UNIX an operating system first developed in the 1960s and has been under constant development ever since.
By operating system, I mean the suite of programs which make the computer work. Of-course it has many components static and dynamic alike, but overall it basically makes our life easier.
Being written in “C” and by being portable it was widely adopted, copied and modified according to ones need by individuals, enthusiasts, organizations and institutions.
There have been and are many different versions of UNIX, the most popular ones which you may know of are Solaris, Linux and so on and then they have their sub-categories based on package manager, operatibility, functionality, commercial perspective, etc.
The Most popular free ones which are preferred for servers are “CentOS” and “Ubuntu”.
The top free distributions or flavors which are preferred for home users include “Ubuntu Desktop”, “Linux Mint”, “Elementary OS” and TBH many more.
And the top commercial platforms for the more elite groups include “Redhat”, “SUSE”, etc.
Then there are Closed Source Operating Systems like AIX and HP-UX owned and developed by IBM and HP respectively and a whole separate branch of BSD systems.
Out of all the AIX and the HP-UX are the systems which close resembles UNIX and its traits.
Back in the day these UNIX and UNIX-like Operating Systems were commercial, so with an aim of creating a free UNIX-like OS Richard Stallman started the GNU project in 1983.
But due to a lack of development at that time it was left alone and then later in 1991 Linus Torvalds started writing a program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an Intel 80386 processor, but he eventually ended up writing an operating system kernel. He announced this system in August of 1991.
Later in 1992 he released the kernel under the GNU General Public License and from there it was an upwards trend.
After loads and loads of development, adoption and modifications we are where we are today with a much more sophisticated, user friendly and beautiful open source operating systems.
Thanks to the efforts of all the developers, contributors and engineers which made this happen.
Hope you liked this post see you in another one of blog.avoidingtech.com.