UNIX /yoo'niks/ n.
1.)A weak pun on MULTICS.
2.)An interactive time-sharing
system originally invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the
Multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7.
Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered co-author of the system. The
turning point in UNIX's history came when it was re-implemented almost
entirely in C during 1972-1974, making it the first source-portable OS. Today
DIGITAL UNIX is the only commercial 'X' O/S that can legally call itself 'UNIX', and
there are more flavors of commercial 'X' than can be counted on a hand, and
several public domain versions as well, such as BSD or (for the 64-bit DEC
Alpha)'Red Hat' LINUX.