Is UNIX an open source OS ?


 
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Old 07-22-2014
Is UNIX an open source OS ?

Hi everyone,
I know the following questions are noobish questions but I am asking them because I am confused about the basics of history behind UNIX and LINUX.

Ok onto business, my questions are-:

  1. Was/Is UNIX ever an open source operating system ?
  2. If UNIX was closed source (as Wikipedia states as "historically closed source") then is LINUX a reverse engineered version of UNIX ?
    I mean if UNIX was closed source how did Linus Torvalds create a "UNIX-like" OS called LINUX without having access to the source code of a closed source OS. The only possible explanation seems reverse engineering UNIX just like ReactOS is a reversed engineered binary compatible version of Windows.
  3. Now this seems a little odd to ask. Is LINUX actually an OS ? Or is Linux just a kernel ? I am asking this because the Debian OS which I use can work on Linux, FreeBSD and I think the GNU Hurd kernel (I have no idea what it is by the way). Wikipedia defines Linux as an OS while I have never used an OS called Linux but I have used distros like "Fedora", "Debian", etc.

Okay that's about it for now. Please don't flame me, I am really confused between the basics here.

Thanks in advance.
 
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DPKG-RECONFIGURE(8)                                                   Debconf                                                  DPKG-RECONFIGURE(8)

NAME
dpkg-reconfigure - reconfigure an already installed package SYNOPSIS
dpkg-reconfigure [options] packages DESCRIPTION
dpkg-reconfigure reconfigures packages after they have already been installed. Pass it the names of a package or packages to reconfigure. It will ask configuration questions, much like when the package was first installed. If you just want to see the current configuration of a package, see debconf-show(1) instead. OPTIONS
-ftype, --frontend=type Select the frontend to use. The default frontend can be permanently changed by: dpkg-reconfigure debconf Note that if you normally have debconf set to use the noninteractive frontend, dpkg-reconfigure will use the dialog frontend instead, so you actually get to reconfigure the package. -pvalue, --priority=value Specify the minimum priority of question that will be displayed. dpkg-reconfigure normally shows low priority questions no matter what your default priority is. See debconf(7) for a list. --default-priority Use whatever the default priority of question is, instead of forcing the priority to low. -u, --unseen-only By default, all questions are shown, even if they have already been answered. If this parameter is set though, only questions that have not yet been seen will be asked. --force Force dpkg-reconfigure to reconfigure a package even if the package is in an inconsistent or broken state. Use with caution. --no-reload Prevent dpkg-reconfigure from reloading templates. Use with caution; this will prevent dpkg-reconfigure from repairing broken templates databases. However, it may be useful in constrained environments where rewriting the templates database is expensive. -h, --help Display usage help. SEE ALSO
debconf(7) AUTHOR
Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> 2018-02-28 DPKG-RECONFIGURE(8)