hi can Microsoft independently develop xenix with Microsoft research?

Hi rootkit@xenix0,

Great question, love the creativity here and you’re absolutely right, Xenix was a huge part of Microsoft’s early history, and the idea of bringing it back as a modern POSIX-compliant Unix is super interesting. Honestly, it’s refreshing to see someone thinking big about this!

Right now, Microsoft’s approach is a little different: instead of reviving Xenix, they’ve gone all-in on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It gives you a full Linux user space right inside Windows, supports most major distros, and even runs GUI apps now. Here’s the official doc if you want to check it out:

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/

If your goal is a certifiable Unix-like environment, WSL plus Azure services is the closest modern equivalent and it’s actively developed and open source in parts.

Thanks for sharing such a bold idea, it’s always nice to see people passionate about the future of computing.

If you find my answer useful, please feel free to mark and interact with it so others with the same idea can join in the discussion of your post.

It’s not likely. Xenix is a true Unix and is licensed by at&t. While Microsoft had a license, they sold it SCO. Linux is a clean room open source version of Unix system 5 and its utilities.

MacOs is the Mach kernel (a replacement of Unix kernel) and the BSD utilities rather than system 5.