IRIX 6.5

IRIX 6.5 is the final major version of IRIX released first in 1998 to replace IRIX 6.2. Further incremental improvements were made from 1998 to 2006, with security updates ending in 2013 under Rackable Systems.

Improvements over IRIX 6.2

IRIX 6.5's most notable improvement is standardized distribution. No more is a specific IRIX version needed for a specific machine. It includes support for all 64-bit capable SGIs with a few exceptions (e.g. the Crimson).

New Features:

OpenGL 1.1 support for all systems supported.
Desktop now called IRIX Interactive Desktop
Improved security for remote X and other subsystems (safer defaults)
Gigabit support
Improved C library support. Compiler now supports C99.
MIPSPro replaces IDO/uopt as the main compiler backend.
Later versions have Firewire and USB support.
Later versions added OpenGL 1.2 support

Lifecycle

From 1998 to 2006 a new point release was released every quarter from .1 to .30. Security updates continued for 6.5.22 and higher until 2013. Shortly thereafter, SGI's Supportfolio site went offline.

System Support

IRIX 6.5 through .22 supported all of the following systems:

After 6.5.22, support for the following systems was dropped:

IRIS Indigo
Indy
Indigo2
Onyx/Challenge