On The Death Of Unix 350
An anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Red Hat Asia Pacific boss Gus Roberston, he tells ZDNet why he believes Unix will be dead since in future, there will only be two operating systems left (for corporations). "We don't see ourselves competing against Microsoft. We are taking market share away from Unix," he said. However, IDC counters Robertson's claim saying Unix market share has actually been increasing in that part of the world."
Which Unix? (Score:5, Interesting)
And then there is the newest Unix on the block, a BSD variant, known as OS X. A User Friendly Unix.
Re:Which Unix? (Score:5, Funny)
doh!
Re:Which Unix? (Score:4, Insightful)
If any of those systems are a form of Unix, then a monkey is in fact a horse.
Re:Which Unix? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. They were both rooted in UNIX traditions. Badly in the case of Windows. DOS was just a UNIX copy, poorly executed, but still UNIX based. MacOS has harder to trace UNIX roots, but they are there. The "Developer's Kit" for Mac produced, among other things, a CLI that was (you guessed it) based on UNIX.
They weren't direct copies, no, but they were definately derivitave. Just as all mod
Re:Which Unix? (Score:2, Interesting)
Although Linux goes stronger, there will always be dedicated proprietry *nix OS for computers managing complicated scientific instruments such as NMRs. The inorganic lab at Oxford University has Irix and Solaris boxes as well as
Re:Which Unix? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't get me wrong, I love OSX. But calling it Unix is a bit misleading.
OSX isn't Unix? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple [apple.com] says it is.
And as far as I'm concerned, Linux and BSD are Unix as well. If it looks like Unix, acts like Unix, etc. Now, had the question been "Will PROPRIETARY Unix die?", well, then maybe you'd have a point. But Linux and BSD have pretty much insured that Unix itself won't die.
Of course it's not just the shell! (Score:3, Interesting)
You're misusing an extreme to prove the moderate.
Just because Windows isn't a Unix, but it has a shell, then Mac OS X isn't a Unix, despite it having a shell.
Between those points though, if you were to plot BSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP on a Unix chart? Mac OS X would cluster much closer to BSD than to Windows XP, and Linux might actually fall in between OS X and BSD.
Cladistcally, OS X *is* a Unix. Trademark wise it
Re:Of course it's not just the shell! (Score:3, Informative)
No, it does not. Windows XP *is* Windows NT - 5.1 - and the only "progenitor" it could conceivably claim is VMS. OS/2 and NT are not related. They have nothing architecturally in common (except generic features like multitasking and multithreading and even then, NT is a superset of OS/2). They don't look, use, smell or taste even remotely similar. Cladistically, as you would say, they are not related.
The only connections between t
Re:Of course it's not just the shell! (Score:3)
For clarity's sake, unless otherwise noted, when I say OS/2 I mean the product that became today's OS/2 and when I say NT I mean the product that became today's Windows NT.
Uh, other than the fact that Windows NT *was* OS/2 v3 [...]
Which was a complete new from-scratch project, not a development of the exising codebase. In other words, not related.
[...] that it contained the full OS/2 subsystem [...]
This is a bit like saying OS/2 is related to Windows 3.x because it contained a Windows 3.x subsystem.
Re:Which Unix? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Which Unix? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which Unix? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think not, myself. That's sort of like stepping back in time to the Windows 3.1 era, and making a claim that "Windows is a 16-bit operating system that runs on top of MS-DOS. Anything that runs completely independently of MS-DOS and doesn't stick to the 16-bit model is no longer Windows."
Re:Which Unix? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Which Unix? (Score:3, Insightful)
UNIX: the AT&T-derived code
Unix: the other stuff
It's easier than MB/s and Mb/s.
Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good way to point out the similaries and differences. Linix and Unix both do posix. Linux is not Unix.
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:5, Insightful)
Use Unix. Use Linux. Then just try to tell the difference. I've been there; there's essentially no different from a user's point of view.
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:5, Insightful)
There certainly is from the shell scripters point of view though. Ever tried porting a script that some one wrote on Linux making full use of the GNU tools featuritis to, say, stock Solaris. Oh Man!
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:2)
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I'm getting fed up correcting badly written scripts on Linux targetted software. Give me some quality control and consistency on stuff being produced and I'll be a happy bunny.
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because only idiots write and maintain complicated code in shell script when there are tools like Perl and Python available. Shell script should only be used for trivial stuff.
(Yeah, go ahead, mod me flamebait, I'm still right.)
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unix has not moved with the demands it's users and GNU has. GNU is free, and available on all those other platforms. It implements all the standards, and then goes beyond the call of duty.
This is why it's good to switch to GNU.
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:3, Insightful)
The bastardization or arbitrary creation of "standards" for political reasons is not a good thing, whether the offender is Microsoft or the GNU people.
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, not exactly. The GNU tools don't do anything to lock you in to their way of doing things. Most, if not all, can operate in backwards-compatible mode just like the traditional Unix tools. If you don't use the GNU features, your shell scripts should run unmodified on other Unix variants in most cases.
This is far, far different from the Microsoft embra
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, given that GNU stuff is available everywhere, UNIX therefore -has- those capabilities if installed, just like anything else (Linux or otherwise). UNIX has not 'moved with the demands' as you say because those features have already been implemented, why reinvent the wheel, just install an rpm/pkg/whathaveyou.
since when does having X windows, or a particular app have any bearing on whether the os you're running is technically a UNIX, a Linux, a NeXT, a windows, etc system?
So if I ran DOS with Norton Commander installed, its not dos anymore because i installed something non-standard?
Anyway, IMHO, i dont think its a matter of 'switching to GNU', its simply 'using GNU'. Heck, even cygwin on windows can use GNU stuff for the most part. Installing GNU utilities on your windows box does not make it a unix.
Come to think of it, that may be the prime example. Cygwin looks like a unix, walks like a unix etc, to quote another poster, but its the kernel that really defines what the system technically is.
Sure, from a USER point of view. (Score:3, Insightful)
Admin HP-UX. Admin Linux. Admin OSX. I've been there, and the differences are profound.
Using your criteria, there is no difference between a bus, a train, or an airplane - as long as you keep your eyes tightly shut!
You and WireDog can choose to remain ignorant of the differences, but that won't make them go away...
Linux is to Unix as the child is to the father - s
UNIX is a philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:UNIX is a philosophy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:3, Interesting)
-
Re:Taking a moment for clarification. (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux is UNIX in all respects that matter; it's just that some people believe we don't have the legal right to call it that due to trademark law. I, on the other hand, believes the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives me the right to call it anything I please. Linux is UNIX. So there. :P I dare anyone to come after me with a legal stick.
Words evolve in meaning; you can't legislate the development of language.
Re:Which Unix? (Score:2)
The 32 bit versions of Windows in the NT line all have a POSIX layer.
RH != UNIX? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RH != UNIX? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many well-engineered products have died on the vine for wont of touting,
and how much debris floats in the market, buoyed by marketing savvy that could have Saddam Houssein smiling while eating gefultefish?
Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
No, what he said was exactly right.
"We are making a product foo, which is a clone of bar. Foo competes mostly with bar, and will kill off bar within a decade."
How hard is that to understand?
Weavers are a clone of triscuits, and saying that "triscuits will be dead within the decade, killed by weavers" is an entirely valid statement.
Re:Wrong (Score:2)
There are two points on which Linux "competes" with more traditional Unixes: price and features. Features are trivial to port back to traditional Unix, should one of the vendors decide that API stability is no longer of any interest to customers (hint: this is not yet the case as far as I've seen). That leaves price.
Price isn't a technical difference.
Any article (Score:5, Insightful)
Period.
Re:Any article (Score:2)
No, this is not FUD. This is understanding why technology that has been in the cuture for over 30 years is not being used as much.
If this article was to spread FUD, it would have included SCO.
Go back to your cave troll!
Elvis is Dead? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh really? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh really? (Score:3, Insightful)
People lose sight of something in the battle between Linux and *OS, though. Linux is MEANT to be a UNIX clone, so it's major target is still UNIX. The whole idea that it's being used to attack Windows is sort of silly, actually. It certainly does make a good Windows replacement on the server for systems that need a wider range of or more robust tools, but part of the reason it isn't a good desktop solution yet is that it's not really meant to go head to head with Windows that way. They're too distinct s
Re:Oh really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually it was. The idea was not to have Linux be some super server to compete with a IBM Mainframe or 10 million dollar Sun box. It was to give one guy a good platform to work on, that didn't crash all the time. So actually Linux started out more as a "desktop" than a server.
I do agree that Linux is a Unix clone, but the core difference I see is the large number of developers working on Linux vs *OS. Were most Unix vendors focus on one area (server), Linux tends to fo
A very academic debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows for desktop Linux for servers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows for desktop Linux for servers... (Score:4, Informative)
My wife (a militant non-geek History postgrad) has no difficulty in coping with Gnomeish interfaces on a Slackware box I set up for her. (And how many Windows users install their own OSs?)
I even heard her gloating the other day to a friend who had been bitten by the virus du jour that since she runs Linux it didn't affect her...
Heh. And who said Linux wasn't ready for the desktop?
Re:Windows for desktop Linux for servers... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's probably little money to be made in desktop Linux, but there's plenty to be saved. The adoption will come first on the corporate desktop, where you can roll out thousands of identical boxes and there are trained people to support them. Linux is just as easy to use as Windows, it's more difficult to administer if you have no idea what you're doing, but easier if you do. Corpora
Hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is this "rival OS Unix" he is talking about? AIX? Solaris? Tru64? BSD/OS? What?
Wrong strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
The combination of Palladium in OS and hardware would be really uncomfortable for up-and-rising Asian countries.
I think that now is a big chance to gain a lot of market share with Linux or BSD. Those countries don't have a lot to spend (yet) and you can ask yourself if they will want to commit themselves to Microsoft vendor lock-in (read: License 6.0). I wouldn't if I were them.
So Linux/Un*x vendors should unite, and not compete (too much). If they will, then the third dog will grab the bone.
Re:Wrong strategy (Score:2)
If RH is replacing Unix, it's doing it on the strength of GNU/Linux, not it's own product like Netware. RH seems to be satisfied with just a little money, not a significant share of the market. So be it. Some other Linux distro will take it's place.
-
Re:Wrong strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
While RedHat does not produce my my favourite distribution [slackware.com] I get very tired of this bashing. RH has contributed probably more man-hours in terms of software development, maintenance and suport than (probably) any other company without charging a cent.
I challenge you to (honestly) say that for Microsoft.
Re:Wrong strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't disagree with this less. The whole reason MS sucks is that there is no genuine competition driving quality and innovation. And nothing driving them to satisfy the customer in a real sense.
By having strong competition between the n*xes we see a diverse marketplace, with a breadth of solutions offering something new, old, original, well tested and everything else thats out there.
Focusing on MS as 'the enemy' sets everything off on t
Re:Wrong strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
(read: good enough).
The whole problem with MS is that it doesn't compete on quality, or price, but it sells through vendor lock-in (read: through the nose).
MS has a broad product suite, where each product has hooks into their other products. If you buy product X, then you need product Y, or it only really really works nice with product Z. And the more products you buy, the more you need to buy their other products.
The main vector for this extremely contagious MS disease are their OSes. Their OSes are the bait in 'bait, hook and switch'.
So, if you think you can compete with MS by providing a better product, and you think that more competition will provide this better product, think again. MS doesn't compete by providing better products, it just grows it's market share and then let their weight do the work. The only way to compete with MS is to prevent them from growing their market share too much. And if you just concentrate on competing with other Unices, then you (and the other Unices) will lose, because behind your back MS will eat the total Un*x-likes market share.
Look at it from a PHB point of view. Say that there is a 75% market share of Un*x-likes and a 25% market share of Windows-likes (which is in effect 25% for Windows itself).
What OS would you choose, an OS with a 25% market share in a fragmented market of total 75%, that means 18.75% of the total market, or an OS with 25% of the total market? Let alone that the position of this last OS will be perceived as more stable, because there is so much turmoil in the Un*x-like market.
So Long, UnixWare (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree with his sentiment, however. It's just a matter of what runs best on what platform. Irix will still be best on SGI hardware, and Solaris will still be best on Sun hardware. And who knows....maybe Sun will bring it up to snuff when they start shipping AMD64 machines. People will run software that best fits their needs and the machine they're using. RedHat on commodity PC hardware might do most of it now, but it certainly won't do all of it.
Re:So Long, UnixWare (Score:2)
Er, no, since pretty soon there won't be new Irix releases - only Linux. I suppose that might not be the case if SGI has waffled again and gone away from it's very public commitment to Linux going forward.
Yep, looks like the new Itanium stuff [sgi.com] is Linux-only. (BTW I'm pretty sure Linux was a better decision than Itanic...heh.) And please, SGI, change the color scheme on those things!
That's the Itanic Stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's the Itanic Stuff (Score:2)
Right, but SGI has been trying to kill off the MIPS/Irix line for years. Now that Itanium is (finally) competitive, I personally wouldn't be investing much in MIPS systems...
As said RH = UNIX (Score:4, Informative)
Rus
RH == Unix clone ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the future there will be 2 os's. Windows and Unix.
I consider Linux/*BSD/Solaris/AIX/MacOSX/etc Unix.
Some variants may have orginal AT&T code while some do not.
But unless you get into the embedded market, Unix and Windows are the 2 main players.
#3 Netware is now going to turn into a Linux in the near future.
I agree though that opensource is eating up Unix more then Windows but its still unix.
It's just like a bad TV commercial... (Score:5, Funny)
"What? but, Agnes you've always used [product].
"Nope, now I've switched--to *NEW*, *IMPROVED* [product]. It's even tastier, more absorbent, and 22.6% faster-acting!"
wha?? (Score:4, Insightful)
What we learn for sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
From 'don't use Linux on the desktop' to 'UNIX is dead', and I'm sure they can do even better.
Just too bad that '640K ought to be enough for anyone' has already been said.
On the death of Red Hat... (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't see ourselves competing against Microsoft.
Too bad for you, because Microsoft certainly thinks that Linux is its number one competitor. [opensource.org] And don't kid yourself: they will do whatever is needed to crush you.
Oh, and if you think you can steal market shares from, let us say, Sun, without them making a fuss, I think you are mistaken too. Last time I checked, Sun [yahoo.com] is still worth more money than Red Hat [yahoo.com]...
Re:On the death of Red Hat... (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time I checked, Solaris was losing market share rapidly to Linux. Dunno how much of that is to Red Hat Linux, but we can surmise a fair amount.
Re:On the death of Red Hat... (Score:3, Insightful)
Like MS, which recently proclaimed the death of Open Source, RedHat is now claiming the death of Unix. Better to ignore these chaps.
-
Re:On the death of Red Hat... (Score:2)
Linux sucks
Ummm... no it doesn't as bad so buy our crappy boxes
Linux is great, let it replace Solaris x86
Linux sucks, use Solaris x86
Linux isn't bad use x86 but if you don't want a good os I guess you can use Linux
We have replaced maybe 4 Windows boxes with Linux boxes, but we have replaced probably close to 100 Sun/Sgi boxes with Linux intel systems. And I know we aren't the only ones with that kind of ratio. Sun is getting killed because Li
Sorry, but Linux != UNIX (Score:5, Insightful)
The death of UNIX was predicted 20 years ago... it was prediced 10 years ago.
History is doomed to repeat itself in the eyes on unenlightened RedHat employees. Sorry, but although many Fortune 500 companies are now deploying Linux, very few of them are deploying Linux to replace their traditional UNIX systems which they have BILLIONS of dollars invested.
So give me a break... UNIX will be around for another 20 years, believe it or not.
Re:Sorry, but Linux != UNIX (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? I just consider it one of the many forms. Most of the UNIX installations are high end hardware. IBM for example hinted that AIX will be replaced with Linux for its RS/6k line.
Its just that Linux is new and only recently got good. OThers such as Unixware and Openserver which are crap never made it to the big machines due to quality and features.
Early versions of SunOS and HP-UX were not that hot either but have mainframe-like capabilities today. Linux is rapidly getting there and 2.6 may match it. I do not know how good its hot swapable hardware support is but the scalability factor is certainly there.
Re:Sorry, but Linux != UNIX (Score:3, Interesting)
A small portion of the text:
Today, the definition of UNIX (R) takes the form of the worldwide Single UNIX Specification integrating X/Open Company's XPG4, IEEE's POSIX Standards and ISO C. Through continual evolution, the Single UNIX Specification is the defacto and dejure standard definition for the UNIX system application programming interfaces.
Unix is dead, long live unix (Score:5, Insightful)
Quality free open software is, to state the fairly obvious, a category killer, i.e. software against which it makes no business sense to compete. This is good news if you are a user, bad news if you were a competitor.
UNIX dead again! ? ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Bosses on high-can't see the forest for the trees (Score:3, Insightful)
Is he only looking at profit statements when he voices his opinion? I would suspect that the business side of Redhat brings them the most moolah ($$). Hence, from that point of view his statement is valid.
However, he fails to recognize the desktop linux, small server farms that are using Linux or Windows and the battle that is going on there. I would suspect that most people using Linux in this environment are using a downloaded copy with a few using a purchased copy for support reasons.
UNIX is generic, there are hundreds of versions (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Microsoft dominates so much in "the Windows Operating System" it has caused this kind of thing to become the norm in the press. That's what is so sickening.
Microsoft Windows XP is what most non geek people understand as an "operating system". If they even get as far as having operating system in their vocabulary. Most non geeks I talk to think that Office is part of Windows. MS Windows 2003 server by default is :
UNIX is really the foundation for a system which does not compete with Windows directly anyway, which is why there are so many vendors and flavours. Each has their own approach to one or many of the software options included but within the Windows Kernel, but within userspace and API territory. Especially stuff like file managers, browser integration, and multimedia.
Linux is just a kernel. You need another set of tools before you have anything half decent to run. Most people have GNU stuff, plus some other random addons from here, there and everywhere, plus for desktop use at least a window manager from KDE, Gnome or something a bit more minimal.
So UNIX cannot die, as an abstract concept. Maybe vendors who sell mostly UNIX will lose revenue or market share, but they all have Linux solutions too. HP, Sun (remember Cobalt...), IBM...
Microsoft, in their entire domination, have got everyone where it hurts - because they supply a COMPLETE system that, while each of the parts is not the best technically, is a package that nobody else is even pretending to supply, except maybe Red Hat, and the other big distros. The press just don't know how to explain that to the public each time so they come up with utter crap like 'UNIX is dying'...
Good points. (That article was crap!) (Score:2)
Remember... (Score:2, Insightful)
There Will Be Only Two Operating Systems (Score:2, Insightful)
I got to say, his words lack credibility, especially if he can't even count the current number of major operating system.
This is a Straw Man. (Score:3, Insightful)
Set-top boxes, watches, radios, DVD players, arcade video game cabinets, traffic lights, webcams, surveillance-cams, networking hubs, point-of-sale cash registers, automobiles, submarines, tanning booths, theme-park rides, oh, and lest we forget beowulf and the server/desktop worlds.
To say that "Unix is Dead" is to set up a straw man... lets argue about 'why unix is or is not dead' and in the meantime ignore the fact - *FACT* - that the Linux kernel is revolutionizing computing as we know it.
It is a totally free OS, and it is being used every day by hardware manufacturers around the world, in extremely diverse markets, to bring new product to light.
I wouldn't call that dead. I'd call anyone calling it dead a moron, though...
Let me arrange this (Score:5, Funny)
Discussion:
It's not dead, I use it all the time.
It's dead for the following reasons...
Flame 1...n (although highly informative flamewar)
Windows sucks.
No Freakin Way (Score:2, Insightful)
HP has been focusing on their 64 processor SuperDome. What are you going to run on that, Windows, Linux (better) or HP-UX (best)?
IBM still has a major investment in AIX and will continue to push it. Why? Notice some of the stuff IBM hasn't released to the general public yet such as JFS2 (dynamic inode allocation, finally). If they were going to toss AIX they would more than likely give away whatever source they could, and that hasn't happened yet
Yearly thing (Score:2, Funny)
Remember how Windows 95 died, and then suddenly there were no Windows users left in the world? Yeah, I thought it might be something like that...
Unix dying? (Score:2, Insightful)
See how e.g. OpenBSD had to fight to get the UltraSparcIII documentation [1]. That was the documentations for a freakin' CPU - not something like the complete drawings for a Boeing 777. If They can't even get the documentation for the CPU, how on earth can anyone else really be expected to interface to it. Ergo; either they die or they continue to sell their proprietary Unix running on proprietary hardware.
They, proprietary Unix vendors, AFAIK write operating systems that ar
Horse hockey. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Microsoft Windows family.
And everything else.
"Everything else" are UNIX family and clone operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X, IRIX, Solaris, BSD, and more.
Windows is built by one company, and based on an operating system model that was flawed from the start.
The UNIX operating system was built with security in mind and has one advantage--there are far, far more experienced users, programmers and administrators who seek to better and strengthen the OS from malicious attacks than there are crackers experienced enough to attempt to compromise it.
Count the number of Windows-based viruses, trojans, and other malware, and then try to find a number for UNIX-based attacks.
Sooner or later, some malware will arrive that does the Unthinkable on a Windows box. A nearby Mac OS X and Linux box will likely go untouched. Watch managerial heads turn. Watch for the shift.
Microsoft could make this so easy and profitable for themselves by taking a Linux distribution (it's free), branding it "Windows LX" or whatever--and rewriting their software so that it compiles and works with every single UNIX that wants to use it. Talk about profit. Talk about security. (To some, talk about competition.)
A single-user architecture and flawed structure like Windows has doesn't have a lot of life. It merely has a lot of copies sold. Once damage from malware shows how unprofitable it is to use Wiindows in that sense, a shift may come. In some places, it has already begun.
Re:Horse hockey. (Score:2)
Not to nitpick, but it wasn't built with security in mind at all--it evolved that way. Remember that Unix has had a pretty ambivalent, colored history, and has almost 15 years head-start on Windows. And the Morris wo
But... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there anything else left? I dont think so.
No one knows what Unix is anymore (Score:2)
who knows anymore.
UNIX is dead? (Score:4, Funny)
I finally figured out vi!
Has anyone else noticed this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Has anyone else noticed that Red Hat, recently, has been using the press to send Microsoft signals along the lines of "Oh we're friendly now. We pose no threat to you. We don't want to compete, we wan't to coexist with you on friendly terms."...........?
I mean, think about it....First, it was "Linux isn't ready for the desktop"...Now, it's "Oh, we're not taking market share away from Windows, we're talking it from Unix."...and about half a dozen little comments inbetween..
WTF?
My contempt for Red Hat, literally, is growing by the day. They've gone from a position of OS leadership into a feeble piss-ant of a company that gave up the reins to their competitors... Red Hat has gone from something we can be proud of, to a company that refuses to believe in the skills and the talents that gave them the fluffy paychecks stock options they're enjoying now. I, for one, want no part of the wholesale cheek-spreading that Red Hat is engadging in. My next distrib install will not be Red Hat.
The fact is, Red Hat _could have_ made a real play for the desktop. All it would have taken is time, and a developer incentive. The desktop/consumer-level (oh, pardon me.. "hobbyist") version WAS making them money, but they abandoned it. What kind of company abandons a _profitable_ product, other than a stupid one?
Re:Has anyone else noticed this? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't think of a single software company that's done well by taking the soft path with Microsoft. Not one. Hardware companies have done it, by turning themselves into marketing arms of Wintel Inc.; and IBM survived a close partnership with the Beast of Redmond because, well, they're IBM. But Red Hat
Re:Has anyone else noticed this? (Score:3, Funny)
The limits of business. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just try to define a business strategy here that would discourage a customer from migrating from UNIX to Linux - Red Hat could offer lousy support for migration, or actually tell sales people to encourage clients to stick with good old UNIX. They could publicly announce that they are there only to compete with Microsoft. Those are not what I would call good business decisions.
There's also the current climate of tight economics and heavy litigation. Why announce that your goal might be to take on MS toe-to-toe? If that was a long term goal, the company doing it would quietly work at areas such as deskop/GUI development, installer packages, and the like, and not discuss it much. Red Hat may not be David to MS's Goliath, but whoever is David is not going to make any noise until they have at least loaded up on rocks for their sling.
About f*cking time (Score:5, Funny)
BSD, well, let's just not go there.
Linux clearly is on its death bed, what with all those lawsuits by good wholesome Utahmericans fighting communism and
MS is clearly making way too much money to be alive much longer.
Does Unix have any reason to live while others die at least once a week. I say, if Unix doesn't make up its mind soon, let's kill it ourselves!
Cheers.
I guess I better roll back my Fedora deployment :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh well, wait 'til we upgrade the kernels to 2.6, then if I get fired, I'll reconsider. (It's blowing the doors off 2003 in our lab tests, so why not?)
BTW, RH can keep spouting this nonsense til the cows come home. The clients seem to have figured out the savings, and don't give a shit, but it seems pretty weird to FUD your own product.
Redhat? No, asshat. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's one quote:
According to Harish Pillay, chief technology architect for Red Hat Asia, the scalability of threading has increased from 1,200 to 32,000 threads with NPTL. This translates to significant performance boosts when running multithreading applications such as Java software and databases, he said. More importantly, the enhancement puts RHEL 3.0 in better stead against rival OS Unix, which has long been equipped with more advanced-threading capabilities.
Whaaat? This guy is the CTO of RH Asia, and doesn't even know WHAT his chief product is? If RedHat Linux is not a variant of Unix, then why is RedHat offering courses on Unix [redhat.com] ?
And here's a quote from a RedHat document, titled " History of Unix, Linux, and Open Source / Free Software [redhat.com]":
2.1.5. Comparing Linux and Unix
This book uses the term ``Unix-like'' to describe systems intentionally like Unix. In particular, the term ``Unix-like'' includes all major Unix variants and Linux distributions. Note that many people simply use the term ``Unix'' to describe these systems instead.
I can't believe this guy is so high up in RH hierarchy. Doesn't look good for RedHat.
Unix has been dead for a *long* time (Score:3, Interesting)
And I'm sorry to tell you that every bit of that applies to Linux and *BSD.
Of interest is also "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" [bell-labs.com].
Get the only OS that doesn't stink while you still have a chance:
Plan 9 from Bell Labs [bell-labs.com]
(and now it's *really* OpenSource)
Plan 9 is what the creators of UNIX thought UNIX should have been. Here is the paper that explains why and how they decided to replace UNIX:
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html [bell-labs.com]
uriel
Re:Sad but true (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't seem any deader than usual to me.
Re:Enterprise operating Systems (Score:2)
Even today MVS and z/OS are responsible for moving much of the world`s money.
If you need good CPU utilisation, high data throughput for a small number of applications, then UNIX and Linux are for you.
If you need essentially deterministic scheduling, extremely high availability and the ability to run a large and complex workload then z/OS is a better bet.
Re:Only the commercial UNIX's (Score:2, Insightful)
IRIX?
Solaris?
When/where do you need these OS's anymore?
AIX: too many uses to list - most notably, on their larger servers. Also, when you want 5 9's or better.
IRIX: good question ;)
Solaris: Solaris is still *leagues* better than linux, for nearly anything. Large database servers, for example. Sun E15k's. Etc.
Databases? (Score:3, Insightful)
Backup Farm (with the 15000 tape robot and 2TB on FC-AL)?
Solaris
Visualization Cluster?
IRIX
Re:Death of Unix or Death of $$ Hardware (Score:4, Insightful)
And these big systems are far from dying as far as I can see. We generate much more data than Moore's law and algorithms can cope with and if anything, the trend is accelerating. So if, one day, I see a 1024 cpu machine (a la SGI) runnning some for of MS windows, then I'll worry about Unix dying, not before.