Amiga Unix (Amix)
amigaunix.com
amigaunix.com
If instead you think of SysVR4 as the first "Unix", then Amiga Unix was indeed a very early Unix. I think this is a useful distinction, because de facto most of the software interfaces we associate with "Unix" are just System V (especially R4) in a trench coat. Note that POSIX and and SysVR4 released the same year (1988); they're technically unaffiliated efforts but represent a consolidation of a bunch of competing ideas into a ... tacit compromise.
Or, being more practical, SysVR4 is the absolute oldest "Unix" you're going to have a good chance of building modern (1990-2020s) software made "for unix" on. You can get a surprising amount of mileage out of a SysVR4 distribution -- but go any older, and you'll be in for a lot of "fun"!
And that's exactly why the term "early Unix" suggests "pre-SVR4". Once a platform has matured, it's not "early" anymore.
The whole thing is weirdly written. For example:
> Like many early Unix variants, Amiga Unix never became wildly popular
Except SVR4 was popular.
So they're either saying Amix was early Unix, then the GP is correct that it wasn't early Unix. Or they're saying that SVR4 was unpopular, which is also untrue.
I don't think the blurb is intending to suggest either of these points though. I'm sure people maintaining a fan site for Amix would understand their history. So I just think they've written the blurb very poorly. Poor enough that the default conclusion people are likely to draw is a technically incorrect one.
As I said, I’m not trying to claim that they’re “wrong”. Just that the whole thing is phrased poorly because it’s really not clear what their context is. And that’s easily demonstrated by the fact that we’re arguing over said context here.
As someone who was a UNIX developer (both kernel and userland) working for a UNIX support shop (Interactive Systems Corporation, later bought by Kodak and then Sun) from the mid 70's, starting with UNIX 6, through the late 80's and once gave a Usenix talk called "Everything you wanted to know about System V but were afraid to ask", where I held up the white System III manual and the black System V manual and joked that they had gone to the dark side, I find this comment utterly nonsensical. I can look through today's BSD man pages, or its code, and it's very familiar.
> If instead you think of SysVR4 as the first "Unix"
But of course it wasn't.
Probably most notably, it implemented SysV shared memory (sys/shm.h) plus messages/semaphores, STREAM support, SysV termio, SysV libcurses, and probably others I'm not aware of.
I'm not sure how much any of these helped run software, but it bears pointing out anyway.
Should not comment anything tired!
Their SVR4 was the first real port of SVR4 to a commercially available system that I know of.
The early versions of most products suck. It's a matter of throwing down enough time and resources to get through that phase
and the background:
https://web.archive.org/web/20001001024559/http://www.best.c...
But I distinctly remember an editorial in UnixWorld magazine (yes, we had magazines like that back then you could buy in like... a drug store...) with the headline "Up from toyland" talking about the Atari TT030 + SysV. Not exactly flattering.
The reality is by 1992, 93, 94 the workstation market was already being heavily disrupted by Linux (or other x86 *nix/BSD) on 386/486. The 68k architecture wasn't compelling anymore (despite being awesome), as Motorola was already pulling the rug out from under it.
And, yeah, many people just ran NetBSD on their Atari TTs or Falcon030s anyways.
From Wikipedia:
> Linux (/ˈlɪnʊks/ LIN-uuks)[16] is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel,[17] a kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds
The first linux was not able to run much.
There were video and multimedia applications at the time that could ONLY be tackled by an Amiga unless you wanted to pay $10,000 or more for specialized equipment. Besides the Video Toaster, which 'nuff said, Amigas also provided teletext-like TV information services in the USA, such as weather forecasts and the Prevue Channel (a cable channel that scrolled your cable system's program listings). Teletext itself never really caught on here.
Anime fan subtitling was also done almost exclusively on Amiga hardware.
Amiga gained a reputation as a glorified game console in the wider market, but those who knew... knew.
I am certain someone have the full source code somewhere, I just hope that they eventually say "f--k it, it has been 36 years, let the world have it".
While I succeeded in making contact with the right person, it quickly transpired that the full source code was subject to proof of having a valid Novell license. Needless to say, no such license was available at ESCOM at the time and an opportunity was lost, perhaps permanently.
That said, I would be mighty surprised if the full AT&T SVR4 source code which was the foundation for Amiga Unix has never been accidentally/intentionally leaked. Could be a fun summer project to rebuild Amiga Unix from scratch ;-)
In many ways it looked quite pleasant and fresh compared to the dark and colourful palettes of CDE-based Solaris.
I presume this was written back around 2005 or so, but honestly color me impressed if there has ever been malware targeting Amix in the wild.
Also, ouch :D
> Table 1: Unix standard → Amiga UNIX alternative
mail elm
more less
finger Finger
vi emacs
cc gcc