For the unrelated operating system with a similar name, see Xinu

Xinu

Xinu is a Unix-like operating system originally developed by Douglas Comer for instructional purposes at Purdue University in the 1980s. The name is both recursive, and is "Unix" spelled backwards...

.

mt Xinu (from the letters in "Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

(TM)", reversed) was a software company founded in 1983 that produced two operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s. Its slogan "We know Unix™ backwards and forwards" was an allusion to the company's name and abilities.

mt Xinu was a commercially licensed version of the BSD

Berkeley Software Distribution

Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...

 Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 operating system for the DEC

Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...

 VAX

VAX

VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...

. The initial version was based on 4.1cBSD; later versions were based on 4.2 and 4.3BSD.

more/BSD was mt Xinu's version of 4.3BSD-Tahoe for VAX and HP 9000

HP 9000

HP 9000 is the name for a line of workstation and server computer systems produced by the Hewlett-Packard Company . The native operating system for almost all HP 9000 systems is HP-UX, a derivative of Unix. The HP 9000 brand was introduced in 1984 to encompass several existing technical...

, incorporating code from the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

's HPBSD

HPBSD

HPBSD was a port of the 4.3BSD Unix operating system to the HP 9000, developed at the University of Utah's Systems Programming Group.HPBSD development started in 1987. The goal was to replace HP-UX with a BSD environment on the HP machines at Utah's CS department, for improved compatibility with...

. It included NFS. Mach386 was a hybrid of Mach 2.5/2.6 and 4.3BSD-Tahoe/Reno for 386

Intel 80386

The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...

 and 486 PCs.

The company's principals were University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 students and graduates, notably Bob Kridle, Alan Tobey, Ed Gould, and Vance Vaughan. Debbie Scherrer was a later contributor.

mt Xinu is also famous for its light-hearted Unix-themed calendars, including:

• Command of the Month (1987–1988)
• Lessons in Art (1989)
• Platform of the Year (1990)

In 1991 a division of mt Xinu broke off to become Xinet

Xinet

Xinet is a developer of the digital asset management system, Xinet WebNative Suite. Headquartered in Berkeley, California and with an office in Munich, Germany, Xinet was incorporated in 1991 after five years as a division of MT Xinu.- History :...

.