| Year |
Event |
| 1957 |
Bell Labs found they needed an
operating system for their computer center which at the time was
running various batch jobs. The BESYS operating system was created
at Bell Labs to deal with these needs. |
| 1965 |
Bell Labs was adopting third
generation computer equipment and decided to join forces with
General Electric and MIT to create Multics (Multiplexed
Information and Computing Service). |
| 1969 |
By April 1969, AT&T
made a decision to withdraw Multics and go with GECOS. When Multics
was withdrawn Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie needed to
rewrite an operating system in order to play space travel on
another smaller machine (a DEC PDP-7 [Programmed Data Processor 4K
memory for user programs). The result was a system which a punning
colleague called UNICS (UNiplexed Information and Computing
Service)--an 'emasculated Multics'. |
| 1969 |
Summer 1969 UNIX was developed. |
| 1971 |
First edition of
UNIX released
11/03/1971. The first edition of the "UNIX PROGRAMMER'S
MANUAL [by] K. Thompson [and] D. M. Ritchie" is also dated
"November 3, 1971". It includes over 60 commands like: b
(compile B program); boot (reboot system); cat
(concatenate files); chdir
(change working directory); chmod
(change access mode); chown
(change owner); cp (copy
file); ls (list directory
contents); mv (move or rename
file); roff (run off text); wc
(get word count); who (who
is one the system). The main thing missing was pipes. |
| 1972 |
Second edition of
UNIX released
12/06/1972 |
| 1972 |
Ritchie rewrote
B and called the new language C. |
| 1973 |
UNIX
had
been installed on 16 sites (all within AT&T/Western Electric);
it was publically unveiled at a conference in October. |
| 1973 |
Third edition of
UNIX released
02/xx/1973 |
| 1973 |
Forth edition of
UNIX released
11/xx/1973 |
| 1974 |
Fifth edition of
UNIX released
06/xx/1974 |
| 1974 |
Thompson
went to UC Berkeley to teach for a year, Bill Joy arrived as a new
graduate student. Frustrated with ed, Joy developed a more
featured editor em. |
| 1975 |
Sixth edition of
UNIX released
05/xx/1975 |
| 1977 |
1BSD released late 1977 |
| 1978 |
2BSD released mid 1978 |
| 1979 |
Seventh edition of
UNIX released
01/xx/1979 |
| 1979 |
3BSD released late 1979 |
| 1979 |
SCO
founded by Doug and Larry Michels as UNIX porting and consulting
company. |
| 1980 |
4.0BSD released 10/xx/1980 |
| 1982 |
SGI
introduces IRIX. |
| 1983 |
SCO
delivers its first packaged UNIX system called SCO XENIX System V
for Intel 8086 and 8088 processor-based PCs. |
| 1984 |
Ultrix
1.0 was released. |
| 1985 |
Eighth edition of
UNIX released
02/xx/1985 |
| 1985 |
The GNU
manifesto is published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's
Journal. The GNU project starts a year and a half later. |
| 1986 |
HP-UX 1.0 released. |
| 1986 |
Ninth edition of
UNIX released
09/xx/1986 |
| 1987 |
Sun and AT&T
lay the groundwork for business computing in the next decade with
an alliance to develop UNIX System V Release 4. |
| 1988 |
HP-UX
2.0 released. |
| 1988 |
HP-UX
3.0 released. |
| 1989 |
SCO
ships SCO UNIX System V/386, the first volume commercial product
licensed by AT&T to use the UNIX System trademark. |
| 1989 |
HP-UX
7.0 released. |
| 1989 |
Tenth edition of
UNIX released
10/xx/1989 |
| 1990 |
AIX
short for Advanced Interactive eXecutive was first entered into
the market by IBM February 1990. |
| 1991 |
Sun
unveils Solaris 2 operating environment, specially tuned for
symetric multiprocessing. |
| 1991 |
Linux is
introduced by Linus Torvald, a student in Finland. Who post to the
comp.os.minix newsgroup with the words:
Hello
everybody out there using minix -
I'm
doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. |
| 1991 |
HP-UX
8.0 released. |
| 1991 |
BSD/386 ALPHA First code released to
people outside BSDI 12/xx/1991 |
| 1992 |
HP-UX
9.0 released. |
| 1993 |
NetBSD
0.8 released 04/20/1993 |
| 1993 |
FreeBSD
1.0 released December of 1993 |
| 1994 |
Red Hat
Linux is introduced. |
| 1994 |
Caldera,
Inc was founded in 1994 by Ransom Love and Bryan Sparks. |
| 1994 |
NetBSD
1.0 released 10/26/1994 |
| 1995 |
FreeBSD
2.0 released 01/xx/1995 |
| 1995 |
SCO
acquires UNIX Systems source technology business from Novell
Corporation (which had acquired it from AT&T's UNIX System
Laboratories). SCO also acquires UnixWare 2 operating system from
Novell. |
| 1995 |
HP-UX
10.0 released. |
| 1995 |
4.4 BSD Lite Release 2 the true final
distribution from the CSRG 06/xx/1995 |
| 1997 |
HP-UX
11.0 released. |
| 1997 |
Caldera
ships OpenLinux Standard 1.1 May 5, 1997, the second offering in
Caldera's OpenLinux product line |
| 1998 |
IRIX
6.5 the fifth generation of SGI UNIX is released July 6, 1998. |
| 1998 |
SCO
delivers UnixWare 7 operating system. |
| 1998 |
Sun Solaris 7 operating system
released. |
| 1998 |
FreeBSD
3.0 released 10/16/1998 |
| 2000 |
FreeBSD
4.0 released 03/13/2000 |
| 2000 |
Caldera
Systems Inc. announces that Caldera Systems has entered into
agreement to acquire the SCO Server
Software Division and the Professional Services Division |
