Migrating to the Solaris™ Operating System: The Discipline of UNIX-to-UNIX® Migrations

Brief History of UNIX

The story of UNIX reads like an ancient Greek epic poem, full of conflict, interesting personalities, and incestuous relationships. It is no wonder, then, that so many histories of this important operating system have been written. While the history of UNIX might seem irrelevant to migration issues, it actually explains many of the problems that arise from today's migration efforts and their potential solutions.

The Early Years at AT&T

UNIX began in 1969 when Ken Thompson and David Retch developed a new operating system for the PDP-7 computer that had replaced their Honeywell 635 running GECOS (General Electric Company Operating System). They sought to emulate many of the key features of the MULTICS operating system that ...