[micrex22]

I've been working on compiling a list of applications (primarily for my own usage) as to what would be useful to run on AIX. At least for doing things whereby you don't want an OS shock-full of distracting things. Obviously there's a lot of software for AIX I'm not aware of (in fact a lot of the commercial AIX applications have long since been forgotten and/or are no longer for sale).

==FREE==

• XMMS (probably the best tracker application for UNIX, later version of this won't be suitable for AIX)
  
• flac123/mpg123 (for playing flac and mp3 files in the AIX terminal)
  
• Firefox (3.6.25.2 is the highest it was ever built for AIX afaik, quite debilitating)
  
• X-Chat (and loads of other IRC clients I'm sure)
  
• Eclipse (IBM started Eclipse before it was spun off independently)
  
• EsoundD (allows applications to share your sound device)
  
• 4Front Open Sound System (allows a universal API for UNIX Audio and allows using UMS (Ultimedia Services) on soundcards it doesn't natively support)
  
• NEdit (free basic text editor)
  
• QEMU (I guess it's possible to run QEMU on AIX if you just wanted to emulate x86 stuff which could possibly eradicate WinMain, but of course do a much more slow job at it and not integrate natively in CDE)
  
• Adobe Reader 3.01 (for UNIX)
  
• Free Pascal https://www.freepascal.org/down/powerpc6...ungary.var
  ==AIX TOOLBOX==
  
• The Gimp (older versions)
  
• AbiWord (older versions)
  
• xpaint
  
• xv Image Viewer
  
• gzip
  
• xpdf
  ==GAMES==
  
• DosBox
  
• PrBoom
  
• Quake 1 / Quake 2 (requires ultimedia and won't work with OSS)
  
• Abuse
  
• Angband (there is an AIX port, and even an AIX PS/2 1.3 port... crazy)
  

==NON-FREE==

• FrameMaker (used for building manuals)
  
• PowerAnimator (AIX version of poweranimator, possibly permanently unobtanium)
  
• WinMain (the 'WINE' equivalent for UNIX, demo binaries were found but not final release)
  
• Compuware Workbench (mainframe application development)
  
• Corel WordPerfect 6.0 (for UNIX)
  
• CorelDRAW 3.5 (for UNIX)
  
• Wabi 2.0 (Windows translation environment for UNIX)
  
• CATIA 4 Release 2 (binaries and license found)
  
• CATIA 5 (binaries have been found but hindered by flexlm)
  
• Adobe Acrobat 3.01 AIX (this older version for AIX does not run on anything but AIX 4.x)
  
• Adobe Acrobat 3.02b AIX (it seems this 3.02b version IBM was using internally on their own RS/6000s but I cannot see evidence of the binaries anywhere, it's possible Adobe made it for IBM per request, possibly runs on 5.3 and higher)
  
• SoftPC/SoftWindows2 for AIX (binaries have been found but hindered by flexlm)
  
• DevPartner Java Edition v4.0 (AIX)  (no images available and also requires flexlm)
  

==AIX BUNDLED SOFTWARE==

• AIX 4.1.5 ValueOptions <-- not exactly sure what extra things are on this, but there is a lot for UMS which is most likely replicated elsewhere
  
• AIX 4 SoftWindows <-- apparently embedded in the AIX 4 media???
  
• AIX 4.1.5 PexPhigs<-- a PEX and PHIGS driver package for AIX
  

(red = so far the AIX packages seem to be lost from the face of the earth, orange = they are difficult to source)
Well that's my list so far, I imagine other people would have other things.

[jpstewart]

I know many of the (very expensive!) CAD/CAM/CAE applications were previously available for AIX:

• CATIA (versions 4 and 5)
  
• Pro/Engineer
  
• Unigraphics
  
• I-DEAS
  

Unfortunately, I don't have version information for anything other than CATIA. Also note that Unigraphics and I-DEAS were merged into "NX" at some point after AIX support was dropped.

Also, I'm fairly sure some of the FEA software such as Ansys and Nastran ran on AIX at points in the past, but I can't find any info on that at the moment.

Hopefully more posters come along and fill in some of the gaps.

[micrex22]

So it looks like chulofiasco found a copy of CATIA V4.2.0 (although I don't know if there's any licensing), I'm downloading it now to check it out (although it wil be a long time before I get to try it out).
It also appears Word Perfect 6.0 was released for UNIX, and AIX was supported; this is another case of 'you need to know it exists to find it'. WinWorld has this listed: **redacted** (just search it up on the site).
There's also a thing called Wabi for AIX, which appears to be a win 3.11 environment for AIX (similar to the thing OS/2 has): http://ps-2.kev009.com/rs6k-austin.ibm.c...bissf.html I'm also downloading Wabi 2.0 for AIX to try out later

Also IBM's PDFs seem to be edited with AIX and state: "acrobat distiller command 3.02b for aix" (searching this brings up a bunch of PDFs that have been edited by AIX but not the acrobat software for AIX itself...)

[jpstewart]

Funny you should mention WordPerfect 6.0 for UNIX. I actually have that, but completely forgot that fact and that AIX was a supported platform.

However, that reminded me that CorelDRAW for UNIX is out there and AIX (version 3.2) is also one of its supported platforms. I have no idea how good AIX is for backwards compatibility so I don't know how new a version of AIX will still run it. Both CorelDRAW for UNIX and Adobe Acrobat 3.01 for UNIX are available from the winworldpc site you mentioned.

[micrex22]

Funny you should mention WordPerfect 6.0 for UNIX. I actually have that, but completely forgot that fact and that AIX was a supported platform.

However, that reminded me that CorelDRAW for UNIX is out there and AIX (version 3.2) is also one of its supported platforms. I have no idea how good AIX is for backwards compatibility so I don't know how new a version of AIX will still run it. Both CorelDRAW for UNIX and Adobe Acrobat 3.01 for UNIX are available from the winworldpc site you mentioned.

Oh yeah... well will you look at that! I missed it because the description doesn't list 'RS/6000'. I'm currently scouring archive.org and winworldpc.com for other hybrid UNIX packages to see if there's any I've missed.
**URL redacted** (corel draw for unix, just search it on winworld)
**URL redacted** (adobe acrobat for unix, just search it on winworld) <-- it looks like this is 3.01 and not the later 3.02 that IBM used, but I'll take what I can get :p

AIX is pretty good for backwards compatibility--the problems arise when you go past 5.3, IBM started removing support code that the applications rely on and in 7.2 they stripped out even more! But, as long as you have 5.3 everything should work fine. 6.1 seems to be pretty good too but behaves oddly with a lot of sound with UMS.

EDIT: here's a thread about someone wanting a version of latex for AIX: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/...bm-aix-5-3 (so you could snap an older version or whatever and run it, but I've no use for latex). Side-note: I think it's ridiculous that the developer intends it to be pronounced as 'lay-tock', really? You're going to mimic a standard English word with a silly acronym and then change how it's supposed to be pronounced? Now I wonder if Leslie Lamport and Steve Wilhite drink coffee together whilst they both reaffirm 'jiff' and 'laytock' to one another in-between sips

EDIT #2:It looks like Framemaker for AIX may be lost as well, I could only find a demo on archive.org but I'll keep digging:
https://archive.org/details/AdobeProductSampler <-- FrameMaker 5.0

FrameMaker versions 5.x through 7.2 (from mid-1995 to 2005) did not contain updates to major parts of the program (including its general user interface, table editing, and illustration editing), concentrating instead on bug fixes and the integration of XML-oriented features (previously part of the FrameMaker+SGML premium product). FrameMaker did not feature multiple undo until version 7.2 (its 2005 release).

I was also able to compare from the sampler in regards to how many times AIX was omitted from the other packages whereby Irix and Solaris had ports:
Type On Call
Version 4.1 for Macintosh, Windows, Silicon Graphics, and Sun
Adobe Font Folio
Version 7.0 for Macintosh, Windows, Silicon Graphics, and Sun
Adobe Photoshop
Version 3.0 for Silicon Graphics or Sun
Adobe Illustrator
Version 5.5 for Silicon Graphics or Sun

Too bad...

[jpstewart]

Add this to the list of things I used to know and had forgotten about (until I stumbled upon my old notes): Quake and Quake2 are available for AIX from IBM's own ftp site: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/games/

I have no idea how well they run or on what hardware they were intended to run.

I'm not much of a gamer, nor do I really think of AIX as being a gaming platform, so those really surprised me.

[micrex22]

Add this to the list of things I used to know and had forgotten about (until I stumbled upon my old notes): Quake and Quake2 are available for AIX from IBM's own ftp site: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/games/

I have no idea how well they run or on what hardware they were intended to run.

I'm not much of a gamer, nor do I really think of AIX as being a gaming platform, so those really surprised me.

Yeah the RS/6000s at the time were heavily geared towards that kind of thing, and the games were popular enough that they saw a port to AIX (they run fine on an RS/6000 with the higher end GPU options, and the TP 850 should as well). I'm certain there were more games and things that were ported and in usage--but the documentation is sparse, and really the only people who would know things are the people who were around using that stuff then. Like, I wouldn't have known about Angband if a coworker who was involved with older games didn't tell me.

I found what retail copy of SoftWindows would be needed to be recovered to get the installer for AIX, here: https://www.duftopia.com/html/insignia_s..._unix.html
Unfortunately, I can't find a version for sale anywhere--and whoever purchased that copy never dumped the ISOs. Lost to history, bwoh bwoh.

HOWEVER, I noticed the "AIX version 4 for clients" mentions SoftWindows, so it's possible SoftWindows for AIX was bundled in this???

If it is bundled I wonder if it's the same fully featured version in the Insignia release and/or how easily it can be extracted from the AIX 4 media to run on 5.3. I'm just scraping at the bottom of the barrel at this point.

No lead for FrameMaker or WinMain yet. There *must* have been some useful applications running in WinMain but again, all of the people who would have used it have moved on to other things, or are retired on a beach and could care less if someone in their mid-twenties is looking to resuscitate software on AIX

[micrex22]

So I was able to get a copy of UNIX FrameMaker. What's interesting is that the readme points to a special sub-folder specifically for AIX for the readme on how to install it on AIX.
What's interesting about this is that I keep hearing AIX is the most unusual of any of the AIX variants, I suppose having a dedicated installation readme may reaffirm that.

Here's the whole readme in full:

0) Extract the files from the tar image sysinst.tar:
$ tar xf sysinst.tar

The following installation procedure was provided by IBM:

README FOR AIX SLHS/6000 Development Tools, 01.01.0003.0001 ON AIX 4.1

1) Logon as root

2) To be able to generate an FDK dynamic client, you will need to install the following files:
slhs.dev.inst_image
slhs.rte.inst_image
slhs.src.inst_image

3) Copy the files to:
/usr/sys/inst.images

If the directory doesn't exist, create it.

4) cd /usr/sys/inst.images

5) Refresh the table of contents file (.toc) by executing the command:
/usr/sbin/inutoc .

6) Start smit by typing:
$ smit install

7) Assuming that the level of AIX is 4.1 or above,
a) Select the following option:
- "Install and Update Software"
Next Select: - "Install / Update Selectable Software (Custom Install)"
Next Select: - "Install Software at Latest Available Level"
Next Select: - "Install New Software Products at Latest Level"

b) Enter "/usr/sys/inst.images" as your INPUT directory

c) Press F4 to list possible update images
- Press F7 on the line containing "slhs.dev.obj"
Note: the slhs.rte.obj object is a prerequisite of slhs.dev.obj.

It is not necessary to commit the software at this point. If you wish, set the "Commit Software?" option to "no". The commit action can be taken at a later time.

If the slhs.rte.obj object is _not_ installed on your system, make sure the "Automatically Install PREREQUISITE Software?" option is set to "yes". The install procedure will put both objects onto the system.

d) Press <Enter> to start the installation

e) Check the output shown in the smit window for any additional instructions.

f) Exit smit (F12), and verify the installation by typing:
lslpp -h slhs.dev.obj

8) Read the manual pages on svCompSetup for further requirements on system configuration:
man svCompSetup

9) Once you've decided which compiler flavors to create, change directories (as root) to:
/usr/lpp/slhs/etc

10) Execute the svCompSetup command in that directory:
$ ./svCompSetup

11) Documentation is in the form of manual pages. The initial place to read is "svld":
$ man svld

Cross-references are provided at the end of this manual, in the section labeled "See Also". The manual pages are located in /usr/lpp/slhs/doc, with symbolic links created in the /usr/man subdirectories.

12) It is advisable to ensure that your compiler levels are up to date. Appropriate levels for xlc, xlf and xlC are (as of 9/30/95):
xlccmp.obj 1.3.0.38
xlfcmp.obj 3.2.2.0 with PTF U438928 (3.2.2.3)
xlCcmp.obj 2.1.4.0 with PTF U437662 (2.1.4.0), or 3.1.2.0

If you have any questions, please call your IBM AIX Support Center.

[micrex22]

PA-RISC confirmed that CD 2 of that alternative AIX 4 release does indeed contain SoftWindows2 for AIX:


Of course it's blocked by requiring a Flexlm license. Because I don't even know if it will work on AIX 5.3 or beyond it's probably not all that useful anyways :/

[gbudny]

I want to inform you that you can run PDF Studio Viewer, PDF Studio and probably other applications created by this company on AIX:

https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudioviewer/download/
PDF Studio Viewer
PDF Studio Viewer