Brief History
Knowing the beginnings of the Linux system
An Operating System (OS) manages all the resources of a computer. These resources may include memory, hard disk space, printers, monitors or any other computing device. The OS also controls access to files and data, user sign in, a document's position in the print queue, console and screen display, memory allocation per application, and the functioning of all other system features and services. An operating system is capable of delegating resources to a variety of devices and executing a very large number of processes at one time.
Today's computers are so fast that transaction speed (the time taken to carry out a single computation) is measured in billionths of a second or less. Although computers may appear to do many things simultaneously, the Operating System is actually efficiently utilizing the system's CPU and memory and switching these resources back and forth between each task in a very, very fast manner (multitasking).
Operating Systems have evolved to current standards in the last fifty years. Before this time, computers ran just one program at a time. A computer operator would load the program onto the computer manually. The person who wrote (developed) the program would pass the program on to the operator who would load the program and return its output to the developer. As technology advanced, many programs (or 'jobs' ) were loaded onto a single tape. This tape would be loaded onto the computer and manipulated by another program. Multiprogramming became possible in the late sixties and many programs could be held in memory at once. If one program had to wait for input data from a tape, the next program on the tape queue could access the CPU in the meantime. This decreased the CPU's idle time dramatically and also improved the efficiency of the computer. Monitoring programs of this sort were precursors to the modern OS.
The UNIX OS was designed by Ken Thompson of Bell Labs in the late 1960s. UNIX was devised to efficiently monitor programs executing on a computer, efficiently host related utilities, and provide access control and security for a multi-user environment. Linux, although a descendant of UNIX, differs from UNIX significantly. Linux may be used to manage and administer all the resources, devices, and facilities on a computer.
