[HN Gopher] Amiga Unix (Amix)
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Amiga Unix (Amix)
Author : donatj
Score : 104 points
Date : 2026-02-01 10:57 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.amigaunix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.amigaunix.com)
| kunley wrote:
| Very honest warning there :)
| brongondwana wrote:
| Damn, $2000. I wish I'd kept my copy.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| > Its kernel, libc, and much of its software is closed source, so
| when Commodore folded its story was over.
|
| I am certain someone have the full source code somewhere, I just
| hope that they eventually say "f--k it, it has been 36 years, let
| the world have it".
| icedchai wrote:
| Probably. Most of AmigaOS (Workbench and Kickstart) got
| "released" on github about 10 years ago.
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Not only that, isn't Commodore now owned/run by Peri Fractic /
| Christian Simpson? It seems if anyone is going to be open to
| these kinds of retro projects, it's going to be the new
| Commodore ownership.
|
| https://www.commodore.net/team
| icedchai wrote:
| "Commodore" is, but "Amiga" isn't. There was a split many
| decades ago. I lost track of all the drama.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| AIUI the rights to old Commodore Amiga stuff (pre 4.x) are
| now held by Cloanto which so far has been reasonably
| friendly to the new Commodore folks.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > Did I mention it hasn't been updated in a decade? Put your
| Amiga UNIX machine on the net with no firewall and you may see it
| rooted faster than a Win98SE box running IE5.
|
| I presume this was written back around 2005 or so, but honestly
| color me impressed if there has ever been malware targeting Amix
| in the wild.
|
| Also, ouch :D
|
| > Table 1: Unix standard - Amiga UNIX alternative
| mail elm more less finger Finger vi
| emacs cc gcc
| Keyframe wrote:
| Should've been vim since it originated on Amiga.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Huh, TIL. And that vim's creator died in 2023, at only 63 :(
| sgt wrote:
| Sadly yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37011324
| rob74 wrote:
| It did indeed, but the original vim was developed for
| AmigaOS, not sure if there was an Amiga Unix version
| available...
| Keyframe wrote:
| correct
| tyingq wrote:
| https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/522
| mepian wrote:
| OpenLook is nice but it's a bit of a shame it doesn't have its
| own version of Workbench.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Acorn's UNIX had the IXI desktop, which was, back then, the
| absolute pinnacle of user friendly Unix. IIRC, IBM's AIX for
| the PS/2 also had it or something very similar.
| rob74 wrote:
| It's a bit strange to call Amiga Unix an "early Unix variant", if
| you consider that in 1990 Unix was already around 20 years old?
| daneel_w wrote:
| I think less strange considering that 1990 was 35 years ago.
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| 36 years ago
| jama211 wrote:
| Depends on when in 1990 ;)
| vardump wrote:
| And 1945 was 35 years before 1990. Obvious, but feels somehow
| weird.
| ojn wrote:
| No, it wasn't.
| spijdar wrote:
| If you count 70s and 80s "Unixes" then on its face it _is_ a
| bit strange, but a lot of 70s and 80s "Unixes" don't exactly
| resemble what we think of as "Unix" anyway.
|
| If instead you think of SysVR4 as the first "Unix", then Amiga
| Unix was indeed a very early Unix. I think this is a useful
| distinction, because de facto most of the software interfaces
| we associate with "Unix" are just System V (especially R4) in a
| trench coat. Note that POSIX and and SysVR4 released the same
| year (1988); they're technically unaffiliated efforts but
| represent a consolidation of a bunch of competing ideas into a
| ... tacit compromise.
|
| Or, being more practical, SysVR4 is the absolute oldest "Unix"
| you're going to have a good chance of building modern
| (1990-2020s) software made "for unix" on. You can get a
| surprising amount of mileage out of a SysVR4 distribution --
| but go any older, and you'll be in for a lot of "fun"!
| icedchai wrote:
| A lot of 90's stuff ran great on SunOS 4.x!
| spijdar wrote:
| Yes, but SunOS 4 was both extremely popular (enough that a
| lot of software had explicit support for running on it) and
| implemented a decent amount of System V and POSIX
| compatibility!
|
| Probably most notably, it implemented SysV shared memory
| (sys/shm.h) plus messages/semaphores, STREAM support, SysV
| termio, SysV libcurses, and probably others I'm not aware
| of.
|
| I'm not sure how much any of these helped run software, but
| it bears pointing out anyway.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I hope someone decompiles this.
| mjg59 wrote:
| The vast majority of it is just recompiled AT&T code. The Amiga
| specific stuff is provided in object form and largely shipped
| with debug symbols so it'd be pretty easy to get something
| approximating the original.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's interesting to see color OpenLook. I only ever saw it on B&W
| or grayscale Sun boxes.
| rabarar wrote:
| I bought an Amiga 3000 back in the day just for Unix SVR4! it was
| exceptional! the only disappointment was it ran Open Look and not
| the ever-more-popular Motif X-Windows Widgets out of the box
| rbanffy wrote:
| OpenLook was always prettier though, but Motif was more
| fashionable with all those 3d buttons.
| mjg59 wrote:
| It's a somewhat weird product. There's no real access to any of
| the hardware that made the Amiga impressive at the time, without
| an add-on graphics card you're going to have a bad time in X, and
| it replaces AmigaOS entirely so you don't have any ability to run
| Amiga software at the same time (it's not like a/is in that
| regard). It's an extremely generic Unix, and I don't know who
| Commodore really thought they were selling it to. But despite all
| this is was cheaper than a comparable Sun? Extremely confusing.
| bitwize wrote:
| Well that sounds disappointing. These days you're probably
| better off just running Linux or NetBSD on your old Amigas. But
| the ability to run true multiuser Unix on cheap desktop
| hardware was probably immensely valuable to businesses at the
| time, so it might've been worth it, even if you forgo much of
| the Amiga's Amiganess. The Tandy Model 16 family was not an
| Amiga by any stretch, but they had 68000 CPUs and were Unix
| capable in the form of Xenix. So they ran a lot of small
| business back office stuff until well into the 90s I'm
| guessing, despite first coming out in 1982.
| bink wrote:
| Sun and NeXT also sold 68k Unix workstations at the time.
| IMHO, The thing about Amiga was that it was not seen as a
| business machine. Commodore in general was seen as a home
| computer, and really one aimed at gaming first. AFAIK they
| didn't even have computers with the specs to compete with
| what Sun, SGI, HP, and others were doing.
| bitwize wrote:
| The Sun and NeXT machines were pricey. Commodore may well
| have been trying to break into the business market by
| releasing an affordable business-attractive OS for the
| Amiga. They were also starting to sell PCs around this
| time. It certainly tracks with their scattershot marketing
| efforts late in their history.
|
| There were video and multimedia applications at the time
| that could ONLY be tackled by an Amiga unless you wanted to
| pay $10,000 or more for specialized equipment. Besides the
| Video Toaster, which 'nuff said, Amigas also provided
| teletext-like TV information services in the USA, such as
| weather forecasts and the Prevue Channel (a cable channel
| that scrolled your cable system's program listings).
| Teletext itself never really caught on here.
|
| Anime fan subtitling was also done almost exclusively on
| Amiga hardware.
|
| Amiga gained a reputation as a glorified game console in
| the wider market, but those who knew... knew.
| kristopolous wrote:
| It wasn't given enough time or resources to be awesome. Being
| an SGI alternative was probably being floated.
|
| The early versions of most products suck. It's a matter of
| throwing down enough time and resources to get through that
| phase
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(page generated 2026-02-01 23:00 UTC)