HACKER Q&A
📣 gfykvfyxgc

What do you think of Xenix?


How does it compare to modern Unix like operating systems?


  👤 simonblack Accepted Answer ✓
Xenix was Microsoft's release of a Version 7 UNIX clone back in the mid to late 80s. Other clones at that time were Coherent and Cromix.

Xenix was eventually sold to the Santa Cruz Operation who released it as SCO Xenix and then as SCO upgraded to their UNIX to System V UNIX it was renamed as SCO UNIX.

If the name SCO rings a bell, it was Caldera renamed as The SCO Group which sued IBM around 2000 over the ownership of UNIX and tried to kill off Linux. I believe that lawsuit, though basically dead in the water for over ten years, is still running. I think SCOG is currently hoping that IBM will collapse and they can then win by default.

Version 7 UNIX was strictly command-line, though early versions of X-Window ran on it. It wasn't till SysV and BSD UNIX that the X11R6 desktop GUIs took off in the late 80s, IIRC.