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Thank you! Yes, it is true, Microsoft did indeed have a Unix... But Xenix was a was a fairly obscure niche OS until SCO took it over & propelled it to greatnes

Thank you! Yes, it is true, Microsoft did indeed have a Unix... But Xenix was a was a fairly obscure niche OS until SCO took it over & propelled it to greatness. I deployed it in production in 1989 and we had no idea it had ever been an MS product. That was already forgotten.

pjmlp 3y ago
As someone that learned UNIX on Xenix, we were pretty much aware of it being Microsoft. > If we go way back in time, Microsoft was actually the first one to go to AT&T and beg to get a nice high-volume commercial license for Unix. And for many, many years we were the highest volume licensee, not only for our own Xenix products, but Siemens with theirs, Santa Cruz with theirs, and dozens and dozens of sub-licensees -- https://web.archive.org/web/20010818203946/http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/industry&tech/uexpo.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20010818203946/http://www.micros...
- lproven 3y ago
  I find I have to say this a lot online: It is an important and very common error of thinking to assume that everyone has the same experiences as you. Don't think "because I did X and found Y, everyone that does X must find Y." I too learned Unix on Xenix. I installed Xenix 286 on my IBM PC-AT in my first job, fitting a 2nd (15MB) HDD to do it (ST-506, 5.25" FH). I got it exchanging messages via UUCP with Xenix 386 over a serial line to a larger 386 machine that wasn't mine. This was 1988. Our office wasn't networked -- LANs were too new and too expensive. No WWW, no internet, no Google. Before Linux, before 386BSD. In my next job I took out my own personal online subscription, which I still have; that email address is now 33 years old. I learned Unix from the SCO manuals, which were excellent. I fondly remember the Permuted Index. No mention of Microsoft. Only occasionally in copyright messages, and they were everywhere and were meaningless and ignored. It would be decades later I discovered Xenix was originally an MS product. To me, it was a SCO product, and SCO were good guys. SCO != SCO Group, who now have tainted the name and most people reading "SCO" don't know the difference. But, for me, Xenix == SCO.

pjmlp 3y ago

As someone that learned UNIX on Xenix, we were pretty much aware of it being Microsoft. > If we go way back in time, Microsoft was actually the first one to go to AT&T and beg to get a nice high-volume commercial license for Unix. And for many, many years we were the highest volume licensee, not only for our own Xenix products, but Siemens with theirs, Santa Cruz with theirs, and dozens and dozens of sub-licensees -- https://web.archive.org/web/20010818203946/http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/industry&tech/uexpo.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20010818203946/http://www.micros...

lproven 3y ago
I find I have to say this a lot online: It is an important and very common error of thinking to assume that everyone has the same experiences as you. Don't think "because I did X and found Y, everyone that does X must find Y." I too learned Unix on Xenix. I installed Xenix 286 on my IBM PC-AT in my first job, fitting a 2nd (15MB) HDD to do it (ST-506, 5.25" FH). I got it exchanging messages via UUCP with Xenix 386 over a serial line to a larger 386 machine that wasn't mine. This was 1988. Our office wasn't networked -- LANs were too new and too expensive. No WWW, no internet, no Google. Before Linux, before 386BSD. In my next job I took out my own personal online subscription, which I still have; that email address is now 33 years old. I learned Unix from the SCO manuals, which were excellent. I fondly remember the Permuted Index. No mention of Microsoft. Only occasionally in copyright messages, and they were everywhere and were meaningless and ignored. It would be decades later I discovered Xenix was originally an MS product. To me, it was a SCO product, and SCO were good guys. SCO != SCO Group, who now have tainted the name and most people reading "SCO" don't know the difference. But, for me, Xenix == SCO.