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About Microsoft
XENIX
MS-DOS 1.x - 3.x
Windows 1.0 - 2.x
MS-DOS 4.0
Windows 3.x
MS-DOS 5.0 - 6.x
Windows NT 3.x
Windows 95
Windows NT 4.0
Windows CE 1.0 - 3.0
Windows 98 & 98 SE
Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows XP |
In 1980, Microsoft announces its XENIX
operating system, an "enhanced version of the UNIX operating
system." It is designed to run on Intel 8086, Zilog Z8000, Motorola
M68000 and DEC PDP-11 series. In the announcement, Microsoft also said
they would port all of their existing software to XENIX (that is,
develop new versions of the software that will run on XENIX), and that
it would be able to run UNIX software as well .6 The
software was not available to consumers directly from Microsoft. They
licensed XENIX to computer equipment manufacturers such as SCO, Tandy
and Intel who sold it to consumers after branding it with their own
name.7
XENIX was Microsoft's first and only UNIX-type operating system. It is
interesting that they have never attempted something like this again.
The majority of Web, database, e-mail, and other high-end servers in
mainstream production use today run on some variation of UNIX, such as
Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, BSD/OS, or Sun Solaris. The reliability of these
systems is much greater than that of Windows NT or Windows 2000, and
they are much more scalable (able to manage large networks and handle a
high volume of users). This is due in no small part to their simplicity
compared to Windows NT or 2000. When people criticize Microsoft for
producing software that is prone to crashing (compared to UNIX
variations), many times they fail to realize how much more programming
code there is in a GUI (Graphical User Interface) application and how
much more complex the code has to be. If Microsoft offered a UNIX
variation today, people may start to realize that the cause of the
relative instability of Windows is not the fact that it is
a Microsoft product, but rather the fact that it is a GUI program.
   
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