The Multi-Boot Configuration Handbook

The BSD Variants

The history of UNIX goes back roughly 30 years, to 1969, when researchers at AT&T developed a new OS. Although crude by today's standards, the first versions of AT&T UNIX quickly gathered a following because it was portable across many of the mainframe and minicomputer systems available at the time and because it provided the tools the computer programmers of the day needed. At that time, AT&T was forbidden from marketing computer software, so UNIX wasn't a commercial endeavor; it was more of an academic project, and many of the early UNIX adopters were universities. One of these was the University of California at Berkeley.

Berkeley students and faculty began working on improving the early UNIX, and over time what emerged ...