Inside Solaris™ 9

Appendix A. UNIX and Solaris Milestones

UNIX is plural. It is not one operating system but many implementations of an idea that originated in 1965. As a system administrator, you need to understand the history of the UNIX operating system—where it came from, how it was built, and where it is now. Understanding the various versions of UNIX and its origins makes it clear why UNIX became known as a somewhat hostile operating system. For example, UNIX was not developed by a single company with a large marketing organization driving the user interface. (In other words, it did not follow the development path of, say, Microsoft Windows.) On the other ...