I've worked since 1995 on porting and platforms for a CAD component supplier. When I joined, it was OSF/1 as the only 64-bit OS, plus 32-bit RISC Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, and AIX. There was also 32-bit VMS on VAX and Alpha, and 32-bit Windows NT on x86 and Alpha. The 68000 UNixes had already come and gone, as had SunOS on Sparc.
Things changed gradually. The 32-bit RISCs all went 64-bit, VMS died out, Alpha died out, Itanium came and went. But no potential customers wanted Xenix, or BSD, or SCO Unix, or Coherent, or Unix on Amiga, Atari, Archimedes or Mac. Windows NT/2000/XP on x86 became important. Linux on x86 grew slowly at first in our markets.
Things began to change faster around 2003, with 64-bit x86 for which we did Windows and Linux, and Mac OS X on PowerPC, which was waaay easier to support than Classic MacOS. The 64-bit RISCs began to die off because they were not cost-effective compared to Linux. Sun tried to get us to do Solaris on 64-bit x86, but could not demonstrate any end-user interest. macOS transitioned to Intel, and 32-bit Linux and macOS became obsolete and were dropped.
Then the ARM platforms came storming in, and the only one that wasn't Unix-style was Windows. Yet still, nobody wants BSD!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2025-11-21 03:40 pm (UTC)Things changed gradually. The 32-bit RISCs all went 64-bit, VMS died out, Alpha died out, Itanium came and went. But no potential customers wanted Xenix, or BSD, or SCO Unix, or Coherent, or Unix on Amiga, Atari, Archimedes or Mac. Windows NT/2000/XP on x86 became important. Linux on x86 grew slowly at first in our markets.
Things began to change faster around 2003, with 64-bit x86 for which we did Windows and Linux, and Mac OS X on PowerPC, which was waaay easier to support than Classic MacOS. The 64-bit RISCs began to die off because they were not cost-effective compared to Linux. Sun tried to get us to do Solaris on 64-bit x86, but could not demonstrate any end-user interest. macOS transitioned to Intel, and 32-bit Linux and macOS became obsolete and were dropped.
Then the ARM platforms came storming in, and the only one that wasn't Unix-style was Windows. Yet still, nobody wants BSD!