The Unix operating system is a powerful programming environment designed by and for computer programmers. Unix is available on a wide variety of computer systems, including personal computers, workstations, mainframes and supercomputers. It was developed for, and is particularly well suited to, multi-user systems, but is now also run on 'stand-alone' machines. Beginners and casual users often find the jargon-filled help system frustrating and the lack of icons and menus unfriendly. Unix was first developed in the early 1970s at Bell Laboratories in the USA. It was originally developed as a system to be used by the staff in the laboratories, and it was principally intended to provide an operating system that people would enjoy using. It was designed for users who were largely computer scientists, which may explain some of the more arcane and apparently unfriendly features of Unix, such as the obscure sounding command names. AT&T (the owners of Bell Laboratories) made Unix available at nominal cost to academic users, with whom it became popular. This helped to create a market for Unix, at a time when technological changes had themselves created a need for a portable multi-user operating system. As a result Unix began to be adopted by non-academic users in the 1980’s, as it became commercially available. Several standards are now being worked out, and Unix is steadily becoming the standard operating system in many environments. Unix has the following advantages: Portability Unix is written in the high level language C. This makes it easy to install on new computing systems. Applications written to run on a Unix system will hopefully run on any Unix system, regardless of the hardware. Popularity Unix is available on many widely used systems. It is very widely used and it has become the de facto standard for academic users, and for all multi-user applications. They are many different versions of Unix, as well as some Unix 'lookalike...
