Welcome to the Amiga Unix wiki!
Amiga UNIX (also known as “Amix”) was Commodore's port of AT&T System V Release 4 Unix to the Amiga in 1990. Like many early Unix variants, Amiga Unix never became wildly popular, but it is an interesting sidestep in the history of the Amiga.
The two “official” machines that could run Amix were the Amiga 2500UX and 3000UX models, however it can run on any Amiga that meets its hardware requirements. The awesome Amiga emulator WinUAE has been able to run it since 2013 (version 2.7.0 onwards).
This site is dedicated on preserving Amix's history and sharing information and instructions on what Amix is, how to install it (either on real hardware or in emulation) and what can you do with it. Mainly, it tries to cater to people who wish to run AMIX for whatever reason on their hardware. By documenting experiences with it, it is hoped that subsequent SVR4 junkies will find the way more smooth than it might have been without any guidance at all. For even a relatively experienced modern Unix or GNU/Linux administrator, System V UNIX is sufficiently different to present difficulty in installation and administration. Not so much in moving around between directories, and using common utilities that persist to this day - although many of those are hoary and somewhat forgetful in their retirement - but of doing more in depth tasks and understanding the differences.
Where to get help with Amix? Currently the most active Amix-related forum seems to be support.Amix @ English Amiga Board. Ask there if you need any help!
Wanted: content for this site! Do you have a piece of third-party software for Amix? Copy of an exotic hardware driver? Would you like to help write guides? Have copy of files from litamiga.epfl.ch or amiga.physik.unizh.ch? Please let us know!
Why would you like to try Amix? The short answer is, you don't want it. Stay with me for just a minute here.
Amiga UNIX is really, really real UNIX. AT&T System V Release 4, ported by a team at Commodore that quit the day that 1.0 was released - at least, as legend has it. All the releases have their share of issues, and none of them have been updated in well over a decade. It runs on old hardware that was expensive when new and hard enough to find now that “RARE!” tags on eBay aren't hyperbole for once. You can cheat and get it installed without the tape drive, at least, but it's not for the faint of heart and has its own caveats such as a completely broken package system.
Think for a minute about your goals before embarking on this journey. If you're a die-hard Amiga user - and we all know they are still out there - interested in trying this UNIX thing, because you've heard about Mac OS X and that's based on UNIX, but before you swap out Kickstart for init you'd like to kick the tires on Amiga UNIX…
Don't.
... continue reading