UNIX

Th_ B_ginning
In 1969, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others started work on what was to
become UNIX on a "little-used PDP-7 in a corner" at AT&T Bell Labs. In 1972-1973 the
system was rewritten in the programming language C, an unusual step that was
visionary: due to this decision, Unix was the first widely-used operating system that
could switch from and outlive its original hardware. Other innovations were added to
Unix as well, in part due to synergies between Bell Labs and the academic community.
In 1979, the ``seventh edition'' (V7) version of Unix was released, the grandfather of
all extant Unix systems.
For ten years, the development of UNIX proceeded at AT&T in numbered versions.
Unix V4
- re-written in C -- a major milestone for the operating system's portability
among different systems.
Unix V6
- V6 (1975) was the first to become available outside Bell Labs.
- Basis of BSD developed at UC Berkeley.
-
Th_ D_v_lopm_nt
The academic community, led by Berkeley, developed a variant called the Berkeley
Software Distribution (BSD), while AT&T continued developing Unix under the names
System III and later System V. In the late 1980's through early 1990's the wars
between these two major strains raged. After many years each variant adopted many
of the key features of the other. Commercially, System V won the ``standards wars''
(getting most of its interfaces into the formal standards), and most hardware vendors
switched to AT&T's System V. However, System V ended up incorporating many BSD
innovations, so the resulting system was more a merger of the two branches.

1. BSD
1BSD [1978], 2BSD [1979], 3BSD [1979] were not standalone operating systems,
but addons and improvements to existing UNIX releases.
- 4BSD and further incarnations of 4BSD led to development of distributions that
provided systems for development of commercial OS like Apple Mac OS,
Sun Solaris etc.
A selection of significant Unix versions and Unix-like operating systems that descend
from BSD includes:
- FreeBSD [1993], first open source general purpose operating system.
- NetBSD [1993] an open source BSD focused on clean design and portability.
- OpenBSD, a 1995 fork of NetBSD, focused on security.

2. System V
- first commercial version of UNIX
- Primary choice of large multiuser system.
Further development took place in System V in different System V Releases (SVR):
SVR1 [1983]
- Improved performance by adding buffer and inode caches.
- Added support for Intel process communication using messages, semaphores
and shared memory.
SVR2 [1984]
- Added shell functions
- New kernel features like file locking, demand paging and copy on write were
added.
SVR3 [1986]
- It included Remote File System (RFS), File System Switch (FSS) virtual file system
mechanism.
- Shared library (restricted form), Transparent Layer Interface (TLI) network
interface was incorporated.
SVR4 [1988]
It was a joint project of Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Sun Microsystems
- TCP/IP support, sockets, UFS, support for multiple groups, C shell
- OpenWindows GUI environment
- x86 device driver support.
- Better Internationalization support
- An application binary interface
SVR 5 [1997]
- Focus of this development was support for large scale severs.

Th_ Op_n Sour]_ R_volution
Linux [1991]
Linux is a Unix-like and POSIX-compliant computer operating system assembled under
the model of free and open source software development and distribution by Linus
Torvalds. The main form of distribution are Linux distributions. Creation of Linux was a
major overhaul in the field of computing due to wide popularity of open source
software development.
- The defining component of Linux is the Linux kernel, an operating system
kernel first released on 5 October 1991, by Linus Torvalds.
- The primary difference between Linux and many other popular contemporary
operating systems is that the Linux kernel and other components
are free and open source software.
- Separate projects that interface with the kernel provide much of the system's
higher-level functionality.
- The graphical user interface (or GUI) used by most Linux systems is built on top
of an implementation of the X Window System.
- Linux based distributions are intended by developers for interoperability with
other operating systems and established computing standards
- Distributions are maintained by individuals, loose-knit teams, volunteer
organizations, and commercial entities.
- A distribution is responsible for the default configuration of the installed Linux
kernel, general system security, and more generally integration of the different
software packages into a coherent whole.
- A distribution is largely driven by its developer and user communities. Some
vendors develop and fund their distributions on a volunteer basis, Debian being
a well-known example. Others maintain a community version of their
commercial distributions, as Red Hat does with Fedora and SUSE does
with openSUSE.
- There is no "one" Linux desktop, but rather there is a pool of free and open-
source software from which desktop environments and Linux distributions
select components with which they construct a GUI implementing some more
or less strict design guide
- Due to its low cost and ease of customization, Linux is often used in embedded
systems.

Most popular distributions of Linux for desktop systems are Ubuntu, Fedora
Linux Mint, Slackware etc.


Written and submitted by:
Pratik Daga
13BEC0494
for CSE101 by Prof. Mohan K.