The Unix History Graphing Project...

[Michael Sokolov]

Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA at trailing-edge.com> wrote:

> Is there a readable (meaning "not source code") history of *.*BSD
> on the McCusick CD set?  Most of the comment-type entries in the
> Unix History Graphing Project for the BSD releases are pretty good,
> but not real complete.

The line of True UNIX development is straight:

V6 -> V7 -> 3BSD -> 4.0BSD -> 4.1BSD -> 4.2BSD -> 4.3BSD -> 4.3BSD-Tahoe ->
4.3BSD-Quasijarus

There is also a branch which I call Bostic BSD, resulting from Keith Bostic
taking over CSRG and killing it, that goes:

4.BSD-Tahoe -> Net/1 -> 4.3BSD-Reno -> Net/2 -> 4.4BSD-Alpha -> 4.4BSD

1BSD and 2BSD were collections of userland bits without a kernel or a compiler
toolchain or anything else that defines a system and its hardware platform, so
it's generally incorrect to consider them as versions of UNIX, much less as
versions of PDP-11 UNIX. They were bits to be added to an existing UNIX system,
which could conceptualy be anything, although V6 and V7 for the PDP-11 were the
intended targets.

Berkeley UNIX never ran on PDP-11s, only on VAXen, that is, there has never
been a Berkeley UNIX kernel or compiler toolchain for the PDP-11, only for the
VAX. As for 2.xBSD, that's an ex-post-facto backport of BSD UNIX to PDP-11s,
ex-post-facto in the sense that it was made after the torch of UNIX passed from
PDP-11 to VAX, and is a human-alien hybrid of PDP-11 V7 on steroids with dumbed
down VAX 4.xBSD. It comes nowhere near to mainline UNIX or mainline BSD.

--
Michael Sokolov		Harhan Engineering Laboratory
Public Service Agent	International Free Computing Task Force
			International Engineering and Science Task Force
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