No part of a computer is as important as the operating system. Without it, you’d have no way of communicating with the actual hardware, meaning it would be as useless as if it had no power to run on. Although there have been many different types of operating systems over the years, one of the most popular has been UNIX.

A Brief History

UNIX has been around for over 40 years and very popular the entire time. That’s because UNIX provides an environment that is both multi-user and multi-tasking. It’s stable and portable, yet no less powerful where its networking capabilities are concerned.

In the late 1960s, minds at General Electric, Bell Labs, and MIT teamed up to create an operating mainframe that would be able to host multiple users and handle multiple tasks all at once for computers called MULTICS (Multiplexed Information and Computing System). Unfortunately, this attempt failed. However, a man named Ken Thompson, who had been on the team from Bell Labs, was inspired to continue working on a simpler system all by himself.

Eventually, he would create UNICS (Uniplexed Information and Computing System). Ultimately, the name was just shortened to UNIX. Speaking of which, at the time, memory and CPU power was in such short supply that UNIX utilized shorter commands like ls, rm, cp, mv, etc. all of which are still in use today. These shorter commands needed less space for storage and didn’t take as much time to decode.

Next, Thompson teamed up with the creator of the original C compiler, Dennis Ritchie, in 1973. They would work together to rewrite UNIX and release the fifth edition to universities in 1974. After that, UNIX went on to enjoy widespread acceptance across academia. Commercial startups were soon to follow. Today, a popular operating system like LINUX and Darwin owe much of their success to UNIX.

Users

As UNIX was created before the personal computer was even around, it was designed from the ground up. That means it has many features you’d probably recognize from later operating systems like users, groups, network-shared resources and permissions.

In order to use the operating system, you have to first log in. This begins with a user account that consists of a:

  • Username
  • Password
  • Default Group
  • Contact Group
  • Contact Info
  • Home Directory
  • Default Shell

Groups

A collection of users is called a group in it. It’s just a list of usernames that provide a mechanism through which UNIX can assign them permissions all at once. However, every user can belong to more than a single group.

Permissions

Everything in a UNIX environment is owned by either a group or a user. Probably the simplest example would just be something like a file. The owner of that file can decide which other groups and users are able to read or modify it. This makes UNIX a great method for keeping files safe from prying eyes or destruction from human error.

Shared Resources

At its core, UNIX is a networked operating environment. Therefore, just about everything that you can access on the local system can also be connected to by remote systems via the network. Amongst other things, this allows common practices like the sharing and editing of files, using printers and running software. You can even manipulate a UNIX system’s display remotely if you desire.

With its long history, it’s easy to look at it as an operating system that is probably now obsolete. However, what those two companies and MIT started so many decades ago has remained a powerful force in the world of computing. We at ServerPronto know all about the potential that UNIX entails.

 

Source:

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~wjk/UnixIntro/Lecture1.html

Photo cred: Flickr / PanelSwitchman

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