Dell CIO Says "Unix is Dead" 656
An anonymous reader writes "I thought this might spur some good discussion on this board, including jabs at Dell and MS, which I always enjoy reading. Dell's CIO believes that the end of Unix is here, in fact his opening slide in a recent presentation was "Unix is dead." Specifically, he talked about the savings he claims in moving Dell's Oracle databases from Solaris to Red Hat.
Tell that to the military (Score:3, Interesting)
Unix is dead (Score:5, Interesting)
The unix - note the lower case - family of operating systems, however is alive and well.
Kudos to Dell for using their own servers to run their business, tho'.
enjoy (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, here is a funny comeback from http://www.superhero.org [superhero.org] "Windows 95 is finally out, and I keep reading in all the consultants' columns that UNIX is dead. I believe them, of course--they're paid well to make such pronouncements--but UNIX seems pretty lively for a corpse. Whenever a hardware vendor brings out the latest hot box, it seems to be running UNIX; the telecom industry still likes UNIX pretty much; and there sure seem to be a lot of UNIX users out there on the Internet. If UNIX is so old, how can it be producing offspring like that little scamp, Linux?
"Maybe these consultants are confusing dying with age. UNIX is old, a lot older than the other operating systems that have long since passed on. In spite of its twenty-six years, however, UNIX continues to crunch numbers while younger systems can only gum them till they're mushy. What explains this mysterious longevity?
"I have a theory. UNIX survives because, unlike other operating systems, it lacks doubt and guilt. UNIX does just what you tell it to, as quickly and efficiently as it can, and then it waits for more work. It doesn't worry about whether what you asked it to do was fair, beneficial, or even sensible. It just does it.
"By contrast, Windows frets about you. It offers you hints and choices and dialog boxes. Help is everywhere (for what it's worth). And if you ask Windows to do anything of consequence, it asks you to confirm your request, and then it tells you what it did. Delete a large number of files, and Windows is exhausted. It's not the work, it's the *stress*. It's no wonder that Windows systems tend to freeze up where a UNIX system would crash.
"UNIX snorts at Windows-style solicitude. UNIX doesn't ask you to confirm--if you didn't want it to do what you asked, why did you ask it? Similarly, it won't annoy you by reporting the consequences of what you did. Why would you enter a command if you don't first know its consequences?"
Suhit
Linux is the next MS (Score:1, Interesting)
Byte agreed.... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the time this was a common headline in the popular rags...and then I noticed the date - February 1992
This crap appears every five years along with "life on Mars" and "possible cure for cancer".
The words "snake" and "oil" come to mind.
Re:And to banks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:since 1980.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some background on Randy Mott, Dell's CIO. Before joining Dell, he was the CIO at Wal*Mart. Both Dell and Wal*Mart are kings of supply chain and operations management, especially cost reduction. This guy is very good at squeezing cost out of corporate IT infrastructures while delivering first rate solutions to his internal corporate customers. Any hyperbole aside, if Randy Mott speaks, he knows what he's talking about, and he knows what he's doing. It may not be right for every organization, but I guarantee it'll be right for Dell.
Developer lashes out: What Killed FreeBSD (Score:0, Interesting)
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
It shows (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux is the next MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux spends almost no money in R&D and Sun spends like 2 billion. Stop ripping their shit off and come up with your own stuff or Unix will die.
Sorry, but ... what the fuck? So free Unix-alikes are "ripping shit off" of Sun, now? I guess the fact that real talent contributes code to Linux doesn't excuse the fact that Linux is based around the "everything is a file" concept. So reading information in public Usenix papers is ripping off of Sun? Please. For example, the anticipatory i/o scheduler seems to be based on information that's been freely published. Not information hidden away under proprietary NDAs. Futexes and the O(1) scheduler are other examples of information that wasn't ripped-off shit. (I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure about this.)
If Sun is spending two billion dollars in R&D and the linux people aren't, why hasn't Solaris managed to totally blow Linux out of the water? Oh wait, it does. On big (as in many processors) systems. It doesn't do as well on commodity hardware, but everybody knows Linux just doesn't scale well to 64-node machines these days. (People are working on it, but we're not there yet.) Even in the days of secure [openbsd.org], portable [netbsd.org], light [freebsd.org] reimplementations with wide hardware support [kernel.org], propietary Unix still has its niches. Besides, part of the appeal of Sun is a "total-package" deal - kind of like Apple.
Look, I appreciate that you might actually care about this, but if you don't give examples of what you're talking about you're going to look like you're talking out of your ass. Even on Slashdot. :3
Re:Red Hat != UNIX ?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because Texans refer to all soft drinks as "Coke" doesn't mean Pepsi sold out. (Ask a Texan for a Coke and they will respond, "What kind? I've got Pepsi and 7-Up for y'all.")
UNIX is obviated to most users needing UNIX-type services thanks to Linux. *BSDs are interesting but don't have the mindshare Linux does.
RMS, Debian, and man (Score:3, Interesting)
E.g. Stallman insists that man pages are obsolete and refuses to support them, which is incredibly wrongheaded.
Ironically, the last person I heard complain about that was a Debian developer. I seem to recall he also said that Debian policy is against this and in favor of having man pages for everything anyway. There's probably a happy medium ... but I definitely agree (and so does Debian?) that a goal of the extirpation of man pages is silly.
Personally, I don't care how "pure" my "Unix" is either. It works the same way, and I like that :3
Re:Then who's alive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Quad-xeon Dell PowerEdge 6600 8Gb RAM, with RedHat Advanced Server and 4 HDs: $31,168
SunFire V480, quad-UltraSPARC, 8Gb RAM with Solaris and 2 HDs: $43,995.00
In the grand scheme of things, that's not a big difference, especially given the high build quality of Sun hardware. It's too early to say that Dell have a distinct advantage.
Re:OH PHEW!! (Score:3, Interesting)
They aren't real UNIX(tm). As for being real Unix systems, how do they differ from Linux in that respect? Both are POSIX-compliant; with the exception of a few newcomers not known to K&R, all the commands in the C library are the same. The system commands all work the same, with the exception of a few knobs here and there there were again added since the time of the first Unix systems.
Just a Visualization (Score:1, Interesting)
Jay
proudliberals.com [proudliberals.com]
Dell, innovation, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:since 1980.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Working fine on my Linux and Cygwin installations. Microsoft says that ODBC is out of fashion, and OLE DB is what they support on
Question: why is Stallman trying to be like Gates?
-1 Troll
Re:He means commercial Unices (Score:2, Interesting)
GNU/Linux is not Unix (Score:2, Interesting)
We all know Redhat is Linux. Or more correctly of course GNU/Linux.
GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix.
Therefore Redhat is not Unix... This is all really simple.
In a related story, Manager Buzzword journal reports this month that the fragmentation in the Windows market spells the end of Windows. "Developers need to write their apps with Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP and not
Why does anyone care what a DELL spokesman says??? (Score:1, Interesting)
The argument that open source is better for reliability just because alot have access to the source is not really true. No one had source to Unix but it was reliable. Also Doesn't BSD have a better uptime than linux?
Re:And to banks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dell gets it wrong again (Score:3, Interesting)
Same thing with Dull's CIO: to him, 'unix' is apparently only proprietary implementations of unix - a meaningless & sensationalist definition these days.
Pigeons are extinct!! (great headline, and accurate if pigeon=carrier pigeon)
Re:Dell Trolls (Score:4, Interesting)
You may find this article interesting:
Sun has two surprises in store for users [infoworld.com]
Basicaly, what they are trying to do is embed tens of processor cores inside one chip. If they can pull this off sufficiently early, they may completely overwhelm their SMP competition as both IBM and Intel are at the point of embeding only a couple of cores in one die. Plus, their software has excellent SMP characteristics which may prove quite usefull.
Sun (Score:3, Interesting)
So during the 1980's you had: PC's which were glorified typewriters while Unix boxes were used for real computation (the workstations)
During the 1990's you had: PCs which were power individual workstations while Unix boxes provide network services (the servers)
During the 2000s you will have: PCs providing workstations and small local servers while enterprise apps and enterprise consolodiated servers become key (essentially Unix as the corporate mainframe)
Re:since 1980.... (Score:4, Interesting)
They want to sell packaged solutions with dell hardware of course. Notice the fast track to Linux [dell.com]is there. They have whole classes on Unix to Windows or Linux migration. They are doing quite a good job of marketing themselves as a supperior solution. Its all about profits and taking as much as they can from Sun.
Re:since 1980.... (Score:2, Interesting)
For year, I've been appauled by the money companies waste on name brands and support contracts. (And that's not including the hoops they jump through in executing their support options. For example, IBM won't send us a replacement for a failed hard drive; we are required to ship the entire server back which can not happen.)
Re:since 1980.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dell Trolls (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Ok, well, yeah, but the drives cost more than 1U dual PIII servers.
2. Yeah, you can, but try upgrading the firmware on an A3500FC on the fly. Would you now trust hitting the disk array with your database at the same time? I wouldn't....
3. Solaris doesn't have 64 bit memory access. Its like 38 or 48 bit. Check their UltraSparc docs.
4. Sure, and for things that need "decent" clustering, its one of a few options. Most things, however, don't need "decent" clustering.
5. No current Sun product supports 128 processors, and if you need a loaded E15k you have very specific needs indeed.
6. Again, how many UltraSparc II/III processors have failed on you in the past month? If you deal with lots of them, they die depressingly frequently. Especially considering the cost.
7. Anybody can and does provide support like this. Sun premium support (gold/platinum) is really freaking expensive.
Sun will continue to have fabrication problems, since they are relying on TI to fab for them. Sun has so many supply vendors that they run into the same problems white box vendors do, but they can hide it better. When push comes to shove, they are selling enormously expensive servers that are justified for about 1% of server duties. And that will shrink as Linux gains the features to compete in those corner cases. At which point, Sun will die. Period.
andy
Re:Byte agreed.... (Score:2, Interesting)
That was some really crufty code. Millions of lines. Nobody understood it other than the few parts they worked on in the last year. Typical jobs involved reading code and documentation for four to six weeks, make changes for a few days, test for a week, document for a week.
What really shocked me was that NT was finally stable enough for this company to take 20 years of crufty code with #define PDP11's still in there and move it once again. Of course, that was just pressure from customers, but up until then I never really considered NT an option for a project like that.
That's RMS all right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad jokes about our bad tempered hero aside, it's very odd that someone as high up as that person at Dell not knowing what unix is. I bet everyone with a degree in anything vaugely technical at Dell would cringe at his comments. At this point (and any point proir) I can't see how anything other than small pockets of the net could survive without all the various breeds of unix boxes holding it together.
Re:GNU/Linux is not Unix (Score:2, Interesting)