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Unix/*nix

An operating system that began on the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7 in 1969 serves as the ancestor for most modern operating systems.

History

Ken Thompson wrote the very first version of Unix for the PDP-7 with Dennis Ritchie and Rudd Canaday in 1969 at the Bell System's Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Initially intended for use only within the Bell System — such as terminals for employees, and the basis of electronic telephone switching equipment — the operating system was completely rewritten by 1973 for a PDP-11 in a versatile programming language created by Ritchie. That language, C, remains very influential to this day. The operating system had many utilities — many of which are still in widespread use.

A year after microcomputers — later called personal computers — took the industry by storm, Bell Labs' UNIX continued to grow in popularity among mainframe and miniframe operators. The University of California at Berkeley had received source code from Bell Labs in 1974, which attracted the attention of other universities. On March 9, 1978, the first release of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) was made. BSD, and many of its utilities, were even adopted by Bell Labs and the Bell System. Some of the features were included in AT&T's System V. (American Telephone and Telegraph, AT&T, was the "parent company" in the Bell System. Following the 1984 divestiture of the Bell System, Bell Labs became AT&T Bell Laboratories. The company was relieved of the 1956 consent degree that barred the Bell System from marketing Unix widespread, allowing System V to become the first wide-spread Unix release aside from BSD.

Apple, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Microsystems all had their own operating systems based on AT&T's Unix System V. Hardware manufacturers like Dell, Intel and Motorola also distributed Unix for use with their computers or processors.

AT&T also capitalized on its release from the consent decree by releasing its own computer hardware. AT&T actually entered the personal computer market before the divestiture with the PC-6300 — which was a rebadged Olivetti M24 IBM PC-compatible machine — in 1984. The DOS-based machine was followed with the 1985 release of the AT&T UNIX-PC, which was configured to run a distribution of System V. (AT&T would release a System V distribution for the PC-6300 as well.)

Three camps formed: AT&T pushed System V among businesses, while BSD flourished among non-commercial users such as universities. Other, smaller Unix distribution "branches" also existed, such as Microsoft's Xenix. Each "branched" from Bell Labs' licenses of Unix that were improved upon by others. Like System V, BSD also had its own derivatives, such as NeXTSTEP created at Steve Jobs' NeXT. This all led to the so-called "Unix wars," resulting in standardization. AT&T would spin Unix off into its own company, Unix System Laboratories. USL would sue BSD before Novell acquired USL in 1993.

BSD and the GNU Project gave rise to many open-source Unix derivatives beginning in the early 1990s. All AT&T code was scrubbed from BSD by 1991. In Finland, Linus Torvalds sought inspiration from Unix to create his own free, open-source but separate project known as Linux. BSD and Linux are the basis of most modern "nix operating systems — including Apple's macOS, iOS, iPadOS (which are all based on BSD); Android (Linux); Ubuntu (Linux); Debian (Linux); and more. AT&T would continue expansion in the personal computer market through its acquisition of NCR, although they still sold personal computers with the famous AT&T "death star" globe logo well into the 1990s, such as the Globalyst. These were almost entirely PC clones running MS-DOS or Windows.

Distributions

OpenIndiana

OpenIndiana is a branch of Illumos, an open-source derivative of Sun Microsystems', and now Oracle's, Solaris distribution based on AT&T Unix System V Revision 4. This makes Illumos the only current, open-source System V distribution. Based on Illumos, OpenIndiana uses the MATE graphical user interface — providing the same look, feel and operation as many Linux and BSD distros.

Software

TiMidity++

A software synthesizer capable of playing MIDI, module and karaoke files — and outputting them to a variety of audio formats — right from the command line.


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Last updated: Nov. 3, 2024