What is UNIX®?

UNIX® is the operating system class (OS) developed in Bell Labs in 1969. Today it is owned by the Open Group trademark, which oversees its development and publishes the single Unix® Specification. Other operating systems that are based on this OS or share many functions with it, but do not meet specification, are generally referred to as Unix-like. Such systems have formed the backbone of the early Internet and continue to play an important role in maintaining the functioning of the Internet. UNIX® originally decided to be an incredibly portable system that is able to allow a computer to run multiple processes at the same time and log in with multiple users at the same time.

Interactions in early systems took place via text input and used the hierarchical system of file storage. Although UNIX® has changed since its early development, many remarking commands and today is largely recognizable as the same system 40 years ago. Since 1994, the Open Group has been owned, which bought it from Novell. Standard is constantly evolving and meL also a number of popular offshoots, which began with their main ideals.

The most famous of these is the Linux® core, which has its beginnings in 1983, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project to try to create a free version of Unix®. Although the project itself was not successful, in 1992 Linus Torvalds created a free version of the core called Linux® and issued it on the basis of the GNU license. As a result, while Unix® remained relatively closed, Linux® was completely open source. This stimulated a large number of core distributions.

Although people tend to think of UNIX® as one operating system, it is an Actally wider class of systems that meet the specification. Anyone who has an operating system that meets this specification can use the name, provided that the correct license fees are valid. Many existing operating systems could use the brand if they were selected even if in MNOha cases would undermine their own properties.

For example, the Apple OSX meets the specification, so it is talked about Unix®. Similarly, the Solaris operating system in this class, as well as HP-UX, AIX, TRU64 and IRIX. Operating systems such as Linux® or BSD flavors that have much in common with UNIX® but are not technically UNIX® systems due to failure to meet specification, pay a license fee, or both, are often referred to as *NIX systems. This comes from the practice in the OS itself as a stars as a surrogate symbol that can stand for any character. Although technically "unix" systems are a preferred term, is it very rarely snipping *nix, *nix or? nix.