112 SEPTEMBER 2019 |COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 379

HALF CENTURY

NOTOUT

NIKRAWLINSONEXPLORES HOW

AN OPERATINGSYSTEMTHAT’SBEEN

AROUND FOR50YEARS IS STILLVITAL TO

EVERYTHING FROM CHEAPCOMPUTERS

TO POWERFUL SMARTPHONES

UNIX

:

W

eall use Unix every day. When you browsethe web,you’re hoppingfrom

Unix to Linux to Microsoftservers. Pick up your mobile phone,and the

kernel of its OS will have been influencedby Unix code.WindowsNT was

built to playnicely with Unix, and has morphedand adapted over the

years to becomeWindows10, which itself incorporates aUnix-inspired

Linux subsystem forhacking at the commandline.

What makes this truly remarkableis that Unix turns 50 this year.What started

as an underfundedattempt to build asimple,lightweightOS to run atelephone

networkhas becomeone of the greatest influenceson modernlife–atleast from

atechnicalstandpoint.Withoutit, we wouldn’t have Linux, RaspberryPi,

Chromebooks,cheap computing,powerfulsmartphonesor even the internet in the

form we recognisetoday.

But where did Unix come from, and why? And how has it enduredforsolong?