[Music]ladies and gentlemen introducingMicrosoft your go-to company for Unixforget those silly single tasking singleuser operating systems like CPM andbasic forget Bonkers graphical userinterfaces that cost bazillions ofdollars like the Xerox star wait just aminute well we show you its power of Lspipelines Man pages and more but notless how much would you pay for a Unixbased multitasking operating system thatwill Pioneer the way that we work onIntel microcomputers five thousanddollars ten thousand dollars no it'sjust995 dollars it's zenix order today fromMicrosoftyep you heard me right Microsoft made aversion of Unix that was available forpersonal computersand they made it before they even madeMS-DOS and windows what's more for awhile Microsoft was the world's largestreseller of Unix in the worldstrap n because today you're going tofind out how close we got to a worldwhere Unix could have been on everyone'sdesktop instead of Windows or Mac OS inthis video we'll take a look at theorigins of xenix its features and howand why it was sold to the Santa Cruzoperation as well as xenix's demise I'llalso wax lyrical for a while about whatcould have been in a world where xenixsucceededback in 1969 a couple of computerscientists here at Bell Labs started todevelop some programs they needed fortheir own usewhat Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchiestarted developing then has evolved intothe Unix operating system which by nowis widely used around the worldat T is no newcomer to computersalthough at T previously was barred fromselling computers in the OpenMarketplace its research and developmentarm at T Bell Laboratories has alwaysbeen at the Leading Edge of computertechnology as computers have grown inpower and complexity at T has developednew computer software to make themachines more productiveThe Versatile Unix operating systemdeveloped at Bell labs in 1969 now isfast becoming the computer industrystandard of the 1980swith its entry into the computerbusiness a t the company that largelycreated today's computer technology hasbecome a major Force shaping its futurein the late 1970s the Unix operatingsystem was gaining popularity inacademic and research circles at thesame time Microsoft was bought afledgling company of about four yearsold with the dockiest of docks at thehelm Bill Gates and Paul Allen despitetheir nerdy nature Microsoft hadrecently become successful selling theirversions of programming languages suchas basic and Fortran although some couldargue that you could do simple operatingsystem type functions with basic andFortran Microsoft had not yet developedany operating system software at thattime Unix was a very popular operatingsystem but was expensive and ran only onMainframe or mini computers recognizingthe potential demand for a unix-likeoperating system on the emerging worldof personal computers Microsoft decidedto create its own version of Unixwith Microsoft being a relatively smallplayer in the Computing industry theybelieve that developing a Unix basedoperating system allowed the company toestablish itself as a credible andInnovative software vendor so in 1978Microsoft entered into a joint venturerelationship with atnt to create aversion of Unix that would run on 8-bitand 16-bit microprocessors used in earlypersonal computers by acquiring therights to Unix from atnt Microsoft wasable to leverage the existing code baseand development efforts of atnt and itsPartners which helped to accelerate thedevelopment of the operating system manyyears later at the 1996 Unix ExpoMicrosoft's chairman Bill Gates saidMicrosoft had for a long time theworld's highest volume at T Unix licensethis new operating system was to becalled zenix and so it was Microsoft'sversion of Unix would become popularwith businesses particularly those whocouldn't afford to buy expensiveMainframe or mini computers the projectwas challenging as the hardwareavailable at a time was not as powerfulas its larger contemporary computersespecially as there were limitations onthe amount of memory and storage thatcould be useddespite the challenges involvedMicrosoft was able to develop xenix formicrocomputers building the system in atiny memory and storage footprint tryasking Microsoft to do that todaycenix was able to offer a powerful Unixderivative to businesses at a fractionof the cost of Mainframe equivalents itfeatured proper multi-user andmultitasking capabilities at a timebefore its single tasking single userbrother MS-DOS wasn't even a twinkle inBill Gates eye on the 25th of AugustMicrosoft announced xenix to the worldand shipped its first version to Centraldata Corporation in 1981. in the yearsthat followed later versions such asxenix 286 and the imaginatively titledxenix 386 ran on more powerfulprocessors and offered more features andbetter performance very quickly xenixbecame popular with businesses butparticularly those in the financial andbanking IndustriesPhoenix was a multi-user operatingsystem that could run on personalcomputers with Intel processors as wellas some other processors especially inthe early days before Intel processorswere the star of the show as you can seein this graphic zenix was on platformssuch as the pdp-11 the Apple Lisa thesun 2 system Intel system 86 machinesthe Altos 8600 Acorn systems running thenational semiconductor ns16032processors as well as tandy's model 16which was on the Motorola 6 to 8000 CPUwith TRS xenixxenix supported many of the samefeatures as its core at T Unix base suchas command line interface filemanagement and the ability to runmultiple programs at the same timehowever zenix had some unique featuresas well for example it had a virtualmemory system that allowed programs touse more memory than was physicallyavailable in the computer this made iteasier for businesses to run multipleprograms at the same time later on inits life zenix Incorporated elementsfrom version 4.2 of the Berkeley systemsdistribution of Unix BSD notably the vior VI text editor and is supportinglibraries term cap and curses its kernelfeatured some original Extensions byMicrosoft themselves notably filewalking and semi-force as well as avisual shell for menu driven operationinstead of the traditional Unix shell italso included a limited form of localnetworking overseas video lines rs232ports it was possible through the mecnetsoftware which supported file transferand electronic mail although Unix toUnix copy protocol uucp was still usedfor networking via modems the cost ofxenix varied depending on the versionand Licensing options that were selectedin the early days of zenix Microsoftoffered several different versions ofthe operating system each with differentpricing and Licensing options forexample xenix 3.0 which was released in1983 was priced at a fairly reasonable995 dollars per copy for a single userlicense whilst the 5 user license wouldcost 2 495 that was a highly competitiveoffering compared to at T's Unix whichwas selling for at least ten thousanddollars at the time as xenix evolved andwas rebranded somewhat as Microsoft'sUnix operating system pricing andLicensing options changed Microsoftsystem v386 released 2.2 which wasreleased in 1989 was priced at 1995 fora single user license whilst the 10 userlicense cost9995. for larger organizations Microsoftalso offered site licensing options forxenix which allowed for an unlimitednumber of users to access the operatingsystem for a flat fee these sitelicensing options could be customized tomeet the specific needs of theorganization and were priced accordinglyin reality though back in those days atMicrosoft they very rarely had astringent price book and were known tojust make up their pricingthe main thing is though that it wasgenerally considered to be an affordableoption for small and medium-sizedbusinesses compared with thecontemporaries such as at T Unix as anexample Unix system V or 5 which wasreleased in 1983 the license was twentyfive thousand dollars plus royalties ofone thousand dollars per system and thatwas on the OEM licenseit hurts me a little bit to see butMicrosoft actually made a robust andreliable operating system in xenix andit was well suited for the needs of thesmall and medium-sized businesses at thetime however compared to othercontemporary operating systems of thetime it had a few shortcomings one ofthe main limitations of xenix was thelack of compatibility with other Unixbased operating systems unlike otherUnix V8s for most of its life zenix didnot adhere to standard Unixspecifications which could make it a bitdifficult to Port applications betweendifferent Unix systems this lack ofcompatibility made it challenging forbusinesses to integrate zenix basedsystems with other Unix based systemsanother limitation of xenix was the lackof support for graphical user interfacesat the time the use of gui's orgraphical user interfaces was becomingmore popular and many contemporaryoperating systems such as the AppleMacintosh the leesa and later MicrosoftWindows were designed to be moreuser-friendly by incorporating gui'sxenix on the other hand was a text-basedsystem making it appear less accessibleto those non-technical users as the 80swore on xenix did eventually support theX windowing system which was the defacto Unix graphical windowing systemcommonly known as X11 which had beendeveloped in about June of 1984 howeverX11 support was not available in earlyversions of zenix and was only adoptedlater with xenix system v386 released2.2 which was released in 1989. in factby the time X11 support had been addedto ZX other operating systems such asSonos BSD and later Linux had alreadygained significant market share in theUnix World which limited the impact theX11 support had on xenix's overallsuccesshowever arguably the biggest shortcomingwith the development of xenix was thatit was largely focused on supporting theneeds of businesses which meant that itdid not have the same level of supportfor Consumer orientated applications andyes games that other operating systemssuch as dos and later Windows had thismade it less attractive to home usersand limited its potential Market beyondthe business sector it's all about theappsso now you've heard a bit about whatzenix was it's interesting to let themind wander and ask what would the worldhave looked like if Microsoft hadcontinued to develop xenix instead ofgoing down that Dawson Windows route onepossible outcome is that xenix couldhave continued to grow in popularity andbecome the dominant operating system forpersonal computers instead of Dawsonlater Windows it was only with theAdvent of Windows 95 that Microsoftreally start getting close tomultitasking and even then a fullypreemptive multitasking multi-useroperating system kind of like Unix wellthat wasn't available until Windows NTcame along both doors and windows hadsome level of networking support fairlyearlier on but it almost always was avia shim and it was pretty archaicmultiple users wasn't really a thing atall in MS-DOS and again it wasn'tproperly implemented in Windows untilabout Windows and T but almost from thestart xenix could be described as amultitasking multi-user operating systemand very early it supported networkingof sorts if xenix had become thedominant operating system it might haveled to a different set of applicationsand services being developed with agreater emphasis on distributedcomputing and networking way ahead ofwhen it became the norm every householdhas a multi-user multitasking networkingoperating system in it today even inyour pocket with your smartphone but itreally took until probably around thelate 90s before that sort of thing wasbecoming commonplace imagine if you hadall that power on your own PC back inthe 80s the fact is that was a realityit just didn't filter down to the homeor the small PC market we all had dosand windows and often didn't think tolook outside of what came pre-installedwith our PC if xenix had become the defacto operating system for the PC markMarket it is likely that IBM wouldn'thave asked Microsoft to make OS 2 withthem and so would have gone somewhereelse maybe IBM would have had even lessSuccess With os2 Or maybe it would havetriumphed I guess we'll never know aboutthat it's also possible that Linux mighthave not made as much of a foothold asit did after all Linux was built out ofthe frustration lennis's new 386computer came with MS-DOS pre-installedand he wasn't satisfied at how littledos utilized to power off the 386 if his3d6 had come with zenix pre-installedwould he even have had the thought towrite his own Unix the mind boggles withthe alternative universe that we mighthave lived inthe Santa Cruz operation usually knownas school was coincidentally establishedin 1979. it was a software company thatwas focused on creating unix-basedoperating systems for businesses asearly as 1982 Microsoft who at the timehad between 25 and 50 employees andscope who had a roughly about the samenumber of employees forged a jointagreement for development and Technologyexchange with the two companiesEngineers working together onimprovements to zenix indeed score'sfirst shrink wrapped product was a copyof xenix that operated on Apple's newLisa computer in 1984 Microsoft andschool jointly announced that score hadbeen provided right to distribute xenixwithin the United States branded as goesEnix the first release of scozenixsystem 5 was in 1985 for the IBM PC XTand compatibles as well as an enhancedversion for the then u286 based IBM pc80the skull branded version had some majorenhancements over the zenix core systemssuch as local area networking andmulti-user support despite a deal to buybetween 11 and 16 percent of school byMicrosoft in February of 1989 industrySkeptics viewed Microsoft's level ofcommitment to xenix with some suspicionfrom as early as the mid-1980s it laterbecame clear that Microsoft was losinginterest in xenix from their ownbusiness perspective there were a numberof reasons for Microsoft's waninginterest the first reason was due inpart to the breakup of the Bell Systemin 1982 prior to this atnt had not beenable to sell Unix in a traditional senseaccording to the Wikipedia article onxenix Microsoft believed that it couldno longer compete with unix's developersas Microsoft were having to payroyalties to ATT and Licensing this wasperhaps not something that they thoughtthe future of Microsoft was forlicensing their own products was farmore lucrative than re-licensing someoneelse's after all secondly before themid-1980s MS-DOS was rapidly taking offas a product due in part to the factthat it shipped with almost every singlePC despite dos not being nearly aspowerful as xenix dos was good enoughfor most businesses of the timeMicrosoft was also investing much oftheir time in a new graphical operatingsystem Windows which was launched inlate 1985. Bill Gates believed that thegraphical user interface for a personalcomputer was the futureand evidence could be found in thisstatement as early as 1981 when BillGates ordered the creation of interfacemanager which eventually became theMS-DOS executive part of Windows 1.0 bythe early 1990s windows by then version3.1 was out and had become Microsoft'sFlagship product the third factor thatcontributed Microsoft's decision to sellxenix was that the Unix market wasbecoming increasingly crowded theemergence of other Unix based operatingsystems such as Sun Solaris had gainedpopularity amongst businesses andMicrosoft found it harder to competewith themfinally the legal challenges that schoolfaced over the ownership of the Unixoperating system also played a role inMicrosoft's decision to sell xenixschool had decided to buy the rights toUnix from Novell who in turn had boughtthe original rights from the Unix systemLaboratories in 1993. this became athree-way deal with HP being in the mixtoo information Week Magazine said in1995 that the computer industry was notso sure that skull could handle beingthe primary Unix Shepherd and that thedeal was a complicated plan and that wasconfusing from the start some of theseissues were LED well into the 2000s withthe legal battles between the newlyformed School group and Novell theuncertainty and controversy surroundingUnix ownership may have made it lessattractive to Microsoft to continueinvesting in zenix despite all of theseaspects staff at Microsoft were said tobe using xenix internally as late as1988 and their internal email system wasrunning on a 68 000 based zenix serverwell into the mid-1990s there wereobviously still a few folks that wereloyal to xenix Until the End however in1995 Microsoft decided to sell therights of xenix to score exclusivelyafter acquiring xenix School continue todevelop and improve the operating systemreleasing several versions includingscore zenix 386 and score open serverforeignSchool eventually sold its business toLinux company Caldera in the year 2000due to earnings shortfalls in 2002confusingly Caldera renamed themselvesthe score group the school group createdsome legal challenges in the early 2000sover ownership of the Unix operatingsystem in a strange twist of fate Schoolgroup claimed that Linux a popular opensource operating system had infringed onits Unix copyrights this led to a seriesof lawsuits between school and severalcompanies including IBM and Novell withlegal disputes going on over 18 yearsthat topic is worth a whole video on itsown so I won't dwell on it suffice it tosay it didn't end that well for schoolin 2007 School group filed forbankruptcy and its Unix related assetswere sold to another company as a resultthe zenix operating system is no longerproduced todayso in conclusion xenix was a significantoperating system that paved the way forthe development of modern operatingsystems despite it hardly being knownabout today Microsoft's acquisition ofthe license for xenix from at T helpedmake it more widely available tobusinesses although zinix is no longerin use today its Legacy continues tolive on as many of the features thatwere first introduced in xenix can befound in modern operating systems suchas Linux and Mac OSthat almost wraps up this video I'd justlike to say a huge thanks to my lovelyPatron sponsors and you can see theirnames running up the screen now if you'dlike to help out this channel make moreoriginal content then please head overto patreon.com forward slash ask geeklab or just press the join button hereon YouTube if you'd like to be remindedof more of my videos then press theSubscribe button and change thenotification Bell to all thank you verymuch for watching this video and I'llsee you in the next one until next timebe excellent to each other