Chronological events in Unix & Linux

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.