this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Windows is based on VMS which was based on RSX-11. Rsx-11 was the OS that Unix was written on.
So a truly traditionally authentic Linux kernel should be compiled under Windows.
No no, I wrote it as an expansion for WSL (Window'S Linux)
I realize you're trying to be funny, but just in case you don't know the actual history:
The Windows NT kernel was architected by Dave Cutler, who had previously designed the VMS and RSX-11M kernels. (RSX-11 is actually a family of PDP-11 operating systems; the "M" stood for "multitasking.") No code was ever shared between the three.
The Unix implementation team started out on a PDP-7, which was a much smaller computer than a PDP-11. Its first code was cross-compiled from a GE 635 mainframe left over at AT&T from the Multics project, which (if it ran anything) would have only had GECOS available. They did eventually graduate to a PDP-11/45, but to do this they used their PDP-7 system to cross-compile. Unix was ported to the PDP-11 in 1970, two years before the first RSX-11 release from DEC (which wasn't even Cutler's RSX-11M; that was 1974).
The appropriate precursor to Linux would be Minix, a much later Unix-like system, which Torvalds was trying to clone. At the time, Microsoft did have its hands in the x86 'nix pie, however; Xenix was popular in business.
A minor correction:
I remember the lawsuit threats back in the 90's. Here's an article from 1996:
"Last year, somone from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology apparently found whole chunks of Mica comment for comment, note for note still there in Windows NT."
https://techmonitor.ai/technology/dec_forced_microsoft_into_alliance_with_legal_threat
Right; Mica wasn't VMS as far as I know, but rather a generic kernel that would have hosted VMS as a client API, a little like how NT hosts Win32 and POSIX (and not OS/2), or how IBM's Workplace OS was going to host OS/2, AIX, and Mac OS as "personalities." It's not likely that any VMS-specific code would have been salvaged from Mica for use in NT, but rather the nucleus of a portable API-agnostic kernel, in which case any architectural resemblance to VMS has more to do with Cutler's sensibilities and less to do with code re-use.