Introduction

AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) (pronounced /eɪ aɪ ɛks/) is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Originally released for the IBM 6150 RISC workstation, AIX now supports or has supported a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the IBM RS/6000 series and later IBM POWER and PowerPC-based systems, IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server. AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions. The AIX family of operating systems debuted in 1986, became the standard operating system for the RS/6000 series on its launch in 1990, and is still actively developed by IBM.

AIX was the first operating system to utilize journalling file systems,[citation needed] and has provided several other innovations in operating system design. AIX was a component of the 2003 SCO v. IBM lawsuit, in which the SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging IBM contributed SCO's intellectual property to the Linux kernel codebase. The SCO Group, who believed they were the rightful owners of the copyrights covering the Unix operating system, attempted to revoke IBM's license to sell or distribute the AIX operating system. In March, 2010 a jury returned a verdict finding that Novell, not the SCO Group, owns the rights to Unix.[1] Novell continues to grant IBM's license of UNIX