ICL Plc is planning to offer a shrink-wrapped version of Unix System V.4 on its so-called Spring Collection of deskside and desktop Intel Corp 80486-based personal computers and servers launched recently, and says that it may offer that implementation on other manufacturers’ personal computers too. Minimum hardware requirements to run the shrink-wrapped implementation Unix are 8Mb of main memory, a 200Mb disk drive and a streaming tape drive; prices for the system software start at UKP1,000 – Unix still doesn’t come cheap even when it is only to run on a personal computer. Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix products are also available for the systems where required by customers, the Putney company says. ICL now has quite an array of Unixes running on its systems, from a Unix System Laboratories Inc Unix-derived, Sun Microsystems Inc SunOS-compatible Unix System V.4 on its Sparc-based DRS 6000 series, to Unix Labs Unix System V.4 on the Intel Corp iAPX-86-based DRS 3000 servers, down to this latest shrink-wrapped offering and the Santa Cruz stuff at the low end. All should become much clearer in the next week or so when the company details its plan for Unix Labs’s Destiny desktop Unix System V.4.2 and UnixWare extensions – and a strategic focus on System V.4. Although Destiny is designed for use on most desktop machines, ICL says that it will position the thing down at the low-end of its range, and won’t offer it, for instance, on the desktop versions of its Sparc-based DRS 6000 series. ICL will run IXI Ltd’s X.desktop manager on top of Destiny.
