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UnixWare

UnixWare is a Unix operating system. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell. It was then taken over by Novell. Via Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), it went on to Caldera Systems, Caldera International, and The SCO Group before it was sold to UnXis (now Xinuos). After the acquisition of SCO by Caldera, the name was briefly changed to Open UNIX before being reverted to the original name in the next release. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. UnixWare is primarily marketed and deployed as a server operating system.

After the SVR4 effort to merge SunOS and System V, AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) formed the Univel partnership with Novell to develop a desktop version of Unix for i386 and i486 machines, codenamed "Destiny".

Destiny is based on the Unix System V release 4.2 kernel. The MoOLIT toolkit is used for the windowing system, allowing the user to choose between an OPEN LOOK or MOTIF-like look and feel at runtime. In order to make the system more robust on commodity desktop hardware, the Veritas VXFS journaling file system is used in place of the UFS file system used in SVR4. Networking support in UnixWare includes both TCP/IP and interoperability with Novell's NetWare protocols (IPX/SPX); the former were the standard among Unix users at the time of development, while PC networking was much more commonly based on NetWare.

Destiny was released in 1992 as UnixWare 1.0, with the intention of unifying the fragmented PC Unix market behind this single variant of the operating system. The system was earlier to reach the corporate computing market than Microsoft's Windows NT, but observers of the period remarked that UnixWare was "just another flavor of Unix", Novell's involvement being more a marketing ploy than a significant influx of technology. There two editions of Destiny: a Personal Edition, which includes Novell IPX networking but not TCP/IP, and an Advanced Server Edition with TCP/IP and other server software. The personal edition is limited to two active users, while the server edition includes an unlimited user license. Around 35,000 copies of UnixWare 1.0 were sold.

In 1992, UnixWare 1.0 Personal Edition came with DOS Merge 3.0 and Novell's DR DOS 6.0.

In 1993, Novell purchased USL from AT&T and merged USL and Univel into a new Unix Systems Group.

In 1994 Novell released UnixWare 1.1, which includes TCP/IP in both the personal and advanced server editions. The MOTIF 1.2 runtime libraries are included for COSE compliance. NUC (NetWare Unix Client) software is included for integration with Novell NetWare servers. The Advanced Merge application is installed on both the server and personal editions to allow running DOS and Windows 3.1 applications.

Novell later released bug-fix versions 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3 and finally 1.1.4 on 19 June 1995.

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