There are many, many important dates in the
history of Unix and Linux. Indeed, a quick
Internet search will turn up a variety of Unix
timelines, showing when a particular version of
Unix were released, when this or that
organization adopted such-and-such standard, and so on.
Beginning Unix students, however, require a different sort of
timeline for two reasons.
First, students need to become aware of the
events that are relevant to what they
are doing: learning about Unix and Linux. For example, a
beginning Unix student will find it useful to be
aware that the IBM PC was introduced in 1981;
that Richard Stallman wrote the GNU Manifesto
in 1985; and that the first popular Linux
distribution was released in 1993. The same
student, however, has no real need to know
that AT&T; UNIX Fourth Edition was released in
1973; or that, in 1993, six major Unix vendors
formed the Common Open Software Environment
initiative.
Second, beginning students need a temporal
framework for understanding the many new
concepts that come their way as they are
introduced to Unix. For example, when a
student learns about the open source software
movement of the 1990s, it helps him a lot to
know the relevant dates regarding the creation
of Usenet, the Free Software Foundation, the
IBM PC, the GNU General Public License, the
Linux Project, and so on.
What you see below is a timeline that has been
carefully constructed to meet these
requirements. For more details, refer to
Harley Hahn's Guide to Unix and Linux,
where you will find discussions of all the
events listed here, as well as many others.
For reference, the number at the end of each
citation shows the page in
Harley Hahn's Guide to Unix and Linux
on which the event is discussed.
| | |
| 1967 | | ASCII code created [465] |
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| 1969 | | Ken Thompson (AT&T; Bell Labs) creates the very first Unix system on a PDP-7 minicomputer [1] |
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| 1970 | | Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (AT&T; Bell Labs) port Unix to a PDP-11 minicomputer [39] |
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| 1971 | | Ken Thompson writes the very first Unix shell (sh) [240] |
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| | | Regular expressions supported by Unix with the release of the ed text editor by Ken Thompson (Bell Labs) [500] |
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| 1972 | | Ken Thompson adds pipelines to Unix [369] |
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| | | C programming language developed at Bell Labs [247] |
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| 1973 | | Ken Thompson delivers the very first paper on Unix at a computer conference [40] |
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| | | Unix development support group formed at Bell Labs [19] |
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| | | Unix becomes a full-fledged multitasking operating system [40] |
|---|
| 1974 | | Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie publish "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" in CACM [40] |
|---|
| | | Unix is first used at U.C. Berkeley (UCB); it is AT&T; UNIX version 4 [19] |
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| 1975 | | Bill Joy (UCB) begins work on Berkeley Unix (BSD); continues until 1982 [19] |
|---|
| | | Ken Thompson goes to UCB for a one-year sabbatical [19] |
|---|
| | | Richard Stallman (MIT) releases the Emacs text editor [20] |
|---|
| 1976 | | Bill Joy releases vi text editor [20, 564] |
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| | | Steve Bourne (Bell Labs) release the Bourne Shell (sh) [241] |
|---|
| 1977 | | Bill Joy compiles and releases first version of Berkeley Unix (1BSD) |
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| 1978 | | Bill Joy releases the C-Shell (csh) [244] |
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| | | Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the VT100 terminal; will become the most popular Unix terminal of all time [53] |
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| 1979 | | AT&T; stops allowing outsiders to look at Unix source code [23] |
|---|
| | | Jim Ellis and Tom Truscott (Duke University) start Usenet [50] |
|---|
| | | Bjarne Stroustrup (Bell Labs) develops "C with Classes" to enhance the C programming language; in 1983, it is renamed C++ [247] |
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| 1980 | | Bob Farby (UCB) founds the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) [21] |
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| | | Dichotomy between East Coast Unix (AT&T; UNIX) and West Coast Unix (BSD) grows quickly [20] |
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| 1981 | | IBM introduces the IBM PC [144] |
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| 1982 | | AT&T; releases System III; first public (commercial) release of Unix [20] |
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| | | Computer Systems Research Group (USB) releases 4.1BSD; becomes the basis of the Internet [21] |
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| | | David Korn (Bell Labs) release the Korn Shell (ksh) [242] |
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| | | Bill Joy co-founds Sun Microsystems [561] |
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| 1983 | | AT&T; releases System V, their first Unix with official support [21] |
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| | | CSRG (USB) releases 4.2BSD; very popular [21] |
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| 1984 | | Mark Vandevoorde (MIT student) releases xterm terminal emulator [112] |
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| | | Project Athena (MIT) releases first version of X Window (X1) [76] |
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| 1985 | | Richard Stallman (FSF) writes the GNU Manifesto [17] |
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| | | Richard Stallman founds the Free Software Foundation (FSF) [15] |
|---|
| | | Mark Nudelman releases less paging program [527] |
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| 1986 | | Project Athena (MIT) releases X Window (X10R3) to the outside world [76] |
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| 1987 | | Andrew Tanenbaum (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) releases Minix for the IBM PC [23] |
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| | | Brian Fox releases Bash shell (bash) [244] |
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| 1988 | | Bram Moolenaar releases Vim text editor [564] |
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| | | First POSIX standards are released; standardizes Unix programming interface [242] |
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| 1989 | | CSRG (UCB) releases first totally open source BSD (4.3BSD NET/1) [29] |
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| | | Richard Stallman (FSF) releases the GPL (General Public License) [18] |
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| 1990 | | By now, there are many types of Unix, especially commercial Unix [21] |
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| | | Paul Falstad (Princeton University student) releases the Zsh shell (zsh) [243] |
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| 1991 | | Linus Torvalds (University of Helsinki student) releases the first Linux kernel [26] |
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| 1992 | | Bill Jolitz releases first Unix-like operating system completely independent of AT&T; UNIX (386/BSD) [29] |
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| | | John Bovey (University of Kent) releases xvt terminal emulator (replaces xterm) [112] |
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| | | XPG4 (X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 4) released; standard for how Unix systems should behave [455] |
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| | | Programmers around the world have begun to join the Linux Project [26] |
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| 1993 | | Patrick Volkerding releases first successful Linux distribution (Slackware) [28] |
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| 1995 | | Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FSH) released [640] |
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| | | Tom Christiansen publishes "Csh Programming Considered Harmful" [245] |
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| 1996 | | Matthias Ettrich (University of Tübingen student, Germany) founds the KDE (desktop environment) Project [82] |
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| 1997 | | Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena found the Gnome (desktop environment) Project [84] |
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| 1998 | | Lars Doelle releases Konsole terminal emulator [112] |
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| 2000 | | AT&T; allows the Korn shell to become an open source product [243] |
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| 2001 | | For the first time, a Macintosh operating system (OS X) is based on Unix [485] |
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| 2002 | | The end of the Plan 9, a Bell Labs project started by the same group that created Unix, C and C++ [637] |
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| | | Microsoft releases the C## programming language (variation of C++ for use with .NET) [247] |
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| 2004 | | Formation of X.Org to maintain X Window [77] |
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| 2005 | | Virtually every niche in the world of computing — from cell phones to supercomputers — is now occupied by machines that can run some type of Linux [26] |
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| | | By now, many Linux distributions have replaced vi with Vim [564] |
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| | | The most recent major version of X Window is released (X11R7) [76] |
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| 2008 | | Harley Hahn's Guide to Unix and Linux is published |
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