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Unix History

by gandalfff on 11/28/22, 5:15 AM with 12 comments

  • by em500 on 11/28/22, 12:37 PM

    Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any link on his page to this reconstructed commit history in github

    https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo

  • by lproven on 11/28/22, 12:35 PM

    Has anyone ever set this in context by doing one of all the non-UNIX OSes?

    There are really less than ½ dozen "Unix" OSes. 99% of them are variants on a theme.

    #1

    There's AT&T UNIX, including System V. That includes UnixWare, SCO OpenServer, Solaris and OpenSolarism and HP-UX .

    Are any other SysV descendants still on sale?

    #2

    There's BSD.

    That covers 4 FOSS BSDs I can think of offhand, plus AFAIK IBM AIX is derived from BSD. Anything else commercial?

    #3

    There's macOS. XNU is based on Mach. I can't think of any other current Mach derivatives. The HURD if you're generous.

    #4

    There's Linux, including Android and ChromeOS.

    #5

    There's QNX.

    #6

    There's Minix 3, which now mostly uses the NetBSD userland but has its own kernel.

    Is that it?

    Any other self-hosting, native on bare metal, Unix-like OSes?

    I know a few things can emulate UNIX well enough to pass the Open Group tests if they cared to: IBM z/OS, OpenVMS. MS has 2: NT's POSIX environment, plus WSL1. But their native OS design is not Unix-like nor meant to be Unix-compatible.

    Plan 9 isn't a UNIX although it is the one true direct offspring of UNIX. And Inferno is even less UNIX-like.

    Serenity OS is not self-hosting and barely runs on bare metal.

    HelenOS and Redox OS are only remotely superficially Unix-like.

    Everything else is either dead, or historical and only runs in VMs or on emulators.

  • by badrabbit on 11/28/22, 11:10 AM

    > 21. Unix's technical history is mostly old now (utoronto.ca) 92 points by ingve 12 hours ago | flag | hide | 90 comments

    22. Unix History (levenez.com) 36 points by gandalfff 5 hours ago | flag | hide | 1 comment

    What a coincidence

  • by pushedx on 11/28/22, 9:00 AM

    This page reminds me so much of the late 90s web. I love it.