UNIX
From iGeek
UNIX is the old war-bird of Operating Systems -- which is ironic as it isn't an OS any more -- but more on that later.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2019-08-03 |
Facts[edit | edit source]
- UNIX was created as a private research project by AT&T's Bell Laboratories (Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie) in 1969.
- AT&T wasn't really in the computer business they had the wise marketing plan of giving away the source code to UNIX for free.
- UNIX wallowed around and was basically only popular in education and research labs because it was inferior to other commercial OS's of the time. But since Universities could modify this Operating System freely, many programmers cut their teeth (in school) using it, and researchers came from academia so they used it too.
- This legacy has totally defined what UNIX is, and what it is good for -- and bad at. It wasn't good, it was free. But perfect is the enemy of good enough, and UNIX was always "Good enough" that people used it, added to it, and it sort of became a defecto solution until it got near universal adoption.
- These same pragmatic compromises are similar to why TCP/IP and HTML became the Internet. Sometimes good enough is better than doing it right or well.
- Basically UNIX (and other *Nix variants like Linux), evolved at the speed of grad projects. What could you do in a year or two, without fixing or changing all the antiquated assumptions beneath that. It allowed it to evolve quickly superficially, and not much at all architectually or foundationally.
More[edit | edit source]
- Command Line Interface - There is an ancient computer debate about command-lines versus a GUI (Graphical User Interfaces). One side argues that command line is where the magic happens, and if you don't know it, you don't know computers. And one computers designed that way, there's a small grain of truth. but a lot of bias and things to unpack as well.
- How Secure are you? - How secure are your devices from intruders? The answer is "it depends", on a lot of things, like what machine you have, what you do, and so on. The OS's are more secure than the Apps you run. And iOS is best, then Android/Chrome, Mac, Unix, Windows. Store apps are safer than random downloads from the Internet.
- Jaguar brings Unix Apps - UNIX comes with UNIX Apps and software: mostly clustered around a few markets, development, academia (higher education), research, network administrators, and some vertical markets in the high-end arenas (high end video productions, high end animation and 3D, and so on).
- Linux - I consider LINUX as a flavor of UNIX. Really Linux is this freeware version of UNIX, that works basically the same, but was written later and was more a project in reverse engineering (copying) an Operating System. Some design parts are better, but some aren't. Really, it is really more accurate to think of LINUX as a UNIX clone than as UNIX.
- MacOS X is Unix - OS X is cool because UNIX is cool. Not because UNIX is a particularly well done OS, UNIX has tons of anachronistic design choices and has plenty of legacy issues that aren't pretty or modern. But UNIX does have many strengths to counteract those issues. The Mac was not UNIX, Jaguar is UNIX.
- Stupid Knowledge - In computers (as well as other aspects of life), there are things you need to know, but shouldn't have to. This isn't useful knowledge, because if it was done "right", you wouldn't need to know it at all. You only need to know because humanity is too lazy to fix it. Thus I coined the term "Stupid Knowledge™", for things you have to know, but you shouldn't have to.
- UNIX History - UNIX was created as a private research projects by AT&T's Bell Laboratories in 1969. The "interface" (and I use that term loosely) was "borrowed" liberally from Honeywell's Multics (which comes from MULTiplexed Information Computing System). UNICS implied it was uniplexed (it isn't), and the geeks designed it, and it shows.
- UNIX is a foundation - Is UNIX an OS? Not really any more, it's the foundation of one. When Operating Systems (OS's) were created, they were basically: a kernel, device drivers, shell (to send it commands). But by the 1980s there needed to be graphics, and graphical interface, video and music streaming, browsers, and so on. Most of the code you use or program to isn't the UNIX OS.
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Tags: Tech Programming
