The Unix 68000-based operating system received two boosts this week with the launch of a new Unix machine from Motorola and the development of a Unix training scheme.

Though neither the new machine nor the greater availability of training is likely to strike fear into the hearts of MSDOS or CP/M software suppliers, Unix would well grab an increasing share of the upmarket demand for expensive specialist operating systems.

It can't expect to have much impact on the home computer scene as you really need about 5Mb of storage and a hard disk. The suggested "configuration" of Motorola's new 2000 series machine (starting at £10,000) includes 704K of RAM and a 20Mb hard disk.

The Motorola machine is also significant because it marks the first move away from components and sub-systems by Motorola in the UK. The machine is, of course, based around the Motorola 68000 processor for which the Unix operating system was written and can be expanded to communicate with mainframes.

The new Unix training scheme, Q-Rain (from the Quantime and Instruction Set companies), will be offering courses in Unix, the C programming language, Ada and the new System V version of Unix. The courses start in February.