Chapter 26: UNIX Applications and Databases


Today, you can find UNIX application software for most any application. This chapter is designed to help you find the particular UNIX application software that you need. It includes a description of some major classes of application software and provides pointers to where this software can be found. Also, a sampling of some of the available software is provided.

Because such a large variety of application software is available for UNIX, this chapter barely touches the surface. It doesn’t attempt to be comprehensive or complete in any way The purpose of this chapter is to give you some idea of the range and type of software available for UNIX systems and where you might begin looking for it. This chapter will discuss general-purpose software not designed for a particular industry, called horizontal software. Furthermore, the chapter addresses both commercial UNIX software products and public-domain software that can be obtained either at no charge or for a nominal cost. This second category is known as F/OSS (free and open-source software). Sometimes you will here it referred to as freeware or shareware, even though these are older terms; we will refer to it as open-source software.

Note that with the tremendous explosion in the use of Linux, there has been a corresponding spurt of activity with new Linux application software, including both open-source software and commercial offerings. Finally, this chapter addresses some of the advantages and the disadvantages of using free software versus commercial software.

Commercially Available Software Packages

The commercial packages described in this chapter were developed to run on a variety of UNIX platforms, such as Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, AIX, and Mac OS X. Most vendors of software running under UNIX have ported their products to all major UNIX variants. Once you have found a UNIX commercial software product you are interested in, contact the vendor of that product to determine whether a version of their package will run on your particular system.

Some vendors offer commercial software products free of charge for noncommercial use, such as by a university, an individual not using the software for business use, or a nonprofit organization. You should check to see whether this is the case for software of interest to you.

The amount of application software available for computers running UNIX has grown significantly since its standardization, especially since porting among UNIX variants has become easier. When looking for a particular application, study the market thoroughly to find out about the latest products. Be sure to consult web sites on particular products and read reviews of software products and survey articles on types of software, published in the UNIX industry periodicals. These reviews and survey articles often compare and contrast competing software products that carry out the same function.




UNIX. The Complete Reference
UNIX: The Complete Reference, Second Edition (Complete Reference Series)
ISBN: 0072263369
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 316

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