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-:
- Was/Is UNIX ever an open source operating system ?
- 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.
- 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.