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The first accelerator at GSI, UNILAC, went into operation in the early 1970s. Today, UNILAC is a small accelerator complex, consisting of several ion sources, injector and main linacs comprising 23 RF cavities, several strippers and other instrumentation, serving a number of experimental areas and the synchrotron SIS18. Three ion species can be provided at different energies simultaneously in a fast time multiplex scheme, two at a time. The UNILAC is going to be the heavy ion injector linac for FAIR, supported by a dedicated proton linac. The current linac control system dates back to the 1990s. It was initiated for SIS18 and ESR, which enlarged GSI at the time, and was retrofitted to the UNILAC. The linear decelerator HITRAP was added in the last decade, while an sc cw linac is under development. Today, SIS18, ESR and lately CRYRING are already operated by a new system based on the LHC Software Architecture LSA, as FAIR will be. In order to replace the outdated linac control system and simplify and unify future operation, a new control system on the same basis is being developed for all GSI linacs. This contribution reports about this venture from a machine physicist point of view.
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