UNIX: The Operating System Running (Virtually) Everything

Yep. You heard me right. Unix, not Windows powers today’s servers, portable devices and more desktops than ever.

“But, MacTexan, what about all those bizillions of Windows computers? Like everybody has one of those, right?”

Well, yes, but slowly but surely those desktops are becoming more and more irrelevant. Read the title again please. It speaks about the OS that’s running everything, not the OS used to access everything.

“But, but, MacTexan, if UNIX is running everything, why haven’t I heard about it?”

You hear about it every day, but it is rarely referred to by the name “UNIX”. You know it by the names OS X, iOS, Android, Ubuntu, Chrome OS and a host of others. Yes, all these operating systems are based on some variant of UNIX. By way of (very oversimplified) explanation, all these OSs start with a UNIX kernel and add a GUI (Graphical User Interface) on top. These GUIs are what we’ve come to recognize as the various, above-mentioned operating systems.

Add to all these the hundreds of thousands of anonymous servers that power companies like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and EBAY, to name a few. Virtually every one run some flavor of Linux (a UNIX variant developed by Linus Torvalds released in 1991) running a software stack called LAMP. LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache web server, MySQL database and Perl or PHP development platform.

“Why do so many companies run LAMP servers, MacTexan?”

Simple. The software is free! Yep, you read that right. No typo. The operating system, web server, database and programming software powering all these hundreds of thousands of enterprise servers is open-sourced and costs exactly $0.00! Zip. Nada. Zilch….  …you get the point. Just think how much money Google saves using tens of thousands of servers running free software versus comparable machines running Windows software costing upwards of $1000 each in licensing fees? Setting economics aside for a moment, another big reason for running LAMP servers is stability. Internet companies like the ones mentioned above demand “five-nine” (99.999%) availability from their servers and these LAMP machines literally run for months at a time with little or no maintenance or need for rebooting.  LAMP setups also require lesser hardware (RAM & CPU) to perform the same tasks as a comparable Windows server. UNIX was originally written when computer memory and CPU cycles were much harder to come by. Single core, 16 bit processor architecture with 128 or 256 KB of RAM was the norm. UNIX stays true to its efficient use of resources to this day. For example, I wrote this post about reviving an old PC (that struggled to run Windows XP) by completely wiping it and installing the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. I did that over a year ago and that machine still sings. In the 14 months since I set it up, it’s been rebooted only five times! No kidding! I went back and examined the logs. Two of those reboots were caused by power outages lasting longer than my UPS battery. So, if I’m the company guy making decisions about what server setup to use, then 1) lesser hardware requirements 2) little or no software costs and 3) superior reliability makes a LAMP setup the “no brainer” choice.

Arguably the most significant segment dominated by UNIX is portable devices. iOS and Android power 98% of smartphones and tablets. Both run a variant of a UNIX kernel. iOS is a pared-down version of OS X which is based on Free BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), a UNIX variant written in the 70s at UC Berkeley. It powers iPhones, iPads, iPods and Apple TVs. Android is based on a Linux kernel customized by Google and optimized for free distribution to smartphone manufacturers (other than Apple, of course).  Why would Google do such a thing? Because they embed their “free” services (Google search, maps, docs, Google Now, etc.) with every Android release. So whenever you look to your Android device for driving directions or search for a web site, you’re sent straight to Google with all their embedded ads and “sponsored” search results. Cha-Ching. All that aside, Android is running on roughly two-thirds of the worlds smartphones and tablets. Basically, iOS runs on Apple devices, Android powers everything else. Like iOS, it is a very lean and (mostly) reliable operating system. In fact, if I open a terminal session to either operating system, 75 – 80% of the built-in commands are common to both thanks to their shared UNIX underpinnings. As you might imagine, I tend to prefer iOS and I don’t want to turn this into some Android/iOS flame war. The point I’m trying to make is, both operating systems have UNIX roots and since Blackberry and Windows phone are all but dead (each at ~ 1% market share), it’s fair to say UNIX powers mobile. Period.

Windows is still the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, but since “computing” as we know it continues its trend toward a mostly on-line and mobile experience, the desktop OS becomes less and less relevant. I use OS X mostly (because I love Apple hardware and Apple’s ecosystem), Windows when I have to for customers and Linux does the heavy lifting when I need to provide a solid server to a value-minded client. I don’t think I’m coming at this from left field either. After doing this for over 30 years I’ve come to realize a very simple truth: IT professionals who hesitate to recommend non-Windows solutions generally do so because they’re 1) ignorant about UNIX/Linux capabilities or 2) drank so much Redmond Kool-Aid while working to pass their MCSE exam they’ve become Windows bigots. To those folks I say “Ignore UNIX at your own peril. Being a Windows-only professional makes you incompetent in two-thirds of the market you try to serve.” I look at this as the world finally regaining its sanity after many years hallucinating on some kind of bad Windows trip. Pardon the poor sixties analogy.

For all you Mac enthusiasts, I strongly recommend you sharpen your UNIX chops. Learning the capabilities of OS Xs CLI (Command Line Interface) is geeky-cool and can quickly turn you into a real power user. It’s really easy and won’t cost a dime. Open “Terminal” and try a few harmless commands like “ls” to list information about what’s in your home folder or “say” followed by any text you’d like your Mac to read to you in the default voice. There’s a great A-Z index of the OS X command line at http://ss64.com/osx/  It’s a great reference replete with tons of explanations and examples. The site also has the same resources for Linux and a quick comparison of the two illustrates how very similar the two OSs are under the hood. Googling “OS X command line” or “Linux command line” yields millions of results each, so there’s obviously no barrier to learning here. Familiarizing yourself with just one of these will make you fairly literate in four popular operating systems, OS X, iOS, Linux and Android.

To my original premise. Windows is starting to look more and more like a fifth wheel. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to imply Windows technology is going away any time in the foreseeable future. It’s still far and away the most popular desktop OS and is still the server architecture of choice for most Fortune 500 companies. Since the '90s, Microsoft has done a great job providing a complete business solution. Windows servers administering Active Directory to users of Windows desktops equipped with MS Office has been a "soup to nuts" offering that's become engrained in most corporate environments. According to Wikipedia, there’s some version of Windows on roughly 85% of desktop computers worldwide. Where Microsoft, under Steve Ballmer's leadership, completely dropped the ball was in mobile. Ballmer poked fun at the iPhone when it was released in 2007 and stubbornly clung to Microsoft's failed "Windows Everywhere" strategy. In the next couple of years, people abandoned Windows Mobile devices in droves in favor of iOS and Android. The same Wikipedia post also sites 60% of all devices (computers, smartphones and tablets) shipped in 2014 ran some variant of UNIX. Even when peering into my cloudy crystal ball it’s easy to see that Windows’ ubiquity is quickly eroding. In 2010, the most prescient tech person who ever lived, Steve Jobs pronounced “the post-PC era” had begun. In this new era he equated desktop computers to trucks, saying they will always be necessary for “heavy lifting”, but mobile devices are the “cars” that will suit the needs of the vast majority. 98% of these cars are fueled by UNIX.