UNIX

An influential operating system created in the Bell Laboratories of USA based phone giant AT&T in the early 70's. Initially created as a minimalist version of MULTICS, it was later in the decade marketed by AT&T as an "easier to use alternative" to common minicomputer operating systems, which became something of a running joke in the computer industry as even by then UNIX had become considerably more complex than the common minicomputer OS's.

The company tried during the 80's to market the system as a microcomputer OS, initially by licensing Release 7 to Microsoft that created a subset of UNIX called XENIX that they then sub-licensed to microcomputer manufactures, later in the decade the company tried to market a line of computers developed by Italian company Olivetti as alternatives to PC's but this was a relative but not complete failure in the marketplace.

The UNIX business was sold to the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) in 1995 and at the same time the ownership of the trademark was transferred to industry association The Open Group.

Porting issues

See: Porting from Unix platforms

Operating systems based on UNIX

• AT&T UNIX
• SCO UNIX
• Xenix

UNIX clones

• 386BSD - Historical
• Coherent
• FreeBSD
• Linux
• Minix
• NetBSD
• OpenBSD
• Solaris
  • Open Solaris
  • Illumos
• SunOS

Links

• UNIX at the Open Group - The current owner of the UNIX tradmark and some of the code.