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UNIX
Posted by Hany
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9:11 PM
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Computer Principles
UNIX® is a class of operating system developed at Bell Labs in 1969. Today it is owned as a trademark by The Open Group, which oversees its develop and publishes the Single UNIX® Specification. Operating systems which are based on UNIX®, or share many features with UNIX®, but do not comply with the spec, are generally referred to as UNIX®-like.
Generally, UNIX® is seen as the operating system on a workstation or a network server. UNIX® systems formed the backbone of the early internet, and they continue to play an important part in keeping the internet functioning. UNIX® originally set out to be an incredibly portable system, capable of allowing a computer to have multiple processes going on at once, and with multiple users logged in at the same time.
The interactions in early UNIX® systems took place through a text input, and used a hierarchical file storage system. Although UNIX® has changed since its early development, many commands remain the same, and it is largely recognizable today as the same system it was forty years ago. Since 1994, UNIX® has been owned by The Open Group, which purchased it from Novell. The standard continues to develop, and has also had a number of popular offshoots which originated with its core ideals.
The most famous of these is the Linux kernel, which has its beginnings as far back as 1983 when Richard Stallman began the GNU project to try to create a free version of UNIX®. Although the project itself had no success, in 1992 Linus Torvalds produced a free version of the kernel, which he called Linux, and he released it under the GNU license. As a result, while UNIX® remained relatively closed off, Linux was completely open source. This spurred a great number of distributions of the core kernel, including popular ones like Fedora, Ubuntu, and Red Hat.
Although people tend to think of UNIX® as a single operating system, it is actually a broader class of systems that meet a spec. Anyone who has an operating system that meets that spec can use the name UNIX®, assuming they pay the proper licensing fees. A number of existing operating systems could use the mark UNIX® if they so chose, although in many cases this would undermine their own properties.
For example, the Apple OSX system meets the UNIX® spec, and so is strictly speaking a UNIX® system. Similarly, the Solaris operating system is a UNIX® system, as are HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, and IRIX. Operating systems, like Linux flavors, or BSD, which have a great deal in common with UNIX®, but are not technically UNIX® systems because of either a failure to meet the spec, to pay the licensing fee, or both, are often referred to simply as *nix systems. This comes from a practice in UNIX® itself, of using the asterisk as a wildcard symbol, which can stand in for any character. Although technically UNIX®-like systems is the preferred term, it is very rarely seen in place of *nix, *NIX, or ?nix.
Generally, UNIX® is seen as the operating system on a workstation or a network server. UNIX® systems formed the backbone of the early internet, and they continue to play an important part in keeping the internet functioning. UNIX® originally set out to be an incredibly portable system, capable of allowing a computer to have multiple processes going on at once, and with multiple users logged in at the same time.
The interactions in early UNIX® systems took place through a text input, and used a hierarchical file storage system. Although UNIX® has changed since its early development, many commands remain the same, and it is largely recognizable today as the same system it was forty years ago. Since 1994, UNIX® has been owned by The Open Group, which purchased it from Novell. The standard continues to develop, and has also had a number of popular offshoots which originated with its core ideals.
The most famous of these is the Linux kernel, which has its beginnings as far back as 1983 when Richard Stallman began the GNU project to try to create a free version of UNIX®. Although the project itself had no success, in 1992 Linus Torvalds produced a free version of the kernel, which he called Linux, and he released it under the GNU license. As a result, while UNIX® remained relatively closed off, Linux was completely open source. This spurred a great number of distributions of the core kernel, including popular ones like Fedora, Ubuntu, and Red Hat.
Although people tend to think of UNIX® as a single operating system, it is actually a broader class of systems that meet a spec. Anyone who has an operating system that meets that spec can use the name UNIX®, assuming they pay the proper licensing fees. A number of existing operating systems could use the mark UNIX® if they so chose, although in many cases this would undermine their own properties.
For example, the Apple OSX system meets the UNIX® spec, and so is strictly speaking a UNIX® system. Similarly, the Solaris operating system is a UNIX® system, as are HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, and IRIX. Operating systems, like Linux flavors, or BSD, which have a great deal in common with UNIX®, but are not technically UNIX® systems because of either a failure to meet the spec, to pay the licensing fee, or both, are often referred to simply as *nix systems. This comes from a practice in UNIX® itself, of using the asterisk as a wildcard symbol, which can stand in for any character. Although technically UNIX®-like systems is the preferred term, it is very rarely seen in place of *nix, *NIX, or ?nix.
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