4 ms·
Xenix was a Unix. It started out as based on Unix V 7, then System III, then System V when MS finally sold it to SCO. MS tends to keep a lot of fingers in a lo
by Sanddancer 11y ago
Xenix was a Unix. It started out as based on Unix V 7, then System III, then System V when MS finally sold it to SCO.
MS tends to keep a lot of fingers in a lot of cakes, even in surprising areas. Given the number of kernels MS Research has released, it wouldn't be too terrible of a stretch to see MS release some sort of unix at some point.
- justin66 11y agoWow, thanks. It's been 24 or 25 years since I used Xenix (dammit) and the funny part is, when I googled a couple of Unix family trees just now, it didn't even appear on some of them. But you're obviously right. I think the big thing that would keep MSFT from rolling their own is fear of antitrust law, in the US and Europe. Less of a concern for them when it comes to Linux on phones or embedded, I believe.
- mishac 11y agoit was actually the most widely used real Unix at one (very dark) point.
- justin66 11y agoInteresting thought. I have no problem believing it was running on the largest number of CPUs. I wonder if it had the largest number of users.
- criddell 11y agohttps://books.google.com/books?id=Dz8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA92661&ots=w8lkIroiE2&dq=%22xenix%22&pg=PA92661#v=onepage&q=%22xenix%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Dz8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA92661&o... From that article: "according to AT&T, roughly half of the 500,000 Unix licenses are held by Xenix developers"
- justin66 11y agoAs I alluded, it's a question of what you're measuring. CPUs, developers, and users could all vary between versions. I really am amazed by that figure, though. Wow. And I had forgotten that xenix ran on some bigger machines, not just pcs.
- RyJones 11y agoNT had a fairly robust POSIX layer, too, for a while. Enough to get POSIX certified for the checkbox driven PHBs.
- davidgerard 11y agoNo, that layer was famously WeirdIX - it was a literally unusable box-ticking exercise. They later bought Interix, who created the foundations of Windows Services For Unix, which was a much better and actually usable Unixlike layer, running directly as an NT subsystem, at the same level as Win32. (This is as distinct from Cygwin, which supplies a GNU layer on top of Win32.)