A brief history of Unix
Jeremy Shafer
MIS Department
Fox School of Business
Temple University
What’s an Operating System?
Here’s an operating system choice you
might be familiar with…
How Unix came to be
• Originated with Bell Labs in the 1970s
• AT&T licensed Unix to outside parties, both
academic and commercial.
• Alternative to other “exotic” operating
systems of the day … OS/360, Unisys, Data
General
Why Unix is the OS of the Internet
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ALWAYS concerned with efficiency
Oriented around well defined processes
Not concerned with easy of use
Not concerned with a slick User Interface
It’s the OS on your web server and on your router
Variants of it are on your phone, and on your game
system
• In short, it’s the OS made by techies, for techies.
The Rise of Linux
• In 1991, while attending the University of
Helsinki, Linus began to work on his own
operating system kernel, which eventually
became the Linux kernel.
• The “big deal” was that this operating system
could run on commodity hardware (and Intel
x86 processor) and it was a completely open
source product.
Distributions of Linux
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Debian
Red Hat
SUSE
Ubuntu
Although Linux distributions are
generally available without charge,
corporations do contribute to the
development of the components of
the system. Roughly 75 percent of the
code for Linux comes programmers
working for corporations.
A number of corporations have built a
significant business around Linux
support.
Where should I start? …
Ubuntu and you
• Ubuntu has earned a reputation for being relatively
easy to install and use.
• It is Debian based.
• Development of Ubuntu is led by UK-based
Canonical Ltd., a company owned by South African
entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.
• The Ubuntu project is publicly committed to the
principles of open-source software development;
people are encouraged to use free software, study
how it works, improve upon it, and distribute it.
The LAMP stack
• The appeal of Linux is the services
it can provide, at zero licensing
cost.
• Some applications are bundled
together so frequently that they
are know collectively as a stack.
• The most popular stack is the
LAMP stack (Linux, Apache,
MySQL, and PHP.)
Just for fun … to do:
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Download VM ( https://www.turnkeylinux.org/lampstack )
Unzip VM
Don't forget NAT
Play the VM, and walk through installation
Login as root
Make a user ( adduser bob )
Navigate to the web root ( cd \var\www )
Make a folder ( mkdir test )
Use chown ( chown bob test )
Logout / login as bob ( exit )
Bob will make a web page with nano
Check to see if it works ( http://some.ip.address.goes.here/test )
Logout / login as root
Shut down the VM ( shutdown )