[ITS] According to a conspiracy theory long popular among ITS and TOPS-20 fans, Unix's growth is the result of a plot, hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent was to hobble AT&T's competitors by making them dependent upon a system whose future evolution was to be under AT&T's control. This would be accomplished by disseminating an operating system that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, but also relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to require continuing upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent a substantial impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in the back door entry. In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the first computer viruses (see virus) - but a virus spread to computers indirectly by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks and networks. Adherents of this "Unix virus" theory like to cite the fact that the well-known quotation "Unix is snake oil" was uttered by DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began actively promoting its own family of Unix workstations. (Olsen now claims to have been misquoted.)

Columbus UNIX, or CB UNIX, is a discontinued variant of the UNIX operating system used internally at Bell Labs for administrative databases and transaction processing. It was developed at the Columbus, Ohio branch, based on V6, V7 and PWB Unix.

The term "Research Unix" refers to early versions of the Unix operating system for DEC PDP-7, PDP-11, VAX and Interdata 7/32 and 8/32 computers, developed in the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center (CSRC).

This is a list of Unix commands as specified by IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, which is part of the Single UNIX Specification (SUS).

<tool> A cross-reference generator by Arnold Robbins from Georgia Institute of Technology. (2000-02-29)

<operating system, convention> Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a trademark of AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly (TM) typography. Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, lawyers now say that the requirement for the TM-postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested that there may be a psychological connection to practice in certain religions (especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity is never written out in full, e.g. "YHWH" or "G--d" is used. See also glob. (1998-04-17)

A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-like application is one that behaves like the corresponding Unix command or shell.

(conspiracy theories)