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SCO the "cool UNIX vendor" was not the company that sued. In 2001, the cool UNIX vendor was struggling and sold its UNIX business to Caldera. Caldera renamed it

SCO the "cool UNIX vendor" was not the company that sued. In 2001, the cool UNIX vendor was struggling and sold its UNIX business to Caldera. Caldera renamed itself "the SCO Group" and filed the lawsuit. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation

noisy_boy 4y ago
I remember seeing original SCO unix in our server room in 1998 - they were a legitimate player then but I also remember seeing all new orders going for SunOS (and later for Sun Solaris).
- robennals 4y ago
  Internally, SCO used to joke that they were “the most popular operating system you haven’t heard of”. It was (at that time) the best Unix on cheap x86 hardware, so it was deployed everywhere. In gas station pumps, in cash registers, in ATMs, in back office databases. I think SCO made up the majority of Oracle database instances. Most people interacted with SCO code on a daily basis but didn’t know. Of course they rapidly lost the x86 UNIX crown to Linux. At the time I was there SCO could still do a lot of stuff well that Linux couldn’t, but the advantages were rapidly going down and the writing was on the wall.
sgt 4y ago
In my mind, I associate Caldera with that Linux distribution that was pretty OK, but nothing to write home about.
- jzb 4y ago
  Caldera’s big trick IIRC was its installer. You could play Tetris in the installer while it copied packages onto the hard drive. It was also a better installer for new users than a lot of others. I think the desktop experience was pretty polished for the time, too.
  - sgt 4y ago
    That's brilliant! I wish more installers did that.
  - jasoneckert 4y ago
    They also had Minesweeper too (I can't remember if it was a choice, or they had two distro flavors - one with Tetris and one with Minesweeper).
- dagw 4y ago
  Caldera, pre SCO, was actually pretty sold 'professional' desktop OS. A place I worked at used it and we had a bunch of developers and researchers with Windows backgrounds that were using Linux for the first time and they all found it a pretty smooth and polished desktop and development experience over all.
wsc981 4y ago
Let's not forget the following [0]: > SCO's Linux lawsuit made no sense and no one at the time gave it much of a chance of succeeding. Over time it was revealed that Microsoft had been using SCO as a sock puppet against Linux. Unfortunately for Microsoft and SCO, it soon became abundantly clear that SCO didn't have a real case against Linux and its allies. In a way this was a proxy war of Microsoft vs Linux. --- [0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/sco-linux-fud-returns-from-the-dead/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/sco-linux-fud-returns-from-the...
- up2isomorphism 4y ago
  Microsoft is very very American.

noisy_boy 4y ago

I remember seeing original SCO unix in our server room in 1998 - they were a legitimate player then but I also remember seeing all new orders going for SunOS (and later for Sun Solaris).

robennals 4y ago
Internally, SCO used to joke that they were “the most popular operating system you haven’t heard of”. It was (at that time) the best Unix on cheap x86 hardware, so it was deployed everywhere. In gas station pumps, in cash registers, in ATMs, in back office databases. I think SCO made up the majority of Oracle database instances. Most people interacted with SCO code on a daily basis but didn’t know. Of course they rapidly lost the x86 UNIX crown to Linux. At the time I was there SCO could still do a lot of stuff well that Linux couldn’t, but the advantages were rapidly going down and the writing was on the wall.

sgt 4y ago

In my mind, I associate Caldera with that Linux distribution that was pretty OK, but nothing to write home about.

jzb 4y ago
Caldera’s big trick IIRC was its installer. You could play Tetris in the installer while it copied packages onto the hard drive. It was also a better installer for new users than a lot of others. I think the desktop experience was pretty polished for the time, too.
- sgt 4y ago
  That's brilliant! I wish more installers did that.
- jasoneckert 4y ago
  They also had Minesweeper too (I can't remember if it was a choice, or they had two distro flavors - one with Tetris and one with Minesweeper).
dagw 4y ago
Caldera, pre SCO, was actually pretty sold 'professional' desktop OS. A place I worked at used it and we had a bunch of developers and researchers with Windows backgrounds that were using Linux for the first time and they all found it a pretty smooth and polished desktop and development experience over all.

wsc981 4y ago

Let's not forget the following [0]: > SCO's Linux lawsuit made no sense and no one at the time gave it much of a chance of succeeding. Over time it was revealed that Microsoft had been using SCO as a sock puppet against Linux. Unfortunately for Microsoft and SCO, it soon became abundantly clear that SCO didn't have a real case against Linux and its allies. In a way this was a proxy war of Microsoft vs Linux. --- [0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/sco-linux-fud-returns-from-the-dead/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/sco-linux-fud-returns-from-the...

up2isomorphism 4y ago
Microsoft is very very American.