Unix and Unix-like operating systems
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed at Bell Labs of AT&T in 1969 by a group of employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan and others. Traditionally Unix provides a CLI (Command Line Interface), similar to, but significantly more complex and powerful than, DOS. It is essentially the system upon which the Internet was founded.
Unix was first developed in assembly language, then rewritten in C by 1973. This effort greatly facilitating its further development and porting to other platforms. In the late 1970s, Bell gave away UNIX to many Colleges and Universities, and students became accustomed to using it. Many variations (usually called “flavours”) of Unix and Unix-like Operating Systems were released especially during the dot-com boom of the 1990's by various commercial vendors, universities (such as University of California, Berkeley's BSD), and non-profit organizations. With the notable exception of Microsoft Windows, all current major operating systems have some kind of Unix at their cores.
A Unix-like operating system is one that has been developed based on the original UNIX. Examples of Unix-like implementations include AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, MINIX, Linux, and BSD descendants (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD), Solaris and etc. They have different graphical interfaces, but from the Unix shell, a command line feature common to all versions, they are very similar.
Minix was a UNIX clone created by Andrew Tanenbaumm in 1987 for x86 used primarily as an educational tool. With Minix as a background, Linus Torvalds released Linux source codes in 1991. Today Linux distributions, consisting of the Linux kernel and large collections of compatible software have become popular both with individual users and in business. It has continued to advance rapidly in terms of ease of use and other performance characteristics as a result of its open source development model, and it has now become the dominant flavor of Unix-like operating systems. Popular distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, Debian GNU/Linux, ARch Linux, Mandriva Linux, Slackware Linux and Gentoo.
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995. Today the term "BSD" is often used non-specifically to refer to any of the BSD descendants which together form a branch of the family of Unix-like operating systems. BSD has been the base of a large number of operating systems. Most notable among these today are perhaps the major open source BSDs: FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, which are all derived from 386BSD and 4.4BSD-Lite by various routes. Both NetBSD and FreeBSD started life in 1993, initially derived from 386BSD, but in 1994 migrating to a 4.4BSD-Lite code base. OpenBSD was forked in 1995 from NetBSD.
Linux and BSD, both based on UNIX are developed by non-commercial organizations. Both the Linux and BSD which were considered as interesting academic projects are now rapidly occupying much of the market traditionally occupied by proprietary Unix operating systems, as well as expanding into new markets such as the consumer desktop and mobile and embedded devices.
OpenSolaris is a relatively recent addition to the list of operating systems based on free software licenses marked as such by Free Software Foundation and OSI. It was based on Solaris, which was originally released by Sun in 1991. Solaris is a version of UNIX System V Release 4 (SVR4), jointly developed by Sun and AT&T to merge features from several existing Unix systems. It was licensed by Sun from Novell to replace SunOS.
Unix is powerful and stable operating system. It is used in both SME and large enterprises. Due to high learning curve, this operating system may not for everyone. However, as complete source codes are available to the public, it will be valuable to those who want to learn and play with it. In fact, learning Unix is fun!
Unix was first developed in assembly language, then rewritten in C by 1973. This effort greatly facilitating its further development and porting to other platforms. In the late 1970s, Bell gave away UNIX to many Colleges and Universities, and students became accustomed to using it. Many variations (usually called “flavours”) of Unix and Unix-like Operating Systems were released especially during the dot-com boom of the 1990's by various commercial vendors, universities (such as University of California, Berkeley's BSD), and non-profit organizations. With the notable exception of Microsoft Windows, all current major operating systems have some kind of Unix at their cores.
A Unix-like operating system is one that has been developed based on the original UNIX. Examples of Unix-like implementations include AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, MINIX, Linux, and BSD descendants (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD), Solaris and etc. They have different graphical interfaces, but from the Unix shell, a command line feature common to all versions, they are very similar.
Minix was a UNIX clone created by Andrew Tanenbaumm in 1987 for x86 used primarily as an educational tool. With Minix as a background, Linus Torvalds released Linux source codes in 1991. Today Linux distributions, consisting of the Linux kernel and large collections of compatible software have become popular both with individual users and in business. It has continued to advance rapidly in terms of ease of use and other performance characteristics as a result of its open source development model, and it has now become the dominant flavor of Unix-like operating systems. Popular distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, Debian GNU/Linux, ARch Linux, Mandriva Linux, Slackware Linux and Gentoo.
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995. Today the term "BSD" is often used non-specifically to refer to any of the BSD descendants which together form a branch of the family of Unix-like operating systems. BSD has been the base of a large number of operating systems. Most notable among these today are perhaps the major open source BSDs: FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, which are all derived from 386BSD and 4.4BSD-Lite by various routes. Both NetBSD and FreeBSD started life in 1993, initially derived from 386BSD, but in 1994 migrating to a 4.4BSD-Lite code base. OpenBSD was forked in 1995 from NetBSD.
Linux and BSD, both based on UNIX are developed by non-commercial organizations. Both the Linux and BSD which were considered as interesting academic projects are now rapidly occupying much of the market traditionally occupied by proprietary Unix operating systems, as well as expanding into new markets such as the consumer desktop and mobile and embedded devices.
OpenSolaris is a relatively recent addition to the list of operating systems based on free software licenses marked as such by Free Software Foundation and OSI. It was based on Solaris, which was originally released by Sun in 1991. Solaris is a version of UNIX System V Release 4 (SVR4), jointly developed by Sun and AT&T to merge features from several existing Unix systems. It was licensed by Sun from Novell to replace SunOS.
Unix is powerful and stable operating system. It is used in both SME and large enterprises. Due to high learning curve, this operating system may not for everyone. However, as complete source codes are available to the public, it will be valuable to those who want to learn and play with it. In fact, learning Unix is fun!
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