What is UNIX?
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UNIX is an operating system that was designed at AT&T's
Bell Laboratories in 1969. While that makes UNIX very old by computer
standards, it is still popular today because of its power, flexability,
and portability. UNIX can run on platforms ranging from PCs and Macs to
Cray supercomputers.
What is a Kernel?
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Today you'll find several flavors of the UNIX operating system (also
known as the "kernel"). AT&T's original version evolved into System V
(pronounced "system five"). The version that AT&T licensed to the
University of California at Berkeley is called BSD (Berkeley Software
Distribution). It is now the de facto standard in the academic community.
Other versions are also available from commercial vendors: Sun's Solaris,
SCO and Microsoft's XENIX, IBM's AIX, DEC's ULTRIX, Apple's A/UX, and the
free Intel-based Linux.
What is a Shell?
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Users rarely use UNIX directly. The utility software that
interprets a user's commands for the kernel is called the shell.
Here too, there are several flavors. The original and most common shell
is the Bourne shell (its prompt is "$"). The C shell ("%"
or ">") is newer and provides an extensive command language similar to
the C programming language. C shell is the default shell for users
of UNM's AIX machines. The Korn shell (also "$") attempts to
combine the best of both the Borne and C shells. More than one shell is
often available to users on a UNIX system.
What is an X-Term?
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What is a Client?
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I forgot my password. What do I do?
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http://www.unm.edu/~consult/genfaq.html
consult@unm.edu
