
The Heirloom Project - protomyth
http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/
======
Koshkin
This, along with the software available at suckless.org, gives us but a
glimpse of the elegance, leanness, minimalism and simplicity of the original
UNIX. (Still, I am not sure what is the best way to have a UNIX experience
today. One, more practical, probably would be to use a minimal install of
Slackware; a more radical approach would be to play with Version 7 either on a
PDP-11 emulator or using an existing port of the same to x86 available at
[http://emma.nfshost.com/v7x86/.](http://emma.nfshost.com/v7x86/.))

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akavel
Regarding "a UNIX experience today", I'd think some *BSD system maybe? I.e.
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or similar.

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mtdewcmu
You could run Solaris[1]. They don't seem to provide versions older than 10.

[1] [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-
storage/solaris10/d...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-
storage/solaris10/downloads/index.html)

~~~
Samis2001
Elsewhere on the internet (without resorting to seedier places like torrent
sites) you can find versions of SunOS 2.x/3.x/4.x as well as Solaris 1.x, 2.x,
7.x and 8.

~~~
mtdewcmu
A google search for "old unix emulator"[1] turns up a wealth of options.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=old%20unix%20emulator](https://www.google.com/search?q=old%20unix%20emulator)

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ivyb
This is a nice project to reimplement the GNU core utils with simpler/shorter
code.

There's a couple projects that superceed it now though Rob Landley's Toybox
and Suckless sbase/ubase.

* [https://landley.net/toybox/](https://landley.net/toybox/)

* [http://git.suckless.org/sbase/tree/](http://git.suckless.org/sbase/tree/)

* [http://git.suckless.org/ubase/tree/](http://git.suckless.org/ubase/tree/)

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pvg
GNU core utils are more complicated reimplementations of the ancestors of
these things.

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pgtan
mailx is a phantastic tool for scripting and automatic processing of mails and
mailboxes.

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DrScump
Going from mail to mailx was a HUGE improvement back in the day.

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stonogo
Gunnar Ritter dropped off the internet half a decade ago. Nothing on that site
is maintained. It's a shame; I hope people pick up the mantle.

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anjbe
Heirloom Doctools is maintained by Carsten Kunze at [https://n-t-
roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html](https://n-t-
roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html).

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fnj
I have the Heirloom Bourne Shell on all my boxes. I don't use it
interactively, but I make an effort to restrict all my shell scripts to use
nothing that is not in HBS and the Heirloom toolchest. It's a matter of pride
to me that all my scripts be portable to virtually any *NIX system. I think it
builds character and pride.

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SwellJoe
Why not build for POSIX sh, instead? It's more, umm, standard, and can be
expected to run on any OS built in the past decade or more. It's equally
character-building, if you've been accustomed to building for modern bash (at
least, it was for me). I haven't seen an actual Bourne shell in maybe 20
years.

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yjftsjthsd-h
Posix is a great standard, but you need an implementation to actually run (and
test) on. I've used dash for this as well, but heirloom sh should be pretty
close (and at worst probably a subset and therefore safe).

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HashThis
Please do NOT use sourceforge.net

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Nexxxeh
I didn't downvote you, but I'll ask the question...

Why not? The new (2016) owners BizX turned that ship around. They seem to
actually give a shit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/)

