OpenPA.net
PA-RISC information - since 1999

PA-RISC Operating Systems

Many operating systems have been available over the years for PA-RISC computers. Most of them are either commercial Unix or derivates and open source projects with different designs ported to and developed specifically for PA-RISC.

A separate article details the history of PA-RISC operating systems chronologically and more in-depth.

Commercial

The main operating system for PA-RISC was HP-UX, the native Unix for HP 9000 computers sold by HP in parallel to products for transactions and real-time markets – MPE/iX and HP-RT.

Open Source

Several open source operating systems are available for PA-RISC, having been developed in the early 2000s with proper, mostly stable hardware and software support since then.

Research and Development

PA-RISC was used for many research projects in the era of the late-80s to mid-90s. Many projects were based on Mach – at HP, the Open Group (OSF) and University of Utah:

MkLinux and Mach 4/Lites were publically available, the others required licenses for source code they contained. The Linux and BSD ports made heavy use of their codebase and developments.

Some oddball projects like Windows and Netware on PA-RISC are documented in OS History.

Support Overview

PA-RISC OS support, 📘 - full support, - partial support
OS 700s 740s 800s A B C D E FGHI J K L N R rp rx SD T V
HP-UX 9 📘 📘 📘 📘
HP-UX 10.20 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘
HP-UX 11.00 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘
HP-UX 11i v1 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘
HP-UX 11i v2 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘
HP-UX 11i v3 📘 📘 📘 📘
Linux 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘 📘
OpenBSD 📘 📘 📘
NetBSD 📘 📘 📘
NeXTSTEP
Mach 3
Mach 4
MkLinux
OSF/1
MK-PA 📘
HPBSD 📘

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