UNIX (to the degree that "UNIX" really exists in the real world -- no real operating system is 100% POSIX compliant, which would probably be the best current guideline for how "UNIXish" an OS is) is obviously an operating system. It provides a kernel and a command-line user environment (or "experience", if you prefer), which is all that's really necessary for some applications.
Mr. Every almost reaches this point:
An operating system is the software that comes with a computer (or OS distribution) that programmers and users need to make themselves productive.
Sometimes, all that you "need to make [yourself] productive" is just the kernel and that basic environment (this is often true of server machines).
What's more, UNIX (especially Linux and other open-source UNIXes and UNIXlikes) is built so that the user (or sysadmin) can add exactly what is necessary for the task at hand without being forced to have a dozen layers of eye candy that don't add anything for them . . . or run *any* of several graphical interfaces to get exactly the "user experience" they'd like, instead of the particular one that the OS designers decided they'd get.
Like someone else said, virtually anything I can do with MacOS or Windows, I can do with Linux. And I've got a lot more flexibility in how I do it and what it looks like. You're telling me this is a bad thing?
I trust myself to determine what I "need to make myself productive" a lot more that I trust an interface designer at Apple or Microsoft...
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That would make it real easy for Venus to be more extreme than its moons, now wouldn't it?
What's more, UNIX (especially Linux and other open-source UNIXes and UNIXlikes) is built so that the user (or sysadmin) can add exactly what is necessary for the task at hand without being forced to have a dozen layers of eye candy that don't add anything for them . . . or run *any* of several graphical interfaces to get exactly the "user experience" they'd like, instead of the particular one that the OS designers decided they'd get.
Like someone else said, virtually anything I can do with MacOS or Windows, I can do with Linux. And I've got a lot more flexibility in how I do it and what it looks like. You're telling me this is a bad thing? I trust myself to determine what I "need to make myself productive" a lot more that I trust an interface designer at Apple or Microsoft...