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A "Unix-like" operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a UNIX system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. The term can include open source operating systems inspired by Bell Labs' Unix or designed to emulate its features, commercial and proprietary work-alikes, and even versions based on the licensed Unix source code (which may be deemed so "Unix-like" that they are certified to bear the "UNIX" trademark). There is no formal standard for defining the term, and some difference of opinion is possible as to whether a certain OS is "Unix-like" or not. In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ...
UNIX is a portable, multi-tasking and multi-user computer operating system originally developed by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
The Single UNIX Specification (SUS) is the collective name of a family of standards for computer operating systems to qualify for the name Unix. The SUS is developed and maintained by the Austin Group, based on earlier work by the IEEE and The Open Group. ...
Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...
The term "Unix-like" and the UNIX trademark
The Open Group owns the UNIX® trademark and administers the Single UNIX Specification. They do not approve of the construction "Unix-like", and consider it misuse of their trademark. Their guidelines require "UNIX" to be presented in uppercase or otherwise distinguished from the surrounding text, strongly encourage using it as a branding adjective for a generic word such as "system", and discourage its use in hyphenated phrases. The closest phrase they consider correct is "UNIX system-like". [1] (http://www.opengroup.org/tm-guidelines.htm) The Open Group is an industry consortium sponsored by IBM, Sun, HP, Hitachi, and Fujitsu for forming de facto-standards in the field of software engineering, in particular APIs. ...
A trademark (Commonwealth English: trade mark)[1] is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to identify itself and its products or services to consumers, and to set the business and its products or services apart from those of other businesses. ...
Other parties frequently disregard these guidelines, willfully treating "Unix" as a generic noun or descriptor for operating systems that are not necessarily covered by the "UNIX" trademark, in much the same way that "Band-Aid" is used in reference to any bandage or "Xerox" to any photocopier. Some abbreviate or "wildcard" the name as "Un*x", "*nix", or some similar construction, which is also contrary to Open Group guidelines. These euphemistic spellings were derived as a way to say "Unix" without formally saying it. They were inspired in part by a tendency for Unix-like systems to be given names resembling "Unix", particularly ending in "x", such as AIX, IRIX, Linux, Minix, Ultrix, and Xenix. Few of these names actually match "*nix". However, wildcards like "*nix" are often meant to match any Unix descendant system, even Solaris or FreeBSD, which do not even have an "x" at the end. Band Aid can refer to: BAND-AID, a brand of sticking plaster Band Aid, a musical ensemble raising money for famine relief. ...
Theres also a song called Bandages by the American alternative rock group Hot Hot Heat which appears on the 2002 album Make Up the Breakdown. ...
Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) is the worlds largest supplier of toner-based (dry ink) photocopier machines and associated supplies. ...
A small, much-used Xerox copier in a high school library. ...
In playing card terms, a wild card is a card that can be assigned any value its holder desires. ...
A euphemism is an expression intended by the speaker to be less offensive, disturbing, or troubling to the listener than the word or phrase it replaces. ...
AIX is the brand name of IBMs proprietary UNIX operating system. ...
IRIX is the System V-based Unix Operating System with BSD extensions developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run natively on their 32 and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. ...
Tux, a penguin, is the official Linux mascot. ...
Minix is one of a number of Unix-like operating systems that includes Idris, Coherent and Uniflex. ...
Ultrix was a DEC version of Unix. ...
Xenix was Microsofts version of UNIX for microprocessors. ...
Development of Unix-like systems The first "Unix-like" operating systems (other than Bell Labs' Unix itself) were developed because of AT&T's licensing of the software, which prevented its sale for commercial purposes. These systems were intended to provide businesses with the functionality available to academic users of Unix. The proprietary "Unix-like" operating systems that were available in the 1980s and early 1990s included Idris, Coherent, and UniFlex. AT&T (formerly an abbreviation for American Telephone and Telegraph) Corporation (NYSE: T) is an American telecommunications company. ...
Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...
Events and trends The 1990s are generally classified as having moved slightly away from the more conservative 1980s, but keeping the same mind-set. ...
Idris is an operating system released by Whitesmiths, of Westford, Massachusetts. ...
The Coherent operating system was introduced in 1983 by the now-defunct Mark Williams Company as one of the first Unix-like systems for IBM PC-compatible computers. ...
When AT&T later allowed commercial licensing of Unix in the 1980s, a variety of proprietary systems were developed based on it, including AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, Tru64, Ultrix, and Xenix. These largely displaced the clones. Growing incompatibility between these systems led to the creation of interoperability standards, including POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. AIX is the brand name of IBMs proprietary UNIX operating system. ...
HP-UX is Hewlett-Packards proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system. ...
IRIX is the System V-based Unix Operating System with BSD extensions developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run natively on their 32 and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. ...
The Solaris Operating Environment is a computer operating system, based on the proprietary UNIX variant SunOS developed by Sun Microsystems. ...
Tru64 is HPs (formerly Compaq; formerly DEC) 64-bit UNIX for the Alpha AXP platform. ...
Ultrix was a DEC version of Unix. ...
Xenix was Microsofts version of UNIX for microprocessors. ...
POSIX is the collective name of a family of related standards defined by the IEEE and formally designated IEEE 1003. ...
Meanwhile, non-commercial "Unix-like" operating systems were developed to serve as inexpensive or free substitutes for Unix. These include BSD, GNU, Minix, and Linux. Some of these have in turn been the basis for commercial "Unix-like" systems, such as BSD/OS, NEXTSTEP, and Mac OS X. Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) is the UNIX derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley starting in the 1970s. ...
The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa GNU is a recursive acronym for GNUs Not Unix. The GNU project was launched in 1983 by Richard Stallman with the goal of creating a complete operating system -- called the GNU system or simply GNU -- that is free software, meaning that users...
Minix is one of a number of Unix-like operating systems that includes Idris, Coherent and Uniflex. ...
Tux, a penguin, is the official Linux mascot. ...
BSD/OS (also known as BSDi and BSD/386) was a commercial version of the Berkeley Software Distribution operating system that had been developed by the University of California, Berkeleys Computer Science Research Group in the 1970s and 1980s. ...
NeXTSTEP Desktop NeXTSTEP is the original object-oriented, multitasking operating system that NeXT Computer, Inc. ...
Mac OS X is the latest version of the Mac OS, the operating system software for Macintosh computers. ...
The various BSD systems are notable in that they are in fact descendents of Unix, developed by the University of California at Berkeley with Unix source code from Bell Labs. However, the BSD code base has evolved since then, replacing all of the AT&T code, and these operating systems are not compliant with the Single UNIX Specification, so they are merely "Unix-like".
Current examples
Open Source Hexley, the mascot of Darwin Darwin is the core operating system of Apple Computers Mac OS X, and runs on an open source kernel called XNU. Apple first released Darwin to the open source community in 2000. ...
FreeBSD is a free, open source, Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through 386BSD and 4. ...
The DragonFly BSD Logo In computing, the DragonFly BSD operating system is a fork of FreeBSD. Matt Dillon, a long-time FreeBSD and Amiga developer, started work on DragonFly BSD in June 2003 and announced it on the FreeBSD mailing lists on 16 July 2003. ...
PicoBSD is a single-floppy disk version of FreeBSD, one of the BSD operating system descendants. ...
The TrustedBSD project provides a set of trusted operating system extensions to the FreeBSD operating system, targeting the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (see also Orange Book). ...
GNU/Hurd or simply GNU is the common name of a free computer operating system consisting of the GNU system and the GNU Hurd kernel. ...
Tux, a penguin, is the official Linux mascot. ...
Minix is one of a number of Unix-like operating systems that includes Idris, Coherent and Uniflex. ...
NetBSD was the first of the freely redistributable, open source versions of the BSD Unix-like operating systems to produce a formal release, with NetBSD 0. ...
OpenBSD Logo with Puffy, the pufferfish. ...
ekkoBSD is a UNIX-like operating system based on OpenBSD 3. ...
MicroBSD is a fork of the UNIX-like BSD operating system descendant OpenBSD 3. ...
MirOS BSD (the original name MirBSD is deprecated) is a free operating system, which started as a fork of OpenBSD 3. ...
This page is about the operating system; for the science fiction film, see Plan 9 from Outer Space. ...
Proprietary *UNIX® systems AIX is the brand name of IBMs proprietary UNIX operating system. ...
HP-UX is Hewlett-Packards proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system. ...
IRIX is the System V-based Unix Operating System with BSD extensions developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run natively on their 32 and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. ...
Mac OS X is the latest version of the Mac OS, the operating system software for Macintosh computers. ...
QNX (pronounced either Q-N-X or Q-nix) is a commercial POSIX-compliant Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. ...
The Solaris Operating Environment is a computer operating system, based on the proprietary UNIX variant SunOS developed by Sun Microsystems. ...
Tru64 is HPs (formerly Compaq; formerly DEC) 64-bit UNIX for the Alpha AXP platform. ...
See also Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) is the UNIX derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley starting in the 1970s. ...
A Linux distribution or GNU/Linux distribution (or a distro) is a Unix-like operating system comprising software components such as the Linux kernel, the GNU toolchain, and assorted free and open source software. ...
This is a list of Unix programs. ...
External links - Unix history (http://www.levenez.com/unix/) – a history time line graph of most Unix and Unix-like systems by Éric Lévénez
- Grokline's UNIX Ownership History Project (http://grokline.net/) – a project to map out the technical history of Unix and Unix-like systems
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