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Unix Operating Systems Software Windows Linux

Windows Beat Unix, But it Won't Beat Linux 424

Posted by Zonk from the we-can-rebuild-you-we-have-the-technology dept.
Onymous Hero writes "The amazing thing isn't that Windows beat the pants off Unix; it's that so many of the Unix companies survived until today. An article from eWeek looks at why Linux has been so successful where Unix failed." From the article: "While the Unix companies were busy ripping each other to shreds, Microsoft was smiling all the way to the bank. Because the Unix businesses couldn't settle on software development standards, ISVs (independent software vendors) had to write not a single application to get the whole Unix market, they had to write up to a half-dozen different versions. Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems? "
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Windows Beat Unix, But it Won't Beat Linux More

Windows Beat Unix, But it Won't Beat Linux

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  • Make that three. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xenex ( 97062 ) * <xenex@noSPaM.opinionstick.com> on Friday September 23, 2005 @08:55AM (#13628354) Journal
    From the article:
    "Twelve years ago, I oversaw a PC Magazine feature on Unix on Intel. My team and I reviewed at Unixes from Consensys, Dell, Interactive, SCO, Univel, Sun, and NeXT.

    ...

    Today, most of those companies are dead. Only two of them--Sun and SCO--are still in the Unix business.


    Make that three.

    NeXT [apple.com] are still in the Unix business [apple.com].

    • Re:Make that three. (Score:5, Funny)

      by hungrygrue ( 872970 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:01AM (#13628370) Homepage
      That is still only two, he counted SCO as still being "in the UNIX business".
    • Still? Apple's new to the UNIX business. They weren't in it 12 years ago.

    • Re:Make that three. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Xarius ( 691264 )
      Make that four.

      SGI [sgi.com] are still in the UNIX business [sgi.com].
  • .. you just have to choose your API's/frameworks carefully.

    i mean, its not so difficult to set up a project that will cross-compile, use GTK+ or one of the other, smart, GUI libs, heck even SDL+libcairo works wonders, and then get it running on Solaris, Linux, *BSD's, OSX, and Windows .. as long as you're developing on Unix.

    but you certainly can't easily do it the other way around: develop on Windows, and port across. It can of course be done (with GTK+, etc), but its not as easy as it is to do under Unix.
    • I find the whole question rather odd. You can just as easily write a single application that would run on all UNIX systems of a particular flavor.

      Why group the different UNIX vendors together then complain that they are different? Why not put microsoft in the same group with them and complain that what you write for UNIX does not run on Microsoft?
      • Depends on your application.

        I work with a system that is 95% system independent, it runs on anything from Windows to mainframes. After each release, the main code goes to platform porting to actually port it to the specific flavour of UNIX, i.e Solaris, AIX (4 and 5, difference between these releases), HP-UX, Tru64, Linux (both 32 and 65 bit). So, for a lot of applications, it is a huge mess porting to various platforms, each platform with their own porting group.

        The problems with multiple UNIX flavors

  • Why it won't. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Friday September 23, 2005 @08:58AM (#13628361) Journal
    And it won't for one simple reason. Its open source and free. Time and time again people say that Linux won't be able to last another year against Windows, and time and time again Linux is still here and stronger than ever. It is for one simple reason. It will last so long as people still have an interest in it and keep developing for it. Theoretically, Linux could last forever against Microsoft because there will always be people who don't want to buy into them. And there will always be people who want software for free and be able to modify their software. We could sit at 24 million Linux users for the next century and be fine. Still using Linux? (version 8.6.12-ac3) You bet I am.
    • And don't forget that Microsoft will build in DRM restrictions and make arbitrary design decisions that make sense for their business model and not for the customer. That can't happen with an active open source project - restrictions and limitations that people don't like are bugs and will be fixed. Features and bad designs that people don't like will be replaced. Windows is not evolving, Linux is.

      • Re:Why it won't. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DigitumDei ( 578031 )
        I worry thought that with MS supporting all the different forms of DRM that the various industries are pushing, and Linux fighting DRM (or at least not activly supporting it). How long until Linux runs into legal issues with these various organisations, and when they realise there is no one to sue, maybe they'll just try to get it banned outright. Unlikely I know, but maybe just insane enough for the RIAA to try. ;(
        • I worry about that too sometimes. But even if it does happen, it will probably only be in the US. Eventually (hopefully) the US would have to fall in line with the rest of the world.

        • Re:Why it won't. (Score:3, Informative)

          by failure-man ( 870605 )
          Unlikley. Linux, even now, is too deeply imbedded in our IT infrastructure. Banning it would cause billions worth of disruption.

        • Re:Why it won't. (Score:4, Funny)

          by Nutria ( 679911 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @10:28AM (#13628864)
          Linux fighting DRM

          Don't think so. It's been in the kernel since 2.6.12.
          $ uname -r

          2.6.13n

          $ zcat /proc/config.gz | grep DRM
          CONFIG_DRM=m
          # CONFIG_DRM_TDFX is not set
          # CONFIG_DRM_R128 is not set
          # CONFIG_DRM_RADEON is not set
          # CONFIG_DRM_MGA is not set
          # CONFIG_DRM_SIS is not set
          # CONFIG_DRM_VIA is not set
          Now, whether userland apps take advantage of it or not is a different story.
    • What I usually read on the internet, is not that linux is dying, but that it is growing and that it will conquer the desktop market (well I am not seeing that happening right now either).

      And that is the point. It's not if it's going to be around for a long time (it will be, for all the reasons the parent posted), but if it will grow to compete with windows on the desktop market. What is really stopping me right now from switching to a linux desktop is software support... I don't want to set up a server here
    • Time and time again people say that Linux won't be able to last another year against Windows

      Who says that?

      People often say that Linux won't displace Windows, that it won't overtake Windows on the desktop, and so on.
    • We could sit at 24 million Linux users for the next century and be fine. Still using Linux? (version 8.6.12-ac3) You bet I am.

      Linux may still be around in the next century.... but I don't think a 130 year-old Alan Cox will...

  • Never! (Score:4, Funny)

    by RasendeRutje ( 829555 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @08:59AM (#13628366)
    Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems?
    Well let me think... I'll write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, after they pry my cold dead fingers off my smoking gun.

  • Is LSB a valid system or isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday September 23, 2005 @08:59AM (#13628367)

    From TFA:
    They [many of the Linux distributors] have realized that it takes more than open-source; it takes open-standards to make a successful open operating system.

    That's why the LSB (Linux Standard Base) 3.0 release is so important.
    Hold on a second...according to Ulrich Drepper [livejournal.com], the LSB was fundamentally broken [livejournal.com].
    (Note: see the Slashdot discussion regarding Ulrich's assertions here [slashdot.org].

    If Ulrich is on target, LSB, far from being the saving grace of Linux, could well be its downfall.

  • Linux wins because the OS isn't as important... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:03AM (#13628375) Homepage

    Back when Unix ruled the world you programmed in C at the OS level, you had to understand about pipes and processors and threads and lots of other elements of the OS. This meant it was a pain to re-learn across all the other platforms.

    Now there are (for enterprises) only two real choices, Java and .NET. Java in paticular abstracts the operating system questions away so it becomes irrelevant what OS is running it just needs to run Java fast and cheap, so using lots of small boxes tends to be the way to go. Similar things can be said about Python, Ruby et al but large enterprises use them less.

    Linux is winning in large enterprises because its the cheapest, and safest, way to run Oracle RAC and J2EE Application Servers. If you really don't care about the OS (and most of the time you don't) then you might as well pick Linux.

    If programming was still at the OS level then IMO Linux would still struggle as you'd have to understand a lot more about it. J2EE in paticular has made hardware a commodity, and in the commodity world Linux is the best choice.
    • At the OS level?

      Um *cough* POSIX.1 *cough*....

      My apps built and tested in Linux build in BSD routinely with little to no modification (occasionally I need to fix a makefile to use the build tools differently).

      Just because some people *can't* code a program without going directly to asm to make syscalls doesn't mean things like glibc [which has threads] and the POSIX.1 standards don't exist. In fact I once wrote a webserver for QNX that built out of the box for GNU/Linux because I used nothing but standard function calls.

      Stop being a poser. You don't need Java to get program portability.

      Tom

      • And of course back in the late 80s this stuff was all sorted, I could use glib and POSIX.1.

        My point is that the market has changed from being one where seperate proprietary vendors had a point to the level where the standard has been raised so it becomes less important.
        • My point here is that there is no need to jumpship and start using inferior technologies like Java just because you can't be arsed to use glibc.

          Tom
          • He was commenting on TFA, which was about way back before glibc. Back then porting was a PITA, a daily struggle to keep track of what methods worked best on which operating systems, indeed which releases of which operating systems. The differences weren't as great as from one Microsoft OS to the next, but they were there, and there were more variants.

            There was no glibc to be arsed to use. POSIX was a joke.

            TFA dealt with that earlier era. You, sir, are off-topic and irrelevant.
      • Little things like different error returns from system calls. EAGAIN varied on socket calls. Been a while since I struggled with this, but I remember having to code up shared memory and threaded apps differently for AIX, Solaris, etc, simply because some methods worked better on different systems. Some wanted mutexes in shared memory, or soemthing else some other way, and it was a real pain in the ass to deal with. HP-UX changed some socket return code semantics in some OS release, in some very subtle w
        • True, mostly I was talking about the BSD and GNU based OSes. Frankly I think UNIX has been obsolete for the last decade.

          But really comparing Windows to UNIX is a bit loaded in the first place as UNIX came out "slightly before" windows. So the entire article is weird.

          Tom
      • I think you are missing the point. Getting your software to build on two platforms is about 10% of the total problem.

        Think of all the surrounding stuff:
        1. Manuals
        2. Installation
        3. Interfaces to other parts of the OS

        So what if your code compiles on Solaris and Linux. If you want to support both, you will need to write a Solaris package and an RPM package. And one system uses /bin/sh as the default user shell and the other user /bin/bash. And those two shells don't work the same way. And a solaris user might well expect the program to be installed in /opt, while the linux sysadmin might well want it in /usr/local. And what if the program relies on the system cron to schedule things. You think Linux and Solaris cron work _exactly_ the same way?

        It's not straightforward.

      • Come on, not in the same league (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Friday September 23, 2005 @11:18AM (#13629214)
        I worked on a C code base that spanned several UNIX systems (the standard ones and wierder ones like AIX or IRIX). It also ran on MPE and VAX systems.

        Let me tell you, there were a LOT of ifdefs going on to deal with vagaries in the size of an int, byte ordering, even memory management.

        You seem to claim that POSIX gives you just as good cross-platform abilities as a system like Java or Python. But that is simply false; at best Posix is only an order of magnitude worse in terms of testing across systems that is required to be done compared to a cross-platform language like Java.

        One reason for this (at least in the case of Java) is a really rigorous set of tests that help ensure to what degree Java will do the same thing across platforms. Posix is not as well defined as Java to start with, and as a result simply cannot be tested as throughly to insure a similar level of behavoral similarilty across systems.

        The common Joke with Java is that you "Write Once, Test Everywhere". But in my extensive practical experience I have seen no code changes required to easily develop day-to-day Java across Windows, Solaris, and Linux. There is NO WAY if I were writing POSIX C code I would be as comfortable just writing on Windows or Linux and then deploying straight to Solaris.

        Java has moved out the bits that you really do need to "test everywhere" out much further on the fringes of coding than C has.
    • "Linux is winning in large enterprises because its the cheapest, and safest, way to run Oracle RAC and J2EE Application Servers. If you really don't care about the OS (and most of the time you don't) then you might as well pick Linux."

      Ummmm, okay, sure. I suppose if you don't care about the OS you might pick Linux because you haven't done your homework and it's the latest buzzword. Ask a true professional or go buy a clue and you will see that Solaris [especially Solaris 10] will beat the doors off of L
  • I always wanted to get my hands on some of that stuff to learn and play on. The cost was way too high iirc.

    I got rid of my old unix magazines from back in those days or I could get some pricing for you all.

    all the best,

    drew
    --
    http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145 [ourmedia.org]
    • I remember buying two SGI Unix Workstations back around '94. IIRC, they were about $40,000 each (I think it was the Indigo 2) After a few years, Windows stepped into the CAD/CAM/CAE arena and the next thing you know SGI was selling Octanes for around $8,000 (which you can now get on ebay for a couple hundred bucks). HP wasn't any better. I believe the HP-UX solution was around the $50,000 mark.

    • Bingo! That's the main reason why Unix lost out. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by btarval ( 874919 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @10:56AM (#13629045)
      Exactly. It's wasn't compatibility that killed UNIX; that issue came later.

      Back in the 80's (about 10 years before the compatibility issue resulted in POSIX), there was a complete, well defined standard for UNIX. This was ATT's version, which was BINARY compatible across all x86 versions (not just source code compatible).

      UNIX should have won out over Windows then. It had networking back in 1986. It had graphics. It had far superior technology to the main competition, which was DOS.

      But, AT&T did everything in their power to kill UNIX. Not deliberately, but out of greed and incompetance. And one of the key factors was that the people who sold cheap UNIX on the PC (Microport, ISC, etc.) all had to pay an exhorbitant royalty to ATT - while Microsoft didn't have any royalties to pay.

      The royalty was about $100 IIRC. That's absolutely rediculous in the PC biz. This meant you simply couldn't beat Microsoft when it came to OEM deals. Nor could you beat them when selling to the average consumer, where price almost always won out. So this was the main reason why UNIX could never beat DOS, or later Windows. Not even binary compatibility could surmount that cost difference. Fragmentation of the standards was an issue later on, and was only a secondary issue.

      As an amusing side note, for a while NONE of those small UNIX companies selling x86 UNIX were paying the royalties to AT&T, not even SCO. When AT&T found out about it, it caused a serious collapse in the x86 UNIX biz. Microport went out of business, Bell Tech got "aquired" by Intel (who was responsible for the licenses - via the ATT "Micro Port" program). That is, Intel paid AT&T in exchange for aquiring Bell Technologies.

      Even SCO wasn't immune. They licensed their Xenix code from Microsoft. It was Microsoft who ended up paying AT&T, and in turn got 20% of SCO stock there for a while.

      Now, with Linux, there are no royalties to pay. Everyone is on a level playing field with Microsoft.

  • Intro ad? (Score:4, Funny)

    by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:04AM (#13628382)
    haha I know this is off topic, but...
    When clicking on the story to ready it, there was a sun ad saying "With their evil systems, it's no wonder their name rhymes with hell"

    haha Classy.

  • Standards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 16977 ( 525687 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:10AM (#13628404)
    the Unix businesses couldn't agree on software development standards

    Oh, and Linux can?

  • Great article... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tominva1045 ( 587712 )
    This is exactly what you get when you have the open source, we don't need no stinking standards operating system.

    If you are running a small company you don't have the time or other resources to support a hundred versions-- you go where the users are.

    I can see Linuxers reading this article and spitting their coffee into their monitors (wooooot).

    Great falme-bait for a Friday!
    • There can't be a competition because Windows WILL NOT permit Linux's existance to continue. Given the oppurtunity, Microsoft will kill Linux. They just haven't figured out how. So Linux's continued existence and Microsoft's continued existence are mutually exclusive. For Linux or any other F/OSS Operating system to survive, Microsoft has to collapse, be split up or something....

      Make no mistake, THEY WILL DO WHATEVER IS NESSESSARY TO KILL US!

  • What's wrong with a win-win? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcraig ( 757818 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:13AM (#13628418)
    Why is it that for Linux to succeed Microsoft must fail and vice versa? Surely there's room for both of them in the market and competition is a healthy thing to prevent stagnation. No one looks for ATi to destroy Nvidia or wants Sony to put Nintendo out of the market so why the constant desire to see Microsoft fail? I actually like a lot of what Microsoft is trying to acheive with its next round of software. At the same time I love the progress made by Debian, Ubuntu, E17 etc. one spurs the other. If Microsoft fails surely thats bad for the American economy and in the long term means less jobs for people like ourselves, it's almost like wishing another Katrina on yourselves, doesn't make much sense to me.

    • Re:What's wrong with a win-win? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jmacleod9975 ( 636205 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:24AM (#13628486)
      Judging from Microsoft's past track record, it defines success as completely destroying its competitors.
      Defining success as being a relevant OS, and failure as being not relevant, it all depends on your point of view.
      From a Linux advocates point of view (if you can nail that down), they should both be able to succeed.
      From Microsoft's point of view, to succeed, Linux must fail.
    • Why is it that for Linux to succeed Microsoft must fail and vice versa? Surely there's room for both of them in the market and competition is a healthy thing to prevent stagnation. No one looks for ATi to destroy Nvidia or wants Sony to put Nintendo out of the market so why the constant desire to see Microsoft fail?

      But the inverse *is* true, from MS's point-of-view. For MS to succeed, Linux *must* fail. For MS to succeed, Sony and Nintento *must* fail. MS doesn't want a 'healthy technology ecosystem' -- it

    • 'cos there is no win-win with Microsoft involved (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DFJA ( 680282 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @10:06AM (#13628727)
      If Microsoft wins and Linux loses, there is no competition left, only a monopoly. That is not good for anyone (except the monopoly).

      However, if Linux wins and Microsoft loses, there are still N-1 companies competing in the OS market, where the -1 is the loss of Microsoft. So still (almost) as much competition as before, and it's still good for everyone.

      I want NVidia and ATi both to succeed as while they are both there, there is real competition. Linux doesn't work that way, it's not a good analogy.

      That's the beauty of the GPL. It's all in the licence, stupid.

  • What? That doesn't add up. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jidar ( 83795 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:14AM (#13628430)
    " Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems?"

    Now how does that make sense? Microsoft didn't meet anyone elses standards either. If anything even though the Unix guys didn't exactly pull it off, they still did a better job meeting standards than Microsoft. The truth is they were all doing their own thing, just MS managed to sell enough to get the userbase it needed to make developing for their platform a no-brainer.
    In short, it wasn't Windows standards compliance or lack thereof that made them win, Windows won in spite of it.

  • Dissing the BSDs, alas... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:16AM (#13628441) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    The second advantage was it had Linus Torvalds.
    There are other open-source Unix operating systems: the BSDs.
    None of them, though, have had even a fraction of Linux's success.
    Because Torvalds is the single leader of Linux, it has avoided the old Unix trap of in-fighting, which continues to bedevil the BSDs.

    Excuse me? Sure, there is in-fighting among the BSDs, but there is certainly more in-fighting and more competition among the Linux distributions.

    For instance, the ports/packages of OpenBSD is inspired by FreeBSD's, while NetBSD's pkgsrc has been selected by DragonFlyBSD. OpenSSH, from OpenBSD, has been adopted by both FreeBSD and NetBSD (not to mention countless other OS) and pf has also been imported into FreeBSD and NetBSD. And so on and so forth. That does not sound like in-fighting to me.

    So... in-fighting? Sure, there is competition between the BSDs, and a fair amount of sniping and name-calling, but I don't think this is worse (or better) than the in-fighting between the different Linux distributions.

  • Attitude (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:17AM (#13628443) Homepage
    As hokey as it may sound, I think some of it has to do with the attitude or "coolness" surrounding Linux. When people were introduced to Linux, it was this new hip cool thing, and if you didn't know what Linux was, then you were out of the loop! Unix always conjured up images of the old greybeard sitting in the lab tinkering with the machines.

    The business world loves to be hip and Linux certainly provided that.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:18AM (#13628449)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Solaris might have been successful had it been available for x86 (before Linux) and with low-cost desktop versions available that were properly pushed.

      I still don't get this whole talking about Solaris in the past tense thing. Solaris is alive and active and thriving, even if Sun is struggling. Solaris has more advanced capabilities today than all other commercial unixes and Linux and BSD as well. Sun's failures have primarily to do with designing and marketing hardware, not writing a good operating sys

    • Spot on! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:56AM (#13628669)
      No middle manager gave a rat's ass about the difficulty of porting to different vesions of UNIX. Certainly the effort to port a UNIX app to Windows and retrain all those programmers was far greater than merely adding a few IFDEFs to existing code. UNIX lost just as squiggleslash says. When time came to add a simple print server or file, managers said, Whoa, I can add a cheap Windows commodity system, or I can buy an expensive UNIX box that has to go in the dataceneter with special power and cooling requirements. As for who would admin the damn thing, since none of the UNIX guys would touch it, the answer was as simple as Microfoft's ad campaign, why the manager would, it's a GUI, what could be simpler?

      UNIX ignored cheap systems, everyone knew the money was in the big boxes, and as for the desktop, that was an insignificant market to be sniffed at. No serious vendor paid attention to desktops, only (sniff) Microsoft and their toy operating system.

  • Unix as a server OS (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Markus_UW ( 892365 )
    As far as I can tell, Unix is still winning as an enterprise server OS, Between AIX and Solaris, there's a pretty nice chunk of Unix servers out there. (Not to mention IRIX or any other Unixes). Plus BSD's will never die, since the BSD licence >> than the GPL. Linux just was the "in" thing for nerds, and when the next OS fad comes along the article on here will be how windows killed Unix and Linux, but won't kill the resurgance of BeOS or something like that.

  • Tyrants and the future... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tominva1045 ( 587712 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:20AM (#13628453)
    Would you rather have 1 tyrant (Bill Gates) 3,000 miles away or 3,000 tyrants (open sourcers) 1 mile away?

  • Wait just a darned minute (Score:5, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:22AM (#13628470)
    Are you suggesting that there's a better way than writing everything for the curses library?

  • Maybe I'm wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:25AM (#13628493)
    but:

    Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems?

    Seems a little bit oversimplified. I'm not directly affected because I don't use Microsoft software, but I've heard where I work that it takes months to verify if every service pack for Windows will work with existing software. And when I was a Windows developer, we were doing some pretty low level stuff with the authentication subystem, and things were very different between Win 98, 2000, and NT 4 (was that really still around then?). Granted, for a simple GUI app, Windows is very portable across its products, but if you get a little lower into the OS, things get nasty quick.

  • History says.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by southpolesammy ( 150094 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:26AM (#13628495) Journal
    History says that if you build an app for Solaris first and that gains marketshare, then maybe it might be worthwhile to port it to other Unices if the development and porting costs can be recouped with sales and support. Linux has been changing that somewhat, but I'd still wager that most development houses that write for a Unix market almost always have Solaris as a primary platform.

    As to why you'd do this (and to some extent, this is still valid), it's because Unices provide a stable, well-mature platform for apps and are capable of more processing power than your typical Windows system -- all desirable traits for an application that people are going to depend on. People use Windows because the time-to-market for development is typically shorter than that of Unix development, mostly due to the fact that 95% of the world can write an app on their Windows desktop and copy it to a Windows server platform without modification. Doesn't mean it's good code or a well-thought out development strategy, but it's an enabling technique that keeps Windows development prevalent in IT.

  • Wrong premise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:29AM (#13628506)
    they had to write up to a half-dozen different versions. Which would you rather do?

    Good grief what bull - anyone would think you've never been able to write large scale single source apps until you ship on one platform (Linux, Windows or the Mac, choose one). Between 1990 and 1994 I worked for Laser Scan (out of business for about a year now) www.laserscan.co.uk. We wrote GIS systems for VMS and 6 Unix platforms. All single source, in C, using X11 and Motif with Oracle I think, using object based code (the GNU C++ compiler wasn't up to much in 1990 when we had to choose). There was I think one header file with the few platform specific things in (like missing macros on Solaris) etc. I can't remember how many lines of code, but I think about the 1 million line mark, excluding comments. 11 years is a long time to try to remember that stuff.

    But single source - that is the majority of your headache gone right there. Which leads to the next FALSE assertion:

    Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems?

    Write a single App for VMS and six competing Unix vendors from single source - why thats the same as write an app for seven different Linux vendors from single source. You STILL have the seven unique quality assurance and support problems because each distribution will be different.

    It would be nice to assume that because you built it on RedHat it will run on Suse. Maybe it will most of the time. But will it always? And when it does not, will the cause necessarily always be the same when it fails on Linux vendor #2 compared to failing on Linux vendor #4? Maybe, Maybe not, that is the question, for alas quality assurance and support did not exist when he wrote plays in Stratford upon Avon.

    Still, I'm sure the informed journo that wrote that article has a nice pay cheque.

  • My money is on the BSD to take a significant part of market share in the future although no where near what Linux will hold and take. However, I have seen very little on BSD in enterprise Clustering solutions.

    Are there any companies successfully deploying BSD clusters that be used cost effectively in the enterprise realm? Or is this just something that Universities and the like are playing around with with little commercial applications.

    JsD

  • Why should Windows beat Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hosiah ( 849792 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:43AM (#13628584)
    The Linux community is doing an excellent job of killing Linux for it, without Microsoft having to lift a finger. Interior battles tore Unix apart: well, then that makes us all think twice before we flame-war about distros, now, doesn't it?

    The other thing is biting the hand that feeds it: Geeks. Yes, I know, we geeks are unmarketable, economically unviable, socially inept, prone to expect other people to know how to do Really Complex Stuff like unzip an archive, but before you burn us all at the stake just to get us out of the way so you can sell Linux for $14.99 off the shelf at WalMart, you might want to preserve a couple of us. Nobody else is going to make more Linux for you to sell. Programs do not write themselves.

    No kidding: Programs really do NOT write themselves!!!!! So if you throw out the compilers based on the notion that including them with the distro will just confuse Joe Sixpack? That's disabling the programming process. If you get rid of the command line? Programs are written there. Throw out programs like vi, Emacs, gcc, gdb, yacc, sed, awk, and man just because they have funny names that won't look tasty on the flashy label? Wait, those are programming tools, we need those! If you make Linux into a Windows clone, thinking you'll attract all the Windows users and be just as rich as Bill Gates (because that's exactly what people are thinking!)? But Linux programmers would really hate that, and you'll scare them all away to BSD or BeOS. Hang lots of whistles and bells on it, decorate it with frosting, throw out every particle of substance and dumb it down? Yes, you will win points with the very lowest common denominator market segment - the ones who spend the money, after all - but you'll ostricize all the other users, who will get tired of being locked in another playpen and wander off looking for better stimulation. Believe it or not, Linux did NOT get to where it is by being Just Like Everybody Else.

    Yes, yes, yes, I know this post is getting flamed to a crisp the moment I hit the "submit" button. That's OK, you don't have to listen to me. Look around in three years, five, ten, and see what happened.

    • Linux victory inevitable. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tjstork ( 137384 ) <todd.bandrowsky@ ... UGARom minus cat> on Friday September 23, 2005 @11:16AM (#13629203) Homepage Journal
      If anyone is screwing themselves up, its Microsoft. They are trying to make their earnings targets by raising prices and cutting services. MSDN used to be excellent, but now, how often do you just get a book about the topic instead and use Google to look for answers to Windows issues. The search in MSDN is useless and getting worse.

      Programs -don't- write themselves, and that is the ultimate point.

      Right now, the entry level system for Windows, Visual Studio Express, is completely crippled, for $50. Even the $500 offering lacks source control. The only suite that really wins is Team System, and that's $2500, a year. That's almost enough to make a car payment with. I've been working with Beta 2 and for C++ its actually worse than KDevelop and for the rest, well, I don't see the justification of a $2500 premium.

      If you are a small indy developer, the economics of writing for Windows is almost absurd. On the other hand, you can do a lot with Linux for the money. I have to believe that this trend will fuel the wider spread of adoption of Linux. That's not to say that it will be easy, but, the more developers switch, the more MS has to raise prices in its tools division to show growth, causing more developers to switch. Microsoft is in a feedback loop and even now licensing costs are starting to get even large IT concerns to take notice.

      It used to be that Linux advocates were a minority, and they still are, but now they are less of a minority than before.

  • Except: Microsoft's evolution was WORSE... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by awfar ( 211405 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:46AM (#13628605)
    "Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems? "

    Development, installation and running on multiple MS platforms was NEVER easy: how quick everyone forgets...

    In Win 3.x installation was text files, then .INIs, then some .INIs and half a registry, then Win32s, Win32, then Win 9x and the registry, then NT, it's unique registry, then running 16 bit in 32 via thunk and later WoW, ad nauseum! Then, its C, then VB, then, Visual, then VB + VC++, whatever...

    Never mind the network. Monolithic, NDIS, NDISII, II(?), Netbios/NETBEUI, then Bill Gates invented the Internet and IP, then broken IP stacks....

    Then COM, COM+, ADO, then AD, then....

    Then this .dll, then VxDs, then .NET,...

    MS Easy to Develop and maintain for, and runs on all machines my Rear.
  • Although linux has a good chance, it will likely lose as well. The reason is because the server market is influenced by the desktop. This may not be true in businesses that don't interact with desktops but those that do will likely prefer an OS that can integrate with the desktop. For example, Microsoft's Active Directory may not be the best thing around by a large corporation will likely go with Windows Server, instead of say Red Hat Linux, because the Active Directory integrates better with the client des

  • Nonsense! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Skjellifetti ( 561341 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:51AM (#13628642) Journal
    Because the Unix businesses couldn't settle on software development standards, ISVs (independent software vendors) had to write not a single application to get the whole Unix market, they had to write up to a half-dozen different versions. Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems?

    I've written several reasonably big Unix server programs over the years (mostly workflow engines and document management systems written in C and C++ with CORBA, multiple DB backends, etc.) and I think the posters statement is nonsense. Typically, one has to write an app for one version and make only minor tweaks to make it run on other versions. Often, those tweaks will point out mistakes made in the original and so are quite helpful in QA.

    The headache is the patch management systems for all of the different vendor's OS versions. When the customer of your product says "We have problem X" and the solution is to tell them to install Unix vendor Y's OS patch 123456, that becomes a support headache. But it really is not very different from telling the customer they need to install a Windows service pack when a product that runs on an MS OS has problems.

    Complaining that Unix OSs aren't perfectly standardized clones is like complaining that RDBMSs don't all implement the SQL standards perfectly. But most server application architects/programmers don't have too many problems converting their apps to use DB2 instead of Oracle. These kinds of minor differences haven't led to a monopolist RDBMS supplier.

  • How about price and Microsoft's bundling.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23, 2005 @09:53AM (#13628654)
    I used XENIX 20 years ago on PC architecture. When we went to the 386, we had a full 32-bit environment, in the late 80's -- it even included a Microsoft 5.x compiler and was VERY stable (only matched today by Linux). The problem was that it cost $400 for the SCO XENIX O/S license and another $400 for the development license (w/o discounts). We were using this software on a computer that we purchased bundled with DOS (esentially for free as you could not buy a PC without DOS from Dell at the time, prior to the first Microsoft bundling law suit).


    The economics were: DOS==FREE (forced bundling) -- XENIX $400


    When you have 1 or 2 machines, this is not too much of a problem. However, when you plan on deploying 20 or 100 or 1000 machines, this $400 adds up very fast. Management balks....


    In the early '90's, we had to pay EXTRA to Dell to get 486 PCs without DOS and Windows. So the cost was EVEN HIGHER. Management would look at the cost of XENIX (or other UNIXs which were comparable) and ask why you could not do it with DOS. As a result a lot of extra, unpaid OT happened to write executives and multi-taskers for DOS when XENIX/UNIX would have been an ideal fit!


    Another factor is price elasticity of demand -- lower price, more demand, higher price, less demand. DOS=FREE (or even $29) versus XENIX $400 -- now which would management let you purchase or design into your product? Concurrent (?) UNIX was $99 and it was an option, but not widely supported. It has taken FREE versions of UNIX/UNIX-like O/Ss (Free BSD, LINUX) to change the market dynamics -- it is hard to compete with FREE and with FORCED BUNDLING.

  • Blinded article.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by katorga ( 623930 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @10:31AM (#13628884)
    Linux bigotry blinds these folks from reality. Unix vendors such as sun sgi et al, were hardware vendors NOT unix vendors. They prospered because in the 1980's through 1990's they kept their high margin hardware 5 years more advanced than the commodity priced PC market. Example, a Sun Ultra2 had 4.3GB/s memory bandwidth when the best PC's had 512MB/s.

    The "workstation" companies began to fail when they could not maintain this technology lead. Why pay Sun's margins for the same basic hardware you can get from the local whitebox shop? Unix and windows don't enter in to it.

    IT is shifting from expensive big iron to throw away whitebox clusters.

    Linux will succeed because it allows consumers to further commoditize the cost the computing for companies that have the staff to build and maintain their own OSS distributions (Google?). For companies that cannot do this and have to purchase Linux support contracts, its generally equal to or more expensive than Windows.

  • which would I rather do? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by untaken_name ( 660789 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @10:38AM (#13628925) Homepage
    Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems?

    As a programmer, I'd rather write six versions. This is because writing six versions takes longer without really being that much harder. It's not as if you'd have to write six completely different programs, just six similar ones. That would take longer than just writing one program, and then you'd have more to do and thus higher job security. Plus, it sounds a lot better claiming overtime when you're writing six programs versus just one. Of course, if I'm a manager or supervisor or something, I only want one program written. Depends on who you are and what you are looking for, I suppose.

  • The Art of UNIX programming (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kat0325 ( 804195 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @10:54AM (#13629037)

    For related 'extra' information... Chapter 2 [faqs.org] in the Art of Unix Programming (Eric S. Raymond) contains a very interesting discourse about the history of the UNIX operating system, and offers insight into operating system wars in general.

    One of his points is that many early UNIXes suffered because of licensing issues. I definitely feel that Linux's edge over older UNIXes is its open source license.

  • Good code, Bad code (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RoadWarriorX ( 522317 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @10:58AM (#13629067) Homepage
    In the meritocracy of open-source development, the good code survives and the bad code dies.

    This is true for most commercial software, too. But, as long as the machine keeps dumping millions of dollars in it and continue to force it down consumer's throat, it may survive for many, many years. There are many examples of this. *cough* MSFT *cough* *cough*

  • Can't we all just get ALONG?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sillypixie ( 696077 ) * on Friday September 23, 2005 @11:12AM (#13629174) Journal
    This just in, some talking head has decided that the fork has clearly WON over the spoon...

    What did the spoon do wrong? Why didn't the spoon evolve to match this new threat?! If only the spoon had all the same characteristics as the fork, it could have stayed at the top...

    Why are we so dedicated, as an industry, to trying to make every product do every thing? Each type of system is better for a certain purpose, for available skill sets, for available budgets. If all of them grow and flourish, it benefits everybody.

    If all we had was Microsoft, the industry would suffer. If all we had was UNIX and/or Linux, the same thing applies. It is useful to know the benefits of each of these. It is also beneficial to understand the flaws. But all of them have uses, and none of them are going away.

    Pix

  • Is this a fucking joke? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xant ( 99438 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @11:37AM (#13629356) Homepage
    You do have to write a different version of your app for every version of Windows. OK, maybe it's not 6, but there are massive differences between Windows 98 and, say, Windows 2000. Windows XP represents another, albeit less disruptive, set of changes. Windows Vista will probably represent the biggest set of changes yet. Each of these is a development target, with its own QA requirements and so on.

    I've worked on software that had to be supported on HPUX, AIX, Solaris, and yes even SCO's crappy UNIX. There were notable differences and QA requirements, but the differences between the Windows branches are much more significant.

    Windows won for one reason. It was pretty, so you could trick people into learning how to use it. Well that, and people had windows computers at home, and they brought that skillset with them to job interviews.

    It can't beat Linux because Linux doesn't have stockholders to answer to. And it's losing share to Linux in direct proportion to the degree to which Linux is getting prettier.

  • No multiple versions? Hahahahaha.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by urlgrey ( 798089 ) * on Friday September 23, 2005 @01:17PM (#13630342) Homepage

    Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems?

    Ok, once again for the benefit folks in the cheap seats, let's review:
    Windows 3.1
    Windows 95
    Windows 95B
    Windows 95B
    Windows 98
    Windows Me
    Windows NT Workstation
    Windows NT Server
    Windows NT Terminal Server
    Windows 2000 Pro
    Windows 2000 Server
    Windows 2000 Advanced Server
    Windows 2000 Server Datacenter Edition
    Windows XP Home
    Windows XP Pro
    Windows XP Pro SP2
    Windows XP Pro 64-bit
    Windows XP Media Center Edition
    Windows 2003 Server
    Windows 2003 Server Small Business Server
    blah... blah... blah...

    OK, now, let's combine that with the various versions of IE
    4
    4.01
    5
    5.5
    6

    ...many/all of which have slightly / entirely different APIs, names, usage conventions and you have a Royal Mess(tm). Just look at the IE toolbar market--most companies gave up supporting anything older than XP.

    As one Windows C++ developer friend of mine described the process of working with these many versions: "Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY!"

    Making most any reasonably complex app work on multiple versions of Windows is difficult at best and impossible at worst. That Windows is a panacea is jut plain wrong.

  • I don't get it. Write for one Linux and (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PotatoHead ( 12771 ) <doug.opengeek@org> on Friday September 23, 2005 @01:19PM (#13630370) Homepage Journal
    let the users sort it out.

    There is no need to support all the different Linuxes, just do one and call it good. Hardware is cheap, applications can run over X, allowing application servers dedicated to specific apps, Linuxes are open so compatability tweaks can be done at any level. (Similar to the standard system load performed by most companies these days)

    I've spoken to a few major software development teams and they don't get this at all. They see a support nightmare with all the different versions. Open scares the hell out of them because they don't have any real control over what users do.

    Why bother with all of that? Let the users do what they will and support those that play ball. The community will evolve whatever is necessary to handle the exceptions and it won't cost a dime. If your app sees wide use, you can bet there will be communities that form around it. Those folks will largely support themselves. In fact, starting such a community would solve the problem and focus the efforts in one known place. Sheesh.

  • Unix beat? $4 billion 2nd quarter is beat? (Score:3, Informative)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @03:25PM (#13631988) Journal

    From Information Week dated Sept 5, 2005 "businesses spent more than $4 billion in the second quarter on Unix servers. Sales of high-end machines (priced at $500,000 and more) grew around 20% in the second quarter, while sales of midrange servers ($25,000 to $500,000) grew more than 15%".

    If only I could lose like that.

    Its also interesting that of the companies controlling "more than 90% of the Unix market", HP, IBM and Sun, only Sun seems to be mentioned at all in this forum. Slashdotters apparently need to open their eyes to the fact that there is a vast market for systems beyond desktops and hobby servers.

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