The Agent, which performed much of the system call validation for the AOS/VS kernel, as well as some I/O buffering and many compatibility functions, ran in ring 3 of each process.

AOS/VS (Advanced Operating System/Virtual Storage) was the most commonly used DG software product, and included a command-line interpreter (CLI) allowing for complex scripting, DUMP/LOAD, and other custom components.

The 16-bit version of the CLI is famous for including an Easter egg meant to honor Xyzzy (which was pronounced "magic").

A modified version of System V Unix called DG/UX was made for the Eclipse MV line and later the 88K and x86 AViiON machines.

As AOS/VS matured, many DG-supplied utilities were rewritten to take advantage of the 32-bit address space and reduce dependencies on assembly language, often resulting in substantial increases in functionality, performance and reliability compared with their AOS ancestors.