Operating Systems

The first Unix system at Berkeley was a PDP-11 installed in 1974, and the computer science department used it for extensive research thereafter.

Other universities became interested in the software at Berkeley, and so in 1977 Bill Joy, then a graduate student at Berkeley, assembled and sent out tapes of the first Berkeley Software Distribution (1BSD).

1981
MS-DOS 1.14

1983
4.2BSD

1985
Windows 1.0
AmigaOS
Atari TOS
Richard Stallman: "The GNU manifesto"

1987
Windows 2.0
MS-DOS 3.3
Release of HyperCard

1988
Macintosh System 6.0 - 6.0.2
October: Nextstep 0.8 - 0.9 (for NeXT hardware only)
A/UX (Apple implementation of the Unix system)
MS-DOS 4.0

1989
Macintosh System 6.0.3 - 6.0.4
September: Nextstep 1.0
Release of the first Macintosh Portable

1990
Macintosh System 6.0.5 - 6.0.7
Windows 3.0
Atari TOS2, TOS 3.01
September: Nextstep 2.0
4.3BSD-Reno - an interim release during the early development of 4.4BSD.

1991
Macintosh System 6.0.8 - 7.0.1
March: Nextstep 2.1
Release of the PowerBook 100 series
Release of QuickTime 1.0
June: release of Networking Release 2 (Net/2), a nearly complete operating system that was freely distributable.

1992
Macintosh System 7.0.1P - 7.1
Windows 3.1
September: Nextstep 3.0

1993
Macintosh System 7.1P - 7.1.1
Nextstep 3.1 (May) - 3.2 (October): support for the i386, PA-RISC, and SPARC architectures.
April: NetBSD 0.8 (first official release, PC architecture)
July: Slackware Linux 1.00 (supplied as 3½" floppy disk images that were available by anonymous FTP)
FreeBSD's development begins with a quickly growing, unofficial patchkit maintained by users of the 386BSD operating system. The first official release was FreeBSD 1.0 in December 1993.

1994
Macintosh System 7.1.2 - 7.5
March: Linus Torvalds releases version 1.0 of the Linux kernel.
April: S.u.S.E Linux 1.0
May: FreeBSD 1.1
October: NetBSD 1.0 - multi-platform release, supporting the PC, HP 9000 Series 300, Amiga, 68k Macintosh, Sun-4c series and the PC532.
November: Red Hat Linux 1.0 (initial release)

1995:
Macintosh System 7.5.1 - 7.5.2
February: Nextstep 3.3 (last and most popular version released under the name Nextstep)
BeOS DR1 - DR5 (developer release)
A/UX 3.1.1 (final version)
Windows 95
January: FreeBSD 2.0

1996
Macintosh System 7.5.3 - 7.5.5
Nextstep 4.0 (beta) - circulated to limited number of developers before OpenStep and Apple acquisition.
BeOS DR6 - DR8 (for PowerPC hardware)
July: OpenBSD 1.2 (initial release, followed in October by OpenBSD 2.0)
Version 2.0 of the Linux kernel.
Debian Linux 1.1 (first stable release)
December: Apple buys NeXT Software, Inc. in order to use Nextstep as the foundation of its next Mac OS.

1997
Mac OS 7.6 - 8.0
Mac OS 8.0 (released on July 26, 1997. Initially, the early beta releases of the product which were circulated to developers and Apple internal audiences, were branded as Mac OS 7.7)
Windows 95
Rhapsody Developer Release (DR-1 and DR-2)
"Two developer versions of Rhapsody were released, known as Developer Preview 1 and 2, these ran on both Intel and PowerPC hardware, though with lacking support for nonstandard hardware."
BeOS DR9/PR1 - PR2 (preview release)
Debian Linux 1.3

1998
Mac OS 8.1 - 8.5.1
Windows 98
BeOS R3 - R4 (PowerPC and Intel)
Debian Linux 2.0
NetBSD 1.3
November: FreeBSD 2.2.8 (end of the 2-STABLE branch)

1999
Mac OS 8.6 - 9.0.3
BeOS R4.5
NetBSD 1.4 (supports 11 different platforms)
Yellow Dog Linux is released for PowerPC Mac hardware.
Mac OS X Server 1.0 (a mix of features from the classic Mac OS, Nextstep and Mac OS X. Mac OS X Server 1.0 was the first commercial release of this operating system, and was delivered exclusively for PowerPC Mac hardware)

2000
Mac OS 9.0.4
BeOS R5 PE/Pro
Windows 2000
March: FreeBSD 4.0
June: FreeBSD 3.5.1 (end of 3-STABLE branch)
September: Mac OS X Public Beta
Debian Linux 2.2 (supported architectures: i386, m68k, Alpha, Sparc, PowerPC, ARM)

2001
Mac OS 9.1 - 9.2.2
March: Mac OS X 10.0 (first official release)
September: Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma)
October: Windows XP
November: BeOS R5.1 (illegal beta)

2002
Mac OS X 10.1.3 - 10.2.3
Debian Linux 3.0 (supports 11 architectures)
Gentoo Linux 1.0 (initial release)

2003
Mac OS X 10.2.4 - 10.3.2
January: FreeBSD 5.0
September: the Fedora and Red Hat Projects merge.
October: Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
November: Fedora Core 1 is released, based on Red Hat Linux 9.

2004
Mac OS X 10.3.3 - 10.3.7 (Panther)
Developer builds of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (which has been presentend at the Worldwide Developer Conference in June) are spreading through the Internet.
NetBSD 2.0
October: Ubuntu 4.10 (Initial Release)
November: Fedora Core 3

2005
Mac OS X 10.3.8 - 10.4.3
January: FreeBSD 4.11 (last 4-STABLE branch release)
April: Ubuntu 5.04
April 29: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
June: Fedora Core 4

2006
Mac OS X 10.4.4 - 10.4.8 (PowerPC-Intel transition)
January: Apple releases the first Intel-based Macs.
February: a crack of Mac OS X 10.4.4 allows installation on non-Apple computers.
March: Fedora Core 5
June: Ubuntu 6.06
October: Fedora Core 6

2007
Mac OS X 10.4.9 - 10.5.1
April: Ubuntu 7.04
May: Fedora 7
October: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
November: OpenBSD 4.2

Linux Audio

Related:
Computer History

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