Trix (operating system)

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1 Attempted use by the GNU Project
2 See also
3 References

TRIX is a research network-oriented operating system compatible with UNIX version 7. TRIX was developed in the late '70s at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) by Professor Steve Ward and his research group. TRIX's kernel uses remote procedure calls (RPC). It was developed with the NuMachine.

[edit] Attempted use by the GNU Project

Richard Stallman mentions in the GNU Manifesto, that "an initial kernel exists but many more features are needed to emulate Unix." He was referring to TRIX's kernel, which TRIX's authors had decided to distribute as free software.

In December 1986, TRIX's kernel was used as a base in the first attempt to create a kernel for GNU's operating system. However, the GNU developers eventually decided it was unusable as a starting point. Primarily:

because it only ran on "an obscure, expensive 68000 box" and would therefore have to be ported to other architectures before it could be used, and
because it was decided that using the Mach microkernel as a base for a server based operating system was a better operating system design for GNU. This second attempt evolved into the GNU Hurd.