Unix
One of the earliest operating systems, UNIX was launched
by AT&T’s Bell Labs in 1969. It grew from the
ashes of an effort to create a dependable timesharing
operating system. It was initially developed as a program
development environment for specialists. Because its code
was free and could be examined and changed by anyone,
it became very popular, first in education and then amongst
the graduate programmers as they moved into industry.
It remains one of the most powerful, versatile and flexible
operating systems around. One
of its major drawbacks is that it has a very ‘bitty’
design, being made up of hundreds of small programs
that were not designed to a general specification. It
is easy to compromise security on it, and, because of
its underlying philosophy, that of interconnecting simpler
tools, it may not be appropriate for real-time applications.
However, it remains popular because it is easy to add
to it and many people know it very well. It also can
be transported between dissimilar computer systems easily
(ported).
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