Unix

Unix (Uniplexed Information and Computing Service) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, development starting in the 1970s at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.

History

Unix was originally written in assembly language. Ken Thompson wrote B, mainly based on BCPL, to write Unix's operating system code. Later, in 1973, Unix was re-written in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie. The availability of a high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier.

Design

The Unix operating system is made up of three parts; the kernel, the shell and the programs.

The kernel is the heart of the operating system. It interacts with the hardware and most of the tasks like memory management, task scheduling and file management.

The shell is an interface to the kernel. The shell interprets the commands given by the user and converts them into a language that is understood by the kernel.

Unix was one of the first systems to store each user's files in a separate directory, an innovation which has been followed by most other systems.

Impact

Unix has been influential, establishing computing concepts and principles that have been widely adopted.

In 1983, Richard Stallman started the GNU project with the goal of creating a free Unix-like operating system. As part of this work, he wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Unix and Unix-like operating systems have been in active use for decades. They have been used in all sorts of systems including servers, desktops, and embedded systems.

See also

• Linux
• BSD
• Solaris
• AIX
• HP-UX
• macOS

References

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