Interix was an optional,

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

-conformant

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user 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, a ...

subsystem for

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s. Interix was a component of Windows Services for UNIX, and a superset of the Microsoft POSIX subsystem. Like the POSIX subsystem, Interix was an environment subsystem for the NT kernel. It included numerous

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

utility software Utility software is a program specifically designed to help manage and tune system or application software. It is used to support the computer infrastructure - in contrast to application software, which is aimed at directly performing tasks that b ...

programs and

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

. Interix was originally developed and sold as OpenNT until purchased by Microsoft in 1999. Interix versions 5.2 and 6.0 were respective components of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Vista Enterprise,

Windows Vista Ultimate Windows Vista—a major release of the Microsoft Windows operating system—was available in six different product editions: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. On September 5, 2006, Microsoft announced the USD ...

, and

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server" (alternatives: "Windows Vista Server" or "Windows Server Vista"), is the seventh major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server b ...

as Subsystem for Unix-based Applications (SUA). Version 6.1 was included in

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

(Enterprise and Ultimate editions) but disabled by default, and in

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2, codenamed "Windows Server 7" or "Windows Server 2008 Release 2", is the eighth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It was release ...

(all editions). It was available as a deprecated separate download for

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

and

Windows Server 2012 Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the ninth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows ...

, and is not available at all on

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

Details

The complete installation of Interix included (at version 3.5): * Over 350 Unix utilities such as vi, ksh, csh, ls,

cat The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

, awk,

grep grep is a command-line utility for searching plaintext datasets for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the ed command g/re/p (global regular expression search and print), which has the same effect. grep was originally de ...

kill Kill often refers to: *Homicide, one human killing another *cause death, to kill a living organism, to cause its death Other common uses include: *Kill (body of water), a body of water, most commonly a creek *Kill (command), a computing command *K ...

, etc. * A complete set of manual pages for utilities and APIs * GCC 3.3 compiler, includes and

* A cc/c89-like wrapper for

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms ...

command-line C/C++ compiler *

GNU Debugger The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, Assembly, C, C++, D, Fortran, Haskell, Go, Objective-C, OpenCL C, Modula-2, Pascal, Rust, and par ...

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

client applications and libraries (no X server included, though third party servers were available) * Has Unix "

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

" capabilities (i.e.

setuid The Unix and Linux access rights flags setuid and setgid (short for ''set user identity'' and ''set group identity'') allow users to run an executable with the file system permissions of the executable's owner or group respectively and to chang ...

files) * Has

pthreads In computing, POSIX Threads, commonly known as pthreads, is an execution model that exists independently from a programming language, as well as a parallel execution model. It allows a program to control multiple different flows of work that ov ...

shared libraries In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

, DSOs, job control,

signals A signal is both the process and the result of Signal transmission, transmission of data over some transmission media, media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processin ...

, sockets, shared memory The development environment included support for C, C++ and Fortran. Threading was supported using the Pthreads model. Additional languages could be obtained ( Python,

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company ** TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

, etc.). Unix-based software packaging and build tools were available for installing or creating pre-build software packages. Starting with release 5.2 (Server 2003/R2) the following capabilities were added: * "Mixed mode" for linking Unix programs with Windows DLLs *

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

CPU support (in addition to 32-bit) * Large file system support on 64-bit systems *

System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...

R4 utilities can be optionally installed instead of the default

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

-based utilities *

MSVC Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) is a compiler for the C, C++, C++/CLI and C++/CX programming languages by Microsoft. MSVC is proprietary software; it was originally a standalone product but later became a part of Visual Studio and made available ...

debugging plug-in * Database (OCI/

ODBC In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...

) library connectivity With release 6.0 (Vista and Server 2008) the following new features were added: *

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

support for socket APIs and daemons * Updates to utilities for additional functionality * MSVC debugging plug-in enhanced Interix release 6.0 for

Vista Vista may refer to: Software *Windows Vista, the line of Microsoft Windows client operating systems released in 2006 and 2007 * VistA, (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) a medical records system of the United States ...

was only available with the

Ultimate Ultimate or Ultimates may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music Albums *Ultimate (Bryan Adams album), ''Ultimate'' (Bryan Adams album) *Ultimate (Jolin Tsai album), ''Ultimate'' (Jolin Tsai album) *Ultimate (Pet Shop Boys album), ''Ult ...

and

Enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterpris ...

editions. Interix release 6.1 was available for

and

for the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

Support

Traditional support was provided by Microsoft for a fee or service contract, though released hotfixes can usually be obtained free of charge from Microsoft. Previously, free support could be found via the forums at the SUA Community site and with the FAQ, however this appears to have been withdrawn.

Additions

Additional pre-built applications and development libraries could be obtained for free from the site, th
Gentoo-prefix
site and the site. These included commonly used applications not part of the Microsoft installation such as OpenSSH,

Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

, Python and bash. The SUA Community site included for developers of Interix and the site has been contracted by Microsoft for several Interix and SUA updates of utilities and documentation.

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 release 2.2. Softway Systems had virtually completed the next release code-named Firebrand in 1999 which became the basis of Interix 3.0. The Interix interoperability suite developed by Softway Systems Inc., included substantial code from

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

,. Microsoft acquired Interix in 1999. Microsoft continued to distribute Interix 2.2 as a standalone product until 2002. Interix release 3.0 was released as component of Windows Services for Unix (SFU) 3.0 in 2002. Interix release 3.5 was released as component of SFU 3.5 in January, 2004. Interix became integrated as a component of the regular Windows OS distribution as a component of

Windows Server 2003 R2 Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft and the first server version to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is part of the Windows NT ...

in December, 2005 at release 5.2 and was a component of the

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

release as release 6.0 (RTM November, 2006).

had release 6.0.

and

included SUA 6.1. Microsoft announced in 2011 that Interix would not be included in Windows versions after Windows 8 and customers should start migrating their applications to an alternative solution.

Releases

; OpenNT Commands & Utilities, Release 1.0 (1.0) : 1996-03-29 OpenNT Commands & Utilities, Release 1.0 for WinNT POSIX Subsystem : 1996-07 X11R6 Server (Win32) : 1996-08 telnetd (and inetd) ; OpenNT 1.1 and SDK (1.1) : 1996-09 OpenNT 1.1 and SDK for WinNT i386, alpha ; OpenNT 2.0 (2.0) : 1997-05 OpenNT 2.0 (Apache httpd and xv) for WinNT i386, alpha : 1997-08-12 "OpenNT: UNIX Application Portability to Windows NT via an Alternative Environment Subsystem" Usenix paper : 1997-08-12 "OpenNT: UNIX Application Portability to Windows NT" Usenix presentation (again 1998-06) : 1997-11 "inetd and telnetd on Windows NT with OpenNT" ; OpenNT 2.1 (2.1) : 1997-12 OpenNT 2.1 for WinNT i386, alpha : 1998-01 OpenNT 2.1 : 1998-02 "Technical Note #9: inetd and the Daemon Package" : 1998-spring paper update : 1998-06 Interix 2.1 rebranding ; Interix 2.2 (2.2) : 1998-06 Interix 2.2(.0)? : 1999-02 SFU 1.0 en for WinNT 4.0(SP3+) i386, alpha (does not contain Interix; included for historical purposes with MS acquisition) : 1999-09-17 Acquired by Microsoft : 1999-12 Interix 2.2(.0) for WinNT 3.51(SP5+),4.0(SP3+),5.0 ; Interix 2.2 Service Pack 1 (2.2.4) ; Interix 2.2.5 (2.2.5) : 2000-02 Interix 2.2.5 for WinNT 4.0(SP5+),5.0 : 2000-04 SFU 2.0 en for WinNT 4.0(SP4+),5.0 i386 (does not contain Interix; included for historical purposes with MS acquisition) : 2000-06 SFU 2.0 ja for WinNT 4.0(SP4+),5.0 i386 (does not contain Interix; included for historical purposes with MS acquisition) : 2001-06-30 "Strangely Enough It All Turns Out Well" Usenix talk ; Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX 3.0 (3.0) : 2002-05 SFU 3.0 en for WinNT 4.0(SP6a+),5.0,5.1 i386 :* Interix 3.0 (AKA Firebrand) : 2002-10 SFU 3.0 ja for WinNT 4.0(SP6a+),5.0,5.1 i386 ; Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 (3.5) : 2004-01 SFU 3.5 en, ja for WinNT 5.0,5.1,5.2 i386 ; Windows Server 2003 R2 (all editions) Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (5.2) : 2005-12-06 WinNT 5.2 R2 ; Windows Vista (Ultimate and Enterprise editions) Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (6.0) : 2006-11-08 WinNT 6.0 (2007-01-30) ; Windows Server 2008 (all editions) Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (6.0) : 2008-02-04 WinNT 6.0 ; Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications in Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (6.1) : 2010-03-11 WinNT 6.1

References

External links

Services for UNIX - Interoperability: A blog on Services for UNIX and UNIX Interoperability components in Windows by Ashish
(official blog, MSDN)
INTERIX: UNIX Application Portability to Windows NT via an Alternative Environment Subsystem
PDF historical
HOW TO: Install Interix
(KB 324081 for Windows NT4/5 up to XP)
Description from the Tcl-Wiki
* ; Debian based applications for Interix/SUA
Gentoo Prefix Port
Gentoo based port of many applications
LBW: Linux Binaries on Windows
an Interix-based Linux system call translator for Windows {{Unix-Windows interoperability Compatibility layers Unix emulators Unix history Windows components