Software and Applications on HP-UX

HP-UX Unix and the HP 9000 PA-RISC platforms were frequently used for technical computing between the 1980s and 2000s. This included a variety of third-party commercial applications and software suites for engineering and design but also many other uses including publishing, development and emulation

Software Engineering CAD/CAM Mathematics EDA Publishing Office
Bundled HP-UX
Open source		 Abaqus
Fieldview
Harpoon
TecPlot
DADiSP
ANSYS		 I-DEAS
CATIA
MSC
Unigraphics
AutoCAD
ME10/ME30
Pro/Engineer		 Mathematica
MatLab
Maplesoft		 Cadence
Altera
Ansoft
Agilent
Verilog
VHDL
Xilinx		 FrameMaker
Interleaf
ArborText
Webworks
Acrobat
DynaText		 CorelDRAW
WordPerfect
Ami Pro
Applixware
IslandOffice
Lotus 1-2-3
Wingz
Networks Internet Services Development Emulation Core Games
NetWare
NMS
Protocols
Servers		 Browsers
Mail
Groupware		 Virtualization
DCE
ServiceGuard
Middleware
Databases		 Compilers
SoftBench
Java
ClearCase
Rational		 MAE
Softwindows
WABI
Liken
QEMU		 SAM
SD-UX
Ignite
VUE, CDE
 Collections
Action
Strategy
Simulation
Arcade

There were possibly hundreds more commercial software solutions ported to HP-UX, especially for business needs like transactions, warehousing, accounting and integration that will not be covered here.

Bundled with HP-UX

HP shipped some software products directly with HP-UX base operating systems, while much HP software was packaged into various specific bundled, that had to be licensed individually. This includes a variety of dedicated HP applications collections on CDs but also some specific software part of operating system extensions.

Application CDs and Software Packs

HP-UX Application CDs contained software extensions and bundled stand-alone software for HP-UX unix computers. The software usually needed specific user-licenses and was code-word encrypted. Contained were standard HP-UX components and bundles to extend the core HP-UX operating system but there was third-party software included also.

ACE and Extensions

HP-UX 10.20

HP ACE
ACE © HP 1997

HP-UX Additional Core Enhancements (ACE) were integrated extensions to base HP-UX operating systems installations with several core components. HP ACEs were available for HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00 represented a new approach to supporting new hardware and software features based on an stable base operating system release for workstations.

The more focused Hardware Extensions (HWE) enabled new hardware in HP-UX 10.20 or enhanced new functionality through software. This included adding support for new workstation and server hardware to HP-UX 10.20.

HP-UX 11.00

In HP-UX 11.00 HP still kept Additional Core Enhancements (ACE) for enhancing hardware and software support in the HP-UX core but added Extension Packs (EP), which contained specific hardware and software extensions to base HP-UX.

Documentation and links

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Open source

Many free Unix software packages and later open source software have been available for HP-UX since at least the 1990s, possibly earlier. There were a few different undertakings to port these software packages to HP-UX and make the source and binary packages available – either as FTP download or in CD collections.

HP Software Depot (ITRC)

HP had an official Software Depot with ports and configurations for popular software. This was a collection of try-&-buy software and shareware for HP-UX and HP products.

Interworks

Interworks
InterWorks © 1996

InterWorks was the Technical Users Forum of Interex, a HP-UX user group in the 1980s and 1990s. It promoted exchange, technical discussion and publications as a non-profit and also provided a large library of ported open source Unix software since the 1970s.

InterWorks CD releases were made available to Interex members for at least HP-UX 8.07, 9 and 10 for HP 9000 700 workstations. From the early 2000s on, HP-UX FastStart packages were available as CD for Interex members with a few selected open source packages.

The Contributed Software (CSL) Library and InterWorks FTP server are long gone and no public archives seem to have survived since the 1990s, a few lists and descriptions are available.

Interworks
InterWorks © 1996

Software Porting Center

A semi-official porting center for open source HP-UX software had been established in the early-1990s already, and worked closely with HP to provide popular free software packages for HP-UX and PA-RISC. This began with common Unix software (and games) for early HP-UX 8 and 9, and broadened the applications greatly with HP-UX 10.20 and 11.x

Not all applications had been available as binary package for each HP-UX release, and not all packages survived the archiving in the two last decades.

The Written Word

The Written Word was a commercial provider of binary open source software for Unix platforms, including PA-RISC and HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00. Packages were available from FTP or through subscriptions CDs and included Development (GNU cc, debuggers, ...), Interpreters (shells, Tcl, awk, Python), Editors (emacs, vi), Networking (mail, ftp, lynx), Text (TeX, groff, postscript), Databases, Libraries, Security and Web (apache, ssh, samba) and Utilities.

There used to be large archive of ported HP-UX software at The Written Word FTP archive, of which no mirrors or archives have survived anywhere.

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Documentation

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