Intro | TOC
History of UNIX
1968 - The start of UNIX - Bell Labs/GE/MIT
     Slow computers (about 50 baud/teletype) 
     All commands are in lowercase. UNIX is case-sensitive. 
MULTICS
1968 - Bell labs quit MULTICS
Leftover MULTICS programmers took a PDP7 and made UNICS to provide a platform on which to run Ken Thompson's "Space
Travel" game. UNICS became UNIX (unk. who made the change).
PDP-7 (assembler)
PDP-11/20 (assembler)
PDP-11/45 (Assembler, BAL) - 1970 
1971 - Dennis Ritchey writes C to write UNIX OS.
1972 - Pipes added.
Thompson is now giving away UNIX OS due to prohibition of selling it (Bell Labs is involved in an anti-trust suit and is
prohibited from selling any OS). Gives it to Berkley.
MAN pages (MAN [command] -will show online documentations for command typed) - Online manual. UNIX was also shipped
with source code.
1973 - 16 sites now running UNIX. Ken Thompson write paper - introduces UNIX to the world.
1974 - Burley made alot of changes and caused the first split: 
             SYSTEM V (AT&T;) 
                               < 
                                   BELL LABS 
                                              > 
                                                     BSD (Berkley Standard Distribution) 
Several more splits occurred.
1979 - Version VII - a 32 bit OS.
1994 - Lenix Torvol (sp??) wrote LINUX kernal and published it on the Internet. GNU Software - copyleft: you can have it,
modify it, give it away but you can not sell it.
www.gnu.org (?)
Source codes, tools, etc. to run in LINUX - all free (also new KORN shell) are found here.
There are 2 problems with Linux:
     Still alot of public hesitation for freeware (If it's free, it must not be any good).
     Worries about lack of support (though support is growing). 
     Lack of applications written for alt. OS.
     Cobol Cube runs LINUX.
     Bell sold their UNIX rights to Novell. Novell couldn't keep it going, so they sold it to SCULL (?) Other sold flavors are
     getting killed by Linux, other free flavors. LINUX will be it.
Intro | TOC