UNIX is a class of operating systems developed in 1969 and owned by The Open Group. It can run on workstations and servers and has played a crucial role in the early internet. Linux is a popular offshoot of UNIX and is completely open source. Other operating systems that meet the UNIX specification can use the name but are often referred to as UNIX-like or *nix systems.
UNIX® is a class of operating systems (OS) developed at Bell Labs in 1969. Today it is owned by The Open Group, which oversees its development and publishes the Single UNIX® Specification. Other operating systems based on this operating system, or which share many features with it but do not conform to the specification, are usually referred to as UNIX-like.
Typically, UNIX® is an operating system that can run on a workstation or network server. Such systems formed the backbone of the early Internet and continue to play an important role in keeping the Internet functioning. UNIX® originally intended to be an incredibly portable system, allowing a computer to run multiple processes simultaneously and with multiple users logged on at the same time.
Interactions in early systems were via text input and used a hierarchical file storage system. Although UNIX® has changed since its initial development, many commands remain the same and it is largely recognizable today as being the same system it was 40 years ago. Since 1994 it has been owned by The Open Group, which bought it from Novell. The standard continues to develop and has even had a number of popular offshoots that began with its core ideals.
The most famous of these is the Linux® kernel, which has its origins way back in 1983, when Richard Stallman started the GNU project to try to create a free version of UNIX®. Although the project itself was unsuccessful, Linus Torvalds produced a free version of the kernel in 1992, which he called Linux®, and released it under the GNU license. As a result, while UNIX® remained relatively closed, Linux® was completely open source. This has spurred a large number of major kernel distributions.
While people tend to think of UNIX® as a single operating system, it is actually a larger class of systems that meet a specification. Anyone with an operating system that meets that specification can use the name, assuming they pay the appropriate licensing fees. A number of existing operating systems could use the trademark if they wanted to, although in many cases this would be detrimental to their own properties.
For example, the Apple OSX system meets the specifications and, strictly speaking, is a UNIX® system. Likewise, the Solaris OS is in this class, as are HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, and IRIX. Operating systems, such as Linux® or BSD versions, that have much in common with UNIX® but aren’t technically UNIX® systems because of not meeting specifications, paying the license fee, or both, are often referred to as simply like *nix systems. This comes from a practice in the operating system itself of using the asterisk as a wildcard symbol, which can replace any character. While technically “UNIX-like” systems is the preferred term, it is very rarely seen in place of *nix, *NIX, or ?nix.
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