A compressed history of operating systems since the abacus

A compressed history of operating systems since the abacus with
Brian Byrne WAES, 10th July 2023 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 1

The thank yous A big thanks to everyone at WAES
for inviting me to speak. These slides are on Speaker Deck https://speakerdeck.com/brianlinuxing © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 2

A confession: I am a dinosaur © Brian Byrne, 2023
Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 3

Very short bio: Brian Byrne He discovered computing around the
time Intel released the 4004 chip, in 1971. After 1979 he professionally worked across most sectors, education, commercial and finance, in some seriously technical, managerial and hands-on roles. NB: Brian speaks in paragraphs. Brian founded Linuxing In London (Britain's largest free Linux group) in 2016, co-organised Covent Garden Pi Jam and the All London Raspberry Pi Jam (mini-science festivals for parents/kids), plus a lot more. He is a freelance IT manager, a thinker and do-er for hire. Want your IT systems organised properly? Pay him, he’ll do it for you and save you hassle! © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 4

Brian’s Operating Systems Brian has used, installed, fixed and played
with over 24 operating systems in 40+ years, including but not limited to: TOPS-10, RT-11, RSX, VAX/VMS, CP/M, MS-DOS, AmigaOS, RSTE/E, Classic Mac OS (Lisa), Sinclair_QDOS, Ultrix, OSF/1, SCO Unix, OpenVMS, OS/2, VM/CMS, NetWare 2->3, Windows 1-> Windows 3.1, Windows 95->98 SE, Windows NT 1.0 ->4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7->8.1, Windows 10, MacOS (OS X) and a lot more. Linux was Brian’s 15th or 16th operating system! © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 5

Brief agenda 1. The modern dilemma of no choice. 2.
Basic operating system concepts. 3. A very subjective and partial history of Information technology and operating systems. 4. The future. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 6

The modern dilemma of no choice © Brian Byrne, 2023

Imagine: no choice, two types of flowers © Brian Byrne,
2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 8

Imagine: no choice,two types of sandwiches © Brian Byrne, 2023

Imagine: no choice, two artists © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing
Email: [email protected] 10

Imagine: shopping for a PC or laptop © Brian Byrne,

Your modern operating system options: © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing
Email: [email protected] 12 Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide - June 2023: Windows 68.23%, OS X 21.32%, Linux 3.07%, Chrome OS 4.13% Source: Statcounter - https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Before we travel back in time via the Tardis ©
Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 13

Basic operating system concepts © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email:
[email protected] 14

What is a computer? Something that computes (makes calculations). Can
be analogue or digital. A person or a device. Apparently, takes its meaning from the word, computist and computus (the calculation of calendars and in particular for Easter, mentioned by the medieval monk Bede - 7th C). © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 15

What’s an operating systems and why are they so important?
© Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 16 No operating systems, no apps to speak of!

What does an operating system do, daily? © Brian Byrne,
2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 17 It manages and controls resources. Think of an operating system as part software juggler and sergeant major.

A very subjective and partial history of IT and operating
systems © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 18

Not a Brain, it is not the 1960s! © Brian
Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 19

The Abacus © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 20
Suanpan, a Chinese Abacus. Various ones have been dated back to ~190 CE

The Antikythera Mechanism © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]
21 Found in 1901, probably dates back to 200 BCE. A complex astronomical device from Ancient Greece.

1830’s Baggage and cogs © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email:

1920’s calculator © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 23

Vacuum tubes, common even into the 1960s © Brian Byrne,

Modern computing: John Von Neumann and Alan Turing © Brian

Von Neumann architecture © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]
26

Modern computing © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 27
• Digital, not analogue. • Digital, everything is represented as numbers, in binary, 1 or 0. • Not decimal. Based on Von Neumann architecture: • Binary • Program management • In sequence • Control and arithmetic unit • I/O separated

Computing through the decades, the 1930s © Brian Byrne, 2023

1944 - Harvard Mark 1 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing

Late 1940s, Edsac © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]
30

1950s - advent of the Cold War © Brian Byrne,

1950s - SAGE building © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email:

1951 - LEO 1 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email:

1952 - IBM 701 - their first scientific computer ©

1954 - IBM 704 - FORTRAN and beyond © Brian

1954 - IBM 650 - drums! © Brian Byrne, 2023

1954 - The transistor at Bell Labs, later at TI
© Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 37

1951 to 1956 - MIT Whirlwind I © Brian Byrne,
2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 38 Changed over time. Implemented core memory. First light pen. Keyboard entry (1956). Technology used in US SAGE defence system.

1959 - IBM 1401 - decimal © Brian Byrne, 2023

1959 - IBM 7090 - transistors and 36 bit ©

1960’s - Grace Hopper and COBOL © Brian Byrne, 2023

Digression: numbering schemes Our modern numbering system is often called
Hindu-Arabic numerals, where 10 symbols are used to represent the decimal system: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 It originated in India (6th or 7th century) later introduced to Europe (10th C) via Latin translations of Islamic scholars, the Persian Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (9th C) and the polymath, al-Kindi (from Kufa, modern day Iraq). NB: Modern computers don’t talk decimal, rather everything is represented internally as binary, and then either taken in or outputted as decimal. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 42

Digression: Why binary, why zero? Why use binary? Simpler, cheaper
and faster. Think electricity, off or on. 0 or 1 The concept of zero goes back to ancient Mesopotamia, etc but was formalised by the Indian scholar, Aryabhata and later developed by Brahmagupta (see the Bakhshali manuscript). © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 43

Integrated circuits and the age of the Mainframe © Brian

1964 - IBM 360 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email:

1967 - IBM 360 model 91 - 16 MIPs ©

The IBM 360 - a third generation revolution Rationalised 5
IBM computer product lines into one. 32 bit processor with floating-point instructions. General purpose computing (not specialised business/scientific machines). 6 processor models and >44 new peripherals announced at launch. Emulated IBM older models: 1401, 1440, 1460, 1410 and 7010. Microcoded. EBCDIC. IBM Solid Logic Technology (SLT). Later models had virtual addressing. 8 bit bytes! OS/360 came late, varied releases. OS/MVT was complex but led to MVS. Cost ~$5 billion to develop. By 1969, IBM was shipping “over 1,000 model 360 systems a month.” © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 47

1969 - IBM 360 model 85 © Brian Byrne, 2023

1970s - Mainframes take off - plenty of human too
© Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 49

1960/70s - The issues of input © Brian Byrne, 2023

1973 - Xerox Alto Computer (first GUI) © Brian Byrne,

1971 - IBM 3270 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email:

1978 - DEC VT100 - more later © Brian Byrne,

Digression: Terminals and GUIs Everyone now uses the Graphical User
Interface (GUI) (Windows, Android, iOS, Chrome OS, etc). So why use the Command Line Interface (CLI)? Simple answer: because it came first and was cheaper, easier to implement. Originally, inputs to computer systems were very, very limited: • dials, plugboards and switches (1940s to 1955) (ENIAC, UNIVAC) • punch cards (1928 to early 1990s) (IBM 711) • punch tape (1943 to early 1980s) (IBM 1620) • very slow mechanical devices (Teletypes) © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 54

c. 1952 - Univac I The Univac I console was
rather advanced for the period, circa 1952. Remington Rand produced various computing devices in the 1950s, before its acquisition by Sperry. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

c. 1952 - IBM 711 The IBM 711 was an
early punched card reader and between 1952-54, later superseded by the IBM 1402. As a peripheral device it worked with the IBM 1401, a transistor based decimal computer, and IBM 700s/7000s mainframes Punched cards were used into 1980s. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

c. 1963 - Teletype Model 33 Teletypes were once very
popular in computing, cheap and are based on a proven technology used from the 1900s onwards. Note the paper tape. That’s why we have tty in Linux. Unix was developed on teletype devices and Linux is a Unix clone. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

c. 1964 - IBM 2260 Released in 1964. The IBM
2260 video terminal was for decades, the state of the art. It led to the ubiquitous IBM 3270. These were complex devices and required specialised networking equipment to function. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

1970s - IBM System 370 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing

1970s - IBM System/370 Model 145 - prices © Brian
Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 60 “IBM System/370 Model 145 … purchase prices ranging from about $705,775 to $1,783,000. “ (Today's prices: $5,253,429.95 to $13,271,744.69)

1970s - TSO and MVS - Banks’ favourite © Brian

1974s - IBM’s Systems Network Architecture (SNA) © Brian Byrne,

1960 - 1970s - Small fry © Brian Byrne, 2023

1970s - PDP 11 - if you can’t afford an
IBM © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 64

Cheaper computing - Unix Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, creators
of UNIX and C, with a PDP-11/20, a 16 bit machine from the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Probably in the early 1970s. Notice the teletypes. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

1969 - Unix - first on 18-bit Unix was originally
written in assembler on a PDP-7, an 18 bit mini-computer from DEC. Later Unix would be re-coded mostly in C, allowing it to be hosted across a range of architectures. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Late 1970s - VAX 11/780 - cheaper computing © Brian

1970s - Asynchronous terminals © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email:
[email protected] 68 VAX 11/780: VAX/VMS Compilers for FORTRAN, COBOL, PASCAL, IDEs, powerful CLI scripting via DCL. Simple editing, very popular.

1977 - ARPANET (forerunner of the Internet) © Brian Byrne,
2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Vanished © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

No one saw it coming, the advent of the Personal
Computer © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 71

1981 - The IBM PC PC - floppies © Brian

1983 - The IBM PC XT - 10 Mb ©

1984 - IBM AT - 80286 is never enough ©

1981 and 1985 - Operating systems and protected mode ©

Intel processors - up to 2001 © Brian Byrne, 2023
Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 83 1982 - 80286 1985 - 80386 1989 - 80486 1993 - Pentium 1995 - Pentium Pro 1997 - Pentium II 1998 - Celeron 1999 - Pentium 3 2000 - Pentium 4 2001 - Xeon

AMD server processors - up to 2022 © Brian Byrne,
2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 84 2009 - AMD Opteron 2010 - Opteron 6100 2011 - AMD Opteron 6200 Series 2012 - AMD Opteron 6300 Series 2017 - AMD EPYC 7001 Series 2019 - AMD EPYC 7002 Series 2021 - AMD EPYC 7003 Series 2022 - AMD EPYC 9004 series

Imperfect summary 1940s - early 1960s: Computing infancy, development pushed
by Cold War and defence spending. Late 1950s - Early 1970s: Getting to grips with the hardware, operating system and best practices. 1970 - late 1980s: Mainframe dominating, small mini-computing fills gaps. Mid-1980s - 2015: Rise of Wintel and its decline. 2012-2022: Massive growth of GitHub and the success of Open Source. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 85

80+ years on Overall, in the past 80+ years of
technology there has been a complete change of landscape. Bespoke systems, emphasis on hardware, complex networking and proprietary software have given way to open source, simpler protocols and the commodification of tech. Tech now is cheaper and more accessible than ever. Still, to understand a lot of today’s design decisions and oddities we need to have a fuller appreciation of the past, what they did and why people did it. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 86

Hands up? Congratulations! You are a Linux user! I am
just like you :) © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 94

Linux runs everything (free apps): Word-processors, managing PDFs, graphic and
image editing, non-linear video, audio editing, databases (SQL, NoSQL), web servers, blogging and lots of coding tools too: git, C, C++, Dart, Swift, Javascript/Node, Python, Go, Ruby, Java, Fortran, PASCAL, COBOL, LLMs, Rust, the lot! All free! © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

The Raspberry Pi - the most popular small board computer
© Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

The Summit Supercomputer (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) © Brian Byrne,
2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

What is a supercomputer and why are they important? Typically,
these are the most expensive and fastest systems that can be purchased or created. US: Summit (created by IBM for Oak Ridge National Laboratory) uses IBM POWER9 CPUs and Nvidia Tesla GPUs, cost ~ $200 million, High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark ~148.6 petaflops. 5th of Top 500. China: Sunway TaihuLight (created by China’s own NRCPC) uses SW26010 manycore 64-bit RISC processors, cost ~$273 million, LINPACK benchmark ~93 petaflops. 7th of Top 500. https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/list/2023/06/ © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Top 500 supercomputers Spending $200 - $600 million on a
really, really fast supercomputer? You’d probably spend a lot of time considering which operating system is best for it? In the case of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, they all run Linux. https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/1/ That should tell you something. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 105

Reasons to use Linux, a skill to have It does
everything that Windows does, but better. It is used extensively in business, and is secure. Most backend computing involves the use of Linux. It is all over the Cloud, even at Microsoft, particularly in Azure. Plenty of choice (270+ varieties). It’s comparatively lightweight on computing resources, thus faster. It is the future, from a ~£35 computer to one costing $200+ million. Computing is all about looking to the future, not the comfort of the past. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Linux facts All major Cloud providers offer Linux. 2/3s of
web servers run Linux. ~3.1% on desktop, >45% among devs. Android (based on the Linux kernel) has an approximate 72% market share. Linux’s specialness: It’s largely written in C, simple and small, works on low-end CPUs, and is supported across 10+ computer architectures. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 107

Microsoft and Linux WSL2 - Windows Subsystem for Linux 2
- a Linux kernel and shell directly from Windows 10/11. “Sasha Levin, Microsoft Linux kernel developer, in a request that Microsoft be allowed to join a Linux security list, revealed that: "the Linux usage on our cloud has surpassed Windows". “ See https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-asks-to-join-private-linux-security-developer-li st/ © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 108

Finally, future hardware The Intel monopoly has gone, even the
Intel 64 bit instruction set is licenced from AMD. For processor architectures, look out for IBM Power series, ARM and RISC-V, they all run Linux. GPU tech is interesting. Nvidia’s Hopper Architecture and their intervention into datacentres is worth watching. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-grace-hopper-superchip-architecture-in-depth/ China has its own CPU technologies, and the ESP32 has great potential. © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 110

Brian’s follow-up talks: ➔ Why Linux? What makes it so
special? (Linux 100) ➔ The installation of Linux from scratch on bare metal laptops. (Linux 101) ➔ Installing Linux with VirtualBox on MacOS or Windows 7/8/8.1 or 10. (Linux 102) ➔ Post installation tasks, the Command Line Interface (CLI) and proper package management under Linux. (Linux 103) ➔ Linux 104 - Installing Kali Linux from scratch on VirtualBox under Mac OS or Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10. (Linux 104) ➔ Linux hardening with Lynis. Coming soon: ➔ Quick guide to the AWS Amazon Linux 2 CLI. (Linux 201) ➔ A very quick Linux installation, very. (Linux 110) © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

The End Thank you for participating. Enjoyed the talk, slides,
etc? Then please leave a nice comment on Twitter/Bluesky/threads. I am BrianLinuxing everywhere. [NB: All images are copyright of their respective owners.] © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] 112

A compressed history of operating systems since the abacus

A compressed history of operating systems since the abacus

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