| The UNIX operating system was originally
developed at AT&T Bell Labs in 1969. It was created as a tool set
by programmers for programmers. The early source code was made
available to universities all over the country. Programmers at the
University of California at Berkeley made significant modifications to
the original source code and called it BSD (Berkeley Software
Distribution) UNIX. They sent this new version of the UNIX environment
to other programmers around the country, who then added tools and code
as they saw fit. Possibly the most important advancement made to the
software by the programmers at Berkeley was the addition of networking
software, which allowed the operating system to function in a local
area network (LAN).
Sun's original
version of UNIX, the Sun operating system (SunOS™) was based on BSD
UNIX Version 4.2. At that time, AT&T's version of the UNIX
environment was known as System V (system 5). In 1988, Sun OS/BSD,
AT&T System 3, and XENIX were combined into what became System V
Release 4 (SVR4). This new generation of the operating system was an
effort to combine the best features of both BSD and AT&T UNIX and
create a kind of industry standard for the operating system. This
enabled software to be developed for UNIX without concern as to
whether it was System V or BSD 4.2. The new SVR4 became the basis for
most of the current varieties of UNIX.
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