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Visual Map of Unix history

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the are-you-confused-yet? dept.

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!"

6 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. The Linux kernel != a Unix (like) distribution by JoeBuck · · Score: 4

    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 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, the first to demonstrate that you could run a company based on free software. (RMS is right to complain about lack of credit here).
    • Even more important, the folks like Peter McDonald, Adam Richter, and Patrick Volkering who demonstrated how to produce complete Linux distributions that mere mortals could use. (RMS would look better if he demanded more credit for these folks as well; the task of producing a complete, working distribution installable by non-experts is gigantic and neither RMS nor Torvalds had anything to do with it).

    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.

  2. Thankfully it's not complete :) by adubey · · Score: 4

    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?

  3. Re:Map this by dagoalieman · · Score: 4

    I'd like to see just a general OS tree... not even as specific as this one, but one that relates *nix, basic (apple and commodore versions...), even (grr) MS OSs... even if it leaves out several revisions and what not, I'm sure connections and relations would be very interesting..

    --
    We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
  4. Wow. I like it... by rho · · Score: 5

    ...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.
  5. UNIX History Graphing Project by eMBee · · Score: 5
    you may also want to check out the UNIX History Graphing Project which uses Graphviz to create the graph from ascii data files. the advantage is, you can calculate the graph on your machine if you want and easely add data and thus contribute to the project.

    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
  6. Windows History, and computer languages history by drivers · · Score: 5

    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/