Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

computing, lxrun is a

compatibility layer In software engineering, a compatibility layer is an interface that allows binaries for a legacy or foreign system to run on a host system. This translates system calls for the foreign system into native system calls for the host system. With som ...

to allow

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

binaries to run on UnixWare,

SCO OpenServer Xinuos OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop (SCO ODT), is a closed source computer operating system developed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), later acquired by SCO Group, and now owned by Xinuos. Early versions of OpenServer were ...

and

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

without recompilation. It was created by Mike Davidson. It has been an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software project since 1997, and is available under the

Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird The MPL license is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concerns ...

. Both SCO and Sun Microsystems began officially supporting lxrun in 1999.

Timeline

*August 22, 1997: lxrun is cited as a proof of concept of cross-platform binary compatibility at the

86open In computing, the Executable and Linkable FormatTool Interface Standard (TIS) Portable Formats SpecificationVersion 1.1'' (October 1993) (ELF, formerly named Extensible Linking Format), is a common standard file format for executable files, obj ...

conference hosted by SCO in Santa Cruz, CA. *August 29, 1997: lxrun's first mention on Usenet, in comp.unix.sco.misc. Most notably, the post mentions lxrun's availability in source and binary form from the

SCO Skunkware SCO Skunkware, often referred to as simply "Skunkware", is a collection of open-source software projects ported, compiled, and packaged for free redistribution on SCO operating environments. SCO Skunkware packaged components exist for SCO Xenix ...

FTP site. A later post in the thread mentions contributions by various authors, both inside and outside of SCO. *October 1, 1997: The official lxrun website is established. *June 19, 1998: Ronald Joe Record, Michael Hopkirk, and Steven Ginzburg present a paper on lxrun at the USENIX 1998 Technical Conference in New Orleans, LA. *Mar 1, 1999: SCO announces Linux compatibility in UnixWare 7 and demonstrates lxrun at LinuxWorld Expo and Conference in San Jose, CA. *May 12, 1999:

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

announces support for Linux binaries on Solaris using lxrun.

Status

According to the official lxrun website, as of 2003 lxrun is in "maintenance" mode, meaning that it is no longer being actively developed. Reasons cited for the declining interest in lxrun include the wide availability of real Linux machines, and the availability of more capable emulation systems, such as SCO's Linux Kernel Personality (LKP),

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around th ...

BrandZ, and various

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

solutions. Newer Linux applications and host operating systems are not officially supported by lxrun.

References

External links

* *
Sun's Solaris get compatible with Linux apps
(''

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

'', Fri 14 May 1999)
Lxrun - why wasn't it released under the GPL?
(Pamela Jones, '' Groklaw'', Wed 16 Aug 2006) Linux UNIX System V Compatibility layers Sun Microsystems software {{Linux-stub