Unix is a powerful, yet cryptic, operating system written around 1970 by Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thompson, two computer scientists at AT&T. Unix was originally designed by computer scientists for computer scientists, using computers that would be considered extremely primitive by today's standards. These early computers did not support any graphical interface, and some only had UPPERCASE character sets. Computers that had both lower and uppercase characters were considered to be sophisticated!

Unix was designed to be modular and simple. Basic Unix commands, which are instructions that you use to direct Unix to perform actions for you, were each written to instruct Unix to do only one task and do it well. By reusing many simple commands, Unix programmers can quickly write programs and develop more powerful applications such as word processors, graphics programs, and web browsers. Due to its power and versatility, Unix has become a widely used operating system for program development and networking.

Unix allows you to run programs, edit text, develop software, print, organize data, connect to computers around the world, and much more. In addition, Unix allows many people to work simultaneously on the same computer. Operating systems, such as Unix, that support multiple simultaneous users are known as multi-user operating systems.

Many of the programming courses at UBC use computers that run Unix for the laboratory sessions. Many non-programming courses also use software packages running on Unix computers such as Alias|Wavefront PowerAnimator, Adobe PhotoShop, and FrameMaker.