With the release of Slackware 13 this week, I updated my page with all the versions that have ever been released of Slackware.All information has been retrieved from official sources, like the ChangeLogs from the original versions I have.
The list includes the official release dates, versions of the included kernel, desktop environments, etc.
I you find [...]
The big split
The first versions of Bell Labs’ Unix. also known as ‘Research Unix’, included the full source code, allowing universities to improve and extend the operating system. As I wrote in the previous post in this series, UCB did a lot to add to Unix and created its own distribution – BSD.The first version [...]
Needing a new language
The first crude version of Unix was written in assembler language on the PDP-7 and later the PDP-11. But Ken Thompson thought it should be written in a higher-level language. In 1971 he first experimented with Fortran, but according to some stories, he gave up after only one day. He then [...]
In the beginning there was…
CTSS, the Compatible Time-Sharing System, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computation Center and first demonstrated in 1961. It had some interesting features like:
inter-user messaging (what we would call ‘e-mail’ nowadays)
a program called RUNCOM, that could execute several commands put together in a file – like modern-day shell scripts
RUNOFF, [...]
For some time I’ve been reading texts on the history of Slackware, Linux, UNIX, etc. It all started with this old Slackware version I found and my quest to get this (and several older) versions working in a Virtual Machine on my modern desktop.
I’ve been using virtualization and emulation for several years, both professionally and [...]
Dutch guy living in Brazil. Has worked in the IT business since it was invented (well, almost...). Interests: Slackware, Lego, Star Wars.