What Is Unix?

UNIX operating system was started by a group of programmers at AT & T Bell. UNIX programming was developed by the same group. Today there are several variants of the system that are being developed by commercial companies and individuals and nonprofit organizations such as the Free Software Foundation.

The trademark belongs to The Open Group Organization which acts as standardization and certification organism. Officially, an operating system can be called UNIX once the system had passed certification of Single UNIX Specification of this organization. Most of the producers especially the non-profit ones, because of price and because of the fast development of their distribution have chosen not to certify the operating systems they produce. These, although they are perfect or almost fully compatible with standard and are commonly called 'UNIX compatible' U * ix or *nix. Such systems are no less good or reliable than those that are certified and currently hold supremacy in terms of the installed base.

At the end of 1970s and beginnings of 1980s, UNIX influenced academia to an explosive spread of the system, mainly the BSD variant, from the Berkley University of California. In addition to the certificates we meet today a number of various descendants of BSD such as FreeBSD, Net BSD and Open BSD or newer systems like Linux. UNIX operating system is widely used for both servers and workstations. UNIX commands are very simple and easy to learn. In informatics, UNIX has become synonymous with the concept of open system.

UNIX operating system was designed from the outset as portable, multiuser and multitasking, and is characterized by the following basic concepts of information: data is stored in plain text format in a hierarchical format, devices and all elements IPC are seen as files, the broad usage of line commanding, instead of the large monolithic programs, it prefers simple programs with a single function.