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Visual Map of Unix history
psychosis writes "A friend pointed me towards this site that has a really interesting diagram of the History of Unix. It shows where all the development splits occured, recombined, and dissolved into the ether. The diagram is available in several different formats (html, pdf, and PS), so all can enjoy!"
Windows won because it ran on everybody's systems. Everybody avoided OS/2 because it was from IBM, and coupled at the time with the IBM Microchannel hardware, everybody figured it was a trap IBM had set to snare everyone back into their proprietary hardware.
You want to purchase "A Quarter Century of Unix" by Salus. ISBN 0-201-54777-5. Order it from Bookpool or your favorite local bookseller. (Friends don't let friends order from Amazon.com)
'Quarter Century' is the definitive history of Unix.
Geez, the inclusion of Steve Jobs ugly mug and the little footnote about NeXTStep being the "best UNIX" really give away this guy's biases.
NeXTStep was not a UNIX. It was NOT derivative of BSD. It had a Mach kernel (which is not UNIX), with a display system and object oriented set of GUI libraries.
It used a BSD filesystem, had BSD file management utilites (i.e mv,cp,rm,ln, etc.) and had a C shell. That does not a UNIX make. NeXTStep/ OpenStep were never POSIX compliant, and never had the full set of system calls that even a poor implementation of either BSD or SYSV would have.
I remember what open source software was like 10+ years ago. I compiled lots of it. Occasionally I'd see a NeXT port of an open source app, and it'd almost always require massive patching to get it to compile. NeXT's simply didnt have the innards of a UNIX.
Don't you mean the point where it became merely the program-loader for Emacs?
I though that it started as a terminal emulator and that Linus had wanted to fork from Minix but couldn't for licensing reasons (and went on to have a big fight with Tanenbaum on UseNet over the portability of the Linux code).
If you want Ken Thompson to enjoy it, it should be made available in Microsoft Word format.
This guy has been making his map for quite a while. I'd like to know if there is a book, preferably in a interesting style, that would relate the history of unix?
The DOS history is also missing all the other things that went into DOS/Windows over time. Like chunks of 'Stacker' and all the other 3rd party products that were bought out and assimiliated.
How many other products that went into Windows can you name?
--
Simon
If you go to mckusick.com, you can buy a 4 CD set containing all the original BSD src. However, you will need to have an ancient Unix source license, according to the web page. There's a link on how to get one listed on the web page.
I teach Computer Science 302, Unix System Administration at Washington State University, and my lecture on Unix history just got a whole lot easier.
Tres cool!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
The computer languages chart doesn't have nearly enough lines going into "Perl 1.0". :^)
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
What is he supposed to say? I did the whole thing? Even if he did it just wouldn't be very cool, a lot of people worked on the design of NT.
Besides, he probably knew it would come back to haunt him ;)
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Here are a couple of example for loops in bash:
for f in foo bar baz; do
echo $f;
lpr $f;
done
or you can use backticks to generate your list (watch out for files with spaces in the names though...):
for f in `find . -type f -name '*.ps' -print`; do
echo $f;
lpr $f;
done
Try reading up on bash functions if you want to do complicated things. The hyperlinked help you mention sounds nice, but I reckon bash is probably bloated enough already without all that extra gubbins in it. If you need to read a manual your shell script might be better written in something a little more legible and flexible -- like Perl, Python or whatever -- horses for courses and all that.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Thats because OS/2 Ain't a unix....
It cam out of IBM/MS's attempt to do the next windows after windows 3.0. they argued at NT came out from M$ and OS/2 from IBM.
He must be thinking of VMS. Microsoft hired some key VMS dude (okay, I forget his name, so sue me), from Digital, and he was like one of the chief architects of the NT kernel early on. I doubt if he would have approved of the changes since his tenure tho.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I have heard the story, but never seen it.
It's interesting to see SunOS starting off as BSD-based, then being changed over to System V-based.
But where is BeOS?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That's funny, I always thought that was a Yankee joke! :-)
-- OpenSourcerers
I worked on the AIX transition from 3.x -> 4.x. There is (were) no single line of code from SVR4 in the AIX kernel. In fact, AFAIR, the kernel was based on the SVR3.2, with extensions from IBM. Also, parts of AIX 3.x were in OSF/1 (another port that I worked on).
-- Roland Buresund MBA, MCMI, CISSP
Hmm... I saw AIX, but no OS/2!
What about Proprietary Unixes... I'm thinking of one made by Altos in particular... I don't remember what they called it, but it ran on their own x86 based hardware (ie, not IBM-PC hardware, it just happened to use the same CPU)... I happen to have one of these boxes, and would be interested in the lineage of it's Unix...
I hate to say it, but you can tell it's Unix by the fonts. Why do Unix fonts have to look so awful? No website created by a Windows user would have fonts that unreadable unless they were deliberately creating a k-rad eyesore. (Of course if you use a Unix based web browser to view a website created on Windows the fonts may suck even if they look great on Windows.)
PS. This is not a troll, it's an observation of the objective fact that Unix fonts suck.
Actually, the "HTML" version is just a series of GIFs. This isn't an HTML issue at all. The GIFs were presumably created using a graphing program. I can't remember the name, but I've used a program on Linux that could have generated those pictures, and I never got it to display anything where the fonts didn't look like crap.
Someone needs to license that from the author and make a nice poster out of it. It's pretty interesting data and shows the family trees well.
Sure, but we'd have to distribute the map.
You take this corner, I'll take this corner....
The unix idea/mentality has been around for years. Yet no one person can say how it should be done. Hopefully in many years from now some great leader will unite the tribes of unix and make us whole(Yeah Right)
... it'l be Microsofts 20th aniversary
of doing the Xenix thing ?
The old Apollo workstations initially ran DomainOS, then later had the option of using Unix. It was a version of BSD that they called Domain/IX.
Wow, I'm such a freaking pack rat. I found this file fragment in one of my archive directories. You had a choice of BSD or SYSV.
//UPDATE_ME).
//meow
$ install_sysadmin
Software installation TYPES are:
RESTART -- Restart the DOMAIN/IX software installation.
DOMAIN_IX -- Install the full DOMAIN/IX software package.
Please enter installation TYPE: domain_ix
**** SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR ONLY INSTALLATION ****
You must provide the name of the TARGET volume on which to
install the software (e.g.,
Please enter TARGET Volume or type quit:
The DOMAIN/IX PRODUCT TYPES are:
BSD4.2 -- Berkeley 4.2
SYS5 -- System 5
BOTH -- Berkeley 4.2 and System 5
Please enter the PRODUCT TYPE you wish to install, or type quit: bsd4.2
Hmmmm, I guess I was a BSD snob back then.:)
Well I spelled it MIPS, but I pronounce it romp.:) Thanks for the correction. BTW, that information page is pretty neat. I had no idea that ppl still had an interest in the RT. It's actually kind of scary.
logan
A handful of real-mode interrupts were still handed off to real-mode DOS as late as Windows 95 at least, but I don't have my copies of Unauthorized Windows 95 or Windows 95 System Programming Secrets anymore. I'm kind of curious to find out how many real-mode calls survived to Windows Me despite the MS hype...
Steven E. Ehrbar
Actually, no.
Structurally, Windows took over more and more of the job of DOS, starting with Windows 3.0 Enhanced Mode. Win95's internals weren't a heck of a lot different than Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with 32-bit file access activated, although both used DOS for some low-level functions.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Eh, the DOS/Windows history could be a lot more complicated if they started with CP/M, and included the OS/2-Windows-Windows NT back-and-forth...
Steven E. Ehrbar
fork f-fork fork fork, Bill Joy fork!
This is a great chart, though. Very interesting.
Not nearly enough incest :)
--
Peter
Coherent was a great stepping stone for a lot of people to get into the Unix way of things. It certainly was ground breaking in its pricing, $99 for a complete OS and development system. I STILL use my Coherent manual daily.
That was/is the UNIX that is built on top of MacOS.
Sitting in my bookshelf right now is:
Advanced Interactive Executive for the Personal System/2 (AIX PS/2) Version 1.1 complete with manuals et al.
It's cool to have, but it is totally worthless... more? No. pgview, which wasn't (iirc) wasn't pipeable. Oh, and no TCP/IP-stack and no X-Server included. Those had to be bought separately.
But the latest versions of AIX (v4.x for RS/6k) are very nice. Especially smitty, the setup-handler.
While these are minor ports, they still need to be added being (supposedly) POSIX compliant OS's AND currently being developed!
-Wes
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
Ummm
/procs. It is a different philosophy, just like using X is a different philosophy from those 'other' GUIS. Since it is slapped on top of a true multi-tasker, you tend to place all of your small concise applications side by side instead of stacking monotlithic monsters on top of each other since you can't use them all at once anyway.
df -h | lpr
I think that is what you are looking for. That'll print out freespace on all mounted disks in 'human readable' format.
I think the problem is you are used to the DOS environment where you must rely almost entirely upon the command line to do things. There are tons of tools on the *NIX side that do these things for you.
For instance, piping to 'sort' to tabulate any output, using 'sed' to format the output before printing using 'cat' to monitor
Those are the two things I see most people struggle with when migrating from mac/dos/win to linux. The need for a new philosophy both on the command line, and in X.
V
OS X will never ship, except to developers, and even that will cease when it is inevitably abandoned. Apple just don't have the resources for that kind of project these days. The people capable of producing the goods left long ago.
Strange, MacOS X server already ships.
And in januari MacOS X will be available.
And most NEXT developers are still working at Apple.
So this is FUD.
After all, I only used it for ~4 years as a grad student. Good call.
Eric
Linux does have a place in the graph as it is based on the concepts and architectur of Unix. After all you have the same file organisation, device approach and other stuff. I think the more important question is what is Unix? Is it a design, an implementation or something else?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Tannenbaum was not Torvalds' professor.
You can find out for yourself how well UNIX V7 runs on a PDP-11, as simulators from DEC are still available!
Be prepared to do without modern conveniences like vi, though... heh heh heh.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
my prayers, sent out to st. unix at http://slashdot.org/com ments.pl?sid=00/07/24/1617240&cid=101 have been answered.
:)
thank you st. unix. thank you st. jude. thank you st. cmdrtaco.
complex
Actually, the chart includes other kernels: HURD, MACH, and Darwin. The problem is that the question this graph answers isn't clear. If it were to document APIs or ABIs it would need to talk about kernels and libraries. If it's talking about user experiences it needs to include various linux distributions. In any case, it's a monumental effort and I'm glad to have it to refer my friends to when they have questions.
Conspiracy theorists also like to tout the idea that NT on Alpha was a concession made to keep
DEC from suing their asses.
Conspiracy theorists also like to point out that W(indows)NT = VMS if you shift the letters one place. (Like HAL in "2001" gives IBM if you shift the letters by one.)
"Half of this game is 90% mental."
Over the time, there's less and less unices (or related). It's also interresting to see the technology transfers from one platform to another.
It definitely looks like a darwinian evolution chart mixed with cultural exchanges.
IT LIVES!
Funny if UNIX would become the predominant intelligence on the planet, but...AAAaaargh...
beware!
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
>the DOS and Windows history doesn't show DR DOS,
>nor Desqview, nor VisiOn, nor Novell Netware,
>nor the IBM OS/2 history...
Novell Netware has nothing to do with DOS, and never has.
Wow, that brings back some memories. I used CPM86/80 on a DEC Rainbow (anyone remember that?) back in the early 80s. After a while I installed MSDOS 1.?. I remember learning to program with GWBASIC on that thing. Ah, those were the days...
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
This one definitely should be gracing the wall of every Unix lab in academia! (I'll be putting it up as soon as school starts.) Can anyone suggest other appropriate posters?
VMS has nothing to do with Mach either.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
It was pretty advanced for the time, the hardware supported memory beyond 64K and had memory mapping and memory protect hardware. My system had two 8" Qume floppys and two 5" hard sectored floppys and no HD for about 2.8MB of disk space. The kernel was under 64KB.
The permutations of what Bell Labs and Dennis Richie started surely are practically unbelievable and it keeps on getting better.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
I very much suspect that Irix is developed in a similar fashsion. I know for a fact that Solaris (aka SunOS) versioning is very similar to what the Linux model is represented as in this diagram.
For example the Solaris 8 source base is taken as a child of the Solaris 7 workspace before Solaris 7 is actually released, work then progresses on both source gates in parallel. When Solaris 7 is released a new child is taken and is nominated the patch gate, it is from here that patches to Solaris 7 are accumulated. Meanwhile Solaris 8 is developing on. The time comes to release a Solaris 7 Update release and a child is taken from the Solaris 7 patch gate and features are backported from the Solaris 8 gate into it. Repeat when Solaris 8 gets close to release and so on...
There are proceedures and tools inplace to ensure that when a fix is made to an "older" release it is forward ported to all relevant "newer" releases, similarly for important backporting of critical bugs.
The only real difference between Solaris and Linux in this respect is that in Linux you can see it is visible because you have source access, a similar software engineering and rolling development model is being used.
Not only is there a Unix History tree, a friend of mine and I have been putting together a whole computer history tree. Check it out at comp-hist.sourceforge.net.
At least in the version I downloaded, Commodore seemed not to have been deemed worthy of inclusion. Strange, that....
Amstrad? There's another family of machines (and I don't mean their PC clones).
deus does not exist but if he does
OpenBSD 2.7 does NOT feel like the 70's. Or do you mean Unix on the PDP-11's?
The amazing part is how quickly Linux has matured. Other unices have been around for decades longer, and in about ten years Linux has caught up to them in many respects. Don't get me wrong, I know Linux isn't quite up to par in many heavy-duty applications-- yet!
Hardware considerations aside, I doubt many of the commercial unices became as solid as they did in this short of a time period. Now what does *that* say for open-source software?
It's only software!
Well, it looks like different species in the family Unix (Unicacea?) can interbreed and produce viable hybrid offspring. For example, the species Linuxus mklinuxii appears to be a hybrid formed from the mating of the two species Machus tertiarii and Linuxus gnuii. Of course, some of the mating habbits of the various species is still a mistery; if one considers that the primeal species of OSFium has three distinct parents. That's just too kinky to be considered scientific!
Alas, this chart also appears to show that a large phase of extinctions is currently in progress. Many species may already be lost. Whether this is due to competition for domination between the many genera of Unicacea, or predation by outside species, such as those in the family Gatesium remains to be seen.
It's only software!
The Windows/DOS hierarchy misses the connection between Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows 95. A lot of the 32-bit filesystem stuff that was "new" for Windows 95 was actually introduced back in WfWG. The same goes for 32-bit application support too... Win 3.1 was very capable of running 32-bit applications using the Win32s extension. The Windows95 support for 32-bit applications was just an extension (a big one) of Win32s.
The VMS guy was/is Dave Cutler. There is no official connection between VMS and NT, but there are definite "stylistic" similarities...which is only to be expected when the same people work on two projects in succession. Conspiracy theorists also like to tout the idea that NT on Alpha was a concession made to keep DEC from suing their asses.
Rick Rashid of Mach notiriety is also at MS now, but I don't know his role. This is the guy who made his reputation talking about microkernels even though Mach had all of a microkernel's weaknesses and none of its strengths during his tenure, and didn't become a true microkernel until after he left. If anyone could fit an at the world's foremost purveyor of vaporware it's him.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Are you sure about that? Maybe it was a later flavor of RT? The original RT used one of the very earliest RISC processors, called ROMP, and IIRC may even have come out before MIPS existed. I used one briefly, and MIPS it most certainly was not.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
whats more interesting is the original parent UNIX TSS which started the whole thing died in 1989 after 10 versions....while its offspring continue to grow. anyone who used UNIX TSS wanna speculate on how good the original UNIX was ? especially at ver 10 ? we could probably copy some of that stuff and graft it into linux/bsd...if it came out with something new.... BTW, anyone see if multics is on the tree ? couldnt find it anywhere.
They could have incoming branches that represented the stolen software! !
Rader
Very much so. It'd be interesting to see what a taxonomist has to say about this.
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
There actually is a map of programming on the same website (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/). Follow the link Computer Languages History near the bottom.
BTW: I'm a bit puzzled by the Pascal history: Object Pascal branches off Pascal in ~1985, but Delphi (which basically is Object Pascal with a huge library (the VCL)) braches off the original Pascal in ~1992.
The Amiga Unix has the distinction of being the first commercially-released SVR4.
I've got an A3000-UX sitting in my apartment. One of these days I hope to get it up and running.
Linux sort of split off from the 386 version of minix, and sort of didn't.
Linux was bootstrapped from minix 386. Also, linux had a complete reimplementation of the minix filesystem to make bootstrapping easier - hence it was cake to set up a filesystem for use with linux - just mkfs under minix and copy your cross-compiled binaries over.
Are you sure Mt. Xinu's MSD 2.6 didn't inherit from any unix variants?
I really thought it was BSD 4.x overtop of Mach. It certainly felt BSD, not that I was aware of BSD vs SysV that much back then. That was only the 3rd unix I'd touched at the time.
Or are you referring to something else when you say "XINU"?
A trivial example, the line "for %x in (c d e f) do free %d > prn"
To do this in bash is very similar...
for in in c d e f; do free $i >(Tested on Windows NT, using bash.exe)
(Assuming, of course, that your printer is setup appropriately, and on /dev/lp0).
Steve
---
There is a short line for Basic starting in 1964.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I didn't notice... was IBM Xenix 1.00 and 2.00 there? I still have one copy of each lying around the lab at work somewhere...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
That phrase is not attributed to I.A. (I'm assuming you mean Asimov), but is in fact Clarke's Third Law. Please update your
From The Lost Worlds of 2001, page 189:
Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he says it is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.
Clarke's Second Law: The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Pedantically yours,
Sconeu
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Soon, soon. Right now we're just trying to jet the project off the ground. Eventually, though, we'll release pre-compiled versions in PS and PDF.
I was surprized to see plan9 on the chart. Although I don't know all that much about it, I was under the impression that plan9 wasn't considered a unix variant. The only unix-ish part I remember was that it expounded on the "everything as a file" metaphor.
Anybody want to spout about it?
p.s. Yes, I realize that I could go read it and figure it out for myself. piss off. I'd be posting comment #328453 and nobody would see it.
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
Exactly. That's why the mistake was that he thought "Mach" instead of "VMS".
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
Nor did it show Mac OS ;-).
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
Try this.
That's just becausewe haven't gotten around to adding them yet. If you have info on them, make a data file.
And dont't forget AIX PS/2, IBM's short-lived SCO competitor based on BSD.
Yes, at least QuickBasic, VB (and maybe PowerBasic) should be mentioned. Didn't BASIC evolve(in a way) off of Fortran.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
The authors leave out the hordes of lesser known Unicies. I'm sure the graph would be completely unreadable if any of these were included.
:(
I also didn't see A/UX (Apples UNIX - don't ask me, I've just saw once that Perl had been ported to it). Not to mention all the early variants: I heard that there was a JHUNIX, a variant created at, as you would expect, JHU. The main Unix box (an SGI) is still called jhunix, but that is all that's left.
DISCLAIMER: I use solaris, linux and bsd.
If the moderators found this to be provocation, it would actually be a point in their favor, since you bring up irrelevant points and try to come to conclusions from them.
By the same token, you could say that:
What's sad is that [Unix] has been lingering on since [1969], and has barely advanced...
Also, it is ironic that you choose the word distribution to describe linux, when in fact BSD is more synomous w/ distribution than linux. All of those linux milestones are kinda bogus because that is only a kernel rev. Where are all of the kernel patches for the other operating systems? I know my solaris box at work is not running the same kernel it was running when it was installed..
The clever troll uses facts and misinterprets them.
When you browse on a windows box you will see Windows fonts, even if you read a HTML-File made on a unix machine.
So if a "Unix-made-HTML"-File has ugly fonts when viewd on a Windows system than because Windows displays such ugly fonts.
Actually the author of this site didn't play with fonts at all (YES! This is how you should do it. Thank God the font tag is not allowed in 4.0-strict anymore!) - If it looks ugly then blame your browser/OS (or yourself) for choosing such ugly default fonts.
> (Of course if you use a Unix based web browser to view a website created on Windows the fonts may
> suck even if they look great on Windows.)
You said it yourself:
Windows users like to choose "fancy" fonts like "arial" and stuff and expect everybody to have that fontset installed on his computer and his browser configured in the same way (There is usually no "arial" on non-windows boxen). And because Windows renders fonts too large they set the font size to a unreadable small size.
That's IMO *MUCH* *MUCH* worse than choosing no font and -size at all and let the viewer decide.
(If Microsoft/Netscape/Opera select optical not pleasing defaults and Windows users are too stupid to select fonts they like it's *NOT* the authors fault.)
Umm my copy of windows 95 doesn't claim to have dos 6.22. It claims "Windows 95. [Version 4.00.1111]" when you type ver. Which is nonsense of course. I've always refered to it as DOS 7. It seems to be basically dos 6.22 with all the help files excised (don't want anyone learning to use the prompt, oh no, they must be crippled by the GUI) and a few useful bsd ports added (tracert, ping, ftp.)
I do still have 6.22 with Windows 3.1 on another machine here, I have almost completely converted to linux, but my father doesn't want to learn anything new at this point. I have one complaint about Linux - bash honestly isn't at all what I expected in a sophisticated, mature shell - 4dos (www.jpsoftware.com - if you use any version of windows or OS/2 you should definately check this site out, 4dos/nt/os2) is a far better shell than anything *nix I've seen so far in some ways. Very sad that. Surely as many years and as many talented hacker/hours as have gone into *nix there has to be a powerful and easy to use shell out there?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I've dabbled with ash and zsh, and not seen any real advantage, at least in regards to what I see as the major drawback to bash.
If you give 4NT a try, you should quickly see a little of what I am talking about.
There is a huge ease of learning advantage. This is what is usually called "ease of use" but of course it's not - as in the case of the Windows GUI, which is in fact far harder to use than say a bash shell, but is definately easier to learn. The 4dos type prompt is perhaps not so easy to learn as any half decent GUI, that's what GUIs excell at, but it is definately the easiest to learn prompt around. The biggest single reason for this is the way 4dos includes and accesses help. It's a similar idea to the man pages, but more usable - first the information is written a little better, it's not "dumbed down" but it doesn't assume a lot of knowledge either... it combines the listing of flags and usage with longer text explanations that are much easier to grasp than the typical man page, and usually include plenty of examples - examples being extremely important helps for some learning styles, including my own.
The best part of this help system, though, is that it is hyperlinked and context sensitive. Considering the age of the system, that was truly innovative at the time, but considering how long it's been out, it is strange that it still doesn't seem to have been copied in unix. It's very handy, say you type a command and get an error message. Up arrow to get the command back at the prompt, hit F1 and you get the help page for that command. That page includes syntax and switches, and a short summary, if you need more detailed information there are hyperlinks to it. When you are done, ESC takes you back to the prompt, with the command still sitting there ready to be edited.
F1 on an empty line brings up a list of help categories, tutorials from the general to the specific and the like, again all hyperlinked.
The 4dos system is not only easy to use, it's far more powerful than the default dos/nt/os/2 command shells as well, although in that area I am sure *nix can probably keep up. I haven't found any way to do some things I used to rely on with 4dos, but I suspect that the problem is just that I haven't found them, not that they don't exist. But there is room for great improvement in providing ways for the user to find out how to do things.
One quick example, in 4dos there is a for command, extremely useful, allowing one to achieve results with a single line command that would have required constructing a detailed batch file with command.com (and reconstructing the file any time something changed.) A trivial example, the line "for %x in (c d e f) do free %d > prn" would send to the printer the current free space on the four drives cde and f. Or, "dir /b *.txt | for %w in (@con) do call text.bat %w" pipes the output from the dir command to for, which then uses it as a list of files to execute the given batch file on. It should be obvious what the advantages here are over a command.com system (in the second example you would perhaps dir *.txt>textcon.bat and then edit that by repeating a cut and paste operation once for every file in it, a real pain if there are many files, then run that batch file to call the other batch file over and over, if there are very many files and the operation is one you do on a regular basis this one command could save many man-hours) - but the other side is that it's not only powerful, it's easy to learn. Type for then hit F1, spend 10 minutes reading the detailed help file on the command which includes numerous examples illustrating how to use it in all sorts of situations, and anyone of average intelligence will be immediately able to figure out dozens of applications of the function. Even if you don't know there is a for command, just hitting F1 on a blank line and scanning the list of commands would disclose it, again, in a hyperlinked form that takes you to the same help text...
I have yet to find any similar function in bash for for-looping btw, I'm not saying there isn't one, but it's certainly not obvious where it is, and the man pages and apropos have been searched diligently... a task that took a lot more time than I used learning how to do this with 4dos. I believe you can do it in zsh, but I still find it hard to believe that there is no way to do it with bash, since it's the shell of choice of a lot of die-hard command line folks... what on earth would you use in the same situation? Surely no *nix hacker would be content to pipe ls to a file and then cut and paste for an hour to make a shell script? So there has to be some functional equivelent... it's just the documentation that's lacking.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I've looked all over the family tree diagram and I can't see where it connects to Deep Purple. I am sure the bassist from this Unix band (some obscure psychedelic r n b outfit I guess) played with the drummer from Iron Butterfly once.
Details indeed! The point of the picture is to show inheritance and it portrays Linux as being a standalone branch with no connection to what went before. The kernel is just a tiny part of the OS but one that gets a disproportionate amount of attention. The majority of what makes up Linux is shared/inherited with other branches of Unix, but the diagram doesn't reflect this. Just think of bash - inherited from AT&T's Korn shell, or X-Windows.
bah. wince is not a variant of NT. It has a new kernel. It is more similar to NT mainly because it mainly exposes unicode api's. Don't expect CE and NT to be "resync'd".
After all, they never were able to merge 95 and NT. MS seems to like their product groups competing with each other (or at least they have internal political reasons not to cooperate)
The map looks really nifty, but I'd have a lot more respect for it if it had references for the information contained therein. There seems to be some room for disagreement. Referencing some authoritative source (even if it's arguably wrong) would give it more clout.
Take the Minux-->Linux line, for instance. Yeah, Linus developed Linux separately, but given his close familiarity with Minux source code, it was hardly a clean-room implementation. But the author of the graph doesn't give any clue as to his reasons for making the connection; we're left to speculate.
I wonder if the sourceforge project includes references? I don't have graphviz (indeed, I'm posting this from a 'doze computer at work) or I'd check myself.
Alternatively, it would be nice if the guy with the map would take submissions for expansion and correction. It looks like a lot of you guys have more information than he showed on the map. Again, though, just because Joe Random Slashdotter says a thing is true, doesn't mean it is provably correct. Could the map owner be persuaded to add references?
If there was a verifiably correct Unix history map available as a wall poster, I'd be just geeky enough to buy one and decorate my room with it. Copyleft? ThinkGeek? Anybody listening?
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
No, not the "DOS 6.22" that Win95 claims it has. I'm talking the real thing. Nothing between me and the kernel but COMMAND.COM. ;)
This is the case with "Livingston," my old 486. I use DOS (and occasionally Win 3.1) because I love the command-line interface and I'm too lazy to switch to linux (correction: I would, but I don't have a computer to spare - this one doesn't have enough hdd space).
Using DOS, in addition to being a regular nostalgia trip, is just plain fun in an indescribable way. Plus there are all those old DOS games which I drag out of my attic, pick up at yard sales, etc. Just the other day I found some old flight sim called..."Wing Commander," I think it was. Anyone heard of it?
Tanj, but i wish my 5 1/4 (or whatever it is) drive was working...that would complete the experience (not to mention let me install WC).
Anyway. Drifting OT there. These "Perfect" apps sound like they might be predecessors to WordPerfect...
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Not if you look at the comparable view: Windows Visual History
At the time Sun was interested in OEMing the A3000UX, as they still had demand for 68k-based systems, while their efforts had already been shifted to Sparc. Obviously enough, the managers at C= succeeded in compromising a deal that would have been a good publicity stunt for C= itself and the Amiga. Oh well.
it's becoming apparent that there is now a need for a new graphing project: A Visual Map of the History of History Graphing Projects. anyone interested in working on this?
I've seen that poster, it's a nice one.
Anybody know where I can find that vi poster, the one that has various commands in a helix?
The length of ones beard is directly proportional to how early one started working on C/Unix.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think this looks like the Second Foundation's PyschoHistory diagram after the emergence of the Mule?
semantic confusion... my meaning was not that A/UX was mach-based but that A/UX was briefly an all original OS, according to the map, before incorporating BSD (again, according to the map)...
That being said, thanks for the info! I had never even heard of UniSoft or UniPlus. Heh, as if the history wasn't complicated enough...
This if fairly interesting too, but I think Q-DOS (Quick&Dirty OS) should be included as ancestor of MS-DOS - until version 3 it included a lot of the orginal code, and VMS and OS/2 as ancestor of NT.
./?).
It's also save to say Windows 2000 is influenced a lot by Unix and Linux.
Furthermore you could also add Wine and that new Open Source Windows project a read about a while ago (in
(-% TwistedMind %-)
I thought that Ultrix was DEC Unix for a while...? At least that's what I saw above the login prompts on some very old DECs.
A friend of mine keeps a pointless list of 55 different "IXs", from A/UX to XENIX.
Bet you don't know them all!
redi
--
--
Please do not use this document as toilet tissue
The first MIPS Unix was BSD4.2, then BSD4.3. Around the same time as the 4.3 port was just working, we did a System V R2 port followed quickly by a System V R3 port that was developed jointly with SGI. This System V R3 port plus a lot of 4.3 features and NFS became IRIX. SGI didn't buy Mips until a few years later.
[place clever signature here]
What about trusted systems such as Argus PitBull? That is a Unix too, you know. *sigh* but I guess, like all open source projects, it is incomplete at best.
Oh well.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
FreeBSD 4.1 just came out too. I guess any thing graphing a snapshot can get outdated quick
You mean the hurd? shown as what it's been, vaporware. Not to be flamebait (which this will be marked at) But RMS hasn't produced a real end-user usable OS yet.
Saying you don't like the UNIX shells is ironic to me, I can't stand any dos shell, and I have bash on the NT box, very nice.
Well the windows history is not nearly as chaotic/complex/insane as unix (it fits on one page!!!)...
Plus, it appears that many of the nodes say "(announced)" or "(beta)". A formal history of vaporware!
I'm taking bets on how high this counter gets by midnight tonight. I watched 250 hits go by in about 5 minutes. The lowest I saw it at was 7442, and at posting it's at 7688. This has been there since december 98. I'd love to hear what it was at before /. posted this.
What low level functions? The ONLY services DOS provided were filesystem services, and they were totally circumvented by said 32-bit file access code. DOS is pretty much out of hte picture in the Windows 3.1 Enhanced mode environment, no?
Yeah man.. all you need to do to convince people of your insanity is to put it up on a CHART.
but linux is a completely independent reinvention of unix and it's on the unix chart... so by the same reasoning (it's the same guy!) the family of DOS and windows should include compatibles.
By the same measure, I now wish to add Borland Sidekick and some of the other TSRs to the list.
Yep :) but Steve Jobs picture and not Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman?
--
--
Well the windows history is not nearly as chaotic/complex/insane as unix (it fits on one page!!!)...
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I believe its based on the Prism kernel (?)
Fear the government that fears your guns. Fear the government that fears your computers. Remove them from my email.
Which AIX was x86 and which was (and is) RS6000?
I definitely remember a branch of AIX that was
for x86. The "Advanced Interactive eXecutive"
IIRC. Ugh.
And isn't IRIX a system V derivative? As somone
else noted, it is shown as appearing out of the blue.
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
This looks like a great place for that guy who wanted to know about computer history.
Geeky.org
How many other products that went into Windows can you name?
Jimmy Hoffa
Honest, Jim. Blue Screen Of Death is just an expression. Trust us.
to the origional distributer of the map. I do not think 'Geek earns a mark-up.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Thanks.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
r.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
AHHH That was scary!! Too many lines and arrows and versions and things... *shiver* someone had too much free time... then again for all I can tell, someone may have just grabbed some unix names and played connect the dots ;)
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
What is the FreeBSD to Darwin connection all about?
-- ERICmurphy -- www.jabber.org for open-source, XML-based IM
I wonder if it is also fair to include other sprout OSs that are still very POSIX compliant, but less like UNIX. Just as an example.. BeOS. Where does one draw the line?
Ixnay, found my answer.
And FreeDOS?
If you wanted, you could add the DOS 3.31 'upgrade'. I remember its purpose was to break Lotus 1-2-3 under Windows. (Happened to me, and there was a big trade press stink about it). Kind of significant, given that Excel would have fared much worse, had MS not made their competitor seem 'buggy' and run an advertising campaign promoting the intelligence of getting your apps from your OS vendor. I am pretty sure that DOS 3.31 was closer in date to Windows 3.0 than your chart indicates. HP shipped me machines w/ DOS 3.31 + Windows 3.0 because MS said 'this is the current config' without giving us cutomers the choice. HP (quickly) later gave us the choice of DOS 3.30 or 3.31 w/ our Windows 3.0.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
I think this was an typo on the part of the poster. This isn't DOS history as much as it is Microsoft Windows/DOS history. You'll notice that all the operating systems mentioned were owned my MS. DR DOS, Desqview, VisiOn, Novell Netware, and IBM's OS/2 aren't there because Microsoft had nothing to do with them. (In a marketing sense.) The chart was designed to help you understand where MS has gone in the past 15 years in as far as it relates to their OSs.
I wasn't too surprised to see the insane amount of forks. What I WAS surprised to see, however, was the number of arrows connecting the branches... perhaps one reason
Unix has become so mature is the influences being traded back and forth.
Of course this happens elsewhere in the computing industry... we all know others borrow. But in the "Open Source" world, it seems that the best available features are put back in the pool for anyone to get.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I like this even better than the Network General Guide To Communications protocols poster. I think I know what my kid's room wallpaper is going to be. I love the guys comment at the end of the page as to why Steve Jobs is listed. I don't have an opinion as to whether NeXT was the best or not. I will however say this, if it was not for my community college getting 5 donated NeXT machines, I may have never had the early exposure to Unix and the Internet that I had. Within 2 months of playing on one of those I was putting toghether my own Slackware boxes with something like kernel 1.2.xx Ahh the days of xfree86 on a 486dx 33 with 8MB of RAM. (Old geezer mumble) Anyone remember trying to get an accelerated xserver to work with the video cards back then? Or hunting for hours among Slackware mirrors that would export NFS to you because you did not have enough HD space for The Disksets and a partition to install on (floppies aside). God.. I am being nostalgic! HELP ME!
Shameless Plug! If you like trance, tell me what you think!!
Unix the royal OS.
Cut my first OS-lovin' teeth on a Magnum pizzabox running MIPS Unix - man, those were glorious days. I'll never forget the smell of those Magnum pizzaboxes when we first unpacked 'em, set 'em up on a desk and plugged in a terminal ... what was it, 50 MIPS (software-MIPS/spec, not MIPS/cpu) or so?
Back in those days, my 25mhz 386 was pretty dope, so having a Magnum pizzabox was delicious. I wasn't really a big fan of DOS (but *was* a big fan of DesqView running multiple DOS shells), so to have cranked up MIPS Unix and be given a Magnum box for my porting effort, that was a sweet, sweet day.
Man, that's some serious nostalgia right there. Wonder if I can get a Magnum cheap somewhere these days, to go alongside my aging Indy collection...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Shouldn't the VIsual map mean that you can navigate it as text with the VIsual editor? What's this graphical stuff doing in a Unix page.
Heresy! Burn them all! Force them to use Windows!
On a more serious note, I *am* strongly skeptical about the credibility of a site that links to a Rhonda Hauben article.
hawk
Actually, these days it runs on Intel CPUs. Although they continue to maintain the m88k version, they haven't sold any 88k based machines for many years now. It's actually one of my favourite Unices. It sucked quite badly in early versions, but later ones are much better. Interestingly, it's the only Unix version I know of (other than Linux) that doesn't originate from "real" Unix. The kernel was rewritten from scratch to conform with the specs. It contains none of the original Unix code. The userland was all licensed from SVR4, though.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
There are some good links to the original classic code, such as the first C compiler by Dennis Ritchie. Now all I need is the old vi editor code by Bill Joy and I'll be set!
:)
I'd give my left mouse button for a genuine compiled binary by Mr. Joy himself...
Perhaps you were mistaken and it doesn't contain any Mach code.
You misspelled "ROMP". :-) The RT PC used the IBM-developed ROMP; see The IBM RT Information page, and pages linked to it, such as the IBM RT system hardware FAQ, which says:
Dave Cutler, as per this earlier posting of mine.
And the evidence to support this belief is? (The fact that Cutler was one of the people working on that project - I seem to remember hearing that "Prism" was the name of the RISC architecture they were doing; I don't know whether the OS they were doing had the same name - doesn't ipso facto mean that the next OS he did included any code from that project. Ideas, maybe, but not necessarily code.)
Windows CE (WinCE) is actually a fork from NT, not from Windows '9x. It's portable, pure 32-bit, and Unicode-only (no ASCII), all of which definitely do NOT apply to '9x/ME.
I think the creator of the chart is well aware of what a "Unix system" really means. Most of the world accepts "Linux" to mean "complete systems using the Linux kernel", in the right context. This is no exception.
Under your proposed definition, the chart is still wrong, as the dates given on the chart are not dates for releases of "complete systems using the Linux kernel". And surely you know that there are a number of contributors to the complete system that uses the Linux kernel that do object to use of the term "Linux" to describe the whole system, even if you think (as I do) that some like RMS carry it too far.
There is no mention of Linus anywhere on the web page.
Well, duh. There is more to a picture than the characters and lines on the page, there is also what is implied to an intelligent reader. Putting an event on the diagram marks it as significant; leaving an event off the diagram marks it as insignificant. The release dates of the various Linux kernels can be obtained from many sources; it would be nice to tell the story of the Linux distributions, as it is woefully under-publicized.
It's debatable what makes Linux Unix-like - certainly the kernel API was designed from the start to be Unix-like, and there are Unix-like tools from BSD and the X project in particular, so it's far from accurate to say that the GNU tools are what makes it Unix-like.
:) It's clear that GNU has contributed massively to the typical Linux distro, I just wish they would not try to take *all* the credit...
I expect this will start another GNU/Linux flamefest
I noticed that virtually none of the Digital UNIXes are on there. There's Digital Unix, the outgrowth of OSF, but nothing about Ultrix (unless I missed it). Hardly a fringe variant, Ultrix got as high as 4.0 and was on Vaxen, workstations, RISC workstations, all sorts of stuff. Being as how this is the UNIX I learned on, I'm kinda miffed to see it missing. :-(
It's also interesting to note that, as recently as a few years ago, DEC was still using their standard character generator for their PCI-based Alpha machines -- now that's what a UNIX console is supposed to look like!
-- Offtopic --
The quote at the bottom, as I read this:
Reminds me of the time in school when I found a phone number that was one digit off from mine, but not currently in service. I recorded the intercept message, put it as my outgoing message, and added "but that's not my number, and I'm not here anyway." Best message I ever did, but really pissed off all my friends and family... :-)
I think they missed AIX/370 --> AIX/ESA. This was an extremely botched IBM port of AIX to the IBM 370 series mainframe processors. We tried it, but it made our mainframe run about as fast as a PC.
This was around 1994. I don't know what it was derived from, but it was an extensive rewrite, and deserves its own breakout in the chart.
I notice that you have Win 3.1 as the direct ancestor of Win95, with DOS influencing.
Shouldn't it be the other way around, given that the first version of Win95 was really just DOS with some 32 bit code, and a GUI totally unlike Win 3.1?
At least it should be equal contrib...
I think it would be interesting if the thickness of each line represented the number of copies in use. This way you see which ones are really the "trunks" (like BSD and AT&T) and which are the twigs.
bp
Well, it is not entirely correct. In fact, IRIX 6.3 was a fork that worked only on the 02. IRIX 6.4 was for the release of Origin 2000. IRIX 6.5 was the first all platform release since 6.2 and 6.2 was the first all platform release since 5.3.
So IRIX did "evolve". Just on different platforms. And Linux is better tracked due to the open development method.
If you look at the IRIX that was developed for the last two years for SN1 (O3000), it was done almost
completely separate from mainstream IRIX 6.5 devolopment and then pulled back in (in an incredibly painstaking manner) to the mainstream 6.5 release for 6.5.9. You just don't know this happened because it was all inside of SGI.
The point of the picture is to show inheritance and it portrays Linux as being a standalone branch with no connection to what went before.
Er, no. The diagram shows code forks. By and large, Linux systems incorporate little to no code from other Unix systems, largely because of the licensing issues. Perhaps there should be a dashed line from some of the BSDs, since there is some BSD code floating around in your average Linux distro, but by and large, Linux (for the obtuse: in this context, Linux == Linux kernel, GNU tools, some BSD tools, XFree, Perl, Python, KDE, etc., etc.) stands alone. Indeed, the line from Minix to Linux is incorrect.
The kernel is just a tiny part of the OS...
And, once again, I state: Most of the world accepts "Linux" to mean "complete systems using the Linux kernel". This diagram is no exception.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I expected to see UNICOS in there somewhere, which is UNIX for the Cray.
And I always wondered about those Unices that the Emacs and trn installers ask about... Venix, Eunice, etc.
Also, isnt EROS a Unixish OS?
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
The great grandaddy was totally left out. I thought all variations of *Unix* stemmed from the reasearch of Multics.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Speaking of odd Unix-ish operating systems, anybody remember OS-9 (not to be confused with Plan 9 or OS/2)? I didn't see it on the chart, but it may not have been Unixish enough to get on. It was originally developed on the 6809, a 8 bit microprocessor, and eventually ported to 68000. It was able to address something like a meg of RAM and I believe on the 68K it had virtual memory.
The company I worked for back in '84 had one shipped to us for a month or so along with a pair of comically inept technicians in the hope we'd consider a port of our Unix software to it.
It didn't seem so bad for a computer with limited resources; certainly it was miles ahead of the very early versions of DOS that were kicking around then. On the other hand, we had a sweet little 68K based Unix System III box from Plexus, that proved you could put a real operating system on a microcomputer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'd like to see a similar map for programming languages, although the few I saw back in school were pretty lacking, and some were big jumps.
At least with Unix, it's easier to trace.
Ever think that some day all the geneology map will be put together officially (by the government of course so that they could mess with your 'past', and prove Jefferson never committed adultery...) but a 3-d real time traversing of the world's geneology....
Rader
Also, CP/M is not mentioned at all, which DOS was originally based on (named QDOS, not written by Microsoft, created according to the specs of a CP/M manual.)
- It interesting to see how Linux progresses as compared to, say, Irix. Linux progresses, and each branch (from kernel 2.0 to 2.1) is the "new" Linux, with the old branch dying off, while Irix runs in a straight, continuous line.
It'll be interesting to see how they continue - It looks like chunk by chunk Irix will be opensourced, and absorbed into Linux.You have to wonder whether IBM are ultimately planning the same fate for AIX.
Oh, but he's missing kernel 2.4.
cheers,
G
Did IRIX really start as a fresh implementation as the chart describes? I thought it was based off the BSD releases, based on early data sheets I have on IRIX 3.x...
--LP
I'm another developer on comp-hist, and we've begun to integrate this tree and a few others. If you've got interesting info, please drop us a line!
Actually A/UX was never Mach based - it came from another whole family tree that's missing from the chart - 'UniPlus' which was an early System 3/5/5r2/5r3 variant with BSD networking and utilities on top - A/UX came from the system 5r2 branch.
UniSoft did over 100 ports of UniPlus to mostly 68k based platforms in the early to mid 80s.
When I first tried MS DOS 1.25 (1.24?), I was fiddling around with both it and Digital Research's CPM86. The only reason DOS got the nod was that the computer I bought had Perfect software bundled with it; Perfect Calc...Writer...and some other 'Perfect' programs. They weren't bad at the time, back in 1982.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Ah, I forgot about that one. I attempted to create a Zork-style game with it without docs, knowledge of arrays, or examples. Really fun to do. I think I spent more time on my Zork-like game then Zork itself!
Unfortunately, because I didn't know what I was doing, when I added rooms the program grew exponentially.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
but Steve Jobs picture and not Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman?
:)
Read all the way to the bottom.
"You may be wondering "Why does Steve Jobs appear in this unix history?". Simply because he has made the best unix computer ever : a NeXTcube powered with NeXTSTEP operating system."
Which seems reasonable, other than his odd misspelling of "G4 Cube powered with OS X operating system."
OS/2 tails off at 1.1, when most of the GUI work that influenced Windows was done afterwards.
.NET into your TV sets...
On top of that you have Microsoft's participation in the pre-divorce OS/2 2.0 project, and the direct connection between the "MS OS/2 3.0" project and Windows NT.
Another major problem is that WinCE is not a variant of Windows 9x, but instead is based on an embedded version of NT. I suspect MS will resync CE and NT around about Whistler so that they can build
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
y'know, showing the evolutionary forms of Geeks. Primordial forms with slide rules and pocket protectors, later forms with their ponytails and nez pierce glasses. never mind the migration patterns of the tribes
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
well, QDOS was written from scratch, though a goal was to mimic CP/M. DOS 2 added significant Unix functionality so Unix would have to be mentioned also. CP/M was modelled after the DEC OSes like RSX-11 and RT-11: anybody remember PIP? :)
BTW, I thought of more of the DOS lineage that should have been included: Phar Lap DOS extenders, QEMM and 386Max... was TopView in there?
There should also be a parallel line with it graphing the amount of sweat on Uncle Bill's forehead.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
How about a map tracing the derivations of internet file sharing software and the resulting lawsuits?
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Visual map of Windows History
--
Am I the only one that thought about the southern joke "...his family tree doesn't fork"?
--
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
The thing that makes Linux Unix-like (libc, shell tools, etcetera) is the GNU System, which was started in 1983, but doesn't appear anywhere in the chart.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
What about Coherent, a V7 clone for 8086/80286 from Mark Williams Corp. and QNX?
I'm a bit suprised that these two are missing, but XINU has made it onto the chart, even though it doesn't show any actual inheritance from any unix strain (and rightly so: XINU's only relationship to unix, aside from the name, was entirely spiritual).
The picture is beautiful, but it repeats a common error.
... and replacing them with a diagram showing the early SLS, LGX, and Slackware releases ...
I think the creator of the chart is well aware of what a "Unix system" really means. Most of the world accepts "Linux" to mean "complete systems using the Linux kernel", in the right context. This is no exception.
Drawing the picture this way gives too much credit to Linus Torvalds...
There is no mention of Linus anywhere on the chart or the web page. Furthermore, the diagram itself is not, as near as I can tell, about giving credit for anything. It merely tracks code forks.
The folks who gave you the hundred-odd programs required by Posix plus all the development tools, mainly the FSF and its army of volunteers and the folks at Cygnus...
Your average Linux distro includes a number of utilities from the BSDs, as well. (Indeed, pretty much any Unix these days encorporates ideas, if not code, from BSD.)
Even more important, the folks like Peter McDonald, Adam Richter, and Patrick Volkering...
Indeed. I wonder if we should include people like ESR and companies like Red Hat, who have been largely responsible for bringing Free Software onto the corporate map?
The picture can be fixed by removing the Linux kernels
That would not "fix" anything, only expand it. The "Linux" branch includes all of those implictly.
I do think a diagram of the history of the Linux distros, in the same spirit as this one, is a cool idea, though.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Oddly... BASIC is not mentioned anythere there. Basic has evolved quite a bit from what it used to be..
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Not only is there a Unix History tree, a friend of mine and I have been putting together a whole computer history tree. Check it out at comp-hist.sourceforge.net.
Fascinating map, I could spend hours just researching from it to find out what the actual relationships are (i.e. what portions of OS A were integrated into OS B)...
One thing: IRIX is shown beginning around 1986 right out of the blue. According to SGI.com's section on IRIX, it was incepted in '82. I'm curious which it is, and whether it was derived or really conjured up from scratch.
The only others that appear out of thin air (other than UNICS) are Minix, Xinu, and Mach (A/UX briefly so before getting BSDed). Does anyone know if IRIX, like these, was an original design? It's certainly unique in its own right.
Also, did I miss UNICOS in there? As I understand it, it is a UNIX (looks like a duck, quacks like a duck) derived from SysV with some BSDisms thrown in... showed up in '85, I reckon.
... and especially, it doesn't show all the rebooting :)
What !?!?! No 2.4.0-test7/pre7???
Those bastards!
"Your pen is bugged..." "How do you know? " "This is an action thriller"
...where Unix stopped being an OS.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
The picture is beautiful, but it repeats a common error. Every Unix or Unix-like distribution listed in the picture consists not only of a kernel, but of hundreds of utilities (all the little programs that you can count on having in your /bin and /usr/bin directories).
Drawing the picture this way gives too much
credit to Linus Torvalds and too little to two
other groups of heros:
The picture can be fixed by removing the Linux kernels (or at least putting in large asterisks making sure that these are kernels only) and replacing them with a diagram showing the early SLS, LGX, and Slackware releases, with the branching relationships showing how the later distributions depend on the earlier ones.
The authors leave out the hordes of lesser known Unicies. I'm sure the graph would be completely unreadable if any of these were included.
Does anyone remember MIPS Unix? I'm not sure of it's origins, but I think MIPS made it before SGI bought them outright (although I think it was still maintained despite the fact SGI had their own version of Unix, IRIX).
Or what about Amiga UNIX (Aka AMIX)? From what I remember, this was a straight port of V.5.
And of course, there was Data General's DG/UX for the Motorola 88K series of RISC processors. And even Dell had their own Unix for a while. And this isn't counting all the versions of companies that went under, and all the tweaked versions used in academia...
fork(), anyone?
...especially the part where Minix is just coasting along, and then... "Look! that little line poking out. Whazzit say? Linux 0.0.1?"
Kinda makes you proud.
It interesting to see how Linux progresses as compared to, say, Irix. Linux progresses, and each branch (from kernel 2.0 to 2.1) is the "new" Linux, with the old branch dying off, while Irix runs in a straight, continuous line.
Looks kinda Darwinian, in fact. If I may make a poor analogy, it's like the difference between balancing a pole on it's end, and balancing a tripod.
I'm still scared of the person that took the time to put that together, though...
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
here is the source for the first linux kernels:
linux0.1
Name: Linux 0.1
Date: 1991-09-17
Reference: http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/Master.html
Influenced by minix1.5.10
linux0.2
Name: Linux 0.3
Date: 1991-10-05
Reference: a printed calendar
Successor to linux0.1
greetings, eMBee.
--
Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
Also very interesting, chart of the history of computer languages:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/lang/
And not as complicated, history of DOS and Windows:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/windows/