UnixUnix (ˈjuːnᵻks; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. Initially intended for use inside the Bell System, AT&T licensed Unix to outside parties in the late 1970s, leading to a variety of both academic and commercial Unix variants from vendors including University of California, Berkeley (BSD), Microsoft (Xenix), Sun Microsystems (SunOS/Solaris), HP/HPE (HP-UX), and IBM (AIX).
NovellNovell, Inc. noʊˈvɛl was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the leadership of chief executive Ray Noorda, NetWare became the dominant form of personal computer networking during the second half of the 1980s and first half of the 1990s.
Linux kernelThe Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system, which was written to be a free (libre) replacement for Unix. Linux is provided under the GNU General Public License version 2 only, but it contains files under other compatible licenses.
SlackwareSlackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System (SLS), Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions, and is the oldest distribution that is still maintained. Slackware aims for design stability and simplicity and to be the most "Unix-like" Linux distribution. It makes as few modifications as possible to software packages from upstream and tries not to anticipate use cases or preclude user decisions.
Hyper-VMicrosoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian, and briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded Windows Virtual PC as the hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT. A server computer running Hyper-V can be configured to expose individual virtual machines to one or more networks.
VMwareVMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS. VMware ESXi, its enterprise software hypervisor, is an operating system that runs on server hardware. In May 2022, Broadcom Inc. announced an agreement to acquire VMware in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at $61 billion.
OpenSUSEopenSUSE (pronˌoʊpənˈsuːzə) is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally, the project creates a variety of tools, such as YaST, Open Build Service, openQA, Snapper, Machinery, Portus, KIWI, and OSEM. In the past, the SUSE Linux company has focused on releasing the SUSE Linux Personal and SUSE Linux Professional box sets which included extensive printed documentation that was available for sale in retail stores.
GNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Richard Stallman, for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition.
Timeline of operating systemsThis article presents a timeline of events in the history of computer operating systems from 1951 to the current day. For a narrative explaining the overall developments, see the History of operating systems. 1951 LEO I 'Lyons Electronic Office' was the commercial development of EDSAC computing platform, supported by British firm J. Lyons and Co.
Red Hat LinuxRed Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release in May 1995. It was the first Linux distribution to use the RPM Package Manager as its packaging format, and over time has served as the starting point for several other distributions, such as Mandriva Linux and Yellow Dog Linux.
