> The TRS-80 Model 16 was the fastest-selling UNIX machine of its time, using Microsoft Xenix on a 68k. Bill Gates mentioned his Xenix sales from time to time in later years.

Microsoft in the 1970s-early 80s was apparently pretty amazing: bringing BASIC to inexpensive PCs, CP/M to the Apple II, and UNIX to your local electronics/stereo/toy shop (RIP RadioShack.) Their logo was cool back then too.

I guess it's not surprising then for Microsoft to offer WSL/ Ubuntu for Windows!

We're pretty lucky to have Linux (and BSD Unix) on a $35 Raspberry Pi, but it's basically a (much) tinier, cheaper, and more powerful version of what you could get at Radio Shack in 1983. (Reading the specs, apparently you could add up to 9 serial terminals to it in addition to the built-in console!)

(Xenix could run on Apple's Lisa as well, but the Lisa was more expensive and presumably its primary appeal was the Lisa Office System rather than Unix.)

Shame that Xenix PCs died out in the 1980s, really. I imagine an alternate universe where Apple and Radio Shack sold UNIX/Xenix "workstations" in the 1990s, with LisaOS X and Microsoft Windows for Xenix.

Xenix had competition in offices: most people wanted wordperfect and Lotus 123 and some way to share their files. In an office with a netware or banyan vines server, xenix really didn't have a place. The netware network stack was tiny compared with a full blown tcp stack to talk to xenix, which used to matter a lot before windows for workgroups. The graphics in a PC were pretty ordinary compared to a Sun or an SGI box, so as a workstation xenix couldn't compete there either.

There was an upper/lowercase mod available for the Model 1.