Interix

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Interix is the name of an optional, full-featured POSIX and Unix environment subsystem for Microsoft's Windows NT-based operating systems. It is distributed as part of the free Services for Unix (SFU) toolkit for versions 3.0 and 3.5. The most recent release of Interix, version 5.2, is part of the Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Vista distributions with the moniker "SUA" [1] (Subsystem for Unix-based Applications) [2].

1 Details
2 History
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Details

Like the Microsoft POSIX Subsystem in Windows NT, Interix is not an emulation of a Unix kernel. It is an implementation of an environment subsystem running in conjunction with the Windows kernel. The complete installation of Interix includes:

Over 350 Unix utilities such as vi, ksh, csh, ls, cat, awk, grep, kill, etc.
A complete set of manual pages for utilities and API's
GCC 3.3 compiler, includes and libraries
A cc/c89-like wrapper for Microsoft Visual Studio command-line C/C++ compiler
GDB debugger
X11 client applications and libraries (no X server included though)
Has Unix "root" capabilities (i.e. setuid files)
Supports pthreads, shared libraries, DSO's, job control, signals, sockets, shared memory

The development environment includes support for C, C++ and Fortran. Threading is supported using the Pthreads model. Additional languages can be obtained from third parties (Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc.).

Starting with version 5.2 the following capabilities were added[3]:

"Mixed mode" for linking Unix programs with Windows DLLs
64-bit CPU support (in addition to 32-bit)
Large file system support on 64-bit systems
System V utilities can be optionally installed instead of the default BSD-based utilities

With version 6.0 the following new features are happening:

IPv6 support
significant update of utilities

[edit] History

This product began to be developed in 1996 under the product name "OpenNT" by Softway Systems, Inc. before the name was changed to Interix in 1998. The last release by Softway Systems was version 2.2. Interix was acquired by Microsoft in 1999. Microsoft continued to distribute Interix 2.2 as a standalone product until 2002. Interix version 3.0 was released as part of Services for Unix (SFU) version 3.0 in 2002. Interix version 3.5 was released as part of SFU 3.5 in January, 2004. Interix became integrated as part of the regular Windows OS distribution [4] as part of Windows 2003 Server R2 in December, 2005 at version 5.2 and is part of the Windows Vista release as version 6.0 (RTM November, 2006).