Taken from computerhope.com

Unix, Linux, and variant history

Year    Event
1957    Bell Labs found they needed an operating system for their computer center which at the time was running various batch jobs. The BESYS operating system was created at Bell Labs to deal with these needs.
1965    Bell Labs was adopting third generation computer equipment and decided to join forces with General Electric and MIT to create Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service).
1969    By April 1969, AT&T made a decision to withdraw Multics and go with GECOS. When Multics was withdrawn Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie needed to rewrite an operating system in order to play space travel on another smaller machine (a DEC PDP-7 [Programmed Data Processor 4K memory for user programs). The result was a system which a punning colleague called UNICS (UNiplexed Information and Computing Service)--an 'emasculated Multics'.
1969    Summer 1969 Unix was developed.
1969    Linus Torvalds is born.
1971    First edition of Unix released 11/03/1971. The first edition of the "Unix PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL [by] K. Thompson [and] D. M. Ritchie.” It includes over 60 commands like: b (compile B program); boot (reboot system); cat (concatenate files); chdir (change working directory); chmod (change access mode); chown (change owner); cp (copy file); ls (list directory contents); mv (move or rename file); roff (run off text); wc (get word count); who (who is one the system). The main thing missing was pipes.
1972    Second edition of Unix released 12/06/1972
1972    Ritchie rewrote B and called the new language C.
1973    Unix had been installed on 16 sites (all within AT&T/Western Electric); it was publically unveiled at a conference in October.
1973    Third edition of Unix released February 1973
1973    Forth edition of Unix released November 1973
1974    Fifth edition of Unix released June 1974
1974    Thompson went to UC Berkeley to teach for a year, Bill Joy arrived as a new graduate student. Frustrated with ed, Joy developed a more featured editor em.
1975    Sixth edition of Unix released May 1975
1975    Bourne shell is introduced begins being added onto.
1977    1BSD released late 1977
1978    2BSD released mid 1978
1979    Seventh edition of Unix released January 1979
1979    3BSD released late 1979
1979    SCO founded by Doug and Larry Michels as Unix porting and consulting company.
1980    4.0BSD released October 1980
1982    SGI introduces IRIX.
1983    SCO delivers its first packaged Unix system called SCO XENIX System V for Intel 8086 and 8088 processor-based PCs.
1984    Ultrix 1.0 was released.
1985    Eighth edition of Unix released February 1985
1985    The GNU manifesto is published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal. The GNU project starts a year and a half later.
1986    HP-UX 1.0 released.
1986    Ninth edition of Unix released September 1986
1987    Sun and AT&T lay the groundwork for business computing in the next decade with an alliance to develop Unix System V Release 4.
1988    HP-UX 2.0 released.
1988    HP-UX 3.0 released.
1989    SCO ships SCO Unix System V/386, the first volume commercial product licensed by AT&T to use the Unix System trademark.
1989    HP-UX 7.0 released.
1989    Tenth edition of Unix released October 1989
1990    AIX short for Advanced Interactive eXecutive was first entered into the market by IBM February 1990.
1991    Sun unveils Solaris 2 operating environment, specially tuned for symetric multiprocessing.
1991    Linux is introduced by Linus Torvalds, a student in Finland. Who post to the comp.os.minix newsgroup with the words:

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
1991    HP-UX 8.0 released.
1991    BSD/386 ALPHA First code released to people outside BSDI 12/xx/1991
1992    HP-UX 9.0 released.
1993    NetBSD 0.8 released 04/20/1993
1993    FreeBSD 1.0 released December of 1993
1994    Red Hat Linux is introduced.
1994    Caldera, Inc was founded in 1994 by Ransom Love and Bryan Sparks.
1994    NetBSD 1.0 released 10/26/1994
1995    FreeBSD 2.0 released 01/xx/1995
1995    SCO acquires Unix Systems source technology business from Novell Corporation (which had acquired it from AT&T’s Unix System Laboratories). SCO also acquires UnixWare 2 operating system from Novell.
1995    HP-UX 10.0 released.
1995    4.4 BSD Lite Release 2 the true final distribution from the CSRG 06/xx/1995
1996    KDE is started to be developed by Matthias Ettrich
1997    HP-UX 11.0 released.
1997    Caldera ships OpenLinux Standard 1.1 May 5, 1997, the second offering in Caldera’s OpenLinux product line
1998    IRIX 6.5 the fifth generation of SGI Unix is released July 6, 1998.
1998    SCO delivers UnixWare 7 operating system.
1998    Sun Solaris 7 operating system released.
1998    FreeBSD 3.0 released 10/16/1998
2000    FreeBSD 4.0 released 03/13/2000
2000    Caldera Systems Inc. announces that Caldera Systems has entered into agreement to acquire the SCO Server Software Division and the Professional Services Division.
2001     Linus Torvalds releases version 2.4 of the Linux Kernel source code on January 4th.
2001    Microsoft files a trademark suit against Lindows.com in December.
2004    Lindows changes it’s name to Linspire April 14, 2004.

Linux.org presented one of the most detailed important events in the history of the Linux operating system development

1983
September    Richard M. Stallman announces the GNU Project, an attempt at creating a completely free operating system.

1984
January    Work begins on the GNU operating system

1985
October    Free Software Foundation established as a non-profit organization to promote the development of Free Software. Sponsors the GNU Project.

1987
January    Computer science professor Andrew Tannenbaum publishes the textbook Operating Systems: Design and Implementation which includes a copy of a teaching version of Unix called Minix.
December    Larry Wall releases version 1.0 of Perl

1989
February    Version 1 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) is released.

1991
June    Version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) is released.
August    Linus Torvalds announces that he’s working on an operating system similar to Minix.
October    Richard Stallman expresses interest in having the Free Software Foundation distribute a GNU system with the Linux kernel.
September    Version 0.01 of Torvald’s project is made available via ftp.funet.fi. Ari Lemmke, the systems administrator, gives the directory the name Linux.
December    Robert Blum posts the first Linux FAQ

1992
January    alt.os.linux newsgroup created.
Minix creator Andrew Tannenbaum claims “Linux is obsolete” in a posting to comp.os.minix and starts a public discussion on the merits of Linux in which Linus Torvalds participates.
February    What could be described as the first Linux “distribution”, called MCC Interim Linux is released by the University of Manchester, England.
March    Version 0.95 of the Linux kernel released. First version to be able to support X-Window.
September    A Linux distribution called Softlanding Linux System (SLS) is released. Early users include Patrick Volkerding and Ian Murdock.
November    Software und System Entwicklung GmbH (SuSE) founded in Nuremberg, Germany. Distributes a German version of SLS with corresponding manuals.

1993
March    Matt Welsh issues the Linux Documentation Project Manifesto. He states that the goal of the LDP is to “collaborate in taking care of all of the issues of Linux documentation”.
August    Ian Murdock creates the Debian distribution.
August    Version 1.0 of Slackware released by Patrick Volkerding. It is based on the SLS distribution.

1994
March    Linux kernel version 1.0 released.
First issue of Linux Journal published
April    Version 1.0 of SuSE Linux released. It is based on SLS.
May    Michael McLagan registers the linux.org domain.
June    Jon ‘maddog’ Hall founds Linux International
Rasmus Lerdorf releases the first version of the PHP scripting language.
September    William R. Della Croce, Jr. of Boston, Massachusetts registers the Linux trademark. He begins, shortly thereafter, to ask for compensation for the use of the word Linux.
October    Marc Ewing releases the first version of Red Hat Linux.
Linux distributor Caldera founded by Ray Noorda of Novell and Ransom Love.

1995
March Bob Young partners with Marc Ewing and forms Red Hat Software.
Apache web server project started as a series of patches to the NCSA HTTPd server (a patchy server).

1996
March    Linux kernel version 2.0 released.
May    Linus Torvalds suggests that a “slightly overweight penguin” would be the best mascot for Linux. He recommends Larry Ewing’s “Tux” penguin images.
September    Linus Torvalds along with Linux Journal, Yggdrasil Computing, Inc., Linux International Work Group Solutions and with the help of Digital Equipment Corporation and Red Hat, file suit against William R. Della Croce, Jr.     to re-assign the Linux trademark to Linus Torvalds. The firm of Davis & Schroeder handles the case on an almost pro-bono basis.
October    Kool Desktop Environment (KDE) project announced.

1997
February Linus Torvalds moves to California and begins working for Transmeta, a microprocessor manufacturer.
May Eric S. Raymond gives a paper entitled The Cathedral and the Bazaar at Linux Kongress. It outlines the principles of what would become known as the “open source” method.
August The Linux trademark dispute between William Della Croce and Linus Torvalds is settled, with Della Croce re-assigning the trademark to Torvalds.
Miguel de Icaza starts the GNOME project.

1998
February Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond found the Open Source Initiative, an organization to promote the use of open source software and establish guidelines for open source licenses.
May Google search engine appears using servers running Linux.
July Sam Ockman founds Penguin Computing. It is the first hardware company to produce Linux-only systems.
Version 1.0 of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) released.
Gael Duval creates Mandrake Linux.
August     Forbes magazine devotes its cover story to Linus Torvalds.
November  Eric S. Raymond releases internal Microsoft memos, known as the “Halloween Documents”, that show that the company is formulating plans to deal with the increasing use of Linux.
December Corel releases Word Perfect 8 for Linux as a free download.

1999
January Linux kernel version 2.2 released.
March The Burlington Coat Factory announces that it is using Linux in its stores.
GNOME 1.0 desktop released.
May Dell pre-installs Red Hat Linux on some servers and workstations.
August Red Hat has its initial public offering (IPO) and becomes a publicly traded company.
VA Linux systems stock reaches $320 US after starting its initial public offering (IPO) at $30. Ending the day at $239.25, it is the largest first-day gain in history to date.
Matthew Szulik replaces Bob Young as CEO of Red Hat.
Corel releases Linux distribution.

2000
March A Netcraft survey reveals that Apache webserver powers 60% of the World Wide Web.
Linux distributor Caldera Systems Inc has its initial public offering (IPO).
May Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer calls Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.
August Caldera Systems acquires the Santa Cruz Operation’s (SCO) Unix server division.
September Trolltech releases the QT libraries, used by KDE, under the GPL.
October Microsoft buys a large stake in Corel.
IBM CEO Louis Gerstner announces that the company will invest $1 billion in Linux development.

2001
January Linux kernel version 2.4 released.
Corel announces that it is selling its Linux unit.
May Linus Torvalds publishes his autobiography entitled Just for Fun with the help of journalist David Diamond.
August MP3.com founder Michael Robertson starts development on Lindows, a Debian-based distribution which promises to be a Linux distribution that can be used by anybody.
October Amazon.com reveals in a SEC filing that switching to Linux has saved them over $20 million.
November 18 year-old Brazilian developer Marcelo Tosatti becomes the maintainer of the 2.4 kernel
Microsoft files a trademark infringement suit against Lindows, claiming the similarity to the name Windows “confuses the public”.

2002
January Credit Suisse First Boston fined $100 million for fraud in connection with the VA Linux IPO.
February Linus Torvalds begins using BitMover’s BitKeeper to manage kernel development. Bitkeeper is proprietary software and many, including Richard Stallman, criticize the decision.
May Linux distributors Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux and Conectiva sign an agreement to form UnitedLinux and jointly develop a Linux distribution for servers.
June Ransom Love is ousted as CEO of Caldera and is replaced by Darl McBride.
July Walmart begins selling Microtel PCs through their online store with Lindows and Mandrake Linux pre-installed
Version 1.0 of the free sound codec Ogg Vorbis is released.
August Caldera announces that they are changing their name to The SCO Group and are going to concentrate on Unix development
Free office suite OpenOffice.org 1.0 is released.
Shares of VA Linux stock reach an history low $0.64 US. Having been the highest climber in IPO history, VA Linux becomes the poster child for the dot-com bust.

2003
January Maureen O’Gara of LinuxGram posts a story that SCO is planning on suing Linux vendors for using proprietary Unix intellectual property. The SCO Controversy begins.(see separate SCO timeline)
May The city of Munich, Germany announces that it’s switching 14,000 PCs from Windows to Linux.
June La Junta de Extremadura (Spain) announces that 80,000 computers in their schools are running a distribution called GNU/LinEx.
Linus Torvalds announces that he’s leaving Transmeta to work full time on the kernel for the Open Source Development Labs. The Torvalds family moves to Oregon.
July Red Hat announces that they will no longer sell boxed sets of their Linux distribution for retail customers. Instead, they will distribute Linux to end users via a development distribution called Fedora Core.
August Novell buys Linux desktop software company Ximian.
November Novell acquires German Linux distributor SuSE.
December Linux kernel version 2.6 is released.

2004

July Microsoft settles its trademark dispute with Lindows. Lindows changes its name to Linspire and assigns Microsoft the rights to the Lindows name. Microsoft pays $20 million and grants Linspire licenses to use certain Windows media     libraries.
October First version of Ubuntu Linux released.
During the Superbowl, IBM runs a commercial promoting Linux featuring Muhammed Ali and other celebrities

2005
April Larry McVoy, creator of BitKeeper, discontinues support for the free BitKeeper client after complaining about attempts to reverse engineer it. Linus Torvalds announces that he will no longer use BitKeeper for kernel development.         Torvalds starts work on a replacement he calls Git.
December In strongly worded emails to the GNOME mailing list, Linus Torvalds reveals that he prefers KDE to GNOME, starting a small controversy. “Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis…”, claims Torvalds.

2006
January Linus Torvalds reveals that he doesn’t like the anti-DRM provisions in the draft for version 3 of the GNU General Public License and as it stands, he won’t convert the Linux kernel to it.
April Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announces that the company may develop their own Linux distribution. “…it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux.”, states Ellison.
May Nicolas Negroponte displays the first working prototype of a $100 laptop computer running Linux and designed for children in the third world. Bill Gates ridicules the project.
November Novell and Microsoft sign a controversial agreement in which Novell agrees to work on SUSE Linux/Windows interoperability while Microsoft pledges not to sue Novell’s customers for possible patent infringement. The         agreement is poorly received by the Linux-user community. It also prompts a re-write of the upcoming version 3 of the GNU General Public License in order to insert clauses to prohibit distribution of GPL software under such         patent agreements.

2007
May Dell announces that it will pre-load Ubuntu Linux on selected desktop and laptop models of their computers.
Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith states in a Fortune magazine interview that his company believes that Linux and related projects infringe on over 230 Microsoft patents. There are fears that a patent war between Microsoft     and the Free Software/Open Source developers. might break out.
June Linux distributors Xandros and Linspire sign patent agreements with Microsoft similar to the pact previously signed between Novell and Microsoft. Ubuntu Linux maintainer Mark Shuttleworth and Mandriva CEO François     Bancilhon publicly rule out making such agreements. It is also revealed that Red Hat had been negotiating a pact with Microsoft though finally no agreement was reached.

Before we start with Linux tutorials, it’s better to understand its history to understand the philosophy behind and fully appreciate the best operating system in the planet.

Taken from Wikipedia:

In 1991, in Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel. It was initially a terminal emulator, which Torvalds used to access the large UNIX servers of the university. He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor. Development was done on Minix using the GNU C compiler. This application is still the main choice for compiling Linux today (although the code can be built with other compilers, such as the Intel C Compiler).

As Torvalds wrote in his book Just for Fun^[7], he eventually realized that he had written an operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he announced this system in a Usenet posting to the newsgroup “comp.os.minix.”:

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them :-)

Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

To read the whole article. visit Wikipedia, here’s the >>  link

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Taken from Ragib Hasan’s article ver. 2.2.0 about History of Linux:

It was 1991, and the ruthless agonies of the cold war were gradually coming to an end. There was an air of peace and tranquility that prevailed in the horizon. In the field of computing, a great future seemed to be in the offing, as powerful hardware pushed the limits of the computers beyond what anyone expected.

But still, something was missing.

And it was the none other than the Operating Systems, where a great void seemed to have appeared.

For one thing, DOS was still reigning supreme in its vast empire of personal computers. Bought by Bill Gates from a Seattle hacker for $50,000, the bare bones operating system had sneaked into every corner of the world by virtue of a clever marketing strategy. PC users had no other choice. Apple Macs were better, but with astronomical prices that nobody could afford, they remained a horizon away from the eager millions.

The other dedicated camp of computing was the Unixworld. But Unix itself was far more expensive. In quest of big money, the Unix vendors priced it high enough to ensure small PC users stayed away from it. The source code of Unix, once taught in universities courtesy of Bell Labs, was now cautiously guarded and not published publicly. To add to the frustration of PC users worldwide, the big players in the software market failed to provide an efficient solution to this problem.

A solution seemed to appear in form of MINIX. It was written from scratch by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a US-born Dutch professor who wanted to teach his students the inner workings of a real operating system. It was designed to run on the Intel 8086 microprocessors that had flooded the world market.

As an operating system, MINIX was not a superb one. But it had the advantage that the source code was available. Anyone who happened to get the book ‘Operating Systems: Design and Implementation’ by Tanenbaum could get hold of the 12,000 lines of code, written in C and assembly language. For the first time, an aspiring programmer or hacker could read the source codes of the operating system, which to that time the software vendors had guarded vigorously. A superb author, Tanenbaum captivated the brightest minds of computer science with the elaborate and immaculately lively discussion of the art of creating a working operating system. Students of Computer Science all over the world pored over the book, reading through the codes to understand the very system that runs their computer.

To read the full article, pls. see it here

And one of them was Linus Torvalds.

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From blogger post of http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com summarized it as :

* In June 1971, Richard Matthew Stallman joined MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as a programmer where he gained popularity with the hacker community and came to be known by his now popular name RMS. At that time, all the programmers used to share their code freely among each other cutting across various institutions.

* In 1980, with the advent of portable software – ie software that can be compiled to run on different computers, a business model emerged where in, the companies developing the code refused to share the code with their clients and began restricting copying and redistribution of their software by copyrighting it.
* In response to this trend, Stallman, who believed in the principle that software has to be free always, founded the Free Software Foundation and in 1985, published the GNU Manifesto. This manifesto outlined his motivation for creating a free OS called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix. By the way, GNU is a recursive acronym for GNU is Not Unix. He along with a group of like minded programmers started work in developing the tools needed to make a complete OS – like an editor (Emacs), a C compiler (GCC), libraries and all associated generic Unix tools like cat,ls, chmod etc.
* In the same year (1985), a professor by name Andy Tanenbaum wrote a Unix like Operating system from scratch based on System V standards POSIX and IEEE for the Intel i386 platform. He named it Minix.

* In 1989, Stallman released the first program independent GNU General Public Licence now popularly known as GPL or copyleft. Not only that, he published all his work under this licence. Now the only thing that GNU lacked was a completely free OS kernel. Even though work was going on in developing HURD which was to fill that gap, the progress was slow.
* In 1990, A finnish student by name Linus Torvalds studying in the University of Helsinki came into contact with Andy Tanenbaum’s OS, Minix. Linus wanted to upgrade Minix by putting in more features and improvements. But he was prohibited by Tanenbaum to do so. Then Linus decided to write his own kernel and released it under GPL. This kernel is now popularly known as Linux.