from Hacker News

Amiga Unix (Amix)

by donatj on 2/1/26, 10:57 AM with 61 comments

  • by rob74 on 2/1/26, 1:46 PM

    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?
  • by mjg59 on 2/1/26, 6:56 PM

    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.
  • by TheChaplain on 2/1/26, 12:46 PM

    > 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".

  • by kevin_thibedeau on 2/1/26, 6:05 PM

    It's interesting to see color OpenLook. I only ever saw it on B&W or grayscale Sun boxes.
  • by mepian on 2/1/26, 12:53 PM

    OpenLook is nice but it's a bit of a shame it doesn't have its own version of Workbench.
  • by Sharlin on 2/1/26, 12:49 PM

    > 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
  • by brongondwana on 2/1/26, 12:33 PM

    Damn, $2000. I wish I'd kept my copy.
  • by stuaxo on 2/1/26, 3:48 PM

    I hope someone decompiles this.
  • by rabarar on 2/1/26, 6:15 PM

    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
  • by kunley on 2/1/26, 12:27 PM

    Very honest warning there :)