using Unix

[Alex Leung]

Perhaps I did not made my point clear in my last post. I will keep this clear and simple, and I appreciate for any help, thank you very much.
I know for using Windows OS, you can either buy a copy of any version of Windows(like XP) from shop/or get a copy from your friend, then insert the disk, reboot and install it.
For Linux OS, it is either 99% or 100% the same way to enable to use Linux.
For Unix OS, How??
Can you buy Unix and install it into your hard disk? Because the last time I used Unix is at school, by logging into a Unix Server through Windows telnet the server. So I do not know how to set up the Unix OS at the first place, and this is what I am trying to find out here.
maybe I should only say: How to set up Unix?

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Generally speaking (some vendors might argue with this, but it's true anyway) there's no one single operating system named "UNIX". There are many "flavors" of UNIX-like operating systems. Some examples: Sun's "Solaris," SGI's "IRIX", IBM's "AIX", Hewlett-Packard's "HP/UX," various BSD systems (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) and, of course, Linux. Any one of these is a version of UNIX.
If your goal is to learn to use UNIX, you can learn on whichever one is most convenient for you. This is likely to be Linux, which you can often buy in a box at Circuit City; of course you can also download it for free from the 'Net. The *BSDs are free, too. Pretty much all other UNIX-like systems cost money and/or only work on vendor-supplied hardware (although at one point Sun was giving away Solaris/x86 for free, a version of their Solaris OS that works on PC hardware.)
Does this answer your question?

[Alex Leung]

Exactly what I needed to know.
I guess I weren't sure what Unix exactly is, and now I have a better idea. I have used Linux before and I guess I will stick to that one, thank you.