UNIX
Developed in 1970 in the Bell Lab research center UNIX became a multitasking and multiuser operating system, reaching numerous platforms for use. It was developed by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and a few others and later AT&T licensed UNIX to the development of many variants of Unix, serving academic and business purposes at the University of California, Berkley Software Distribution, IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystem. The OS is totally written in C language allowing it to serve in various platforms. It provides a set of simple and dedicated tools to perform a well-defined task using basic functions, shell scripting, and command languages. As of 2014, the Unix version with the largest installed base is Apple’s macOS.
Advantages of UNIX
- The OS is available on a wide variety of machines that are the most truly portable operating system.
- It has a Very efficient virtual memory system, which allows many programs to run simultaneously with a modest amount of physical memory and time.
- The OS was primarily built to serve the complete multitasking purpose without crashing of data, and it served well along with the protected memory.
- Has a high-level authentication system along with a fully secured environment.
Disadvantages of UNIX
- This OS was primarily designed for programmers and techies and not for personal and casual use.
- It is a command-driven OS with commands being supplied by the shell kernel and often has cryptic names which normal users find difficult to keep up with.
- To work comfortably with the UNIX system, one needs to understand the main design features and how to command and interact with the OS.
Commonly Used Operating System
There are various types of Operating Systems used throughout the world and this depends mainly on the type of operations performed. These Operating Systems are manufactured by large multinational companies like Microsoft, Apple, etc. Let’s look at the few most commonly used OS in the real world:
- Windows
- UNIX
- LINUX
- BOSS
- SOLARIS