Two weeks ago frequent contributors p_msac and bportlock challenged me to see Linux as not Unix and to discuss the consequences of that difference. The reality here is simple: Linus Torvalds started ...

The “What’s the difference between UNIX and Linux?” question can be answered similar to the analogy section that many of us had to complete on the SAT test; UNIX is to DOS as Linux is to Windows. That ...

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at a PDP-11. Peter Hamer [CC BY-SA 2.0] Last week the computing world celebrated an important anniversary: the UNIX operating system turned 50 years old. What was ...

What defines an operating system isn’t a geeky label or a collection of ramblings from the mouths of its community members. Nor is it some empty and pointless certification offered up by an obscure ...

Columnist Dave Taylor reminisces about the early days of UNIX and how Linux evolved and grew from that seed. Twenty five years of Linux Journal. This also marks my 161st column with the magazine too, ...

Several readers took me to task for referring to Linux, BSD, and OS X as Unix. Lighten up, folks — I’m on your side. No one feels more protective of Unix’s heritage than I. Unix has a rich legacy that ...

SCO Group says copyrighted code has made its way into Linux, the popular open-source OS. If true, the open-source community could find its hard-won gains threatened. Stephen Shankland worked at CNET ...

Back on September 12, fellow blogger Marc Wagner wrote a long rebuttal to my comment that the Linux community should stop trying to make Linux look like Windows and just let Linux be Linux. As part of ...