Linux was not muscled like that in 1991 - it’s first, barebones kernel was released in September of that year.
I remember installing Linux on a 90MHz 486 in the mid 90s and it barely ran X server with a simple window manager. And if the machine was turned off while Linux was running, you might not be able to boot again.
Linux now, however, is unrecognizeably better.
I remember someone here made a detailed list of how lots of the early linux FOSS stuff was essentially ripoff of unix software lol. I think XFCE was originally a knockoff of CDE or something with XForms. Now it’s the de facto performance DE and the default on Kali.
KDE’s name was a direct rip off of CDE’s name
XFCE’s old panel was a distinct mimic of CDE’s. I liked it…
But now CDE is open source and NsCDE gives you the same look with a highly customised fvwm config if you don’t want to stick to the Motif universe.
There are a lot of hobby Unix-like OS’s however. I don’t see the point in most of them, but still.
You also forgot macOS. It’s a shitty “UNIX-certified” OS though.
Its a BSD derivat tho.
AIX is not dead yet.
While much of the Unix family has died, (especially in the System V family) there is an old one surviving and a few new additions being added.
Solaris is still alive, and from it was forked illumos. Meanwhile BSD has spawned its own family made up of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFlyBSD, but also MacOS and Playstation. Other systems that appeared without any prior history like Linux include Redox OS and SerenityOS.
With that being said, the Unix family has noticeably shrunk, and the System V family is very much in danger of going extinct, with only the Solaris branch looking like it will survive the next year. If the System V family goes extinct, it would make the BSD family the only surviving branch descended from the original Unix.
Oh, and Minix still exists.
If you have an Intel based system with AMT, you’re running minix on a 486 and probably don’t know it.
I use hpux everyday. Mostly it still runs what it needs to run and the hardware for the most part is a tank so you don’t have to think about it.
When it breaks it’s the most infuriating thing in the world. All the hardware is bespoke and obsolete, old unix is maddening coming from modern Linux, it’s a nightmare but kind of fun at the same time. My only hope that HP will open source it at the end of the year.
SCO died by self inflicted gunshot wounds.
Unfortunately, I have a very large client whose core business app runs on SCO still. They’re coming up on year 10 on their migration attempt.
Let me guess. A aged purpose built program used for something like inventory and accounting. Built with something like cobol or pascel. With a set of specific feature set that they are unable to or unwilling to pay for a updated rewrite?
Redox OS is a little baby sprout of grass on the very right
Just wait for Hurd!
Hurd will kick all those little asses, you’ll see, whenever it comes out!
And then GNU will be really independent and superior!
Can just be like a few years now!Edit: I shouldn’t type anymore today …
I don’t think that’s a good fit there, Redox OS is 10 years old and has yet to go stable. In the same timespan in the 90s, Linux managed to carve out a notable portion of server market share. I am not going to Tanenbaum myself and claim it’s never going to go anywhere but as is, Redox is more like the one who didn’t show up because they are still in their moms basement.
I liked OpenSolaris, you could order a free CD from their website and they’d post it, even internationally.
I still have one of those! 😆
Didn’t use it too much, tho. Never installed it on bare metal, only in a VM, and back in those days I was in my distro-hopping phase (I was discovering Arch), so I tested it and quickly forgot about it.
Thanks for digging it up and sharing the photo! It’s nostalgic seeing this
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I used Solaris today. I’ve never been on BSD.
If you lament the death of AT&T Unix, blame IBM.
Irix is missing. It was quite cool at the time. (Well, its desktop was).
They may be dead, but we still have some amazing alternative OS’s that exist that, as far as I’m aware, are still being updated. First thing that came to my mind was AROS ( Amiga Research Operating System that had to change the name to AROS Research Operating System ).
I personally don’t use it since I don’t use Amiga software, but it’s still really cool. Under no circumstances would I recommend it as a daily driver because any software based around Amiga is purely hobby at this point, but it’s still cool to check out.
No love for temple os 😢
Temple OS wasn’t Unix-like.
Also it gets way too much attention as is IMO. Its the only hobby OS project people know about, purely because 4chan turned its mentally ill creator into a meme.
What other hobby operating systems have a cool hook like TempleOS’s religious thing?
Qnx Unix still technically kicking
Quite popular in automotive and other embedded applications. License and support costs were driving the last company I worked for to explore Linux as an alternative though.
SCO crashed and burned in part because they tried to sue multiple Linux providers claiming that they owned all the rights to certain pieces of code that they’d contractually leased from IBM, and that IBM giving code to Linux distributors violated the terms of their agreement with IBM. It was a lawsuit that dragged on for over a decade and a half–I think that it’s still going–and it’s bled SCO of tens of millions of dollars ,esp. since they’ve lost nearly every single claim they’ve made.
Msft funded them for a while to do this:
SCO Unix was mostly dead before then (not fully dead, just smelled like it). They were never the most popular Unix vendor to begin with. Caldera–a commercial Linux distro–had bought them out, and that’s when the legal trouble started.
All those old vendors tended to have one specific thing they were really good at. IIRC, the thing for SCO was that they could load up hundreds of users on a single box on 1990s hardware. No small feat when the traditional Unix model needs to
fork()a process for login/shell/whatever.It’s been a long time since I worked on that case, and I only did a very small part working on the discovery documents, so I’ve forgotten a lot, and had a lot of details a little confused. :)
It sounds like it was probably one of the seminal patent troll cases.
but why was mematic used if GIMP was used?
Why are there only five headstones and two characters in the second panel when there are eight operating systems in the first panel?
GNU Hurd is technically alive, just horribly obsolete.
I say the FSF rewrite Hurd, but using Rust or Zig.
The ghost doesn’t get a gravestone
SCO Unix still exists i guess
Sun.
