It's well-known that zombies have their origin in Haitian legends, perhaps influenced by older African legends, but probably having more to do with the experience of slavery. In these legends, a recently-dead corpse is re-animated by an evil sorcerer, which it then serves as a mindless slave lacking all free will. The modern conception of the zombie, however, originates with George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Ironically, that film never actually uses the word "zombie", but it has become widely used since to refer to a selection of similar beings in films and other media.
In making zombies more obviously corpse-like, but keeping them as automata under the control of evil spell-casters, Gygax created something that's a meld of the mythical and cinematic zombie. As an aside, the modern trope that zombies feast on brains originates with Return of the Living Dead in 1985. This was some years after the original Monster Manual was written, which explains why D&D zombies don't do anything of the sort.
Unless one counts the Grim Reaper, animated skeletons rarely feature directly in myth or legend, although illustrations of them abound, going back to at least the late Middle Ages. They are usually more of a spooky concept or a representation of death than anything specific, but a particular inspiration for Gygax may well have been the army of skeletal warriors in the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts.
1E
The physical look of both zombies and skeletons is the same here as in all later editions. A zombie is an animated corpse, partially rotting and still bearing whatever injuries it possessed at the point of death. Skeletons are always depicted as consisting of fleshless bones alone, although, presumably, any corpse that no longer possesses muscles or sinew would do the trick. Skeletons are typically shown armed and wearing tattered remnants of armour (likely in a nod to the above-mentioned Jason and the Argonauts) while zombies are not.
At least as compared with typical orcs and the like, zombies are reasonably tough, possessing two hit dice. They have the equivalent of leather armour, which may simply reflect the fact that they can't feel pain and don't bleed, so that a glancing blow does nothing to them. They are also remarkably slow-moving, shuffling along at half regular pace and going last in every fight. We're told that they can only be created by evil spell-casters and remain entirely under their control, having no intelligence of their own. They are said to be found in groups of up to a dozen or so, and usually in graveyards or on battlefields, but that presumably just reflects how busy the spell-casters are likely to be and where they are going to find their base material.
Skeletons are weaker, doing less damage when they hit (regardless of what weapon they are using, for some reason) and being less likely to land a blow in the first place. Their lack of any vital organs is seemingly offset by their fragility although sharp weapons do relatively little to them, since they have nothing vital to target and simply smashing them apart is an attacker's best option. They are slightly harder to hit than zombies, either because they don't move as slowly, or because there's physically less there to strike. Otherwise, there's little difference between the two.
There are no real changes in 2E, although it is pointed out that zombies smell bad and that skeletons don't have to be made from human bodies, with animals, giants, etc. also being possible options.
3E
Following on from and expanding on the discussion of non-human animated skeletons in 2E, in 3E both "zombie" and "skeleton" are templates, a set of modifications applied to the description of whatever sort of corpse was used as their base material. From this, we can see that zombies are more physically resilient than a living body and are also stronger than they were in life but, being mindless, have no identifiable skills or knowledge. Their coordination drops slightly from life, and their movement is limited, although not really as slow as it was before. Their bloodless nature is now reflected in the fact that they are hard to injure with blunt or pointed weapons, and are best dealt with by being hacked into pieces.
Skeletons are now slightly more agile than the original corpse - perhaps all those bodily organs that living things have are just slowing them down. Despite the lack of muscles, the magic that animates them duplicates whatever strength they originally had in life (which, when you think about it, is a bit odd). In other respects, and allowing for tweaks to the rule system, they are not that different than they were before.
For some reason, both zombies and skeletons are now described as evil. What that's supposed to mean for something that has no mind and can't take meaningful decisions, moral or otherwise, is unclear. It may just be to ensure that they can be targeted by divine spells that only affect evil things, their mere existence being an affront to decent deities.
5E
There are some significant changes to zombies and skeletons in 5E. We are now told that, while it remains the norm, they don't have to be raised by spell-casters, but can also be created spontaneously from corpses in areas somehow infused with dark magic. Zombies are clumsier, but not as slow-moving, as in 3E, and don't have any particular resistance to regular weapons. Skeletons, on the other hand, are even more agile, and the stats reflect the fact that most illustrations show them wearing at least the remnants of armour.
More importantly, though, they now have an intelligence score - which at least makes more sense of their "evil" descriptor. In the case of zombies, this is close to the minimum possible, and the description implies that they aren't sentient. Skeletons, however, while a bit stupid, clearly now fall into the "sentient corporeal" category of undead, rather than mindless automata - they are, for example, more intelligent than the average ogre.
There are perhaps a couple of reasons for this. One is rule-mechanical, in that 5E isn't really set up to describe something with a zero stat. But even zombies aren't at the absolute minimum value (as they were in 4E), so it may also be to allow those spontaneously created versions to actually do something in the absence of a controlling agent. Admittedly, all they do is attack whatever is around them (except each other), but the versions in prior editions wouldn't even have done this much if left entirely to their own devices.
In the typical versions at least, a zombie is simply a corpse moved around and controlled via magic. It has no vital organs as such, although it evidently requires muscles and tendons in order to move, and presumably uses its eyes and ears as sensory organs to gain feedback on its surroundings. But, otherwise, it does not need to be intact to function and, since they smell of rotting flesh, it's evident that the decay process has not stopped, and they become more degenerate with time.
Since they aren't actually in the soil, it probably takes longer for a zombie to lose its flesh than for a non-animated corpse. Likely, they would last for a number of years, although this would vary with the climate. If the animation magic can adapt, then they would eventually turn into skeletons but, if not, they would become weaker as their muscles decay and eventually cease functioning.
Skeletons, on the other hand, use magic not only to move, but to hold themselves together, simply collapsing into a heap of bones once that magic is overwhelmed. They can evidently see and hear, but have no sense organs, and so must be using magical means to do that as well. Logically, one would expect this to have some effect on the ability of others to blind or deafen them, although there's no indication that this is the case.The other significant question with regard to skeletons and zombies is exactly what it means to be "mindless". Prior to 4E, zombies and skeletons both have an intelligence score of zero, and even in 4E, zombies remain less intelligent than typical wild animals. Ignoring those later versions, however, it seems that the primary distinguishing feature of these mindless undead is their lack of free will. They always do exactly as instructed by their creators, and stand around doing literally nothing if not given such an instruction.
On the other hand, they can be given instructions that require some degree of awareness and even judgement, such as being tasked with defending an area. And, indeed, the fact that they can fight suggests some degree of autonomy - or they'd just wave their sword around in a repetitive motion, which would be pretty easy to defeat. Clearly, therefore, some sort of spirit animates them, although it's more like a noncorporeal computer program than it is like a true soul. Possibly, it's an extension of their creator's will, tied into the corpse and able to react at an instinctive, autonomic level.
Zombies and skeletons are common features in other fantasy RPGs, not to mention those specifically intended for horror gaming. Indeed, being similar to zombies may exist in SF settings too, especially those at the softer end of the SF spectrum.
In D&D, both zombies and skeletons are intended as relatively "low level" opponents, easy to defeat for all but the newest of PCs, except perhaps in large numbers. In other systems, this isn't necessarily so, especially if they use realistic rules for things like blood loss and weakness due to injury. For instance, hacking a zombie's arm off would do far less to it than performing the same action on a living human, so if the system uses that kind of detail, a zombie is almost inevitably going to be harder to defeat than many other things are.
That can, perhaps, partly be countered by emphasising the weak points that D&D rolls into their low hit points. For zombies, that's their unusually slow movement, especially in the earlier editions, while for skeletons, it's their fragility - hacking an arm off may not do much, but if it's easy enough to do that may not be too much of an advantage.
Assuming you're not simulating the 5E (or 4E) version, mindlessness might be another thing that's difficult to carry across. Many systems either don't allow for a zero intelligence, or have specific effects for it that might not reflect what it's supposed to indicate in D&D. Here, the use of the lowest possible intelligence score, combined with some immunities from effects that rely on free will - such as fear or low morale - would probably be a better way to go.
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