Getting Started – Unix Tutorials

What is UNIX?

Like DOS and Windows, UNIX is another operating system. It was developed in 1960s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs and has been under constant development ever since.UNIX is nothing but a set of programs which acts as a link between Computer and user.

Note: Operating System is the software that manages the computer hardware and provides a convinient and safe environment for running programs.

You can interact with a UNIX system through a command interpreter called the shell. Key in a  word , the shell interprets it as a command to be executed.

UNIX has the following features.

• UNIX is having many different version of UNIX in market like Solaris Unix, AIX, HP Unix and BSD etc. Linux is also flavour of UNIX which is freely available in market.
• UNIX can be used by several users concurrently i.e. it is a multiuser system. In other words, UNIX installed on a single machine can serve the need to hundreds of user. In this multiuser system, you will be given a terminal or monitor and a keyboard to work.
• You will be able to run multiple program at the same time, that’s why it is called multitasking system.
• It consists of commands that let you manage information in the form of files or run programs that perform tasks such as word processing, email, or data analysis.
• A command may already exist on the system or it could be one written by you.However , the power of UNIX lies in combining these commands in the same way the english language lets you combine words to generate a meaningful idea.

In the next post, we will learn about the UNIX architecture and its working.