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What is UNIX (Linux)? - Japanese Only
Hey there, everyone!
If this is your first time here, welcome aboard! And if we've crossed paths in another article, great to see you again. This is the UNIX (Linux) beginner's course — glad to have you here.
We're going to walk through the basics of 'UNIX' and 'Linux' step by step. So let's start from the very beginning — what even are these things?
'UNIX' is what's known as an 'Operating System', or 'OS' for short.
So what's an 'OS'? In simple terms, it's software that controls all the different hardware components in your computer in an organized and efficient way.
Right now, you're reading this article on a PC or smartphone. Inside that device, there's a CPU, memory, storage (like an SSD), a display, keyboard, mouse, touchpad, battery — all sorts of components connected to a motherboard. The 'OS' is what manages all of those things together.
To really appreciate what an OS does, try imagining what it would be like to build something without one.
Let's say you want to create a program that displays a letter on screen when you type it on the keyboard — but there's no OS to help you.
First, you'd need to figure out how the keyboard works at the electrical level. A keyboard is basically a collection of switches — when you press a key, it sends a specific electrical signal. So you'd need to map out every single key and its corresponding signal.
Then you'd need to store that input in memory. That means understanding CPU architecture, memory addresses, and all that fun stuff. Good luck with that one.
After that, you'd need to figure out how the display works. A screen is essentially a grid of tiny lights, so to show the letter "a", you'd need to light up exactly the right pixels to form that shape.
...See where this is going? Building even a simple feature from scratch at the hardware level is incredibly tedious. You'd probably run out of lifetime before finishing — seriously.
And that's basically what an OS does — it bundles up all these fundamental operations so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Pretty impressive when you think about it, right?
Now, back to UNIX. UNIX is the pioneer of operating systems — the original OS, if you will. Modern systems like 'Windows' and 'macOS' are all built on concepts that originated in UNIX, making it essentially the godfather of all operating systems.
Technically, there were OS-like systems before UNIX, but looking at their capabilities, they were pretty far from what we'd call an OS today. That's why most people consider UNIX the true origin — and the author of this site is one of them.
A quick history lesson: UNIX development began around 1969 at AT&T's Bell Labs, and it started being deployed in production systems around 1978.
The most famous person at Bell Labs during that era is arguably Dennis Ritchie (Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie). He's also the creator of the C programming language, which went on to influence the vast majority of programming languages that exist today. It's no exaggeration to call him one of the founding gods of the modern IT world.
In the 1980s, PCs (servers) running UNIX began making their way into major corporations. UNIX was incredibly well-designed and user-friendly from the start — but there was one big problem: the hardware was stupidly expensive.
See, UNIX was originally sold as a package deal — hardware and OS bundled together.
Think of it like Apple today. When you buy a MacBook, macOS comes pre-installed — you're buying the hardware and OS as one package. That's essentially how early UNIX was sold.
Microsoft's approach with Windows, on the other hand, is different — they sell the OS separately, and you can install it on pretty much any PC that meets certain specs. So early UNIX was the exact opposite of that model.
And while Apple products today start at a few hundred dollars, UNIX machines back in the day were... not exactly affordable. From the author's memory, UNIX servers from NEC and Fujitsu in the early 1990s started at prices higher than a used car. The high-end models could run up to around a million dollars. Not exactly pocket change.
"So how did people learn UNIX back then?"
Well, your options were basically:
"Get into a university that had the equipment"
or
"Get hired at a company that had it"
— the barrier to entry was pretty darn high.
As for the author — I took the second route. I joined a company as a part-timer, and they told me:
"Hey, we're not using this UNIX box anymore, so go nuts with it."
And I was like, "Don't mind if I do!" and happily started tinkering away.
But having such a high barrier to learning something isn't great, right? And that's where the creator of Linux enters the stage — Linus Torvalds (Linus Benedict Torvalds).
Linus was a university student who had been building an OS for fun, using UNIX as a reference. Then, around 1991, he did something revolutionary — he published it online for anyone to use. This was the birth of what we now call 'open source'.
The idea of "giving your work away for free without claiming ownership" was groundbreaking at the time. Once the code was public, programmers from all over the world jumped in to help develop it, and the OS evolved at an incredible pace. And that's how 'Linux' was born.
Linux is essentially free, and it can be installed on pretty much any PC that runs Windows — so the barrier to learning UNIX-like systems dropped dramatically. Suddenly, anyone could set up their own servers and deploy IT services. Pretty amazing, right?
Fun fact: Linus still holds significant decision-making power in the IT world today, and he's a strong advocate for sharing technical resources globally. That philosophy is a huge part of why so much powerful software and tools are available for free today.
If you've spent any time programming, you've probably noticed that incredibly powerful tools are often available at no cost. The author believes Linus's influence has a lot to do with that.
Alright, that was quite a deep dive, but here's the key takeaway: UNIX and Linux can be operated with nearly identical knowledge.
Since Linux was built based on UNIX, the concepts and commands are almost the same. So if you can use UNIX, you can use Linux — and vice versa.
On top of that, modern macOS is actually UNIX-based (it's technically a certified UNIX system), so if you know UNIX, you can also work with the macOS Terminal. What a time to be alive!
One caveat though: Windows was also inspired by UNIX, but only in terms of concepts. The actual commands are quite different, so keep that in mind. If you're curious, look into 'MS-DOS' and 'Command Prompt' — that'll give you a good idea of how Windows diverged.
And that wraps up our intro to UNIX and Linux! In the next article, we'll talk about distributions. See you there!
This article was written by Sakurama.
Author's beloved small mammal |
桜舞 春人 Sakurama HarutoA Tokyo-based programmer who has been creating various content since the ISDN era, with a bit of concern about his hair. A true long sleeper who generally feels unwell without at least 10 hours of sleep. His dream is to live a life where he can sleep as much as he wants. Loves games, sports, and music. Please share some hair with him. |
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