UnixWare is a Unix operating system. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell. It was then taken over by Novell. Via Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), it went on to Caldera Systems, Caldera International, and The SCO Group before it was sold to UnXis (now Xinuos). UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than a desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. UnixWare is primarily marketed as a server operating system. After the SVR4 effort to merge SunOS and System V, AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) formed the Univel partnership with Novell to develop a desktop version of Unix for i386 and i486 machines, codenamed "Destiny". Destiny is based on the Unix System V release 4.2 kernel. The MoOLIT toolkit is used for the windowing system, allowing the user to choose between an OPEN LOOK or MOTIF-like look and feel at runtime. In order to make the system more robust on commodity desktop hardware, the Veritas is used in place of the file system used in SVR4. Networking support in UnixWare includes both TCP/IP and interoperability with Novell's NetWare protocols (IPX/SPX); the former were the standard among Unix users at the time of development, while PC networking was much more commonly based on NetWare. Destiny was released in 1992 as UnixWare 1.0, with the intention of unifying the fragmented PC Unix market behind this single variant of the operating system. The system was earlier to reach the corporate computing market than Microsoft's Windows NT, but observers of the period remarked that UnixWare was "just another flavor of Unix", Novell's involvement being more a marketing ploy than a significant influx of technology. There two editions of Destiny: a Personal Edition, which includes Novell IPX networking but not TCP/IP, and an Advanced Server Edition with TCP/IP and other server software. The personal edition is limited to two active users, while the server edition includes an unlimited user license.
Alessandro Barchiesi, Simone Campana