Date: Tue Aug 15 15:14:00 EDT 1995
X-Version: 2.9

6.6)  Brief notes on some well-known (commercial/PD) Unices.

      (I am not at all satisfied with this section, unfortunately I
      have neither the time nor the documents to make it much better
      (wrt contents).  Should only list Unices known by a reasonably
      wide audience.  Small and non-US Unices welcome, e.g. Eurix.  In
      need of reformatting)

      This section lists (in alphabetical order) some of the better
      known Unices along with a brief description of their nature.
      Unfortunately, it's out-of-date almost by definition...

      (sorted alpha, ignoring numbers and other chars)

      AIX:  IBM's Unix, based on SVR2 (later up to SVR3.2?) with varying
         degrees of BSD extensions, for various hardwares.  Proprietary
         system admin (SMIT).  Both 850 and Latin-1 CPs.  Quite
         different from most Unices and among themselves.
         Newsgroup: comp.unix.aix.
         - 1.x (for 386 PS/2)
         - 2.x (for PC RTs)
         - 3.x (for RS/6000), paging kernel, logical volume manager, i18n;
           3.2 adds TLI/STREAMS.  SV-based with many enhancements.
           4.1 is latest (includes support for PowerPC?)
         - AIX/ESA, runs native on S/370 and S/390 mainframes, based on OSF/1.
         AIX was to have been base for OSF/1 until Mach was chosen instead.
         I hope this subsection is converging :-)

      AOS (IBM):  4.3BSD port to IBM PC RT (for educational institutes).
         Don't confuse with DG's proprietary OS of same name.

      Arix:  SV

      A3000UX (Commodore): 68030-based SVR4 Unix (?) for the Amiga.

      A/UX (Apple): SV with Berkeley enhancements, NFS, Mac GUI.  System 6
         (later System 7) runs as guest of A/UX (opposite of MachTen).
         Newsgroup: comp.unix.aux.
         - 2.0:  SVR2 with 4.2BSD, system 6 Mac applications.
         - 3.0 (1992): SVR2.2 with 4.3BSD and SVR3/4 extensions; X11R4,
           MacX, TCP/IP, NFS, NIS, RPC/XDR, various shells, UFS or S5FS.
           System 7 applications.
         - 4.0 will have/be OSF/1. But I hear Apple has decided to drop
           A/UX (will go for AIX now that they're together with IBM on
           the PPC)

      3B1 (680x0): SV-based, done by Convergent for AT&T.
         Newsgroup: comp.sys.3b1.

      BNR/2: stands for BSD Net/2 Release? Includes NetBSD/1, FreeBSD.

      BOS for Bull's DPX/2 (680x0)
         - V1 (1990): SVR3 with BSD extensions (FFS, select, sockets),
           symmetric MP, X11R3
         - V2 (1991): adds job control, disk mirroring, C2 security,
           DCE extensions
         - There's also BOS/X, and AIX-compatible Unix for Bull's PPC
           workstations. How it relates to above two is unknown.

      386BSD: Jolitz's port of Net/2 software.  Posix, 32-bit, still in alpha
         (now version 0.1).

      BSD/386 (80386):  from BSDI, with source (augmented Net2 software)
         Newsgroup: comp.unix.bsd.

      Chorus/MiXV:  Unix SVR3.2 (SVR4) over Chorus nucleus, ABI/BCS.

      Coherent (Mark Williams Company): For 80286. Unix clone compatible with
         V7, some SVR2 (IPC). V4.0 is 32-bit. Newsgroup: comp.os.coherent.
         Mark Williams closed down early '95.

      Consensys: SVR4.2

      CTIX: SV-based, from Convergent

      D-NIX:  SV

      DC/OSx (Pyramid):  SVR4. Newsgroup: comp.sys.pyramid.

      DELL UNIX [DELL Computer Corp.]: SVR4

      DomainIX: see DomainOS below.

      DomainOS (Apollo, now HP): proprietary OS; layered on top is BSD4.3 and
         SVR3 (a process can use either, neither or both).  Development now
         stopped, some features now in OSF/1 (and NT).  Now at SR10.4.
         Name for SR9.* was DomainIX.  Newsgroup: comp.sys.apollo.

      DVIX (NT's DVS):  SVR2

      DYNIX (Sequent): 4.2BSD-based

      DYNIX/PTX: SVR3-based

      EP/IX (Control Data Corp.): for MIPS 2000/3000/6000/4000; based on
         RISC/OS 4 and 5, POSIX-ABI-compliant. SVR3, SVR4 and BSD modes.

      Esix (80386):  pure SVR4, X11, OpenLook (NeWS), Xview

      Eurix (80?86):  SVR3.2 (Germany)

      FreeBSD: 386bsd 0.1 with the patchkit applied, and many updated
         utilities.

      FTX: Stratus fault-tolerant OS (68K or i860-i960 hardware)

      Generics UNIX (80386): SVR4.03 (Germany)

      GNU Hurd (?):  vaporware from the Free Software Foundation (FSF):
         Unix emulator over Mach 3.0 kernel.  Many GNU tools are very
         popular (emacs) and used in the PD Unices.

      HELIOS (Perihelion Software): for INMOS transputer and many other
         platforms.

      HP-UX (HP):  old from S III (SVRx), now SVR2 (4.2BSD?) with SV utilities
         (they have trouble making up their minds).
         - 6.5: SVR2
         - 7.0: SVR3.2, symlinks
         - 7.5
         - 8.0: BSD based? for HP-9000 CISC (300/400) and RISC (800/700),
           shared libs
         - 9.0: includes DCE

      Interactive SVR3.2 (80x86): pure SVR3.  Interactive has been bought
         by Sun; will their system survive Solaris?

      Idris: first Unix clone by Whitesmith. A small Unix? For INMOS
         transputer and others?.

      IRIX (SGI):  Version 4: SVR3.2, much BSD.  Version 5.x (current is 5.2)
         is based on SVR4.  Newsgroup: comp.sys.sgi.

      Linux (386/486/586): Unix under GPL (not from FSF, though).  Available
        with sources.  POSIX compliant w/ SysV and BSD extensions.  Being
        ported to Alpha/AXP and PowerPC (ports for 680x0 Amigas and Ataris
        already exist; a port is also being done to the MIPS/4000).
        Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.{admin,announce,development,help,misc}.

      MacBSD, ?: works on Mac II (directly on H/W).

      MachTen, Tenon Intersystems:  runs as a guest under MacOS; 4.3BSD
         environment with TCP, NFS. Scaled down version: MachTen Personal.

      MacMach (Mac II): 4.3BSD over Mach 3.0 microkernel, X11, Motif, GNU
         software, sources, experimental System 7 as Mach task.  Complete
         with all sources (need Unix license).

      Mach386: from Mt Xinu.  Based on Mach 2.5, with 4.3BSD-Tahoe
         enhancements.  Also 2.6 MSD (Mach Source Distribution).

      Microport (80x86):  pure SVR4, X11, OpenLook GUI

      Minix (80x86, Atari, Amiga, Mac):  Unix clone compatible with V7.
         Sold with sources.  Being POSIXified (sp?). For PCs, and surely
         many others (eg. INMOS transputer). Newsgroup: comp.os.minix.

      MipsOS:  SVish (RISC/OS, now dropped, was BSDish)

      more/BSD (VAX, HP 9000/300):  Mt Xinu's Unix, based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe.

      NCR UNIX: SVR4 (4.2?)

      Net/2 tape (from Berkeley, 1991): BSD Unix, essentially compatible with
         4.3BSD, includes only sources free of AT&T code, no low-level code.
         See 386BSD and BSD/386 above.

      NetBSD 0.8: is actually 386bsd in a new suit. Ported to [34]86, MIPS,
         Amiga, Sun, Mac. What is relation to Net/2?
         - 1.0 came out in '94.

      NEXTSTEP (Intel Pentium and 86486, Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC, NeXT 68040):
         BSD4.3 over Mach kernel, own GUI.
         - 1.x, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1 (old)
         - 3.2 (current version,
              Intel Pentium and 86486,
              Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC,
              NeXT 68040)
         - 3.3 (shipping; SPARC-version available)
         - 4.0 (to be announced, will include Sun SPARC version and
           will be OpenStep compliant
         - no NEXTSTEP for PowerPC or DEC Alpha yet announced (are there plans?

      NEWS-OS (Sony)
         - 3.2

      OSF/1 (DEC): DEC's port of OSF/1.  I think this is now (4/93) available
         on DEC's latest Alpha AXP (64-bit machine).

      OSx (Pyramid): Dualport of both SysV.3 and BSD4.3. Newsgroup:
         comp.sys.pyramid.

      PC-IX (IBM 8086):  SV

      Plan 9 (AT&T): announced 1992, complete rewrite, not clear how close to
         Unix it is.  Key points: distributed, very small, various hardwares
         (Sun, Mips, Next, SGI, generic hobbit, 680x0, PCs), C (not C++ as
         rumors had it), new compiler, "8 1/2" window system (also very
         small), 16-bit Unicode, CPU/file servers over high speed nets.

      SCO Xenix (80x86): Versions for XT (not robust!), 286, 386 (with demand
         paging).  Today bulk of code is from System V.  Stable product.

      SCO Unix (80x86):  SVR3.2 (stopped taking USL source at this point).

      Sinix [Siemens]: System V base.

      Solaris (Sparc, x86):
         - 1.0:  essentially same as SunOS 4.1.1, with OpenWindows 2.0 and
           DeskSet utilities.
         - 1.0.1:  SunOS 4.1.2 with multiprocessing (kernel not multithreaded);
           not for 386
         - 2.0: (initially announced as SunOS 5.0 in 1988) based on SVR4
           (with symmetric MP?), will include support for 386; with
           OpenWindows 3.0 (X11R4) and OpenLook, DeskSet, ONC, NIS.  Both
           a.out (BSD) and elf (SVR4) formats.  Kerberos support.  Compilers
           unbundled!
         - Solaris is OpenStep compliant (non-NeXT, but with NEXTSTEP API)
           with latest (1994?) version.
         - Sun will ship its OpenStep-implementation with project DOE for
           Solaris. First versions will be for SPARC-based Suns, but a
           version for Solaris 2.4 for x86 and PowerPC will appear later.

      SunOS (680x0, Sparc, i386):  based on 4.3BSD, includes much from
         System V.  Main Sun achievements: NFS (1984), SunView (1985), NeWS
         (1986, postscript imaging, now in OpenWindows), OpenLook GUI standard,
         OpenWindows (NeWS, X11, SunView!).  Newsgroup: comp.sys.sun.*.
         - 3.x:  SV IPC package, FIFOs
         - 4.0.3: lightweight processes, new virtual mem, shared libs
         - 4.1: STREAMS & TLI, 8-bit clean?, async I/O, ms-dos file system
         (continues as Solaris -- see above).

      UHC (80x86): pure SVR4, X11, Motif

      Ultrix (DEC):  based on 4.2BSD with much of 4.3.
         Newsgroup: comp.unix.ultrix.
         - 4.4 is latest

      UNICOS (Cray):  System V base.  Newsgroup: comp.unix.cray
         - 5.x, 6,x, 7.0

      UnixWare Release 4.2 [Univel]: SVR4.2; over NetWare. Univel no longer
         exists.

      UTEK (Tektronix)
         - 4.0

      VOLVIX (Archipel S.A.): UNIX-based OS built around a communication
         based, distributed, real-time micro-kernel. SVR3.2 system calls,
         BSD4.4 file/network system calls (VFS, FFS). Also NFS and X11.
         Vanilla VOLVIX is for transputers.

      Xenix (80x86):  1st Unix on Intel hardware, based on SVR2 (previously on
         S III and even V7).  Newsgroup: comp.unix.xenix.