Microsoft Announces Windows 10

[BigTroll]

Yeah I still can't stop singing the praises of mint 17, i put it on a hp mini at work with 1gb ram and a atom n270 1.6ghz, actually even played youtube okay, wasn't smoothest experience I guess you could call it peppy.

[Almighty1]

Originally Posted by SteveNielsen

"Microsoft originally had its own Unix called Xenix which was later sold to SCO (Santa Cruz Operation)."

Microsoft bought Xenix from AT&T and later sold it to SCO.

Wrong, Microsoft "licensed" version 7 Unix from AT&T in 1979, they did not buy Xenix from AT&T.

Xenix was a version of AT&T UNIX, ported and packaged by Microsoft.
Xenix was Microsoft's version of Unix intended for use on microcomputers; since Microsoft was not able to license the "UNIX" name itself, they gave it an original name.

It was first offered for sale to the public in the August 25, 1980 issue of Computerworld that it would be made available for the 16-bit microcomputer market . It was originally priced between $2000 and $9000 per copy, depending on the number of users. The initial port of Xenix to the Intel 8086/8088 architecture was performed by The Santa Cruz Operation.

MS owned the Xenix trademark and had a master UNIX license with AT&T, which allowed them to sub-license Xenix to other vendors.

Xenix varied from its 7th Edition origins by incorporating elements from BSD, and soon (for a time) possessed the most widely installed base of any Unix flavor due to the popularity of the inexpensive x86 processor.

Microsoft did not sell Xenix directly to end users; instead, they licensed it to software OEMs such as Intel, Tandy, Altos and SCO, who then ported it to their own proprietary computer architectures. Microsoft Xenix originally ran on the PDP-11; the first port was for the Zilog Z8001 16-bit processor. Altos shipped a version for their Intel 8086 based computers early in 1982, Tandy Corporation shipped TRS-XENIX for their 68000-based systems in January 1983, and SCO released their port to the IBM PC in September 1983. A port to the 68000-based Apple Lisa also existed. At the time, Xenix was based on AT&T's UNIX System III.

Xenix was licensed by a variety of OEMs, and then either bundled with their hardware or sold as an optional extra. Ports were available for a variety of different architectures, including the Z-8000, Motorola 68000, NS16032, and various Intel processors.

In 1983, IBM contracted with Microsoft to port Xenix to their forthcoming 80286-based machines (codenamed “Salmon”); the result was “IBM Personal Computer XENIX” for the PC/AT.

By this time, there was growing retail demand for Xenix on IBM-compatible personal computer hardware, but Microsoft made the strategic decision not to sell Xenix in the consumer market; instead, they entered into an agreement with a company called the Santa Cruz Operation to package, sell and support Xenix for those customers.

Even with outsourcing retail development to SCO, Microsoft was still putting significant effort into Xenix:

Ports to new architectures, the large majority of the core kernel and driver work, and extensive custom tool development were all done by Microsoft. By the time of the Intel releases, there was significant kernel divergence from the original AT&T code.

The main Microsoft development products (C compiler, assembler, linker, debugger) were included with the Intel-based releases of Xenix, and there were custom internally-developed toolchains for other architectures. Often, the latest version of the tools appeared on Xenix well before they were available on DOS.

The character-oriented versions of Microsoft Word and Multiplan were both ported to Xenix.

MS had a dedicated Xenix documentation team, which produced custom manuals and tutorials.

Version 2.0 of Xenix was released in 1985 and was based on UNIX System V. An update numbered 2.1.1 added support for the Intel 80286 processor. The Sperry PC/IT, an IBM PC AT clone, was advertised as capable of supporting eight users under this version. Subsequent releases improved System V compatibility.

As late as the beginning of 1985, there was some debate inside of Microsoft whether Xenix should be the 16-bit “successor” to DOS; for a variety of reasons – mostly having to do with licensing, royalties, and ownership of the code, but also involving a certain amount of ego and politics – MS and IBM decided to pursue OS/2 instead. That marked the end of any further Xenix investment at Microsoft, and the group was left to slowly atrophy.

In 1987, SCO ported Xenix to the 386 processor, a 32-bit chip. Xenix 2.3.1 introduced support for i386, SCSI and TCP/IP. SCO's Xenix System V/386 was the first 32-bit operating system available on the market for the x86 CPU Architecture.

The final Xenix work at Microsoft was an effort with AT&T to integrate Xenix support into the main System V.3 source code, producing what we unimaginatively called the “Merged Product” (noted by the official name of “UNIX System V, r3.2”.

Once that effort was completed, all Intel-based releases of UNIX from AT&T incorporated Xenix support; in return, Microsoft received royalties for every copy of Intel UNIX that AT&T subsequently licensed.

It will suffice, perhaps, to simply note that this was a good deal for Microsoft.

[Almighty1]

.

[Almighty1]

http://www.adaptivecomputing.com/blo...dows-use-unix/

[SteveNielsen]

http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/

It would be intersting to see someone create an entirely new OS for PCs.

[Almighty1]

Would be more interesting if someone made a new OS that was rock solid in stability and can run apps for any existing OS out there.

[japlytic]

I've read that this version will drop floppy drive support (even from USB drives) - but Arduino could come to the rescue here.

[c_hegge]

^
About time they dropped it. FDDs needed to die long ago.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Even though i was still using a floppy drive 2 years ago, i agree. It's too old, too slow and too unreliable. Good riddance.

Nowadays it is extremely easy to create a bootable USB flash drive for DOS or Linux or whatever else, so floppies are simply not needed anymore.

[keeney123]

A friend of mine said that they were so embarrassed with Windows 8 that they just skip Windows 9.

[Agent24]

Originally Posted by Th3_uN1Qu3

Even though i was still using a floppy drive 2 years ago, i agree. It's too old, too slow and too unreliable.

Ironically cheap flash drives are also slow and unreliable...

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by c_hegge

^
about time they dropped it. Fdds needed to die long ago.

qft!

[lookimback]

How about fixing the problems with 8.1 first? Half the users, including myself, are still having internet issues. I dream of the day when I can permanently switch to Ubuntu. Sadly, at this point, there are still things I need which only run on windows.

[R_J]

Originally Posted by keeney123

A friend of mine said that they were so embarrassed with Windows 8 that they just skip Windows 9.

Windows NEIN

[mockingbird]

Hey, what's wrong with floppies? I still use them for BIOS flashes and such. A lot easier than making a boot CD or a boot flash drive. I've found that formatting flash drives drastically reduces the write performance.

[Agent24]

Originally Posted by lookimback

How about fixing the problems with 8.1 first? Half the users, including myself, are still having internet issues. I dream of the day when I can permanently switch to Ubuntu. Sadly, at this point, there are still things I need which only run on windows.

I'll tentatively suggest WINE although I'm guessing you want to run things that need direct hardware access etc.

Originally Posted by mockingbird

Hey, what's wrong with floppies? I still use them for BIOS flashes and such. A lot easier than making a boot CD or a boot flash drive. I've found that formatting flash drives drastically reduces the write performance.

I like floppies too. But formatting a flash drive shouldn't slow it down, unless the formatter did some thing weird with sector size or something.

[mockingbird]

Originally Posted by Agent24

I like floppies too. But formatting a flash drive shouldn't slow it down, unless the formatter did some thing weird with sector size or something.

No, this is a known phenomenon when re-creating partition tables on USB drives. The manufacturers put some sort of custom variables, and if they're reset, the drive writes very slowly. Some manufacturers even offer a utility to reset the partition tables to stock which solves the problem.

It's possible to insert a MBR to the stick without a complete re-format, but the whole idea of possibly damaging the stick in the aforementioned manner just makes the whole thing risky. And if I had to keep-re-formatting USB sticks, I'd just as well use a portable floppy with disposable disks. I picked up like 100 disks for a dollar a garage sale some years ago.

Now I need to find a low-level floppy formatting utility that isn't 16-bit. The previous one I used won't work in Win x64.

[Per Hansson]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

Now I need to find a low-level floppy formatting utility that isn't 16-bit. The previous one I used won't work in Win x64.

Here you go: http://forum.canardpc.com/threads/29...in-Windows-x64

[lookimback]

Originally Posted by Agent24

I'll tentatively suggest WINE....

I'd need something far stronger than wine for me to forget how much I hate Windows 8/8.1.

[Agent24]

Originally Posted by lookimback

I'd need something far stronger than wine for me to forget how much I hate Windows 8/8.1.

But you know what I mean, right? https://www.winehq.org/
Doesn't work for everything, and likely won't work for anything that needs direct serial, parallel and USB hardware access, but it's still pretty good though...