The IRIX 6.5.7M (sgi) source code
60 points by reconnecting 9 hours ago | 26 comments

reconnecting 7 hours ago
For me personally, IRIX 6.x had one of the most beautiful (and colourful) GUIs ever.

For the curious, there is a guide (1) on how to run IRIX 6.5.22 in MAME.

1. https://sgi.neocities.org

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mixmastamyk 7 hours ago
Wow, look at those luxurious titlebars, windows edges, scrollbars, and tabs! So easy to use.

One other thing lost, their scrollbars kept an indentation of where the bar was until you let go, which was sometimes useful.

Not a fan of the busy backgrounds, but can’t win ’em all.

Does anyone have a screenshot of the window menu (right click on titlebar)? Been looking for the CUA hotkeys related to those window functions. Most still work but are not shown on Linux desktops for some reason.

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sgt 6 hours ago
They also loved italic!
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hedgehog 7 hours ago
Someone did a screen capture of a SGI "System Tour" app that explains how a lot of the UI worked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8fiA9TrRk

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dvno42 2 hours ago
For those interested, there is a lovely IRIX clone WM called MaXX. I've been using it for a couple months and have been quite happy with it on a remote dev machine. I believe it only runs on xorg currently.

1. https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/

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rainingmonkey 6 hours ago
What is the scrollwheel thing on the left side of some windows?
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blipvert 6 hours ago
As I recall that changed the size of the (vector graphic) icons in the window.

Though it has been twenty-odd years since I last used an SGI box so open to correction!

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zvr 4 hours ago
Yes, it was essentially a "zoom" wheel.
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jnpnj 5 hours ago
A blend of nextstep and macos classic somehow.
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actionfromafar 5 hours ago
I thought of BeOS for some reason.
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mrweasel 9 hours ago
Unless it's true that they lost it, I really see no reason why HPE doesn't just release the official IRIX source code. It cannot be worth much at this point.

Maybe there's 3rd party code which SGI/HPE licensed? That's apparently why we can't have Operas Presto.

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pm215 7 hours ago
Even if there isn't any 3rd party code, the whole process of going through the codebase to confirm there really isn't any 3rd party code, and generally getting the legal department to sign off on it, is a lot of work in itself. My impression is that this kind of "historic source" release typically only happens if somebody sufficiently senior in the company cares enough to actively push it through. The default is that nobody does care that much, and it doesn't happen.

"Do nothing" has essentially zero downside for a big company that happens to have something of niche interest like this in its vaults.

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miki123211 6 hours ago
third-party code is one thing, political correctness is another. What was acceptable in 90s brogrammer culture may not be considered acceptable by PR obsessed corporate types now.

To put this more charitably, the only reason to release something like this is to get some good PR, but if not carefully controlled, such a release could create more bad PR than good PR.

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actionfromafar 5 hours ago
How?
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throw0101a 8 hours ago
> Maybe there's 3rd party code which SGI/HPE licensed?

IIRC, this was one of the complication of open sourcing Solaris back in the day.

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linolevan 7 hours ago
Yep, I recall one of the big components being libc i18n
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fredoralive 8 hours ago
An obvious source for 3rd party code is that it’s a real UNIX System V derivative, so the AT&T code would need to be cleared.
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sedawkgrep 8 hours ago
As a long-time AIX admin I'd LOOOOOVE to see some of the AIX source.

I used to be connected to the community where stuff like this was passed around. But that was a long, long time ago.

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kev009 5 hours ago
A partial but significant dump of 4.1 is easy to find. Probably leaked for/by Apple Network Server people.
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mrpippy 6 hours ago
This leak has been floating around for years, and it's not even close to everything (i.e. no GUI pieces)
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andsoitis 9 hours ago
isn't this violating copyright?
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majorchord 2 hours ago
The mods do not seem to care about pirated software (or links to tons of it) being posted here, I have seen people doing it for years now.
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sedawkgrep 8 hours ago
Dunno but the repo is 4+ years old.
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dboreham 7 hours ago
Interesting that GitHub recognizes "Roff" as a language.
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oldnetguy 9 hours ago
Is this real?
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