XENIX was a Operating system UNIX developed by Microsoft. Microsoft called it thus because it did not have a license to use the name “UNIX”.

History

In 1979, Microsoft bought a license of version 7 of the UNIX of AT&T and announced the August 25th 1980 its intention to make it available for the Processeur S 16 bits.

XENIX was not sold directly with the end user; Microsoft sold a license to the computer makers which wished the to carry on their systems. The first bearing of XENIX was on a Zilog Z8001 equipped with a processor 16 bits.

Sold licenses

Several companies of the time bought a license XENIX. One can quote in particular:

• Violas which sold a version for their computers with the beginning of 1982;
• Tandy Corporation which sold of them for their computers based on the processor 68000 in January 1983;
• Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) distributed a bearing for the processors Intel 8086 in September 1983, and also a bearing for the processor 68000 of the Apple LISA 2, in 1984.

Microsoft yields XENIX to SCO

Microsoft gave up XENIX when it signed an agreement to jointly develop with IBM the operating system OS/2. In an agreement with SCO in 1987, Microsoft sold its rights to him on XENIX in exchange of 25% of SCO.

SCO distributed a version resulting from UNIX System V baptized SCO XENIX System V for the processors Intel 80286 in 1985. This version will be followed in 1987 of a bearing for the processors Intel 80386, developed to version 2.3.4 exit in 1991.

In 1988, because of market share which represented produces it, part of XENIX was built-in System V Release 3.2 ; this version of System V will be used then basic for SCO UNIX , left in 1989, and become then SCO Open Desktop (SCO ODT) then SCO OpenServer .