[TUHS] Unix/World Magazines

[TUHS] Unix/World Magazines

[Warren Toomey]

All, I've uploaded 13 Unix/World magazines from 1984-85 to archive.org.
They are at:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3A%28Unix%20World%29

Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[reed]

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, Warren Toomey wrote:

> All, I've uploaded 13 Unix/World magazines from 1984-85 to archive.org.

Thanks!

November 1985 issue has an article by Bill Gates.

Gates wrote that they were optimistic to achieve 400,000 XENIX 
installations -- their critical mass -- within 18 months.

"... IBM has announced XENIX as the multi-user operating sysytem for the 
IBM PC-AT."

"Significantly, at the time the XENIX project was started [mid 1980], 
the IBM Personal Computer had not been announced."

What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used at least 
one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings on the 
PC family.

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:

[...]

> What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used at least 
> one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings on the 
> PC family.

I was forced to use Xenix for a contracting job (and hated it, as it was 
almost-but-not-quite-Unix, and the differences annoyed me).  Wouldn't 
Linux have arrived at around that time?

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Warner Losh]

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On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:13 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used at least
> > one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings on the
> > PC family.
>
> I was forced to use Xenix for a contracting job (and hated it, as it was
> almost-but-not-quite-Unix, and the differences annoyed me).  Wouldn't
> Linux have arrived at around that time?
>

These mags are from 84 and 85. Linux wasn't really viable until 92 or so.

Warner

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Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Adam Thornton]

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Hell, Linux didn't exist at all till '91.

I think Xenix was more just a casualty of the Unix Wars.  The victors there
were SunOS/Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX.  There were a bunch more walking
wounded that never really achieved much market share.

By the time SCO filed suit in 2003, not only were the Unix Wars fairly long
over (SCO had lost), but commercial Unixes had largely been supplanted by
Linux (and BSD enthusiasts had three free options, and OS X was a thing if
you wanted a commercial BSD, but Apple never managed to make much in the
way of inroads into the server market).  Linux's ascendency happened around
the turn of the millennium, as I recall, although I was using AIX at my job
as late as 2010-2011, and I presume the Big Several still exist in some
form or other.

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:28 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:13 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used at least
>> > one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings on
>> the
>> > PC family.
>>
>> I was forced to use Xenix for a contracting job (and hated it, as it was
>> almost-but-not-quite-Unix, and the differences annoyed me).  Wouldn't
>> Linux have arrived at around that time?
>>
>
> These mags are from 84 and 85. Linux wasn't really viable until 92 or so.
>
> Warner
>

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Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Thomas Paulsen]

>Hell, Linux didn't exist at all till '91.
>I think Xenix was more just a casualty of the Unix Wars.  The victors there
>were SunOS/Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX.  There were a bunch more walking
>wounded that never really achieved much market share.
'In the mid-to-late 1980s, XENIX was the most common UNIX variant, measured according to the number of machines on which it was installed.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Matt Rudge]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 at 07:48, Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen@firemail.de> wrote:
>
> >Hell, Linux didn't exist at all till '91.
> >I think Xenix was more just a casualty of the Unix Wars.  The victors there
> >were SunOS/Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX.  There were a bunch more walking
> >wounded that never really achieved much market share.
> 'In the mid-to-late 1980s, XENIX was the most common UNIX variant, measured according to the number of machines on which it was installed.'
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
>

I do remember supporting a small Xenix userbase in the mid-90's in
southeast Ireland. Mostly in law offices, surprisingly. They were very
resilient, usually running on a Wang PC-02 with greenscreen terminals
(Wyse, I think). Although they worked fine for their intended purpose
(word processing etc.), the allure of Windows was their demise.

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Heinz Lycklama]

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On 1/7/2020 11:46 PM, Thomas Paulsen wrote:
>> Hell, Linux didn't exist at all till '91.
>> I think Xenix was more just a casualty of the Unix Wars.  The victors there
>> were SunOS/Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX.  There were a bunch more walking
>> wounded that never really achieved much market share.
> 'In the mid-to-late 1980s, XENIX was the most common UNIX variant, measured according to the number of machines on which it was installed.'
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
Two other major vendors competing with Xenix were:
     1. _*INTERACTIVE Systems Corp. (ISC)*_ 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Systems_Corporation> [founded 
in 1977] with PC/IX, and later IS/3, etc.
     2. _*Santa Cruz Operation (SCO)*_ 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation> [founded in 1979] 
with SCO UNIX, etc.
There were also a number of smaller players in this space.

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Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[CHARLES KESTER]

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> On January 8, 2020 at 8:56 AM Heinz Lycklama <heinz@osta.com> wrote:
> 
>     Two other major vendors competing with Xenix were:
>         1. INTERACTIVE Systems Corp. (ISC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Systems_Corporation [founded in 1977] with PC/IX, and later IS/3, etc.
>         2. Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation [founded in 1979] with SCO UNIX, etc.
>     There were also a number of smaller players in this space.
> 
This brings back memories.  My first exposure to Unix (ca. 1985) was Interactive 386/ix.  I think I still have the floppies for it around here somewhere.  I don't know if they're still readable but if anyone wants them, send me a private email.


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Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Thomas Paulsen]

--- Ursprüngliche Nachricht ---
Von: Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com>
Datum: 08.01.2020 00:36:15
An: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>,  The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Betreff: Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

Hell, Linux didn't exist at all till '91.

I think Xenix was more just a casualty of the Unix Wars.  The victors there

were SunOS/Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX.  There were a bunch more walking
wounded that never really achieved much market share.

By the time SCO filed suit in 2003, not only were the Unix Wars fairly long

over (SCO had lost), but commercial Unixes had largely been supplanted by

Linux (and BSD enthusiasts had three free options, and OS X was a thing if

you wanted a commercial BSD, but Apple never managed to make much in the

way of inroads into the server market).  Linux's ascendency happened around

the turn of the millennium, as I recall, although I was using AIX at my job

as late as 2010-2011, and I presume the Big Several still exist in some
form or other.

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:28 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:


>
>
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:13 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used
at least
>> > one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings
on
>> the
>> > PC family.
>>
>> I was forced to use Xenix for a contracting job (and hated it, as
it was
>> almost-but-not-quite-Unix, and the differences annoyed me).  Wouldn't

>> Linux have arrived at around that time?
>>
>
> These mags are from 84 and 85. Linux wasn't really viable until 92 or
so.
>
> Warner
>

[TUHS] XENIX and Linux (was: What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines))

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Wednesday,  8 January 2020 at 10:12:23 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used at least
>> one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings on the
>> PC family.
>
> I was forced to use Xenix for a contracting job (and hated it, as it
> was almost-but-not-quite-Unix, and the differences annoyed me).

I did so too in the early 1990s, using (IIRC) "XENIX System V", an
attempt to retrofit some System V features to XENIX.  It was very
limited: it ran in Intel 80386 real mode, so it was limited to 16 MB
of memory.  The toolchain was excruciating.  I think it was based on
Microsoft products, and I soon replaced them with GNU software, which
had its problems on the platform.  The good news: it worked.

> Wouldn't Linux have arrived at around that time?

You don't say your time.  Referring to Jeremy's original message (time
frame mid-1980s), no, Linus would have been about 14 at the time.  He
made the first announcement of what would become Linux on 25 August
1991 (“just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu").  So
yes, it was available when I was doing my XENIX work.  So was BSD/386,
which is what I was using at the time.

Greg
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Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Dave Horsfall]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> I was forced to use Xenix for a contracting job (and hated it, as it was 
> almost-but-not-quite-Unix, and the differences annoyed me).  Wouldn't 
> Linux have arrived at around that time?

OK, I was out by a few years...  That job was some time in the 70/80s, and 
my memory isn't the best these days.

Similarly, I have a Penguin laptop at home for porting purposes, otherwise 
I never use it.  The cycle goes something like: get it working on both 
FreeBSD and the Mac (fairly easy), try it on the Penguin to see what 
they've broken and make the appropriate changes, then back to the Mac and 
the FreeBSD box again; repeat as necessary.  If worse comes to worst, make 
the code conditional upon the architecture (and I hate doing that, because 
it breaks the logical flow of the code).

For the record, I was porting Unify (an early RDBMS, and quite a nice one) 
to a 386...  Those damned memory models drove me crazy!  I preferred the 
small model because it was fast, but some modules were so big I had to use 
the large model which meant modifying the build script in the appropriate 
directory (no "make" in those days), and there were dozens of them.

ObTrivia: I used to use the Unify demonstration to benchmark a machine, 
and used to joke that sometimes I needed a calendar, not a clock :-)

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Harald Arnesen]

Den 08.01.2020 23:15, skrev Dave Horsfall:

> Similarly, I have a Penguin laptop at home for porting purposes, 
> otherwise I never use it.  The cycle goes something like: get it working 
> on both FreeBSD and the Mac (fairly easy), try it on the Penguin to see 
> what they've broken and make the appropriate changes, then back to the 
> Mac and the FreeBSD box again; repeat as necessary.  If worse comes to 
> worst, make the code conditional upon the architecture (and I hate doing 
> that, because it breaks the logical flow of the code).

In my experience, macOS breaks more things these days.
-- 
Hilsen Harald

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[ron]

We were Interactive Systems users in 1981 when I worked for Martin
Marietta.   Heinz, you were working there at that point, right?   I
remember my rep was Monica Gallegos.

A few years later I got caught up with a Multibus II port which I think
Interactive Systems was also involved with.   I had three systems on my
desk to get the experimental computer with the experimental SCSI host
adapter and the experimental SCSI tape drive:   A Wyse PC, a Intel
Multibus I 386 system, and an Intel MultibusII system.

I really did end up liking MultibusII for UNIX.

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Heinz Lycklama]

Yes, I worked at INTERACTIVE Systems Corp. (ISC) from 1978
to the end of 1991 when Sun Microsystems acquired ISC.
-- Heinz --

On 1/8/2020 4:01 PM, ron@ronnatalie.com wrote:
> We were Interactive Systems users in 1981 when I worked for Martin
> Marietta.   Heinz, you were working there at that point, right?   I
> remember my rep was Monica Gallegos.
>
> A few years later I got caught up with a Multibus II port which I think
> Interactive Systems was also involved with.   I had three systems on my
> desk to get the experimental computer with the experimental SCSI host
> adapter and the experimental SCSI tape drive:   A Wyse PC, a Intel
> Multibus I 386 system, and an Intel MultibusII system.
>
> I really did end up liking MultibusII for UNIX.
>
>

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Dave Horsfall]

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020, Harald Arnesen wrote:

> In my experience, macOS breaks more things these days.

Fortunately my Mac never progressed beyond Sierra due to memory 
limitations or something; its other major job is as a client into my 
FreeBSD server.

Slowly getting into COFF territory now, I think...

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[David Arnold]

> On 9 Jan 2020, at 10:29, Harald Arnesen <skogtun@gmail.com> wrote:
> Den 08.01.2020 23:15, skrev Dave Horsfall:
> 
>> Similarly, I have a Penguin laptop at home for porting purposes, otherwise I never use it.  The cycle goes something like: get it working on both FreeBSD and the Mac (fairly easy), try it on the Penguin to see what they've broken and make the appropriate changes, then back to the Mac and the FreeBSD box again; repeat as necessary.  If worse comes to worst, make the code conditional upon the architecture (and I hate doing that, because it breaks the logical flow of the code).
> 
> In my experience, macOS breaks more things these days.

When I first used “Unix” in the late 80’s, most of the available source code needed some sort of tweaking to work, unless the author happened to have the same system I was using (HP/UX, Minix, and a BSD VAX, iirc).  A rummage through the GNU’s autoconf docs will (re)acquaint you with he multitude of small differences that needed to be accounted for to make most things portable.

Then Sun became the dominant vendor, and most things would work out of the box on SunOS / Solaris, with different degrees of effort required depending on how different your system was.  I was working for a DEC-sponsored lab at the time, and Ultrix was more in the BSD camp than Solaris, but there was usually someone had done some BSD-style tweaks that could be co-opted into mostly working for Ultrix.  Then we got the fancy new DEC3000 Alphas, and to a first approximation, *nothing* worked (although that was mostly 64 bit pointers, rather than OSF/1).

As Linux has become increasingly popular, things now almost universally work out of the box on Linux, with some work required to make macOS, *BSD, and the other commercial Unices work.  Often now, there’s no autoconf (at least for newer projects) or it’s poorly maintained, and I find myself back to the 80s-style patching to get stuff to run on systems other than Linux.

Whenever one system becomes too popular, the definition of “Unix” drifts in that direction …




d

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Adam Thornton]

On Jan 8, 2020, at 8:25 PM, David Arnold <davida@pobox.com> wrote:
> Whenever one system becomes too popular, the definition of “Unix” drifts in that direction …

“All the world’s a VAX” became “All the world’s a Linux/x86 box” about 1996, and then in 2010 or so, “all the world’s a Linux/amd64 box.”

At least ARM saved us from another total processor monoculture.

Adam

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[Peter Cetinski]

> On Jan 7, 2020, at 5:22 PM, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:
> 
> What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used at least 
> one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings on the 
> PC family.

XENIX was staged for greatness until Microsoft decided they did not want to be subject to the AT&T license long term with all the potential issues that could arise by not being in complete control of their operating system.

[TUHS] IBM PC and XENIX (was: What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines))

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Tuesday,  7 January 2020 at 16:22:41 -0600, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, Warren Toomey wrote:
>
>> All, I've uploaded 13 Unix/World magazines from 1984-85 to archive.org.
>
> Thanks!
>
> November 1985 issue has an article by Bill Gates.
>
> Gates wrote that they were optimistic to achieve 400,000 XENIX
> installations -- their critical mass -- within 18 months.
>
> "... IBM has announced XENIX as the multi-user operating sysytem for the
> IBM PC-AT."

XENIX was initially targeted for the PDP-11, for some reason beyond my
understanding.  Looking at the Wikipedia page, it seems that the first
Intel ports were not aimed at the PC-AT.

> "Significantly, at the time the XENIX project was started [mid 1980],
> the IBM Personal Computer had not been announced."

You don't say where this quote comes from.  The use of pluperfect
suggests that it's not from the Unix/World article.  The PC was
announced in August 1981, and the PC-AT was released in August 1984,
so the date of the article fits well.

Greg
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Re: [TUHS] IBM PC and XENIX (was: What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines))

[reed]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> On Tuesday,  7 January 2020 at 16:22:41 -0600, reed@reedmedia.net wrote:

> > November 1985 issue has an article by Bill Gates.

> > "Significantly, at the time the XENIX project was started [mid 1980],
> > the IBM Personal Computer had not been announced."
> 
> You don't say where this quote comes from.  The use of pluperfect
> suggests that it's not from the Unix/World article.  The PC was
> announced in August 1981, and the PC-AT was released in August 1984,
> so the date of the article fits well.

It was from the magazine. I added the brackets for the date which came 
from an earlier sentence in the article.

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX?

[Michael Kjörling]

On 7 Jan 2020 16:22 -0600, from reed@reedmedia.net:
> "Significantly, at the time the XENIX project was started [mid 1980], 
> the IBM Personal Computer had not been announced."

Perhaps even more significantly in this case, but possibly not
publicly known at the time, IBM's Project Chess, which resulted in the
IBM PC, apparently began in July 1980. (The promise was to develop an
initial prototype in 30 days, and a working personal computer in a
year; the initial demo was in August, the first internal demo in
January 1981, and product release was in August 1981.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer#Project_Chess

So by "mid 1980", what would eventually lead up to the IBM PC was at
most _just barely_ getting started.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael@kjorling.se
 “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

[TUHS] Dating quotes (was: What happened with XENIX?)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Wednesday,  8 January 2020 at 12:18:01 +0000, Michael Kjörling wrote:
>
> So by "mid 1980", what would eventually lead up to the IBM PC was at
> most _just barely_ getting started.

Right, but my recollection is that the original quote was "mid 1980s"
(i.e. round 1985), not "mid 1980".

Greg
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Re: [TUHS] Dating quotes (was: What happened with XENIX?)

[reed]

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> On Wednesday,  8 January 2020 at 12:18:01 +0000, Michael Kj?rling wrote:
> >
> > So by "mid 1980", what would eventually lead up to the IBM PC was at
> > most _just barely_ getting started.
> 
> Right, but my recollection is that the original quote was "mid 1980s"
> (i.e. round 1985), not "mid 1980".

"mid-1980" (without "s") was from page 31
https://archive.org/details/Unix_World_Vol02_10.pdf/page/n29
(It is in a sidebar; I will still attribute it to Gates.)

(I'd think mid-1980s with "s" wouldn't make sense for an article written 
probably before October 1985.)

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

This web page has some details about XENIX prior to 1985:
http://seefigure1.com/2014/04/15/xenixtime.html

In particular this chart is intriguing:
http://seefigure1.com/images/xenix/xenix-timeline.jpg

I’d love to have XENIX from the 1980-1985 era in the TUHS archive, as it documents the tail end of the Unix on 16 bits era. It would have been great if MS had released that as part of the Unix-at-50 events.

Paul

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX?

[Ronald Natalie]

One of my first contracts with IBM was to add (get this) a SECOND network interface to secure-XENIX, an MLS version of the software.
I believe it was being used as a “downgrade” audit station to allow data to be moved form one secure network to another.    I believe the
original work was done by Jakob Recktor (probably butchering the spelling of his name).

That contract led to a few follow ons with IBM to port AIX to i860 based machines.    I still have my old IBM badge kicking around somewhere.