[TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code?

Charles H Sauer (he/him) sauer at technologists.com
Mon May 2 04:22:19 AEST 2022


I don't recall that particular case, but AIX was definitely derived from 
AT&T code. See 
https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/

HOWEVER, when the 1983 transition happened and AIX became a primary site 
effort (as discussed in the cited reference), there were those new to 
the effort and new to Unix that thought they could redefine behaviors 
inappropriately.

For example, I recall one person trying to enforce only one root login 
at a time. Larry made it quite clear to that person that we were not 
going to violate Unix tradition in that manner.

Charlie

On 5/1/2022 1:08 PM, ron minnich wrote:
> in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I
> understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the
> code."
> 
> Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right.
> One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if
> the full path existed. oops.
> 
> But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to
> handle AIX being different from just about everything else.
> 
> 
> On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin
> <kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was first released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of inexpensive Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server transfers. Took the printing burden off the main systems. Someone came out with a network based print spooler box (Milan ??) later on which I switched over to after MW passed into obscurity.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago.
>>>
>>>> On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin <andreww591 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived
>>>> from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris
>>>> is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a
>>>> genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the
>>>> first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence
>>>> but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of
>>>> my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which
>>>> predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was
>>>> actually the first.
>>>

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