únics

UNICS, later known as UNIX, is a family of multitasking, multiuser operating systems that originated at Bell Labs in the late 1960s. It was designed as a smaller, portable successor to the Multics project and aimed to support efficient software development through a simple, modular design and a philosophy of small tools used together via pipes.

Origin and naming: The early system was referred to as UNICS—Uniplexed Information and Computing Service—during its development. The name UNIX emerged as a pun on Multics and gradually became the standard designation for the lineage.

Development and dissemination: Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie led the work, beginning on a PDP-7 and later porting to the PDP-11. Public releases in the 1970s culminated with Version 7 around 1979. In the same period AT&T began licensing Unix to universities, spurring widespread adoption and derivative work (BSD and System V).

Impact and lineage: Unix popularized the Unix philosophy—small, composable tools, text streams, and pipelines—along with portable, written-once, run-anywhere code. It influenced numerous operating systems and spawned major branches, including BSD, System V, Solaris, and, indirectly, Linux and macOS, all of which shaped modern computing standards, including POSIX.

Today, Unix and Unix-like systems remain central in servers, workstations, and embedded devices. The term "únics" is not a standard designation for the operating system in English; it is occasionally seen as a linguistic form meaning "unique" in other languages.