University of New England

School of Science and Technology

COSC110 Introduction to Programming and the Unix Environment

Assignment 1

INDIVIDUAL TASK
Dr Ian Andrew - 220171296

A HISTORY OF UNIX AND UNIX-LIKE SYSTEMS

Development of the UNIX family of operating systems began in the aftermath of Bell
Labs departure from a joint mid-1960s project with MIT and GE to develop a time-sharing
operating system called Multiplexed Information and Computer Service (Multics). In 1969 a
team of Bell Labs researchers previously involved with the Multics project - most notably Ken
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie - developed their own operating system guided by the aims of
the Multics project but on a more manageable scale. This would later be dubbed the
Uniplexed Information and Computer Service (Unics) and later UNIX (Richie, 1984).

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the system and available components would
continue to be expanded. The 1972 migration of the OS from specific assembly language to C
greatly increased the portability of the software between machines and the free distribution
of the software with its source code (prior to the commercially-licenced System V version in
1983) allowed widespread development on the Unix kernel, with notable versions by
Berkeley, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and HP (Ross, 1999). While the AT&T release was
ultimately commercialised and licenced, the Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) variants
created by University of California researches would go on to be widely distributed in
educational and corporate environments. Attempts by AT&T and Sun to standardise Unix
distributions in the late 1980s created a rift with other developers. Many modern systems still
in use have their roots in variants of Unix OS, most notably Mac OS (OS X) (Lee, 2015).

By the early 1990s the BSD variants of Unix contained so little of the original AT&T
source code that programmers were able to develop and release three major free source

Dr Ian Andrew 220171296 COSC110

distributions of the system: FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. In 1984 programmer Richard
Stallman founded the GNU project which commenced work on a free clone of the Unix OS
and required components and by the early 1990s GNU developers were able to distribute key
components including the GNU C Library and the Bourne Again SHell (BASH) however lacked
a functional OS kernel. In 1991 Univeristy of Helsinki student Linus Torvalds released source
code for an improved version of Minix, itself an abridged BSD Unix variant. Dubbed Linux
(after Linus + Minix,) the source code was modified by a team of developers from around the
world to generate a working kernel in 1994 which could be combined with the GNU Unix
system clone to create a free working system. That Linux is an operating system in its own
right remains a point of contention as technically Linux refers to the kernel used to run the
open source libraries and some feel that this does not sufficiently acknowledge the GNU
project content in the distribution (e.g. Stallman, 1997). The Linux OS has in turn been
redeveloped into numerous variants, some with commercial support including Red Hat and
Caldera, others remaining free software such as Debian. The adoption of Linux-based systems
has been sufficiently successful that many former Unix-based vendors have migrated to Linux-
based systems instead (including Sun, HP, Oracle, Dell and IBM) (Ross, 1999).

Dr Ian Andrew 220171296 COSC110

 University of New England
School of Science and Technology

COSC110 Introduction to Programming and the Unix Environment

Assignment 1

GROUP TASK SHOULD

Dr Ian Andrew 220171296 Group F (vs. Lara Harris)

There are two strong primary arguments in favour of attributing the GNU/Linux
name to Linux-based operating systems in favour of the commonly use of Linux to refer to
the OS as a whole.

The first and most important point calls attention to the simple fact that in most cases
Linux is merely the kernel around which the GNU software is run, not the operating system
as a whole. Generally the longstanding GNU Project, which was formed in 1983, provides the
majority of the operating system utilities including the Glibc, Coreutils and Bash. In a typical
distribution of a variant such as Red Hat Linux the total size of included GNU packages greatly
outweigh the Linux kernel, while in the 2011 Natty release of Ubuntu GNU components
made up as much as 13% of the main repository, with the Linux kernel accounting for just 9%
(Crte-Real, 2011).

The second argument suggests that the abbreviated nomenclature is at odds with the
ideologic foundation of the open-source software. Proponents of the dual GNU/Linux naming
system feel that the omission of GNU from the title under-represents the vital long-term role
of GNU and the GNU Project in the development and distribution of the free operating
system, with GNU founder Richard Stallman (2006) expressing his irritation with the
popularity of the oversimplified Linux terminology by comparing running Linux to driving
a carburettor and stating:

Today tens of millions of users are using an operating system that was developed
so that they could have freedom but they dont know this, because they think the system
is Linux and that it was developed by a student just for fun (Stallman, 2005).

Dr Ian Andrew 220171296 COSC110

 The casual widespread use of Linux to refer to the OS as a whole has also had
confusing consequences in news reporting, public relations campaigns and legal threats,
with commentators often unclear as to whether attention or lawsuits are directed towards
the operating system as a whole or only towards alleged infractions within the Linux kernel.
(Angelo, 2003 and Moglen 2003).

Therefore it may be concluded that while Linux has become the convenient
terminology for referencing the operating system, the need for clarity, the importance of
raising awareness of GNU and open-source contributions and the inaccurate implication of
the contribution made to the overall content of the OS by the Linux kernel all provides
evidence that Linux based operating systems should by convention be referenced as
GNU/Linux whenever appropriate.

Dr Ian Andrew 220171296 COSC110

 References

Angelo, Mike. (2003). SCO-Caldera vs IBM. Retrieved from

http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-10_Story01.html

Crte-Real, Pedro. (2011). How Much GNU Is There In GNU/Linux?. Split Perspective. Retrieved from
http://pedrocr.pt/text/how-much-gnu-in-gnu-linux/

Lee, Joel. (2015). UNIX-Like Operating Systems that Arent Linux. Retrieved from
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-unix-like-operating-systems-arent-linux/

Moglen, Eben. (2003). FSF Statement on SCO v IBM. Retrieved from

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sco/sco-v-ibm.html

Richie, Dennis M. (1984). The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System. AT&T Laboratories
Technical Journal. 63: 1577-93. Archived from the original on 8 April 2015. Retrieved from
http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/class/aosref/ritchie84evolution.pdf

Ross, Seth T. (1999). Unix System Security Tools. McGraw-Hill Companies. Excerpt retrieved from
http://www.albion.com/security/intro-2.html

Stallman, Richard. (1997). Linux and the GNU System. Retrieved from
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html

Stallman, Richard. (2005). Free Software as a Social Movement. ZNet. Retrieved from
http://www.zcommunications.org/free-software-as-a-social-movement-by-richard-stallman

Stallman, Richard. (2006). GNU Users Who Have Never Heard of GNU. Retrieved from
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-users-never-heard-of-gnu.html

Dr Ian Andrew 220171296 COSC110