During the late 40s, the first computer was developed. A large building full of vacuum tubes, the computer could not make a grocery list nor do the work of your pocket calculator today. As the 50s closed and the 60s began, computer systems had gotten rid of many of the tubes and lights and gone to tape drives (both paper and magnetic) and either paper punch cards or keyboard input. These systems still filled large rooms. In fact, any decent computer filled at least the average sized classroom of today, with much of the room devoted to input devices and storage of information.
Then something called a hard drive was introduced. The first hard drives looked like gold or copper plated LP records swirling around inside a portable refrigerator or an old console television. They had a storage capacity of less than one-half of a standard floppy diskette today. However, operating systems lagged behind the hardware changes and languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL and RPG were the standards.
At the close of the 60s, the US Patent Office was beginning to wonder what to do with a growing mass of software patent applications, being presented in one form or another by IBM, Bells Labs, and others. In 1969, the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, stated that computer software programs were not patentable. But that statement would not last. AND, THERE WAS NO INTERNET.
Designed for the United States Defense Department during the 70s, the Internet connected most military computers in the US and these computers, for the most part, ran an operating system called UNIX. (You know, like DOS, and Windows). Then, the National Science Foundation, in the late 80s, setup five super computers, making world resources available for academic research. (So, what I am saying here is that before DOS, OS/2, and Windows, there was an operating system called UNIX, which was developed during the end of the "Cold War" and the Internet came from efforts by the US Government.)
UNIX is an operating system for many users, most of whom will never know what it means or does. UNIX was designed to be a small, flexible system used exclusively by programmers.
UNIX was one of the first operating systems to be written in a high-level programming language. This meant that it could installed on virtually any computer. This natural portability combined with its low price made it a popular choice among universities.
By the end of the 1970s, dozens of different versions of UNIX were running at various sites. (There are over 50 UNIX operating systems today.) Some of those other fifty odd versions of UNIX are: AIX (IBM's version); A/UX (for Macintosh computers); and XENIX (Microsoft's version).
After its breakup in 1982, AT&T began to market UNIX in earnest. It also began the long and difficult process of defining a standard version of UNIX. Today, there are two main dialects of UNIX; one produced by AT&T known as "System V" and one developed at Berkeley University known as "BSD UNIX". (Credit should be given to Sun Microsystems, who recently merged its efforts in this area with those of AT&T.)
For more information on UNIX, see ftp.wfu.edu/usenet/cuuf-FAQ. (NOTE: When accessing some of the websites and FTP sites mentioned in this article, if you have trouble with your browser, delete one or two of the entries to the right of the first "/". For example, in the example above, try "ftp.wfu.edu/" [or ftp://ftp.wfu.edu/ ] if the full command line does not work.)
Due to its portability, flexibility, and power, UNIX has become the leading operating system for workstations. Historically, it has been less popular in the personal computer market, but the emergence of a new version called LINUX is revitalizing UNIX.
What is now known as LINUX began life as a student project at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus Torvalds wanted a small, UNIX-like operating system. He received help from volunteers all around the globe, who collaborated via bulletin boards (BBS), E-mail, and the Internet, to create the LINUX operating system.
In 1997, LINUX groups claimed more than 500,000 users. About the time that all the large companies were fighting over who should have the software patents, make all the money, and so forth, a small group, led by Richard Stallman, was formed and named the Free Software Foundation.
This group of folks have provided us, the computing public, with free programs, such as FreeBSD, similar to Berkeley's BSD mentioned above ( www.gnu.org ). I almost forgot, the website's name "gnu" means "GNU's NOT UNIX".
These folks truly believe that software should be free, free, free. They even have web pages devoted to the definitions of what "free" means!
Other folks, began to sell clones of the UNIX operating system. Some, such as Slackware, Red Hat, Debian, and Caldera, package various LINUX programs together and sell them. ( http://www.linuxmall.com/ ; www.redhat.com ; and ftp://ftp.debian.org [or www.debian.org ].)
Most folks, however, distribute their software offerings free via the Internet. An example is LVIEW31.EXE, freeware, was written by Leonardo Haddad Loureiro, which is an excellent *.BMP, *.GIF, and *.JPG viewer. Other important software packages in this area are XWindows and Xfree86, which are the graphical interface versions of LINUX.
For more on LINUX, see:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/
ftp://ftp.cs.helsinki.fi/pub/Linux_Kernel/
Microsoft Windows programs will not yet run under LINUX. You might want to review software packages, such as Windows Commander, which allow you to run more than one operating system on your computer ( www.v-com.com ).
Also, you will find at the above web sites, a directory called LILO. It contains a LINUX booter that will allow you to run all these mentioned operating systems on the same machine.
If you missed my last article concerning FTP, you can access is at: http://lonestar.texas.net/~weersjt/club/articles/IB980607.htm. ALSO, the PBS location mentioned in the last article has changed to: http://www.pbs.org/uti/guide
Happy surfing!
Tom Crump can be contacted at tomcrump@swbell.net
To contribute articles to the Internet Beat column, contact Column Coordinator Gloria R. Rivera at riverag@connecti.com 303-4764, fax 372-1418, http://www.seguin.net