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Version 6 Unix

 

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Version 6 Unix



 
 
Sixth Edition Unix, also called Version 6 Unix or just V6, was the first version of the Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
 to see wide release outside Bell Labs
Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research organization of Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company .Bell Laboratories has had its headquarters at Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, and it has research and development facilities throughout the world....
. It was released in May 1975. Since source code
Source code

In computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language....
 was available and the license was not explicit enough to forbid it, V6 was taken up as a teaching tool, notably by the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley is a public university research university located in Berkeley, California, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines....
 and the University of New South Wales
University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales, also known as UNSW or colloquially as New South, is a university situated in Kensington, New South Wales, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....
 (UNSW).

V6 was notable for Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition
Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code

Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code by John Lions contains the complete source code of the Version 6 Unix Unix kernel plus a commentary....
, also known as the Lions Book after its author, UNSW professor John Lions
John Lions

John Lions was an Australian computer science. He is best known as the author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book....
.






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Sixth Edition Unix, also called Version 6 Unix or just V6, was the first version of the Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
 to see wide release outside Bell Labs
Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research organization of Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company .Bell Laboratories has had its headquarters at Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, and it has research and development facilities throughout the world....
. It was released in May 1975. Since source code
Source code

In computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language....
 was available and the license was not explicit enough to forbid it, V6 was taken up as a teaching tool, notably by the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley is a public university research university located in Berkeley, California, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines....
 and the University of New South Wales
University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales, also known as UNSW or colloquially as New South, is a university situated in Kensington, New South Wales, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....
 (UNSW).

V6 was notable for Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition
Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code

Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code by John Lions contains the complete source code of the Version 6 Unix Unix kernel plus a commentary....
, also known as the Lions Book after its author, UNSW professor John Lions
John Lions

John Lions was an Australian computer science. He is best known as the author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book....
. This book was an edited selection of the main parts of the kernel as implemented for a Digital PDP-11
PDP-11

The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s. Though not explicitly conceived as successor to DEC's PDP-8 computer in the Programmed Data Processor series of computers , the PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many Real-time computing....
/40, and was the main source of kernel documentation for many early Unix developers.

The code has been made available under a BSD License under agreement from the SCO Group
SCO Group

The SCO Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called Caldera Systems and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to Unix....
; see Ancient UNIX Systems
Ancient UNIX Systems

Ancient UNIX is a term coined by Santa Cruz Operation to describe early releases of the Unix code base released prior to Unix System III, particularly the Research Unix releases prior to and including Version 7 ....
.

Variants

Apart from the first BSD (1BSD), several other Unixes were derived from the V6 code base.

IS/1 was INTERACTIVE
INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation

INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation was a software company, known for their versions of the Unix operating system.In 1977, ISC was the first commercial Unix vendor, selling IS/1, a Version 6 Unix variant enhanced for office automation which ran on most PDP-11's.....
's enhanced V6, the first ever commercially sold Unix version.

A port of V6 to the Interdata 7/32 was completed by Richard Miller
Richard Miller

Richard Miller may refer to:* Richard Miller , arrested for spying in 1983* Richard Miller , first president of Olin College* Richard Miller , operatic tenor, professor of singing at the Oberlin College, and the author of books on singing...
 and Ross Nealon at Wollongong University, Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
, during 1976-1977. This project was supervised by professor Juris Reinfelds. The resulting system was called Wollongong Interdata UNIX, Level 6. This distribution also included utilities developed at Wollongong, and later releases had features of V7, notably its C
C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language originally developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories to implement the Unix operating system....
 compiler
Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language . The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program....
. Wollongong Unix was the first ever port to a platform other than the PDP series of computers, proving that portable operating systems were indeed feasible, and that C was the language in which to write them. In 1980, this version was licensed to The Wollongong Group in Palo Alto that published it as Edition 7.

A port
Porting

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable Computer program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed ....
 of V6 to the Interdata 8/32 was completed within Bell Labs, but this version was never released.

A version of V6 for lower-end PDP-11 systems, such as the 11/10, was available as MINI-UNIX.

PWB/UNIX
PWB/UNIX

PWB/UNIX was an early version of the Unix operating system.Prior to 1976 Unix development at AT&T was done by a small group of researchers in the Bell Labs Computer Science Research Group ....
 1.0 was based on V6 (earlier, internal use-only versions were based on V4 and V5).

UNIX/RT was a real-time operating system
Real-time operating system

A Real-Time Operating System is a Computer multitasking operating system intended for real-time computing applications. Such applications include embedded systems , industrial robots, spacecraft, industrial control , and scientific research equipment....
, based on V6 and the earlier MERT (Multi-Environment Real-Time Operating System) hypervisor
Hypervisor

A hypervisor, also called virtual machine monitor , is a computer hardware platform virtualization software that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer concurrently....
.

LSI-UNIX or LSX was a minimal Unix for the LSI-11 microprocessor
Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using Binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit Word ....
 variant of the PDP-11. It ran in 40kB of memory, with the kernel occupying only 16kB .

AUSAM (Australian Unix Share Accounting Method), released in November 1979, was a V6 variant from the University of Sydney
University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in Australia. It was established in Sydney in 1850. It is a member of Australia's "Group of Eight " universities that are highly ranked in terms of their research performance....
, Australia. Its main improvements were better security and process accounting.

MNOS
MNOS

MNOS was a Unix-like operating system developed in the Soviet Union. It was derived from Unix Version 6 and consequently heavily modified to incorporate many features of BSD Unix....
 was V6-based version of Unix, popular on various Soviet
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 and Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc

During the Cold War, the terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to European annexed or expanded Soviet Socialist Republics of the USSR and Satellite state states, including members of the Soviet-dominated organizations Comecon and the Warsaw Pact....
 PDP-11 clones; over the years it was heavily augmented for partial compatibility with BSD Unix.

BKUNIX
BKUNIX

BKUNIX is an operating system for the Soviet Union Elektronika BK personal computer. It is based on LSX kernel and licensed under the GNU General Public License....
, based on LSX is the only version of UNIX, working on Elektronika BK
Elektronika BK

Elektronika BK was a series of 16-bit PDP-11-compatible Soviet Union home computers developed by NPO Scientific Center, at that time the leading Soviet microcomputer design team, responsible also for more powerful UKNC and DVK micros....
 Soviet personal computer.

xv6
Xv6

xv6 is a modern reimplementation of Sixth Edition Unix in ANSI C for multiprocessor x86 systems. It is used for pedagogical purposes in MIT Operating Systems Engineering course....
, a port to run on modern x86 multiprocessors using ANSI C
ANSI C

ANSI C is the standard published by the American National Standards Institute for the C . Software developers writing in C are encouraged to conform to the requirements in the document, as it encourages easily porting code....
. It is designed as a pedagogical tool by MIT for .

See also

  • Version 7 Unix
    Version 7 Unix

    Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system....
  • Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code
    Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code

    Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code by John Lions contains the complete source code of the Version 6 Unix Unix kernel plus a commentary....
  • Ancient UNIX Systems
    Ancient UNIX Systems

    Ancient UNIX is a term coined by Santa Cruz Operation to describe early releases of the Unix code base released prior to Unix System III, particularly the Research Unix releases prior to and including Version 7 ....


External links

  • in HTML format
  • ; Richard Miller's account of porting Unix to the Interdata 7/32 (PostScript
    PostScript

    PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. PostScript is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas....
     file)