The history of operating systems is closes related to the development of computer technology. Current monster OSes would be impossible without tremendous increase is the capabilities of the computers for the last 50 years.
CTSS Multics Unix VM/CMS VAX/VMS Linux
DOS History OS/2 Windows 95-98 Amiga Windows NT
OS/360 VMware VM/Linux Plan9 BeOS OS X
The history of operating systems is closes related to the development of computer technology. Current monster OSes would be impossible without tremendous increase is the capabilities of the computers for the last 50 years.
1950s:
* Era of large, vacuum tubes-based computers. Jobs, or programs, were loaded into RAM by punched cards or tape drives. These were batch jobs run one after another as the CPU is finished with the previous job. Long jobs, such as printing large number of pages, were deferred until night to avoid waiting and wasting expensive user time.
Late 50th. First semiconductor-based computers.
Early 1960s:
* IBM 360 series machines was made by IBM with the pioneering OS/360. Contains high quality compliers including compiler from PL/1. Used special language called JCL for batch jobs control.
* CTSS was written by a team of MIT Computation Center programmers led by Prof. Fernando J. Corbat?/a>, known to everybody as Corby. Corby's title was Deputy Director of the Computation Center. An early version of the M.I.T. Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) was first demonstrated in November, 1961, at the M.I.T. Computation Center. It evolved over the years and in the Fall of 1963 began daily operations at the Laboratory for Computer Science as well as at the M.I.T. Computation Center where it operated until July, 1973. 1964. CP-40 was a virtual machine operating system; a simple interactive computing single-user operating system, CMS, was designed to go along with it. Actual implementation started in 1965, and the complete system was first available to users in early 1966.
* Development of VM/CMS started on what was then called the "CP-40 Project", working with a modified System 360 Model 40, at IBM's Cambridge Scientific Center (CSC) in the Fall of
Late 1960s:
* In 1965, most of the CTSS development group had moved over to Project MAC and was beginning the design of Multics, where many future designers of Unix were trained. Project MAC chose the GE 645 as the platform for its next generation system, instead of IBM's proposal of a System/360 machine.
* After IBM announced the System 360 Model 67, the software was converted to run on that; CP-40 was renamed CP-67 at that point. An early version of the system was installed at MIT's Lincoln Labs in 1967, because of Lincoln's dissatisfaction with the "standard" IBM time-sharing offering, TSS (Time Sharing System), which was at that time very slow and unreliable. Lincoln personnel co-operated with CSC is improving the system. Union Carbide, also decided to run VM/CMS, and also contributed to its development.
* Unix was started in 1969 after AT&T withdraw from the project.
1970s:
* DEC PDP machines become popular for their low price and promoted Unix. The Unix code was distributed free by Bell Labs and many companies and universities started modifying it to create two strains of Unix, later called System V and BSD. Larger numbers of users mean the systems have to manage larger programs but RAM is very expensive thus leading to development of virtual memory systems where cheaper storage devices are used to simulate the availability of RAM at the expense of speed.
* VM/CMS became official IBM product. IBM finally accepted the inevitable with relatively good grace, having learned through internal experience just how useful it was.
* 1973/74 Kildall created the first version of CP/M and showed it to Intel, but the company declined to market or further develop the project.
Late 70th.
* 1975 several small companies were marketing microcomputers with CP/M 1.0 to curious hobbyists
* 1976 Digital Research was created. Kildall introduced the idea of BIOS in CP/M 2.0. By 1977, CP/M had become the most popular operating system (OS) in the fledgling microcomputer (PC) industry.
* 1976, Steve Wozniak had completed his 6502-based computer and would display enhancements or modifications at the bi-weekly Homebrew Computer Club meetings. In July of 1976 the Apple-1 was released and sold for $666.66
* Others jump into the market with the TRS-80 and Zilog machines driven by a small OS called CP/M.
* April 1977 Apple II see Apple II History
Early 1980's: .
* DEC markets the popular VAX series to compete with IBM and others jump into the market with Unix offerings.
* August 1981 Original IBM release of PC-DOS (IBM Personal Computer DOS 1.0) based on CP/M v2.2. It became the first highly successful operating system that Microsoft wrote for the IBM-PC. It becomes a hit with the corporate world. Due to this Intel will soon become the leading microprocessor vendor.
* February 1983. Version 2.0 of MS/DOS was announced with IBM's new XT computer.
* November, 1983. Microsoft Corporation formally announced Microsoft Windows, a next-generation operating system that would provide a graphical user interface (GUI) and multitasking environment for IBM computers.
* August, 1984. Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.0 for PCs. It adds support for 1.2 MB floppy disks, and bigger than 10 MB hard disks.
* November, 1984. Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.1. It adds support for Microsoft networks.
Mid to Late 1980's:
* 1985. The Commodore Amiga (the initial name of the Amiga 1000) was unveiled at the Lincoln Centre in New York on July 23rd in a media frenzy.
* January, 1986. Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.2. It adds support for 3.5-inch 720 KB floppy disk drives.
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.25.
* 1986. NetWare/86 was released
* August 1987. Microsoft ships MS-DOS 3.3.
* Fall of 1987. Windows 2.0 was introduced.
* November 1987. Compaq ships his version of MS-DOS 3.31 with support for over 32mb drives.
* December, 1987, OS/2 1.00
* Apple computer markets the first widely available windowing GUI OS with the Macintosh computer. Larger systems still hold sway in the back office as DEC upgrades its PDP offerings to VAXes running VMS and various versions of Unix.
* June 1988. Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4.0, including a graphical/mouse interface.
* Late 1988. Macintoshes could be supported by NetWare version 2.15, filling the Mac server hole left by Apple.
* 1989. OS/2 1.20 - with REXX
* March 1989. The original proposal of the WWW by Tim Berners-Lee.
* 1989, NetWare/386 (also known as version 3) was released; version 3.20 was the most popular.
Early 1990's:
* May, 1990. Digital Research releases DR DOS 5.0.
* May, 1990. Microsoft Windows 3.0 was released
* June 1991. Microsoft releases hugely successful MS-DOS 5.0. It adds a full-screen editor, undelete and unformat utilities, and task swapping. GW-BASIC is replaced with Qbasic, based on Microsoft's QuickBASIC.
* August 1991. Linus letter about Linux
* September 1991. Digital Research Inc. releases DR DOS 6.0, for US$100.
* September 1991. Linux version 0.01 is released and put on the Net.
* Unix is available from many commercial vendors like Sun, DEC, HP and IBM.
* Minix, a small OS teaching project developed by Andy Tanenbaum is rewritten by Linus Torvalds into a freeware system called Linux. Usenet becomes the first global communication system.
* Spring of 1992. OS/2 2.00 was released: the first true non-Unix 32 bit operating system for personal computers.
* October, 1992. Windows 3.1 released
* Early 1993. Netware became the first widely deployed network OS. NetWare 4 introduced NDS
* February 1993. NCSA release first alpha version of Marc Andreessen's "Mosaic for X".
* March 1993. Microsoft introduces the MS-DOS 6.0 Upgrade, including DoubleSpace disk compression. 1 million copies of the new and upgrade versions are sold through retail channels within the first 40 days.
Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 was released August, 1993 and captures an increasing share of the market for corporation PCs. IBM realizes it has lost control of the PC OS market to Microsoft and begins divorce proceedings against MS by trying to develop a competing system for PCs called OS/2. It flops. GUIs become the standard presentation tool for PC users.
* March 1993. WWW (Port 80 HTTP) traffic measures 0.1% of NSF backbone traffic. WWW presented at Online Publishing 93, Pittsburgh.
* June 1993. Slackware, by Patrick Volkerding, becomes the first commercial standalone distribution and quickly becomes popular within the Linux community.
* October 1993. Over 200 known HTTP servers.
* November 1993. Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.2.
* March 1994. Linux 1.0 is released.
* June 1994. Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.22, bringing back disk compression under the name DriveSpace. This is the last version of MS DOS.
* June 1994. WWW explosion started. Over 1500 registered servers.
* September, 1994. Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 was released Windows NT 3.5provides OLE 2.0, improved performance and reduced memory requirements. Windows NT 3.5 Workstation replaces Windows NT 3.1, while Windows NT 3.5 Server replaces the Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server.
* October 1994. OS/2 Warp for Windows
* Start of demise of mainframes. Vast expansion of smaller minicomputers and desktop PCs.
Mid to Late 1990's:
* February 1995. Web is the main reason for the theme of the G7 meeting hosted by the European Commission in the European Parliament buildings in Brussels (BE).
* February 1995. IBM announces PC DOS 7, with integrated data compression from Stac Electronics (Stacker). This is the last version of PC DOS.
* August, 1995. Microsoft Windows 95 was released and sells more than 1 Million copies within 4 days. Windows 95 provides first consumer platform with WWW connectivity out of the box.
* Late 1995. WWW overtakes early protocols like Gopher.
* August, 1996. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 was released .
* November 1996. First Windows CE 1.0 devices.
* Palm became popular with PalmOS for PDAs.
* Early 1998. Windows CE 2.0 became available. Addesses most problems in Winsowd CE 1.x
* Linux arise as an important OS and was adopted by IBM. Multiple distribution from well-fed start-ups like Red Hat, SuSE, and others.
* BeOS was launched
* June, 1998. Windows 98 was released.
* January 1999. Samba 2.0 is released. It contains a reverse-engineered implementation of the Microsoft domain controller protocols, allowing Linux servers to provide complete services to Windows networks.
* Amiga is dead.
2000:
* Aging Mac OS is replaced by BSD Unix engine with a Mac-based kernel called OS X. More systems continue to be developed from the pioneering ideas from the 1960s.
* February 2000, Windows 2000 cemented Microsoft dominance in OS for personal PCs. Linux is dead as a mass market personal PC desktop OS alternative to Windows but still remains viable alternative for hobbists and special categories of users.
* Septemeber, 2000 Microsoft released Windows Me, the last version of Windows 95 line.
* October 2001. Windows XP was introduced.
* June, 2001. Microtel Computer Systems, Pre-Installed with LindowsOS, a flavour of Linux to Cost Less Than $300 at Walmart.com
Operating systems history reveals that the role of Microsoft as an innovator in OS design was/is minimal, but does exists. Of course Microsoft proved to be great in popularizing of somebody else (ripe for commercialization) concepts :-) but still it has contributions of its own. Moreover, it was one of the influential Unix players (Xenix) that later became the most successful anti-Unix player and in late 80th and early 90th greatly contributed to the diversity and low prices of the software on Unix and creation of such projects as FreeBSD and, especially, Linux. The latter became a flagship of the antiMicrosoft movement.
From the links below one it's also quite clear that Linux is not an innovative OS as many proponents of open source claim, but can be considered as a rather conservative reimplementation on traditional System V Unix.
I would also like to pay attention to VM/CMS and other VM based OSes -- a branch of OS development with great and unrealized potential. VM/Linux and VMware are probably the latest and greatest in this line of OSes and it's definitely distinct from the plain vanilla Linux.
Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov
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