-4.02       groff-1.11   less-340       rman-3.0.7       textutils-2.1
  fileutils-3.16  gsar110      m4-1.4         sed-3.02         which-2.4
  findutils-4.1   gzip-1.2.4a  make-3.78.1    sed-4.0.7        zsh

Some of those versions are really quite old!  I would definitely
recommend that you look elsewhere for your MS-Windows programs.  For
MS-Windows the Cygwin tools are a often recommended location for
precompiled binaries.

  http://cygwin.com/

Bob