Unix is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. It is a modular OS made up of a number of essential components, including the kernel, shell, file system, and a core set of utilities or programs. Unix was originally meant to be a convenient platform for programmers developing software to be run on it and on other systems, rather than for non-programmers. The system grew larger as the operating system started spreading in academic circles, and as users added their own tools to the system and shared them with colleagues.
Unix is a stable, multi-user, multi-tasking system for servers, desktops, and laptops. It has a reputation for stability, security, and scalability, making it a popular choice for enterprise-level computing. Unix systems also have a graphical user interface (GUI) similar to Microsoft Windows which provides an easy-to-use environment. However, knowledge of Unix is required for operations that arent covered by a graphical program, or for when there is no windows interface available, for example, in a telnet session.
There are many different versions of Unix, although they share common similarities. The most popular varieties of Unix are Sun Solaris, GNU/Linux, and MacOS X. Linux is also a flavor of Unix which is freely available. The kernel of Unix is the hub of the operating system: it allocates time and resources to programs and handles the file system and input/output operations.
