UNIX

Full Name

UNIX

Information

Originally conceived as a play on the term Multics - an early time-sharing operating system developed by Honeywell in the late 60's - UNIX was a time-sharing operating system developed in a division of AT&T to support printing of Patent applications. Over a number of years its use grew in the academic Computer Science community around the world until in the late 70's and early 80's it began to emerge in a range of variants across a large number of commercial mini-computer hardware platforms.

Today is found in a number of variants - Solaris on SUN hardware, AIX on IBM and HPUX and HP hardware. Another variant, Tru64 was orginally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), a company which was taken over by Compaq which in turn was acquired by Hewlett-Packard (HP).

Related Links

• UNIX.org web site
• Wikipedia entry on UNIX
• Also see entry on Linux