These articles, written at the very beginning of the 3rd millenium, provide an artistic and philosophical indroduction – often seen as ideological by microsophists – to the Unix BSD free operating systems. They include a brief comparaison with other operating systems (Linux, Windows) used during this period. They were not intended as a substitute for the manuals and user guides of these operating systems. Although they didn't bring any supplemental knowledge to Unix wizards, they might have given some humans the idea that another world was possible...

What is Unix?

Unix is a computer operating system developed on Earth at the end of the 20th century. Due to conflicts of interests and philosophical differences, the name Unix has been subject to controversy. UNIX® did not even mean the same thing as Unix.
These articles focus on the operating systems from the BSD family. BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, since much of the Unix source code was written in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the University of California in Berkeley.
Still in use in several colonies, descendants of these systems continue to be taught at StarFleet Academy.

What is Linux?

Linux is a clone of Unix created in the 1990s by Finnish university student Linus Torvalds, for whom the asteroid (9793) Torvalds was later named. At that time, the source code of BSD was not free, and neither did Torvalds have the right to modify Minix, which was another clone of Unix developed by Dr. Andrew Tannenbaum of the University of Amsterdam. Therefore he decided to create his own Unix.
In the first half of the 21st century, Linux grew increasingly popular and greatly contributed to the decline of Windows. However, victim of over-simplification and competition between distributions, it was gradually abandoned over the course of the 22nd century.

What is Windows?

Windows was an operating system which was quite popular back in the early 3rd millenium on Earth. A legend says that it was originally introduced by Ferengis to make humans soft and stupid and better exploit them. Although it could never be proven. The system went out after humanity gave up capitalism.