UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Apparently even for MS-DOS they bought exclusive rights from the makers of Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty DOS, a CP/M 80 derivative )..

Hi.

Slightly OT --

A graphic of the family tree beginning with Unics at:

File:Unix history-simple.png - Wikimedia Commons

and text at:

Unix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ... cheers, drl

Thanks Scrutinizer that is the missing link for me.

I was working on some serious scale with DR-DOS systems including CP/M, MP/M and MUCCP/M at the time. I was disgusted with some of the marketing tactics by Microsoft because in my lab the products were garbage. Concurrently I was working on DEC RSX11/M systems (a precursor to unix and a truly great O/S) and OS/9 (another precursor to unix albeit on Motorola hardware but not to be confused with the much later Apple MAC O/S by the same name) and having to produce impartial evaluation reports. The impartial results at the time in order of preference were : RSX/11M , OS/9 , DR-DOS, ...(yawn)..... MS-DOS. Subsequently I changed my bias more than once to: VMS, then Berkeley unix, then unix System V and expected Microsoft and Digital Research to disappear. Got that one wrong!

Apple OSX is based on UNIX and runs on Intel processors as well

Awesome. This thread sure took off in the few days I was MIA.

Thanks for all the great info guys!

And haha, I realize Oracle is the Sun Microsystem's aquirer.. I made an honest mistake when I said Novell.. I mix those two up sometimes...
They are so similar in a sense..
Speaking of Sun, anyone ever use SunOS? What if one was to install it today? Would it be useless? or could you actually use it, even though it turned into Solaris nowadays?


Thats really unfortunate about SCO not offering a free non commercial version anymore!! Thats not very cool.. I thought they were doing that to get people to start converting from Linux! I guess they want to remain towards the bottom forever, even though theyve been around forever... :/

As for OSX, yeah as soon as the 13th comes around and my Bandwidth gets reset, I will most definitely be downloading the OSX86, to install on my laptop! Definitely want to tri boot: Win7 (until Win8 comes along), Linux of coarse!, and OS X. Should be really nice! I can use Dreamweaver, Coda, and Aptana! Among others of coarse! Can you believe that this will be my first time with any Mac like operating system! Hard to believe.. Never really liked them, but they have really become quite slick these days, and I keep finding some really great programs that are Mac only. (Coda for instance)

I also wouldnt mind trying some of the older Mac OS'es either. I think they would be kind of neat. Hmm, I might keep my eyes open for an ancient Mac Box on eBay or something. Might be a cool thing to play around with.

I tell you what, something that has been near the top of my list of OS interests is the Darwin kernel! Its free open source from Apple. but I am probably going to work with PureDarwin. (another open source Fork) Theres some talk about some servers running a darwin stack (DAMP). I would love to play around with that! Hell a fun fact: the first public server ever was hosted on a NEXTstep system! (Mac product, with Darwin Kernel, implemented BSD like source, and evolved to the first Mac OS.) So Darwin OS, OpenDarwin, PureDarwin, NEXTstep, GNUstep, etc. All of those may be pretty neat to play around with, in server and personal instances! Especially Darwin considering its Open Source. I really need to get my Kernel development skills going more so I can build a nice custom system implementing Darwin. I think it has potential as not many have grasped it so far.

Also Neo, you said OSX is based on Unix. Inst it UNIX. Like actually unix, not just based on it, or unix-like. I thought it actually is considered a Unix OS flavour?

Thats nice to hear about HP-UX guys! I thought they ditched that a while ago! Thats nice though, because I would love to start messing around with it! Plus I run a small VPS business still in beta right now, as I am testing and upgrading, I would love to add as many choices as I can for people.. Especially good because HP-UX is quite a big name in the industry, and may bring a whole other client base.
That being said I am going to see what it will take to become Partners/Reseller with/of HP and SCO.
But wait, does HP-UX run on Intel processors?? I thought it didn't?

OH and as for this Unix rightful owners talk that you all are talking about, as to who is who, and who owns what.
I thought it came down to this.
Unix originally developed by AT&T. (Begat BSD, et all) Novell aquired Unix rights from AT&T. Then there was that big case of SCO vs Novell, correct? Then SCO bought the rights from Novell correct? I know somewhere Bell Labs falls in here.. I believe somewhere with AT&T..
So as of this moment, SCO owns Unix rights.
I am not to informed about the whole microsoft involvement though... As I tend to just not give a shit about them...
But I really like how they are starting a new Open Source Project, and how much they support/fund open source projects like Apache Foundation.


So lets get jumping back to the old skool here.

What about the System V's? What are the versions/different ones?
And what hardware will they run on, and do any have a GUI?

Another notable old skooler. BSDi. Any information on this one? 1BSD, 2BSD, 3BSD, 4BSD... What can all these run on? Only VAX?
What about the 3BSD-Tahoe, 3BSD-Reno, 386BSD!? 4-BSD-Lite!? et all.
Any BSD experts here?
I know the 386BSD is intel supported... BUT can it run on simple x86 processors? If so that could be a neat kernel to mess around with as well, to implement as a whole system.


So are we missing anything here?? There HAS to be more!!!?
So sad if not... Hopefully the future will have some Ports ready for us!
If not, is there any OS's that can be Emulated on an x86 machine?

Is AIX supported on x86? or did someone just mention them just cause?

What about MINIX? I know that has a x86 port. That one really has some potential. Especially when MINIX 4 comes. Its still actively developed.
Would MINIX be considered a Unix?


Thanks for all the support on x86 support guys!

wicked community here! Love it already!

Oh and just to mention, UGU, aka Unix Guru's Universe has probably the most substantial list of Unix flavors. I only glanced at it but its pretty long, and detailed. Nice site too.

Take Care Unix Experts! You all rule! This is a nice place I may someday like to call home!
Peace, and Love.

There are about 20 questions in your last post, only picking these ones.
SunOS is pretty alive, has likely hundred of thousands users (if not millions) and its latest version is SunOS 5.11.

Assuming your question are about SunOS 4.x, you might find SS 5 or similar hardware supporting it and installation media on eBay, however, unless you are interested in creating a computer museum, that system would be pretty useless nowadays.

Similarly, cherry-picking questions for the moment:

The current range runs on the Intel Iantium range (64-bit processors which are not x86-64 processors). HP-UX also runs on PA-RISC processors.
It's not suitable for loading on a PC.


The SCO vs Novell and many more interesting legal cases are covered on the excellent Groklaw site.
http://www.groklaw.net/

Afaik Apple OSX is pay software for Apple computers.

Afaik Solaris (aka Sunos) is pay software for commerical use.

Minix is not unix or Linux.