History questions

[cahult]

Which was the first operating system and what was it used for?

Which is the oldest OS in use today?

How old is Be OS?

[Master of Reality]

I'm pretty sure the oldest OS in use today would be one of the UNIX variants. Linux only came out in 1991(2?). void main probably knows.

.....hey void i'm sure you'll read this so, according to my C++ book for linux it says "void main();" isnt used and more and is not legal C++. Is this still used in C or somethin'?

[ January 23, 2003: Message edited by: The Master of Reality / Bob ]

[ January 23, 2003: Message edited by: The Master of Reality / Bob ]

[Kintaro]

Linux 0.01 was out in 1991 Linux 1.0 was out in 1994 Linux 2.6 was out in June 2003

[Pantso]

I think that the first attempt to create an OS, came from IBM in the '60s with System/360. As far as I know it was the first OS that included innovations such as multiprogramming (multitasking) and time-sharing. IBM finally delivered System/360 but only after encountering massive cost overruns and lengthy delays.

At the same time AT&T's labs in collaboration with General electric and MIT also initiated an effort to produce an equally massive OS called Multics which turned into a fiasco.

As a matter of fact UNIX, which was created by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (two Multics veterans) was a pun on Multics, because their reduced version of Multics could support only one user at a time.

I don't know however which OS is the oldest in use today. It should be the original Berkley Software Distribution of UNIX derivatives. I believe that void main could shed some light on this, since he has a much deeper knowledge on a lot of platforms and OSs.

Now, as far as BeOS is concerned, I really don't know. I haven't used BeOS myself but I hear that it was a really nice OS. Too bad they were also one of M$'s victims.    

[choasforages]

beos is pretty new. and for the oldelst system in use. im guessing some government office might have a pdp-11 running somewhere.

[voidmain]

.....hey void i'm sure you'll read this so, according to my C++ book for linux it says "void main();" isnt used and more and is not legal C++. Is this still used in C or somethin'?

http://voidmain.kicks-ass.net/usr/include/stddisclaimer.h

[voidmain]

You could go back 4000 years when the Greeks and the Chinese used the abacus. It's argued that Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine was the first computer back in the 1833. It had 1000 words of memory, 50 decimal digits each. Capable of input, processing, memory, output. Ada Lovelace became famous for programming it. I suppose the operating system was part mechanical and part human.

Then you had the vacuum tube machines that were programmed by patching wires. Later punch card and paper tape fed machines, then magnetic tape and so on. OSs go back a long ways. IBM started building machines back in the late 1800's. UNIX is probably one of the oldest operating systems still in wide use today that still has somewhat of a resemblence to it's origins at the very base level. Even UNIX is a young operating system at ~35 years.

Linux (UNIX like kernel) was started in 1991 by Linus Torvolds as you know. Although most people think of the entire operating system which is based on GNU software (UNIX like) which has been in development for quite some time prior to the Linux kernel (I believe since the early 80s).

I'm not real familiar with BeOS other than I did download and install it at one point and I found it also to be very UNIX like underneath, in fact I wonder if a lot of it didn't come from BSD, maybe someone can enlighten me on this one. And I don't believe the BeOS OS started development until the mid to late 1990's, someone correct me.

Also CPM was created in 1954. And IBM had operating systems long before that. I used MVS on their mainframes which I believe to be at least as old as UNIX, could be wrong. Don't know for sure what they used on their big mainframe systems prior to MVS. But any of the OSes running today have been significantly enhanced over their predecessors because of advances in hardware making much more possible.

Here's an interesting link I just found:
http://www.geocities.com/alienhardware/index10.htm

[ January 24, 2003: Message edited by: void main ]

[avello500]

IM A little curious about this line from that link viod main gave    
"1980.  Microsoft Corporation has now the copyrights of UNIX Operating System.

Apple Systems, introduces Apple III."
is that in reference to when microsoft started screwing everybody over or does it mean m$ has the copyrights of ownership to unix?
it would be very interesting if m$ is just a version of unix once its de-compiled. of course with a shitload of b$ included.

[voidmain]

Before Microsoft got into the DOS/Windows thing they had a version of UNIX called Xenix. As a matter of fact they used Xenix to write DOS (even though DOS had absolutely nothing to do with or was anything like UNIX). Their entire goal was to build a proprietary operating system for the new PCs and mass market it. They did a pretty good job at that as you know. They dropped Zenix quite a long time ago though. I believe somewhere around the Win 3.x stage.

[ January 24, 2003: Message edited by: void main ]

[choasforages]

xenix? that might have been the only decent product that they made.