Some standards do exist (Score 1)

I have suppoerted several different flavors of unix from BSD to SysV. I try to focus on standards. Like all BSD systems did something this way and most SysV implementations did something another way. I believe that there is a SysV and BSD spec that defines what should go where. Also, on top of that we have posix levels and Unix95 etc... that most OS's are as compliant as they've chosen to be. (even NT) The primary differences (at least from a command point of view) is the volume management tasks. The bad news is that whenever a real high profile project somes up, they don't usually pick me since there are more specialized people with more uninterupted experience with that flavor. I've worked at 3 companies now that have tried to combine Sun and HP Unix support teams and all 3 failed miserably. Mostly due to admins reluctance or inablility to do and learn more. Also for the reason above. If I'm an HP admin and start dabbling in Sun, then management is going to pick the guy that kept his focus on HP for the big projects and pick the pure Sun guy for the big Sun projects! Arrggh! So management comes up with the idea and then punishes you for following it. Bottom line: I love the challange and variety of supporting multiple platforms and would pick that if given a choice. But it doesn't seem to be a career booster since most managers are REALLY only looking for 1 specialty no matter what they say.