FEATURES OF UNIX OPERATING SYSTEMS:

Some key features of the Unix architecture concept are:

Unix systems use a centralized operating system kernel which manages

system and process activities.

All non-kernel software is organized into separate, kernel-managed

processes.

Unix systems are preemptively multitasking: multiple processes can run at

the same time, or within small time slices and nearly at the same time, and any
process can be interrupted and moved out of execution by the kernel. This is
known as thread management.

Files are stored on disk in a hierarchical file system, with a single top
location throughout the system (root, or "/"), with both files and directories,
subdirectories, sub-subdirectories, and so on below it.

With few exceptions, devices and some types of communications between

processes are managed and visible as files or pseudo-files within the file system
hierarchy. This is known as everything is a file. However, Linus Torvalds states
that this is inaccurate and may be better rephrased as "everything is a stream of
bytes".

The UNIX operating system supports the following features and capabilities:

Multitasking and multiuser

Programming interface

Use of files as abstractions of devices and other objects

Built-in networking (TCP/IP is standard)

EXPLANATION OF UNIX ARCHITECTURE:

The kernel of UNIX is the hub of the operating system: it allocates time and
memory to programs and handles the filestore and communications in response to
system calls.

As an illustration of the way that the shell and the kernel work together, suppose a
user types rm myfile (which has the effect of removing the file myfile). The shell
searches the filestore for the file containing the program rm, and then requests the
kernel, through system calls, to execute the program rm on myfile. When the
process rm myfile has finished running, the shell then returns the UNIX prompt %
to the user, indicating that it is waiting for further commands.
Amongst the functions performed by the kernel are:
managing the machine's memory and allocating it to each process.
scheduling the work done by the CPU so that the work of each user is carried out
as efficiently as is possible.
organising the transfer of data from one part of the machine to another.
accepting instructions from the shell and carrying them out.
Enforcing the access permissions that are in force on the file system
The shell:
The user can customise his/her own shell, and users can use different shells on the
same machine.
History The shell keeps a list of the commands you have typed in. If you need to
repeat a command, use the cursor keys to scroll up and down the list or type history
for a list of previous commands.
You can use any one of these shells if they are available on your system. And you
can switch between the different shells once you have found out if they are
available.
Bourne shell (sh)
C shell (csh)
TC shell (tcsh)
Korn shell (ksh)
Bourne Again SHell (bash)

LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM:

Linux is one of popular version of UNIX operating System. It is open source as its
source code is freely available. It is free to use. Linux was designed considering
UNIX compatibility. Its functionality list is quite similar to that of UNIX.

Components of Linux System

Linux Operating System has primarily three components
Kernel Kernel is the core part of Linux. It is responsible for all major
activities of this operating system. It consists of various modules and it
interacts directly with the underlying hardware. Kernel provides the
required abstraction to hide low level hardware details to system or
application programs.
System Library System libraries are special functions or programs using
which application programs or system utilities accesses Kernel's features.
These libraries implement most of the functionalities of the operating
system and do not requires kernel module's code access rights.
System Utility System Utility programs are responsible to do specialized,
individual level tasks.

Kernel Mode vs User Mode

Kernel component code executes in a special privileged mode called kernel
mode with full access to all resources of the computer. This code represents a
single process, executes in single address space and do not require any context
switch and hence is very efficient and fast. Kernel runs each processes and
provides system services to processes, provides protected access to hardware to
processes.
Support code which is not required to run in kernel mode is in System Library.
User programs and other system programs works in User Mode which has no
access to system hardware and kernel code. User programs/ utilities use System
libraries to access Kernel functions to get system's low level tasks.

Features OF LINUX:
Following are some of the important features of Linux Operating System.
Portable Portability means software can works on different types of
hardware in same way. Linux kernel and application programs supports their
installation on any kind of hardware platform.

 Open Source Linux source code is freely available and it is community

based development project. Multiple teams work in collaboration to enhance
the capability of Linux operating system and it is continuously evolving.
Multi-User Linux is a multiuser system means multiple users can access
system resources like memory/ ram/ application programs at same time.
Multiprogramming Linux is a multiprogramming system means multiple
applications can run at same time.
Hierarchical File System Linux provides a standard file structure in
which system files/ user files are arranged.
Shell Linux provides a special interpreter program which can be used to
execute commands of the operating system. It can be used to do various
types of operations, call application programs. etc.
Security Linux provides user security using authentication features like
password protection/ controlled access to specific files/ encryption of data.

LINUX Architecture
The following illustration shows the architecture of a Linux system

The architecture of a Linux System consists of the following layers

Hardware layer Hardware consists of all peripheral devices (RAM/
HDD/ CPU etc).
Kernel It is the core component of Operating System, interacts directly
with hardware, provides low level services to upper layer components.
Shell An interface to kernel, hiding complexity of kernel's functions from
users. The shell takes commands from the user and executes kernel's
functions.
Utilities Utility programs that provide the user most of the functionalities
of an operating systems.

HISTORY OF UNIX:
The history of Unix dates back to the mid-1960s when the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, AT&T Bell Labs, and General Electric were jointly developing an

experimental time sharing operating system called Multics for the GE645 mainframe.[1] Multics introduced many innovations, but had many problems.
Bell Labs, frustrated by the size and complexity of Multics but not the aims, slowly
pulled out of the project. Their last researchers to leave Multics, Ken
Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna among others,
[2]
decided to redo the work on a much smaller scale.[3] In 1979, Dennis Ritchie
described their vision for Unix:[3]
What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to
do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form. We knew
from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remoteaccess, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead
of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication.

Since it began to escape from AT&T's Bell Laboratories in the early 1970's, the
success of the UNIX operating system has led to many different versions:
recipients of the (at that time free) UNIX system code all began developing their
own different versions in their own, different, ways for use and sale. Universities,
research institutes, government bodies and computer companies all began using the
powerful UNIX system to develop many of the technologies which today are part
of a UNIX system.
Computer aided design, manufacturing control systems, laboratory simulations,
even the Internet itself, all began life with and because of UNIX systems. Today,
without UNIX systems, the Internet would come to a screeching halt. Most
telephone calls could not be made, electronic commerce would grind to a halt and
there would have never been "Jurassic Park"!
By the late 1970's, a ripple effect had come into play. By now the under- and postgraduate students whose lab work had pioneered these new applications of
technology were attaining management and decision-making positions inside the
computer system suppliers and among its customers. And they wanted to continue
using UNIX systems.
Soon all the large vendors, and many smaller ones, were marketing their own,
diverging, versions of the UNIX system optimized for their own computer
architectures and boasting many different strengths and features. Customers found

that, although UNIX systems were available everywhere, they seldom were able to
interwork or co-exist without significant investment of time and effort to make
them work effectively. The trade mark UNIX was ubiquitous, but it was applied to
a multitude of different, incompatible products.
In the early 1980's, the market for UNIX systems had grown enough to be noticed
by industry analysts and researchers. Now the question was no longer "What is a
UNIX system?" but "Is a UNIX system suitable for business and commerce?"
Throughout the early and mid-1980's, the debate about the strengths and
weaknesses of UNIX systems raged, often fuelled by the utterances of the vendors
themselves who sought to protect their profitable proprietary system sales by
talking UNIX systems down. And, in an effort to further differentiate their
competing UNIX system products, they kept developing and adding features of
their own.
In 1984, another factor brought added attention to UNIX systems. A group of
vendors concerned about the continuing encroachment into their markets and
control of system interfaces by the larger companies, developed the concept of
"open systems."
Open systems were those that would meet agreed specifications or standards. This
resulted in the formation of X/Open Company Ltd whose remit was, and today in
the guise of The Open Group remains, to define a comprehensive open systems
environment. Open systems, they declared, would save on costs, attract a wider
portfolio of applications and competition on equal terms. X/Open chose the UNIX
system as the platform for the basis of open systems.
Although UNIX was still owned by AT&T, the company did little commercially
with it until the mid-1980's. Then the spotlight of X/Open showed clearly that a
single, standard version of the UNIX system would be in the wider interests of the
industry and its customers. The question now was, "which version?".
In a move intended to unify the market in 1987, AT&T announced a pact with Sun
Microsystems, the leading proponent of the Berkeley derived strain of UNIX.
However, the rest of the industry viewed the development with considerable
concern. Believing that their own markets were under threat they clubbed together
to develop their own "new" open systems operating system. Their new
organization was called the Open Software Foundation (OSF). In response to this,
the AT&T/Sun faction formed UNIX International.

The ensuing "UNIX wars" divided the system vendors between these two camps
clustered around the two dominant UNIX system technologies: AT&T's System V
and the OSF system called OSF/1. In the meantime, X/Open Company held the
center ground. It continued the process of standardizing the APIs necessary for an
open operating system specification.
In addition, it looked at areas of the system beyond the operating system level
where a standard approach would add value for supplier and customer alike,
developing or adopting specifications for languages, database connectivity,
networking and mainframe interworking. The results of this work were published
in successive X/Open Portability Guides.
XPG 4 was released in October 1992. During this time, X/Open had put in place a
brand program based on vendor guarantees and supported by testing. Since the
publication of XPG4, X/Open has continued to broaden the scope of open systems
specifications in line with market requirements. As the benefits of the X/Open
brand became known and understood, many large organizations began using
X/Open as the basis for system design and procurement. By 1993, over $7 billion
had been spent on X/Open branded systems. By the start of 1997 that figure has
risen to over $23 billion. To date, procurements referencing the Single UNIX
Specification amount to over $5.2 billion.
In early 1993, AT&T sold it UNIX System Laboratories to Novell which was
looking for a heavyweight operating system to link to its NetWare product range.
At the same time, the company recognized that vesting control of the definition
(specification) and trademark with a vendor-neutral organization would further
facilitate the value of UNIX as a foundation of open systems. So the constituent
parts of the UNIX System (source code/technology and specification/trademark),
previously owned by a single entity are now quite separate
In 1995 X/Open introduced the UNIX 95 brand for computer systems guaranteed
to meet the Single UNIX Specification. The Single UNIX Specification brand
program has now achieved critical mass: vendors whose products have met the
demanding criteria now account for the majority of UNIX systems by value.
For over twenty years, since the inception of X/Open, UNIX had been closely
linked with open systems. X/Open, now The Open Group, continues to develop
and evolve the Single UNIX Specification and associated brand program on behalf
of the IT community. The freeing of the specification of the interfaces from the
technology is allowing many systems to support the UNIX philosophy of small,

often simple tools , that can be combined in many ways to perform often complex
tasks. The stability of the core interfaces preserves existing investment, and is
allowing development of a rich set of software tools. The Open Source movement
is building on this stable foundation and is creating a resurgence of enthusiasm for
the UNIX philosophy. In many ways Open Source can be seen as the true delivery
of Open Systems that will ensure it continues to go from strength to strength.
1969 The Beginning

The history of UNIX starts back in 1969, when Ken

Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others started working on
the "little-used PDP-7 in a corner" at Bell Labs and what
was to become UNIX.
1971 First Edition
It had a assembler for a PDP-11/20, file system, fork(),
roff and ed. It was used for text processing of patent
documents.
1973 Fourth Edition It was rewritten in C. This made it portable and changed
the history of OS's.
1975 Sixth Edition
UNIX leaves home. Also widely known as Version 6,
this is the first to be widely available out side of Bell
Labs. The first BSD version (1.x) was derived from V6.
1979 Seventh Edition It was a "improvement over all preceding and following
Unices" [Bourne]. It had C, UUCP and the Bourne shell.
It was ported to the VAX and the kernel was more than
40 Kilobytes (K).
1980 Xenix
Microsoft introduces Xenix. 32V and 4BSD introduced.
1982 System III
AT&T's UNIX System Group (USG) release System III,
the first public release outside Bell Laboratories. SunOS
1.0 ships. HP-UX introduced. Ultrix-11 Introduced.
1983 System V
Computer Research Group (CRG), UNIX System Group
(USG) and a third group merge to become UNIX System
Development Lab. AT&T announces UNIX System V,
the first supported release. Installed base 45,000.
1984 4.2BSD
University of California at Berkeley releases 4.2BSD,
includes TCP/IP, new signals and much more. X/Open
formed.
1984 SVR2
System V Release 2 introduced. At this time there are
100,000 UNIX installations around the world.
1986 4.3BSD
4.3BSD released, including internet name server. SVID
introduced. NFS shipped. AIX announced. Installed base

1987 SVR3
1988
1989
1989 SVR4
1990 XPG3
1991
1992 SVR4.2

1993 4.4BSD
Late SVR4.2MP
1993

1994 Single UNIX

Specification

1995 UNIX 95

1996
1997 Single UNIX

250,000.
System V Release 3 including STREAMS, TLI, RFS. At
this time there are 750,000 UNIX installations around
the world. IRIX introduced.
POSIX.1 published. Open Software Foundation (OSF)
and UNIX International (UI) formed. Ultrix 4.2 ships.
AT&T UNIX Software Operation formed in preparation
for spinoff of USL. Motif 1.0 ships.
UNIX System V Release 4 ships, unifying System V,
BSD and Xenix. Installed base 1.2 million.
X/Open launches XPG3 Brand. OSF/1 debuts. Plan 9
from Bell Labs ships.
UNIX System Laboratories (USL) becomes a company majority-owned by AT&T. Linus Torvalds commences
Linux development. Solaris 1.0 debuts.
USL releases UNIX System V Release 4.2 (Destiny).
October - XPG4 Brand launched by X/Open. December
22nd Novell announces intent to acquire USL. Solaris
2.0 ships.
4.4BSD the final release from Berkeley. June 16 Novell
acquires USL
Novell transfers rights to the "UNIX" trademark and the
Single UNIX Specification to X/Open. COSE initiative
delivers "Spec 1170" to X/Open for fasttrack. In
December Novell ships SVR4.2MP , the final USL OEM
release of System V
BSD 4.4-Lite eliminated all code claimed to infringe on
USL/Novell. As the new owner of the UNIX trademark,
X/Open introduces the Single UNIX Specification
(formerly Spec 1170), separating the UNIX trademark
from any actual code stream.
X/Open introduces the UNIX 95 branding programme
for implementations of the Single UNIX Specification.
Novell sells UnixWare business line to SCO. Digital
UNIX introduced. UnixWare 2.0 ships. OpenServer 5.0
debuts.
The Open Group forms as a merger of OSF and X/Open.
The Open Group introduces Version 2 of the Single

Specification,
Version 2
1998 UNIX 98

1999 UNIX at 30

2001 Single UNIX

Specification,
Version 3
2003 ISO/IEC
9945:2003
2007
2008 ISO/IEC
9945:2008
2009 UNIX at 40
2010 UNIX on the
Desktop

UNIX Specification, including support for realtime,

threads and 64-bit and larger processors. The
specification is made freely available on the web. IRIX
6.4, AIX 4.3 and HP-UX 11 ship.
The Open Group introduces the UNIX 98 family of
brands, including Base, Workstation and Server. First
UNIX 98 registered products shipped by Sun, IBM and
NCR. The Open Source movement starts to take off with
announcements from Netscape and IBM. UnixWare 7
and IRIX 6.5 ship.
The UNIX system reaches its 30th anniversary. Linux
2.2 kernel released. The Open Group and the IEEE
commence joint development of a revision to POSIX and
the Single UNIX Specification. First LinuxWorld
conferences. Dot com fever on the stock markets. Tru64
UNIX ships.
Version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification unites IEEE
POSIX, The Open Group and the industry efforts. Linux
2.4 kernel released. IT stocks face a hard time at the
markets. The value of procurements for the UNIX brand
exceeds $25 billion. AIX 5L ships.
The core volumes of Version 3 of the Single UNIX
Specification are approved as an international standard.
The "Westwood" test suite ship for the UNIX 03 brand.
Solaris 9.0 E ships. Linux 2.6 kernel released.
Apple Mac OS X certified to UNIX 03.
Latest revision of the UNIX API set formally
standardized at ISO/IEC, IEEE and The Open Group.
Adds further APIs
IDC on UNIX market -- says UNIX $69 billion in 2008,
predicts UNIX $74 billion in 2013
Apple reports 50 million desktops and growing -- these
are Certified UNIX systems.