• WhyYesZoidberg@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “Started as”

    Yeah, no. Yes Xenix was a thing but it would be incorrect to say that it ever was their main product.

    I don’t think anyone has ever hinted on that NT has a unix code base except for some “borrowed” networking code from bsd.

    • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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      10 months ago

      it would be incorrect to say that it ever was their main product.

      They made 3 full versions of it… It was not simply a one off product.

      While Xenix 2.0 was still based on Version 7 Unix,[30] version 3.0 was upgraded to a Unix System III code base,[12]: 9 [31][32] a 1984 Intel manual for Xenix 286 noted that the Xenix kernel had about 10,000 lines at this time.[10]: 1–7  It was followed by a System V R2 codebase in Xenix 5.0 (a.k.a. Xenix System V).[33]

      Also,

      Microsoft’s Chris Larson described MS-DOS 2.0’s Xenix compatibility as “the second most important feature”.[38] His company advertised DOS and Xenix together, describing MS-DOS 2.0 (its “single-user OS”) as sharing features and system calls with Xenix (“the multi-user, multi-tasking, Unix-derived operating system”), and promising easy porting between them.[39]

      So they were simultaneously created AND interoperable (from a program development perspective). This was a full fledged item.