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People forget that MS used to have it's own Unix in the 80s: Xenix. I ported a large DEC PDP Fortran codebase to run on Xenix back then - it was far too big to

People forget that MS used to have it's own Unix in the 80s: Xenix. I ported a large DEC PDP Fortran codebase to run on Xenix back then - it was far too big to fit in the 640K DOS limit. Writing the Xenix device driver for the 68000 powered graphics card in the PC was fun.

amyjess 11y ago
It's also very likely that if things went just a little differently, Microsoft's main OS today would probably be Xenix-based. Microsoft created Xenix because they knew DOS would have a limited future, and in particular they knew there was a lot of value in running enterprise software on microcomputers. They also knew costs would go down and performance would go up over time and that running minicomputer-grade stuff on micros would become more and more feasible as time goes on. They made Xenix for a number of microcomputer platforms, typically partnering with the hardware manufacturers (as is the case with Tandy). For the PC, they chose to partner with SCO instead for some reason. Xenix was Microsoft's next-generation operating system, intended to be a platform for the few high-end customers who wanted to run enterprise software on PC, with plans to push it across the mid-range and even the low end as PCs get faster and fast hardware gets cheaper. And then, it all changed when AT&T got broken up. Suddenly, AT&T was allowed to commercialize their software, including Unix. And AT&T was very, very much interested in doing this. The whole thing culminated in System V Release 4, but that took a few years for AT&T to put it together. In the meantime, Microsoft thought they'd never be able to compete in the Unix market against the creators of Unix, so they panicked, sold Xenix to SCO, and began looking for a partner for their _new_ next-generation operating system. So Microsoft hooked up with IBM and created OS/2 as their successor to Xenix. Eventually, however, Microsoft fell out with IBM... After falling out with IBM, Microsoft decided to do it entirely by themselves, so they poached a bunch of ex-VMS guys from DEC and created Windows NT. After a few years serving as an enterprise OS, Microsoft began trickling NT down to the consumer market, eventually replacing DOS-based Windows entirely with the launch of Windows XP in 2001. Just imagine the alternate world where Microsoft didn't get spooked by AT&T commercializing Unix and instead focused on Xenix, trickled it down to the consumer market, and ultimately replaced DOS-based Windows with a Windows-style GUI built on top of Xenix.
- hga 11y ago
  A bit of nuance to part of the story: IBM previously had told it's legion of "buying IBM won't get you fired" IT managers that the 286 powered PC-AT was the last PC model they'd have to buy for a long while (one reason Compaq was the first to come out a 386), and demanded OS/2 run on it. Unfortunately, the 286 was seriously crippled for doing this sort of thing, as I recall, switching segment registers was very expensive. And for those of you who didn't live through the ugliness of 8086->286 (and 386 and beyond compatibility modes) programming, these were thoroughly 16 bit computers, where you had at most 64 KiB segments each of stack, code and data, unless you switched one of those segment registers to point elsewhere. That was cheap enough for the vast gain in memory on the 8086/8, and the 286 in its compatibility mode, but native? That mode did a lot more for you (like, hey, memory protection!), and Intel when that decision was made and implemented slowly simply didn't understand how people used their CPUs. Anyway, Windows 3.0 and on was taking off, no one but stupidly managed Lotus wanted to program OS/2 Presentation Manager, and prior to in 1988 that DEC killed off a RISC CPU + new operating system effort in favor of continuing with VAX/VMS for a while longer. The software people, at least, were in Bellevue, WA, and many were hired to develop OS/2 3.0, which due to the above morphed into NT 3.1 (which really was around a 3.x Microsoft quality release :-).
pluma 11y ago
There was even some Unix in Windows itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
- david-given 11y ago
  ...and I perpetrated a horrible hack which let me run unmodified Linux binaries on it. http://lbw.sourceforge.net http://lbw.sourceforge.net (Seriously, it's a vile, vile hack, involving dynamically patching running binaries to work round Windows ABI differences and work around seg faults. But it works well enough to run a Debian userland.)
  - kyberias 11y ago
    That's an amazing hack! I've looked at that page a great many times over the years.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    Speaking of vile hacks... has anyone here used Eunice, which allowed people to have a Unix (BSD-flavor) userland on VMS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_%28software%29 Larry mentions it in the perl configuration file: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Configure https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Configure
    - rjsw 11y ago
      I have used Franz Lisp on VMS that had been built using Eunice. I guess the Eunice userland may have been installed somewhere on the VAX but I don't remember finding it.
rsl7 11y ago
Used that on a Sequent Symmetry at Purdue in the early 90s

amyjess 11y ago

It's also very likely that if things went just a little differently, Microsoft's main OS today would probably be Xenix-based. Microsoft created Xenix because they knew DOS would have a limited future, and in particular they knew there was a lot of value in running enterprise software on microcomputers. They also knew costs would go down and performance would go up over time and that running minicomputer-grade stuff on micros would become more and more feasible as time goes on. They made Xenix for a number of microcomputer platforms, typically partnering with the hardware manufacturers (as is the case with Tandy). For the PC, they chose to partner with SCO instead for some reason. Xenix was Microsoft's next-generation operating system, intended to be a platform for the few high-end customers who wanted to run enterprise software on PC, with plans to push it across the mid-range and even the low end as PCs get faster and fast hardware gets cheaper. And then, it all changed when AT&T got broken up. Suddenly, AT&T was allowed to commercialize their software, including Unix. And AT&T was very, very much interested in doing this. The whole thing culminated in System V Release 4, but that took a few years for AT&T to put it together. In the meantime, Microsoft thought they'd never be able to compete in the Unix market against the creators of Unix, so they panicked, sold Xenix to SCO, and began looking for a partner for their _new_ next-generation operating system. So Microsoft hooked up with IBM and created OS/2 as their successor to Xenix. Eventually, however, Microsoft fell out with IBM... After falling out with IBM, Microsoft decided to do it entirely by themselves, so they poached a bunch of ex-VMS guys from DEC and created Windows NT. After a few years serving as an enterprise OS, Microsoft began trickling NT down to the consumer market, eventually replacing DOS-based Windows entirely with the launch of Windows XP in 2001. Just imagine the alternate world where Microsoft didn't get spooked by AT&T commercializing Unix and instead focused on Xenix, trickled it down to the consumer market, and ultimately replaced DOS-based Windows with a Windows-style GUI built on top of Xenix.

hga 11y ago
A bit of nuance to part of the story: IBM previously had told it's legion of "buying IBM won't get you fired" IT managers that the 286 powered PC-AT was the last PC model they'd have to buy for a long while (one reason Compaq was the first to come out a 386), and demanded OS/2 run on it. Unfortunately, the 286 was seriously crippled for doing this sort of thing, as I recall, switching segment registers was very expensive. And for those of you who didn't live through the ugliness of 8086->286 (and 386 and beyond compatibility modes) programming, these were thoroughly 16 bit computers, where you had at most 64 KiB segments each of stack, code and data, unless you switched one of those segment registers to point elsewhere. That was cheap enough for the vast gain in memory on the 8086/8, and the 286 in its compatibility mode, but native? That mode did a lot more for you (like, hey, memory protection!), and Intel when that decision was made and implemented slowly simply didn't understand how people used their CPUs. Anyway, Windows 3.0 and on was taking off, no one but stupidly managed Lotus wanted to program OS/2 Presentation Manager, and prior to in 1988 that DEC killed off a RISC CPU + new operating system effort in favor of continuing with VAX/VMS for a while longer. The software people, at least, were in Bellevue, WA, and many were hired to develop OS/2 3.0, which due to the above morphed into NT 3.1 (which really was around a 3.x Microsoft quality release :-).

pluma 11y ago

There was even some Unix in Windows itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX

david-given 11y ago
...and I perpetrated a horrible hack which let me run unmodified Linux binaries on it. http://lbw.sourceforge.net http://lbw.sourceforge.net (Seriously, it's a vile, vile hack, involving dynamically patching running binaries to work round Windows ABI differences and work around seg faults. But it works well enough to run a Debian userland.)
- kyberias 11y ago
  That's an amazing hack! I've looked at that page a great many times over the years.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  Speaking of vile hacks... has anyone here used Eunice, which allowed people to have a Unix (BSD-flavor) userland on VMS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_%28software%29 Larry mentions it in the perl configuration file: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Configure https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Configure
  - rjsw 11y ago
    I have used Franz Lisp on VMS that had been built using Eunice. I guess the Eunice userland may have been installed somewhere on the VAX but I don't remember finding it.

rsl7 11y ago

Used that on a Sequent Symmetry at Purdue in the early 90s