It is a generic way to refer to unix and unix-like systems. It is still in use today, e.g. to indicate Linux as part of the set. For this document most likely it refers to Xenix (MS's unix).

IIRC Microsoft's internal email still ran on Xenix at the time (until Exchange betas got good enough for internal use c. 1995?), so perhaps more trademarks than some sort of absolute hatred of Unix. Also note that one of the two APIs that NT OS/2 was initially going to support was POSIX, albeit perhaps more because the US government wanted that than a true love of UNIX. Although the design rationale document (ntdesrtl) does lament that existing POSIX test suites tend to also test "...UNIX folklore that happens to be permissible under an interpretation of the POSIX spec".

That was back when there was "real" UNIX around, as well as a number of clones, including Microsofts own Xenix (maybe they had offloaded that to SCO by then). So UN*X was one way to indicate that it meant UNIX-like OSes.

I think trademark, I remember Bill Gates referring to Windows NT as "a better UNIX than UNIX".

Yeah I think this is the original design doc for NT.

This mostly describes stuff to do with the [Windows] NT [OS][/2] (delete as appropriate) kernel layer, which normal mere mortals aren't supposed to interact with. You're supposed to use stuff like the Win32 KERNEL32.DLL not the more direct DLL, NTDLL.DLL (a DLL). Of course, true hackers scorn such abstractions.

Turns out SCO bought Xenix in 1987, but Microsoft was just a couple of years removed from being the biggest Unix vendor around at this point.

OS/2 is likely where that came from - https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/21/successor_to_unix_pla...

I think Windows and DOS do have good documents. I actually think they had way better ones than Linux at the time. But I could be wrong.

For reference:

https://jacobfilipp.com/msj-index/

And also MSDN.

I guess that's probably Apple now.

For more modern Windows, Windows Internals Parts 1 and 2[1][2], and Windows 10 System Programming Parts 1 and 2. Basically anything by Yosifovich, Russinovich, Ionescu et al.

[1]: https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/windows-internals-...

[2]: https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/windows-internals-...

[3]: https://leanpub.com/b/windows10systemprogrammingP1and2

Yeah this is definitely a hell of read which probably has more historical values than real ones. The book "Inside Windows NT" also gives a good overview about Windows NT 3.1. There is another one called "Understanding Windows NT File System" which talks about the fs I think.

The biggest problem is NT is not open-source, and while there are leaked copies posted online, there is no "official" build guide so people have to try their luck.

It's giving me flashbacks to a few months ago.

(*cries in X12 270/271*)

Microsoft's eye wasn't on open sourcing their OS and describing the deep internals. They still don't want you to develop against the NT API, even though developers certainly do (and Microsoft makes compatibility shims for applications which do, when required).

I have a hot take. manpages are really bad for noob examples, or if you actually want to learn how to use something. They are great references if you already know 95% of the tool, but for the most common use cases, they completely lack any sort of examples.

In this sense, LLMs (as much as I am sceptical about them) are much more useful.

Yeah I agree, TBF I rarely found man-pages to be useful to me, while so far LLM is pretty good at bash scripting, at least at the level that I need. But of course still wants to learn this stuffs in depth.