I bet most would never imagine an article like this. And yes, it’s really Bill Gates on the cover. And yes the lead story is about Xenix. Really.
And can you imagine what magazine would have such a glowing photo shoot of Gates? I almost wonder if anyone can imagine which one it would be?
The main point of course is binary compatibility between x86 distros, and killer apps. Of course not quite in that terminology but it’s there. Even in 1985 the hints of the far superior 80386 was being actively talked up, and the promise of a Xenix for the 386 as well.
And the magazine?
Yeah it’s Unix World. Volume 1, issue 5.
A bunch of early issues found their way onto archive.org, and it’s great stuff going over the old ads for SUN, HP, and all the old vendors, the articles wondering what will the future of BSD be, and Bill Gates on Xenix.
I know this will be a great score for all my Xenix fans!
[jacko-poopcorn.gif]
first! 🙂
Second!
The only part that is surprising is just how modest the hoped for size of the Unix market would be.
Crazy in how we had hoped for a computer on every desk, not even thinking of every pocket, and every possible tiny device. I think once we hit the point of contact card reading doors, among other things we certainly hit a crazy tipping point where CPUs can and are in everything.
Heck even storage cards have embedded processors into them. There is that Apple video cable with an embedded ARM to transcode the digital video signal. There is no reason XNU couldn’t run in 256MB of RAM, although it’s probably NetBSD, like the airports.
Thank you for link in Unix World magazine.
Interesting that Microsoft with all of its wrong visions of futures of software stopped
playing with “unix make it yourself” kits, and made os ready for instant usage based on windows api.
Highly respect you neozeed. And your article about Sun-2 os probably the best on internet.