What exactly is UNIX? (Totally OT)

[Tachyon]

I have been using Microsoft OSes (DOS through Windows) 99% of my total
computer experience (the remaining 1% on a Mac).

It suddenly dawned on me the other day (during a conversation) that I have
never seen a "real" UNIX machine. All I have seen are different "flavors" of
Linux.

Is this collective of Linux flavors all that constitute UNIX or is there
really a unique UNIX OS out there? I mean one not Unix-like or called Linux.

I apologize for this totally off-topic post but could not figure out where
to pose this question. There seemed to be too many "unix" newsgroups on the
news-server I subscribe to (Teranews).

Regards and thanks.

Tachyon
---------

 

[Og]

I have been using Microsoft OSes (DOS through Windows) 99% of my total
computer experience (the remaining 1% on a Mac).

It suddenly dawned on me the other day (during a conversation) that I have
never seen a "real" UNIX machine. All I have seen are different "flavors"
of
Linux.

Is this collective of Linux flavors all that constitute UNIX or is there
really a unique UNIX OS out there? I mean one not Unix-like or called
Linux.

I apologize for this totally off-topic post but could not figure out where
to pose this question. There seemed to be too many "unix" newsgroups on
the
news-server I subscribe to (Teranews).

Regards and thanks.

Tachyon

 

[Og]

I have been using Microsoft OSes (DOS through Windows) 99% of my total
computer experience (the remaining 1% on a Mac).

It suddenly dawned on me the other day (during a conversation) that I have
never seen a "real" UNIX machine. All I have seen are different "flavors"
of
Linux.

Is this collective of Linux flavors all that constitute UNIX or is there
really a unique UNIX OS out there? I mean one not Unix-like or called
Linux.

I apologize for this totally off-topic post but could not figure out where
to pose this question. There seemed to be too many "unix" newsgroups on
the
news-server I subscribe to (Teranews).

Regards and thanks.

Tachyon

What is UNIX ®?
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix.html
Steve

 

[Edwin vMierlo]

good link from Og,
the next I like to mention is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

rgds,
Edwin.

 

[Tachyon]

My response at bottom:

I have been using Microsoft OSes (DOS through Windows) 99% of my total
computer experience (the remaining 1% on a Mac).

It suddenly dawned on me the other day (during a conversation) that I have
never seen a "real" UNIX machine. All I have seen are different "flavors"
of
Linux.

Is this collective of Linux flavors all that constitute UNIX or is there
really a unique UNIX OS out there? I mean one not Unix-like or called
Linux.

I apologize for this totally off-topic post but could not figure out where
to pose this question. There seemed to be too many "unix" newsgroups on
the
news-server I subscribe to (Teranews).

Regards and thanks.

Tachyon
---------

Thanks Steve and Edwin for the excellent and informative links. Now I know
more!

Regards and thanks again.

Tachyon
----------

 

[FrankV]

UNIX was developed by the old-old AT&T Bell Labs back in the 1970's era. It
is still the major OS for large computers and servers. The Linux flavors
basically duplicates UNIX on the desk-top computers and is something like 30
years younger than UNIX.

Frank

 

[P. Johnson]

I have been using Microsoft OSes (DOS through Windows) 99% of my total
computer experience (the remaining 1% on a Mac).

It suddenly dawned on me the other day (during a conversation) that I have
never seen a "real" UNIX machine.

You probably won't at this point, since the unix world is more or less upset
at the current UNIX owners, which happens to be The SCO Group (so the
current iteration of UNIX's direct descendant is UnixWare).

All I have seen are different "flavors" of Linux.

That's fine, Linux is a bit easier to use and administrate than UnixWare,
and there's more software geared towards Joe Average on Linux. In the unix
world, Linux is where it's at right now.

Is this collective of Linux flavors all that constitute UNIX or is there
really a unique UNIX OS out there? I mean one not Unix-like or called
Linux.

UNIX is a trademark, unix is a concept. The latter represents all the
various UNIX-descendants, the best known right now being FreeBSD, OpenBSD,
MacOS X, Linux, HP/UX, UnixWare and AIX, not necessarily in that order.

The great thing about this subject is that unix and the Internet
practically grew up together, so there's an absolute deluge of
information archived potentially over 40 years about unix on the
Internet/Usenet now (though in some cases, it might take some time if
it's old enough that Google Groups doesn't have it in their archives).

Probably the best place for the layman to get introduced to unix is
through Wikipedia. Two good places to start are
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix> for the historic prospective, and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux> for the currently popular unix
experience.