Shell Scripting: Expert Recipes for Linux, Bash, and More

Chapter 1

The History of Unix, GNU, and Linux

The Unix tradition has a long history, and Linux comes from the Unix tradition, so to understand Linux one must understand Unix and to understand Unix one must understand its history. Before Unix, a developer would submit a stack of punched cards, each card representing a command, or part of a command. These cards would be read and executed sequentially by the computer. The developer would receive the generated output after the job had completed. This would often be a few days after the job had been submitted; if there was an error in the code, the output was just the error and the developer had to start again. Later, teletype and various forms of timesharing systems sped up the matter considerably, but the model was basically the same: a sequence of characters (punch cards, or keys on keyboards — it’s still just a string of characters) submitted as a batch job to be run (or fail to run), and for the result to come back accordingly. This is significant today in that it is still how data is transmitted on any computerized system — it’s all sequences of characters, transmitted in order. Whether a text file, a web page, a movie, or music, it is all just strings of ones and zeroes, same as it ever was. Anything that looks even slightly different is simply putting an interface over the top of a string of ones and zeroes.

Unix and various other interactive and timesharing systems came along in the mid-1960s. Unix and its conventions continue ...