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 ...

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 ...

At the Linux Foundation’s annual conference in August, IBM VP Brad McCredie told the crowd something that was probably unthinkable when Linus Torvalds created his new operating system kernel two ...

Unless you've had your head under a rock for the last several years, you know that Linux has been gaining a considerable amount of attention and even market share. Through the use of shallow thinking ...

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 ...

Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created. In August 1969, Ken Thompson, a programmer ...