Microsoft's Ancient History w/ Unix

NutscrapeSucks writes "The Register is running a article which discusses Microsoft's experience running their own version of UNIX, called Xenix, as their standard desktop operating system. Before they got involved with OS/2 and later NT, Microsoft considered UNIX to be the PC operating system of the future. Talks about Bill Gates running vi, difficulties with AT&T, and other interesting tidbits." There's a lot of stuff everyone knows, and a lot of stuff you probably didn't know. Worth a read.

Comments

Windows NT == VMS

[quark2universe]

"And through Windows NT, you can see it throughout the design. In a weak sense, it is a form of Unix."

Actually, Windows NT was built very much like VMS, the operating system for the VAX built by DEC. David Cutler, one of the main architects for VMS, was hired by Microsoft to build Windows NT. The name Windows NT itself is one of those HAL like play on letters where each letter is the VMS letter plus 1. WNT VMS

Re:Windows NT == VMS

[maggard]

In the novel 2001, the joke about HAL was that H, A, L are one letter before I, B, M, so HAL was one step ahead of IBM.

Actually Arthur C. Clarke has denied this repeatedly, loudly, and at this point irritably. He even wrote Byte Magazine a few years ago correcting their reference to this geek lore. He claims this is just one of those accidents that happens and indeed in his book "The Worlds of 2001" goes into a bit on how HAL's name actually did come about: Pretty much happenstance, it was "Athena" through most of drafts.

IBM/HAL, Santa/Saten, its all part of a biiig plot...

Re:Windows NT == VMS

[VAXman]

VMS was hugely successful. It was the most successful minicomputer OS of all time, and made DEC filthy rich in the 80's.

What killed VMS was not DEC, but Unix - mostly Sun. Their stuff was 10x as fast at 1/10 the price, so people bought Sun instead. DEC was never really able to adapt from the closed proprietary business model to the open commodity business model. Even with Alpha, DEC never got more than 1% of the Unix market.

a glorified email terminal

[Speare]

When I worked at Microsoft in the early 90s, the role of Xenix was pretty much relegated to a glorified email terminal. A few old-timer people on the teams I worked with used it, and few of those people did anything but read their email remotely on the Xenix email servers. I don't recall anyone actually running Xenix on any box within their own office.

At no time did I get the impression that a developer at Microsoft felt that Xenix/UNIX was the future of the desktop. It was big, it was bloated, it couldn't run on then-current PCs well, nevermind the smaller machines of the mid-80s.

Sure, maybe there were some hold-outs in groups I didn't interact with, and I was only there long past Xenix heyday, but Xenix had no chance at the desktop, really.

Re:a glorified email terminal

[Lumpy]

you are so full of Shit you stink.

Xenix ran fine on a 386DX-35 platform supporting 10 users off of that ONE computer using Wyse 75 terminals. It supported several businesses helping with Multiple tasks in that company using that ONE computer. Excalibur was the best Business accounting/inventory/Point of Sale software on the market at that time (1992) It ran faster than anything that microsoft offered it gave you more productivity than anything that Microsoft offere'd then and NOW from your equipment and coince it was really written by a group that were outside Microsoft at the beginning, bought by them and then re-sold (SantaCruz Operation) it was never tainted with the Microsoft Style. The Only thing that sucked about Xenix was that the Xwindows system was horrible and required specalized hardware, Compiling X11 on it solved that problem. ..

SCO Xenix was a awesome thing at the time, and I still have the origional disks and Manuals from that 386 version.

ATT's "failure" to properly manage UNIX

[mikewas]

ATT had no reason to "properly manage" UNIX. ATT's forays into areas that the FCC deemed outside of the realm of telecommunications (i.e. computer HW & SW) resulted in a a choice for ATT:
1. retain the telecommunications monopoly but refrain from any money-making ventures outside of the telecom area
2. become a real business, make money on anything you want, and open up competition in telecommunications.

ATT chose choice #1 -- retain the monopoly. This was for them a sure thing. They had always managed to retain the monopoly in the past and it provided a steady source of income. Computers were new, and internally were not percieved as a consumer item.

So at the time Bill was talking about ATT, the UNIX development/administration/lisencing was, by legal necesity, not a money-making area for ATT. UNIX was a tool to develop telecom products, the real business of ATT. Giving the technology away and managing the process "for the public good" was a means to demonstrate that it was not a money-making venture as well as a way to trumpet Bell Labs. It didn't recieve the best support from management, though, as they were focused on the money-making areas of the business.

On the other hand, the statement that ATT didn't know what they had, was that ever true! Once they did figure it out it was too late, they were legally barred from that market untl after deregulation (nothing is forever!) -- too late!

Some history notes on NT's development:

[Otis_INF]

Slideshow: http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix-win2000/invite dtalks/lucovsky_html/.

In there, you'll learn 'NT' was related to the first proc it was targeted to, the 860 of intel, codenamed 'N10', plus some juicy stuff about the development of NT3.1 and win2k, and some related notes to Unix and NT.

Re:Cut N Paste?

[MAXOMENOS]

I've always found these handy:

• dd and yy to cut and copy, respectively
• p to paste
• J (note caps) to append the next line to the end of the present line
• U (note caps) to undo the last command.
• :1,$ sub /oldphrase/newphrase/ to replace oldphrase with newphrase throughout a document
• :syntax on with VIM, for syntax highlighting
• :cd to change current working directory
• :e! file to edit file file
• CTRL-W n to create a split window...sometimes useful if you're writing code and want to have the header file right in front of you.
• CTRL-W w to switch from one split window to another
• :set sw=num and :set softtabstop=num to set how far your tab key indents (in spaces). I use four spaces, and this is set automatically by putting these lines in my .vimrc and .gvimrc files.
• /phrase to search forward for phrase phrase; / alone to search again for that same phrase. ? searches backwards.

That's just off the top of my head. Things beside these I can usually find in New Riders' book Vi IMproved -- Vim

Good luck. I use VIM almost exclusively for my editing needs; over the last ten years it has been my constant companion through thick and thin. I wouldn't work without it.