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
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.
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
> 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.
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 576 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1041 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1455 bytes --] 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 > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2258 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1570 bytes --] 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 (âjust 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 -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA [-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1283 bytes --] 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 -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA [-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]
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.
>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
--- 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 >
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?”
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.
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 886 bytes --] 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. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1473 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 563 bytes --] 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 -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA [-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]
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
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 732 bytes --] > 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. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1159 bytes --]
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
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.)
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.
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.
>
>
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
> 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
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