Operating Systems: Timeline and Family Tree | Hacker News Reader

Operating Systems: Timeline and Family Tree

eylenburg.github.io

100 pointsmanuelmagic22 comments

Link to SVG because scrolling doesn't work in website: https://eylenburg.github.io/pics/Eylenburg_Operating_System_...

Awesome compilation but two rendering problems:

1. scrolling, I can't see the right side

2. collapsable hierarchies - i can't get a bird's-eye view for prolific parents

This would be a fun dataset to run an interactive visualization on – I presume the author used some kind of relational data structure to generate the SVG; I wonder if they'd mind sharing it.

I'd also like to know what tool is used to generate the diagram.

On a separate note, it's great, but could do with a way to search.

It looks very similar to this[1] which uses a fork of a deprecated project called gnuclad[2], which, like gnuplot, is not a GNU project.

[1]https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline

[2]https://launchpad.net/gnuclad

Nice to see A/ROSE on there. You haven't been forgotten little fella! Such a cool idea that actually worked pretty well and simultaneously went next to nowhere.

Interesting how the Linuxes were picked and split up. I understand the difficulty on where to draw the line on what Linux to add - so many out there.

But I'd expect to see NixOS on there - such a different way to interact with a (u|li)nix system, aside from GNU Guix System. I'd consider those more of an "Operating System" than say mandrake, which is on the list

just think of how many years of effort many of those dots represent. and how OS development is such a small fraction of overall software development. and how much of that software just evaporated from the world because it was no longer useful.

feels sort of like monkeys at typewriters sometimes

True, but the same statement could be made about most software (including perhaps 95% of apps on Android and iOS app stores). Perhaps mobile apps provide some form of return on investment through mobile advertising, although it's probably not much.

Anyway, there are people that are perfectly willing to toil away on their labor of love because it's a hobby for them and they get some form of satisfaction from it all.

> just evaporated from the world because it was no longer useful.

If lessons were learned, either what is good/useful/supportable or what not good/useful/supportable then it's not wasted work

Plan9 is long gone but still provided good ideas that Linux and other use to this day. I'm sure some ideas have been taken from BeOS etc etc

Fun to look around the chart. Had forgotten of any link between OS/2 and NT, tho maybe not as clear directly connected, even though similar hires and since IBM and MS were working together you would think the conversation was shared.

This is amazing, but it would be even better if one could zoom in and out, and scroll left to right. On a 1080p display, I could not read some of the names because they were overlapping.

Minor, minor nitpick: I miss NIROS, the NIxdorf Realtime OS. I know little more about it than its name and that it was used on their line of Quattro machines, which I think were kind of minicomputers built around MIPS CPUs. There is another OS by Nixdorf listed, which I know nothing about, is that a different system?

What operating system is "doesmu"? I suspect it's really a typo for "dosemu", but it seems strange to include that on chart of operating systems.

Bad.Bad.Bad. According to this timeline Linux started before BSD/Free/NetBSD split. Not only this but is not even drawn as Minix clone. Minix itself isn't even related on this timeline to UNICS (or AT&T UNIX) whatsoever. UNICS isn't even close somewhere on this timeline to Multics(which is much lower).

You can write to the author and make a suggestion, like I did.

Great graph! Another one I like is this one by Eric Levenez: https://www.levenez.com/unix/. It's a little more detailed, as it includes specific releases and non-inheritance relationships, but it's only for Unix systems.

windows nt started from os/2? no idea

I already sent to eylenburg a small suggestion: after 2016 MacOS X is called macOS.

clicking Back to Homepage we land on a curious selection of lists and articles:

    Who is "White"?
    Decline of White Demographics
    German Elections since 1871 
    What would the World look like if the Axis had won WW2?
    EU of Regions after Right-Wing Takeover