Home

Start with Unix

A brief "history" of OS -

Multics: an OS by Ken Thompson. MIT and GE.

Unics: 1970 came along and this new operating system came along - a "castrated" operating system compared to multics (hence the unic).

C: the "C" programming language came out after unics came out.

Unix.

  • started in/around 1969 by two guys - Kenneth Thompson && Dennis Ritchie from AT&T

A Brief history

1969: The Birth

Unix is born in 1969.
Kenneth Thomson and Dennis Ritchie, from AT&T.

1973: Converted to C

Unix gets updated in the language of C.
Dennis ritchie created the C programming language.

1975: BSD Release

The BSD ("Berkeley Software Distribution") release of Unix, formerly referred to as Berkeley Unix, was created from the University of California. Berkeley Unix "Rabbit Hole" book

1979: Bourne Shell Release

A default "shell" for unix was developed and released by Stephen Bourne.

1982: Several Distributions Released

  • HP-UX: First unix to offer ACL, access control lists for file access permissions
  • SunOS: Made by sun microsystems
  • Two others: USG System II, and Ultrix-11

1984: TCP/IP Introduction

Until this time, Unix had UUCP networking to copy files to-and-fro.
Here, in the BSD release 4.2, a new network protocol suite was introduced, this TCP/IP.
TCP is the transmission Control Protocol, a byte/stream service abstraction.
IP is the internet protocol, an "un-reliable datagram carriage across the entire internet".

1986: NFS and AIX

AIX is a version of unix made and sold by IBM.
4.3 BSD version of unix incorporated the SunOS "NFS" code.
NFS, network file system, is a distributed file system protocol.
NFS allows users access to files over a network.

1987: Posix, OSF1 and UI

OSF is a variation on unix developed by the Open Software Foundation, a non-profit that created standards for implementing Unix.

1989: Motif and the GUI Tooklit

Motif was released - some common standards and "building blocks" rules for a User Interface, what we see on the screen.

1990: Plan 9 and Distributed Computing

Plan 9, released by bell labs (now nokia), worked at treating a de-centralized network of computers as a single unit. UIs (rio) would access CPU-intensive servers to do to work. Storage was also de-centralized.

1991: Linux and the free OS

Linus Torvald developed linux.

Linux is not unix

Linux is free, Unix costs $$.
A core part of linux is GNU, which stands for "gnu is not unix".

Unix-Like

Linux is "unix-like"

Tags: