History of Computer Operating Systems -Links:

History of operating systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operating systems (OS) provide a set of functions needed and used by most application-programs on a computer, and the necessary linkages for the control and sychronization of the computer's hardware. On the first computers, without an operating system, every program needed the full hardware specification to run correctly and perform standard tasks, and its own drivers for peripheral devices like printers and card-readers. The growing complexity of hardware and application-programs eventually made operating systems a necessity.

• 1 Background
• 2 The mainframe era
• 3 Minicomputers and the rise of UNIX
• 4 The case of 8-bit home computers and game consoles
  • 4.1 Home computers
  • 4.2 Game consoles and video games
• 5 The personal computer era: Apple, PC/MS/DR-DOS and beyond
• 6 See also
• 7 Further reading

Have you ever wondered about how Operating Systems have changed over the years. Lots of modern operating systems (OS) are a lot older than you would think. Some modern operating systems having roots going as far back as the early 1960's. To help show this I have been working on a timeline showing how they have evolved and what some of the influences between operating systems have been. This site is is dedicated to finding and documenting the entire history of computer operating systems. A lot of the earlist operating systems were not properly documented at the time because computers and operating systems were new and things were just evolving. The inital few versions of the OS Timeline were my personal efforts and research but I feel now it is time to invite the internet community join in and help. Computer power has increased massively over last 50 years whilst the physical size has shunk but with this the speed of evolution has also increased. This makes documenting the ever increasing numbers and versions very difficult. I am currently in the process of cross referencing the listing of operating systems based on my timeline diagram and splitting out the information I have into the families of related operating systems.

	In the Beginning was the Command Line - http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html A history of operating systems, by Neal Stephenson.
	OldOs.org - http://www.oldos.org A source for utilities, history, and everything you need to get your old computer up and running, either in emulation or in real life.
	Operating Systems Through Time (8-bits) - http://www.armory.com/~spectre/tech.html A brief history of 8-bit operating systems.
	History of the AmigaOS GUI - http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/ Dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the Amiga Workbench's history.
	Operating Systems History - http://www.cs.gordon.edu/courses/cs322/lectures/history.html A Brief History of Computer Operating Systems from the mid 1950s on.

Easysoft - http://in.geocities.com/easysoft2002/ Operating systems are defined here. All type of operating systems like windows,unix,linux,debian are defined here.open bsd as well as bsd is described here