Unix Operating System

An Unix Operating System is a multitasking operating system that ...

• AKA: Unix-Like OS.
• Example(s):
  • a Linux OS, such as Ubuntu.
• See: Unix Utility, Multi-User System, Unix Philosophy, Unix Filesystem, Unix Shell, Platform (Computing).

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References

2014

• (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix Retrieved:2014-5-12.
  • Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system that exists in many variants. The original Unix was developed at AT&T's Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.

    From the power user's or programmer's perspective, Unix systems are characterized by a modular design that is sometimes called the “Unix philosophy," meaning the OS provides a set of simple tools that each perform a limited, well-defined function, with a unified filesystem as the main means of communication and a shell scripting and command language to combine the tools to perform complex workflows. The C programming language was designed by Dennis Ritchie as a systems programming language for Unix, allowing for portability beyond the initial PDP-11 development platform and the use of Unix on a plethora of computing platforms. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Unix developed into a standard operating system for academia. AT&T tried to commercialize it by licensing the OS to third-party vendors, leading to a variety of both academic (e.g., BSD) and commercial variants of Unix (such as Xenix) and eventually to the “Unix wars” between groups of vendors. AT&T finally sold its rights in Unix to Novell in the early 1990s. The official trademark of the operating system is specified as UNIX. It is owned by The Open Group, an industry standards consortium, which allows the use of the mark for certified operating systems compliant with the Single UNIX Specification. Other operating systems that emulate Unix to some extent are often called Unix-like, although the Open Group disapproves of this term. The term Unix is also often used informally to denote any operating system that closely resembles the trademarked system. The most common version of Unix (bearing certification) is Apple's OS X, while Linux is the most popular non-certified workalike.

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