Slashdot Mirror
Unix Isn't Dead
windows bios world writes: "Compaq, Sun, SGI, and IBM are releasing new machines running Unix. From cnet.com: 'Compaq has begun shipping test versions of a new line of AlphaServer Unix servers using the EV7 "Marvel" version of the company's Alpha processor. ... As expected, IBM released on Monday its p670, a 16-processor machine that's essentially a smaller version of Big Blue's top-end 32-processor p690 "Regatta" server introduced in late 2001.' Also, Sun teamed up with Sony to release video-on-demand servers." And of course, there's OS X.
Does this mean BSD isn't dying after all?
Damn it I read it on slashdot it MUST be true.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
How about a fricking link?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I think i will be first to ask: now where is the damned article? maybe i am missing something
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
sgi irix = bsd, osx = bsd, and on... what was dec alpha unix based on?
Vital Idea
Who ever said unix is dying? thats BS!! go to netcraft.com and see what 80% of the people use for their webservers, UNIX! GOD BLESS UNIX
keanmarine.com
Here's a link to the actual story. It'd be nice if the /. editors could include it.
FMS (FORTRAN Monitor system) has been dead for about 40 years. It is not expected to re-appear anytime soon.
And Linux is gaining.
Sun sells less boxes, so does SGI, so does IBM.
But there's more Linux out there in the wild. It's not only replacing Microsoft servers, but it's replacing proprietary UNIX machines.
The platform-specific software keeps each UNIX alive (Irix/Solaris etc)
and I was wondering when all those thousands of back-end servers running various incarnations of UNIX were to be done away with and replaced by NT boxes.
Oh wait, you mean to tell me the vast majority of the tech community loathes NT? Well, I suppose we can always go back to OS/2 when Unix finally does die. What was the point of this article again?
__
LilDebbie
It's a slow breech birth of an overgrown and mutated child, but it's still a BEGINNING.
:)
We are just getting started.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Who's the fool who thought it was ?!
it just a zombie'd process
the sky is more or less blue, the Earth is more or less round.
Honestly. Everyone who uses Linux knows that UNIX isn't dead: on the contrary, it seems to be on the upswing.
Everything is mainstream now.
Isn't Unix a 64-bit OS? (or could it be?) If so, then it most definitely has life for the forseable future.
I have a feeling that MS wants everybody to run a 64-bit Windows Variant in the server world when Itanium architecture becomes wide-spread. That's why they're pulling the whole "Unix is too expensive" bit. They may sort of have a case. If MS provides software that makes setting up a 64-bit server real easy, then they could claim you don't have to custom program it. I think the true cost is a wholly different story, however. If you're running Unix on a 64-bit server, isn't it likely that you're going to want a custom program anyway?
I dunno. I think the only think Unix needs to fear is MS using marketing against it. Anybody who pays attention to what Unix is and what it does is going to have a hard time being convinced that Unix is dead.
"Derp de derp."
A bit of "Unix isn't dead! Really! Wait! Listen! See? It's not dead!"
Of course Unix isn't dead. OSX is a perfect example. It would seem that most of Apple's user base is well on its way to migrating over to OSX, as I see more and more posts on various sites where people are deleting their OS9 install.
Aww, c'mon. Laugh, it's funny.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
That said, both linux and Win2k are set to completely consume the server markets. Solaris, AIX and True64 simply won't be in use in ten years. On that I will bet.
Lots of startups that had great success with their smaller servers are now finding the loads way to high to maintain any reliability. I know of a company that was trying to run a POS server and was processing over a million transactions a day and couldn't keep up, with an outlook of millions more by the next year.
:)
I am sure that there were better software solutions for them to try and all but IBM looked too good for them. Now they are running a tru Unix OS and are sooo pleased with the performance of the IBM main.
One thing you have to give to IBM is their stability. Just cant be beat. I know that a linux clustered could prolly do the same but most dont have the admins to even try to pull that off.
I dont think Unix will ever die. It might turn into a speciality market type thing but will never die.
Just my rambling
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
Every commercially available OS with the exception of Windows and its incarnations are based at their core with Unix.
_ __
The internet runs on Unix based OSes for the most part. The majority of major system services had their origin and are mostly installed on Unix based systems. The homogenous Windows NT datacenter server farm idea is flawed and has IMHO failed.
Unix is alive and well and if it was not Mickeysoft would never bother putting up sites bashing it. Micro$oft does not need to beat the dead horses (ever see them run ads today bashing OS/2?).
_______________________________________________
ACK
"Tru64" Unix is what DEC I mean Compaq puts out on Alpha-based computers. It's based on Mach 2.5 I believe.
Apple's OSX is based on Mach 1.0 I believe so there's a sort of kinship there.
And now for some stuff I'm less sure of:
1. MSFT Windows NT used to run on Alpha CPUs albeit not using the full 64-bits of addressing those CPUs can do. Rumor has it that DEC got a real sweetheart deal on NT licensing because the NT source code was (illegally!) based on "Micah" the operating system that Dave Cutler was working on at DEC before he moved to MSFT in 1988. Comments in the NT source code in the mid-90s confirmed this allowing DEC to get a bit of leverage when dealing with MSFT.
2. Sort of in contrast the first edition of "Inside Windows NT" described an operating system that just could have been Mach 1.0. A lot of the original NT was very reminiscent of Mach 1.0 except less rigorously done. I don't imagine there was any real similarity between the OS described in Helen Custer's book and the real NT though. Mach and Unix were scrupulously ignored in the bibliography and index of "Inside Windows NT" 1st edition. At the time MSFT clearly wanted to emphasize the "N" in NT as "new" even though it wasn't.
Unix servers breaking out all over
:)
Kind of like its Users huh?
The unix mindset has become too pervasive in the midrange computers. Nobody is implementing new ideas because everything has to be `posix compliant'.
Better operating systems are not getting a chance, e.g. plan9, hurd (I am not sure about this myself).
You could argue that unix can assimilate things, but that can only go so far. Some time we have to break out of the mindset.
Linux is nice but has not advanced the state of the art.
Even though Unix is not profit-making like windows it has the same power as microsoft in stiffling innovation (to some degree).
No, there is always AmigaOS (which may be unix based now?) and BeOS and OS/2 and a slew of other OS's which probably never made it very far out of academia. But there are a few alternatives out there to Unix and Win32 based systems.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
I was pretty blown away when I went into the "sharing" control panel, clicked on web sharing, and apache started up, all ready configured and eager to go. Then there's "remote terminal login" which fired up sshd (and not telnetd thank god).
Next stop, the fink site so I can install a rootless X server and all the GNU and other tools which are missing from it.
Basically, the best of all worlds. Unix, the slick Apple GUI, and even IE and Microsoft Office.
Unless you include the second hand systems being bought at auction from defunct dot-coms (or telecoms or energy trading firms, etc.). Honestly, why do pointy-haired folk think that short term statistics have any meaning whatsoever, especially when taken without any kind of context?
I'll worry about Sun and IBM if they can't increase their market share over a five year span. Pardon me if I don't get upset when their market share falls during a recession. (I'm perfectly happy, however, to proclaim the doom of SGI, whose market share has been falling for over half a decade)
People here spend so much time staring at Microsoft that without noticing they start believing the Microsoft Marketing Department holds keys to the future in its hand. So eventually every phrase said in Slashdot is formed as an answer to reality as marketed by Microsoft, even when no question was asked.
Funnier still, since the [non-]linked article never states Unix was dead or dying.
Which is exactly why IBM is selling the hell out of some huge iron zSeries (Linux) machines- cuz' they can kick Sun's butt all day long (performance/price vs. purple boxes). Trust me from direct experience with fortune 500 companies, they don't want no-name boxes, so as they move to Linux, IBM and HP will happily pump them out rather than lose market. Besides, UNIX (and later Linux) will be around for a long time because our prie$thood depends on it. ;-)
Irix 5.x was BSD-based. Irix 6.x is SVR4.
...but why Microsoft Windows considers itself really alive.
Windows is a teenager--and a rude, aggressive, unpredictable one at that--compared to the various Unixen out there.
To paraphrase "Dark Paladin" in a recent article about his Mac OS X conversion: Microsoft Windows is like your class president that didn't do shit. Linux is like a super-smart, sexy redhead girlfriend that's also a bit insane. Mac OS X is like the geeky girl at school who shed her braces and became a total hottie--and still wants to spend all her time hanging around with you.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
If the article title was 'ALPHA isn't Dead. Unix's lifespan really isn't in jeopardy.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
And of course, there's OS X.
There's also Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD(which is essentially the same thing as OS X). I might be mistaken but what makes OS X anymore of a traditional Unix than any of these others I've suggested, or is he just mentioning OS X because it's well established in the desktop market.
I stole this Sig
btw, when did News.com become News.com.com ?? What is this, 1999 or something? I wonder how much money they blew on purchasing Com.com. That was a great investment..
cpeterso
Does anyone know of a website or anything that could perhaps show me the way out?
Of course, UNIX isn't dead. A large part of our business and government infrastructure runs on it. Even more software is written using UNIX APIs, and this includes a lot of Windows software. UNIX isn't at risk: there is just too much of it, supported by too many vendors and on too many platforms.
The operating system perpetually at risk is Windows, which is a single vendor solution and stands and falls with Microsoft. When Microsoft abandons Windows, there won't be any more. If you want to know what the future of Windows holds, just look at VMS.
For now, let's ask the opposite question: how much of the supposed success of Windows is really hype? How many IT managers think that their infrastructure is running on Windows when it's kept together by UNIX machines? How many Windows-licenses does Microsoft double and triple count for machines that are running Linux or BSD?
Actually, OS X *has* been certified, I think. I can't find the link, but I do remember the press release. They are also a member of the Open Source group that does the certification...that link is http://www.opengroup.org/overview/members/membersh ip_list.htm
"That said, both linux and Win2k are set to completely consume the server markets. Solaris, AIX and True64 simply won't be in use in ten years"
DOD is going to chuck ASCI White within 10 years?(runs AIX per previous article) Don't think so.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Maybe not in five years, but in ten years supercomputing technology will be so far out ahead of ASCI White that either in terms of speed, power consumption, or floorspace, it will be waaaay obsolete.
http://www.wehadthewayout.com
Bwahaaaa!
-- Windows security? Sure, which ONE would you like? -me
well, they seem to like redundant repetition. Cnet Networks on cnet.com.com: it makes sense. (Too bad they can't get c.net - one letter domain names are reserved per some Postel RFC I haven't read in years.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Oh good, I was worried for a while. I've been going to that We Have The Way Out site, and they make a pretty convincing argument that Windows is the only way to go. But it's good to know that there's all these big companies using and selling UNIX - who would've thought?
sic transit gloria mundi
Unix has been around 30 odd years. It runs graphic development machines (IRIX), industrial big iron (AIX, Solaris), desktop machines (Linux, MacOS X), gateways, routers, firewalls (*BSDs). And its been doing this for years. As the saying goes "if windows was built for the internet, then the internet was built for unix". Unix is clean and well thought out. It mixes commercial and open source and has a 30 year track record of being reliable, stable and once you get the hang of it amazingly easy. Windows on the other hand has been reliable for 2 years (Win 2k in my opinion is the only MS OS i'd trust for critical stuff, XP is too bloated and buggy, and we won't even get into the 9x line or older NT's). I think that this whole anti-unix campaign is pure Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Microsoft is scared. All of the markets (server, desktop, big iron, embedded systems) that MS is interested in, have unix challengers. I choose Mandrake and OS X over windows any day, even if it means some things I can't do as of now. But the thing about Unix is it's ability to adapt and grow. Between Irix, Aix, the hundred and 20 Linux distros, Free/Open/Net BSD, Solaris, MacOS X and countless others, thats a hell of a community working together. Most of these systems use GNU software (emacs, gcc, etc). Microsoft realizes now that they're not breaking into those markets as easy as they thought. They're not gaining server market share. They're not gaining embedded market share. They're definitly not gaining big iron market share (datacenter from what i hear is a disaster). And all this time, their one true market possession (desktop) is stagnet and is in danger of slipping in the future. MS realizes they can't compete with the raw numbers, and are hoping to save themselves some time or kill any chance of unix expansion. They're in a hell of a fight, the Unix world isn't netscape, lotus or any of those little companies. Unix is the big guys, like IBM, Sun, Sony (linux for ps/2 I imagine is going to be a future trend), Apple but more importantly Unix is also the faceless targets. The guy up at 3 in the morning hacking on gcc, or linux's vm system. MS just can't compete with that, and thats something I like to see. MS losing its own game.
/powerlinekid
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
My biggest beef with OS X was that the X-Window systems was not installed by default. They keep saying that it is the newest UNIX without a lot of the UNIX tools. Don't get me wrong, OS X is a great OS, but don't call it a *great* UNIX unless I can download programs that use the standard XWindow libraries and compile them.
There's a difference between an OS being used and an OS being a viable platform for future growth.
For example, there's LOTS of people using VMS. Is VMS a viable platform anymore? Probably not, it's just easier for people to buy a newer faster Alpha for their apps then trying to port an app built around VMS features to Unix or Windows.
What you will likely see is that, as Linux gets better, Solaris/AIX/Irix/etc will get pushed to platforms where Linux isn't yet viable.
For a company who makes higher-end servers, Linux makes perfect business sense. The OS doesn't sell the hardware, the hardware forces you to use a particular OS, unless it's Windows. Thus, if you can lay off 25% of your OS development staff and put the other 75% to making Linux work on your platform, you save money and get geek points. Your only risk is that nobody else will make the gamble and you will be left holding the bag. Or that your hardware innately sucks and people are buying it because they got locked into your OS many many years ago.
Gentoo Sucks
In saying that Unix isn't dead, I thought that the only Unix was that from Bell Labs. Other operating systems ie HP-UX, xBSD, and GNU/Linux are not Unix, since Unix is proprietary AT&T software that has not been able to be sold since the mid 80's. Having taken classes from a former Bell Labs employee, this point has been engrained into my cranium. Loath to anyone who calls Linux/BSD/MacOSX Unix in front of a former/current Bell Labs employee from that era.
Oh how I wish we could vote for "Most asinine sig"
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
at least compared to windows. Just read this article.
"Windows NT was redesigned from the ground up to have reliability, scalability, and security. Windows 2000 builds on the Windows NT base, not the Windows 95/98/ME base. It should be no surprise, then, that Windows 2000 has proven itself to be much more reliable than either Unix or Windows 95/98/ME."
"In short, the Windows 9X [95/98/ME] operating system was not designed for today's networking environments... Unix, which was developed by and for scientific researchers and computer scientists, was not designed with security in mind either..."
No, I don't believe this FUD, I just can't believe some of the crap that people say...
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
"trying to eke sales out of a Unix market that shrank 18.7 percent from $25.3 billion in 2001 to $20.6 billion in 2000."
Translation:
1) I need a proofreader.
2) What I really mean is an 18% year on year drop from 2000 to 2001.
3) I am trying to hint that Unix sales are falling. ( Maybe some competing operating system is taking over... )
Of course, this is not the whole story. The dotcom crash hit everyone, not just the Unix vendors ( ask Compaq, HP, IBM how there PC sales went. Ask Dell for that matter )
I can't imagine asking my boss to drop 150 large on a Starkitty.
"Well sir, we can either go with the IBM p670 or the Sun Starkitty."
"The IBM or WHAT!?"
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Or should I say FreeBSD is not dead. I work for a medium-sized manufacturing company, and we are making the move from a data center hodge-podge of Windows NT/SQL Server and HP-UX/Oracle to FreeBSD/Postgres.
Why? Microsoft, HP and Oracle's license schemes and pricing are completely out of control and unpredictable. FreeBSD affords us the opportunity to move into a very familar and comfortable environment while still maintaining the stability and robustness of a "real" UNIX.
Microsoft is not the only priniciple behind this move. While it'll be great to get Windows NT completely off out network, it'll be even more beneficial to our company's bottom line to rid ourselves of Oracle's and HP's constant intrusions and high pricing as well!
Unlike many Windows servers, my experience with UNIX servers has been that its longevity is one of its endearing qualities. Services running on UNIX servers tend to have a very long usable lifespan, IMHO due to the fact that the underlying system runs well enough that the application tends to be updated before the system needs to be.
But there is a caveat with using UNIX. The people who can successfully design, architect, administer, and maintain UNIX servers are a tight knit bunch, and as a result of its longevity, they don't tend to move around very often because a given server may be alive far longer than the average Windows server. Additionally, it's been my experience that the longer an individual concentrates on a given subject, such as a single UNIX server, that the more in-depth knowledge they begin to amass about that OS and therefore, they become even more valuable/pigeon-holed into a given organization's IT plans.
This combination of longevity and expertise results in a decreased pool of available personnel available for UNIX projects to organizations at any given time, compared to what I perceive as a larger pool of available Windows talent at any given time. Does this necessarily lead to new projects being run on Windows because the only available talent is Windows? Perhaps...
My vision of UNIX's biggest fear, is that it won't necessarily die, but be bred out of existence because new projects tend to be addressed by whatever resources are available at that time, and if there aren't any available UNIX experts, then nature abhors a vacuum and the projects will be filled with whomever is available at that time.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I'm not dead!
I'm not!
I'm getting better!
I don't want to go on the cart!
I feel fine!
I think I'll go for a walk.
[singing] I feel happy. I feel happy.
(etc. Credit due the fine fellows of Python)
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Its pining for the fjords!
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
"If you're going to capitalize a word for emphasis, please at least make sure that you spell it right, at the risk of making yourself look Really Dumb.(TM)"
It's really rude to correct somebody when they are perfectly understandable. I certainly have no intention of judging anybody's intelligence by the way they spell.
BTW, if you're going to use the TM symbol, do it right: (TM) -- see, not too hard is it?
"Derp de derp."
too bad 3Com cannot get 3.com.
cpeterso
I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.
-nd
According to http://www.linuxnews.com/stories.php?topic=8 "OS X Achieves Official UNIX® Certification Status" This is according to Linux News for Business.
But Compaq and SGI haven't achieved the market success of competing Unix servers from IBM, Sun and Hewlett-Packard. Those larger companies are moving aggressively as well, trying to eke sales out of a Unix market that shrank 18.7 percent from $25.3 billion in 2001 to $20.6 billion in 2000.
Am I the only one that notices a logical problem here? Or perhaps that guy finished his time machine?
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Not to mention GNU/Linux, since 2.2.x on 64-bit architectures.
... Microsoft Windows.
t erations) operating system finally gets a modicum of 64-bit capability, many will look at 64-bit computing as another Microsoft "innovation," reality be damned.
I believe most of the *BSD variants are 64-bit capable as well these days.
Indeed, AFAIK the only 'mainstream' OS that is struggling with 64-bit and so late to the game is
But with their propogandists to convince everyone who'll listen that 64-bit computing didn't exist before their johnny-come-lately (and johnny-can't-do-it-quite-right-for-several-more-i
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Well shit, I guess that means I have to go to work tomorrow. Hope my co-workers see this story
or else I'll be all alone in the office.
Outright stupidity on the front page is nothing new, but somedays it's hard to believe the editors don't know better.
cheers,
mike
Need a GUI app as root? sudo open.
sudo open does not work. It was linked to a major security hole and Apple shut it down. If you need to sudo a gui app, you need to run sudo path/to/actual/binary/in/pkg
t'nera semordnilap
Microsoft releases Windows/X, a BSD-based unix with an open-source layer called Freud and a graphical interface called Water. The OS uses twin APIs; a cleaned up Win32 called Soot and (uh) Chocolate.
Some people thought the Roman empire would last forever, but it only lasted a thousand years (counting high) which of course is a very long time, but hardly forever...
That's because the total market is going up (just more slowly, because of a recession)
I'll worry if the number of machines they sell doesn't increase. The desktop market (windoze + some mac) is larger and will grow faster than the server (unix + some windoze) & specialty workstation (unix, mac + some windoze) markets , but...
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
trying to eke sales out
:) Unless time suddenly started moving backward, or cnet hired some editors away from slashdot
of a Unix market that
shrank 18.7 percent from
$25.3 billion in 2001 to
$20.6 billion in 2000
That looks like growth to me
...but why Timothy is trolling. Are hits really that bad?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
What fantastic new feature do midrange computers need that Unix does not allow?
I just wish that computers would run one OS, one standard interface to the hardware. I've had to learn PC/DOS, MCP, OS/390, OS/400, OS/2, Windows (3.11->XP) and Unix. I'm sick of learning new wasy to do the same old thing.
It's the same with programming, I'm not a systems guy I develop applications. Languages I've had to use Basic, COBOL, PL/I, Pascal, C, C++, Smalltalk, Java, RPG/II->RPG/ILE. I'm a smalltalk fan but Java looks to be the answer.
In short there is no need for future developers to suffer like I had to. Buy some hardware, load Unix and program in Java.
FreeBSD 5.0 Developer Preview 1 is now available!
. html
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP1/relnotes
New SMP, better threads, file system snapshots, background fsck, and more!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From the NSA:s faq on "NATIONAL POLICY REGARDING THE EVALUATION OF COMMERCIAL IA PRODUCTS":
"Effective 1 July 2002, U.S. Government Departments and Agencies will be required to acquire, for use on national security systems, only those IA and IA-enabled products that have been evaluated or validated in accordance with the requirements of NSTISSP No. 11, and its associated programs and processes."
So what does this mean?
It means that linux can't enter into high security environments without having been evaluated, and since the evaluation process takes several years and cost lots of money, this is unlikely to happen.
Which in turn makes unix live on, as there already exists evaluated "trusted" versions of many unixes.
That's just my .2
I don't think this story quite passes my "Flanders" test:
[Rod shows Todd a headline: "Playtime Is Fun"]
Todd: [gives thumbs-up] Go with it!
If your headline can be substituted for "Playtime Is Fun" in the above, and it is still funny, then the story has failed the Flanders test.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Now that's the kind of shrinkage I could get used to.
Everything (devices too) as a file?
Or a file structure starting in one of those geeky symbols '/' instead of 'C:' under "My Computer" where it is supposed to be?
Damnit I hate people who say "A drive" instead of floppy drive.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"unix isn't dead".
Is this a troll or something? Seems like an editorial troll to me. Of course I don't have to mention that each and every person on this board knows that unix alive and kicking. Why the silly headline???? Is this the first Slashvertisement or something?
Now Compaq starts pushing the Alpha again just in time to merge with HP. Oh yeah, I'm sure the Alpha has a great future. <cough>
When buying server hardware you want to know the product line will be supported in the future. Given that, the commercial UNIX players of today are Sun and IBM, with SGI a a distant third. Wasn't it Nestle who just made a $5mil deal to switch from HP-UX to AIX?
-- Argel
... it just smells funny.
(Yes I do know that it's a rewrite and not the same codebase. So? Why should anybody care? Is every car other than Mercedes no car, just because they were designed independently from the first design?)
Unix and Linux run the same applications, look the same, feel the same, have the same philosophy and are run by the same people which the same skillset. I even use the ~/.alias file from an very old SunOS (yes, the OS before Solaris) on my Linux boxes right now.
(Try using any Win3.11 file on WinXP. Good luck. Linux and Unix are closer than the Windows variants, actually.)
Why anybody should artificially seperate Linux from the other Unix-flavours is beoynd me. It's the same in all respects that matter.
err, yes, thanks for pointing that out i guess...
It was resting...and pining for the fjords.
I'm sure John Cleese would back me up on this one.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is at least partially because Linux and it's set of applications are FINALLY starting to mature. Mozilla is *nearly* there. (IMO, it's there - I've deleted Netscape 4.72 and I'm not looking back). Gimp, a few years ago was very rough, and now it's actually a useful app. And the windows managers for Linux are far better than they used to be. I think Linux's time has not yet arrived - but it is soon, my children. Soon.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This is of course the guy version -- any female /.ers want to comment?
Windows 2000/XP: Yes, she's hot, and by all accounts good in the sack, but you've heard stories. Miss XP in particular has a well-documented reputation for being something of a fleabag.
Windows 98: Not bad looking, not real interesting, probably going to college because her parents want her to. High maintenance, low expectations.
WinME: Same girl, sophomore year, taken to wearing too much makeup because her parents wouldn't let her wear any.
Linux: Heartbreakingly beautiful, or at least she would be if she tried, but couldn't care less. If she showed up in anything even as daring as a scoop-necked top, though, everyone would be drooling and nobody would recognize her.
MacOS (classic): Beautiful but ditzy, basically compentent but was mysteriously the best student in art class. Daddy gave her an AmEx gold card.
MacOS X: Went to college, still beautiful, still ditzy, but there's clearly a brain under there. But she's holding back for some reason.
BeOS: Quirky, slightly psycho hot goth chick that transferred out sophomore year just as soon as everyone started to get to know her.
PalmOS: MacOS' kid sister. Just as hot, but seems determined not to grow up.
/Brian
definately not dead.
chip companies use it so much that without it, they're pretty much dead. so much computation. dont tell me they use win32 to do all their heavy design. all the command line tools are so useful in parsing/ modifing the netlists. write a script and you're all done. not to mention the least about design automation..
my blog
for trolling?
Is it just me, or does that subject line just sound bad? At first thought, I figures lots of UNIX server were breaking. But when I read the article, I realized otherwise.
I think CNET chose that confusing tagline on purpose, to help spread FUD.
I could, but it would only lead you to a realm whose architechture is comprised of gates, windows, and insecure explorers.
Now once you get down to the players who are 100% unix, you'll notice that combined they aren't even half of the market cap of MSFT, and probably occupy less rack space (don't smirk - there is a lot of Win2k in the colos these days).
Well, you can't, stupid yankee.
Well, just because things have similar look and feel, does not mean they are the same thing. Hell, Unix variants are further apart than Windows variants (try running ls from old SunOS on a different unix.. ok this doesn't work for more than just library reasons, but even if you have two true Unix systems and the same architecture, they won't run each other's binaries most of the time (exceptions like BSD's linux emulation, iBCS, etc exist, but they are jsut that, exceptions.) Now run a WfW 3.11 app on a brand new Windows install, it will 98% likely work, maybe not perfect, but it will work.
:)
Linux achieves a very similar feel and API, but, as the GNU acronym says, GNU is not Unix, it is a Unix clone that won't pay money to get the Unix certification...
In the end I guess I agree with you that they are close enough not to matter, but you can't call them the same thing, and for all the faults of the Windows platforms, maintaining compatibility across variants isn't one of them. I still hate Windows, but I hate it on terms that are more true
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
IBM has been putting it on their Itenium boxes.
Some of the girls you mentioned are yours for money.
Some agree to sleep with you for free.
It made me laugh so hard it hurt. And do you really wan---
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
If they were better, they'd have their chance. Welcome to the market, or Real World, or "that big room outside the lecture hall where the ceiling is sometimes blue and white, and other times black with white dots".
The innovation you claim is being stifled sounds like whining to me.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My biggest beef with OS X was that the X-Window systems was not installed by default
I'm guessing this policy is partially because Apple doesn't want developers to "port" to Mac OS X by recompiling for Darwin with X11. It would provide a pretty horrible experience and we're back to square one. I suppose this is debatable, but I can see merit in this. If apps are ported to Cocoa or Carbon, everything works very nicely together.
X11 is fine for hardcore nix folks, but arguably bad for "normal" people. The people that do want X11 won't have much of a problem setting it up.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I'm writing this post on a 64-bit 500MHz Alpha machine running Redhat Linux 7.1. Here's a story about 64-bit Windows. Digital and Microsoft worked on 64-bit windows together for some time. This box came with Windows NT 4.0 for DEC Alpha back in '98. That OS was a bit of a kludge because it was still a 32-bit version of Windows. For some time Alpha NT ran most large Exchange, SQL, and IIS servers. Oracle ran on Alpha NT as well. The software for Alpha NT was plentiful in the server world, so compatibility wasn't an issue. My Alpha was purchased for running Lightwave 3D under Windows NT (alpha version). NT (and 2000 and XP) has a hardware abstraction layer which allows for multiple architectures to run on NT without having to re-write the entire code. NT 4.0 was also available for PowerPC and MIPS processors. There were very few of these boxes around, though I did see a PowerPC/NT Box running when I worked at Nortel.
I believe that much of the code used in writing the 64-bit Itanium version of windows was actually developed during the MS/Digital collaboration. Shortly after Compaq bought Digital, us alpha users were presented with a letter saying that Compaq will discontinue work on 64-bit windows. I imagine that must have been a nightmare for quite a few CIO's that had banked on 64-bit windows. Recently we were informed that the Alpha team was sold to Intel by Compaq!
Anyway, Linux supports 64-bit like a champ.
A few platforms available...
MIPS
Sparc64
PowerPC
Compaq Alpha
Itanium
Amd's new x86-64(for Hammer series chips)
A couple of things that make me go hmm?
Microsoft still compiles on Alpha machines(read that on the microsoft site somewhere deep inside MSDN).
Microsoft runs TONS of Compaq Hardware.
Microsoft develops an OS that runs exclusively on Intel processors.
It comes as no suprise that the fastest (outside of a power4 which is really 4 processors) processor was killed by these three companies getting together.
It has been ages since I have used Lightwave on an Alpha machine.
I have a question: Do you have any statistics on how much faster the 64-bit version of LW was on the Alpha vs. IA-32?
The reason I ask is that I'm trying to figure out if the Itanium processor will be of any serious help with my future in 3D. It's not entirely clear, from what I've read, what 64-bit processing could do for 3D.
"Derp de derp."
It's not dead; it's only mostly dead.
Dave------
http://cooltech.org
If it ain't cool, it ain't coolt
It has found a ecological niche.....
Which will render all Glass Pane Trolls mute
Free people found their glitch
Vanished if stroked under *nix
No more License Dispute.
SB
Ah, Coors; fsck blech/belch --uta
Live with it! Linux: The Human Republic's preferred Operating System! Buy Now!
mod me troll: I deserve it, you know I do, and
anyway, you want to
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Linux distributions include an already configured Apache (yes, with Perl, PHP & stuff) for years.
. html
True, but I don't think it's not presented nearly as cleanly or consistently. There is a button you can push to start/stop apache in many linux distros, but getting there and/or figuring out which button to push can be confusing. There is one central control panel in Mac OS X "standard" -- System Preferences. Mac OS X Server uses Admin Tool for more complex server features.
Also, as much as it has improved, installation of Linux is still a fairly big hurdle. The fact that you can go out, buy an iMac or iBook and have Apache running in 5-10 minutes out of the box with little or no technical knowledge is a big step.
But when Apple does it, people are "blown away". I think it doesn't matter what Apple does, no matter what it is, people will say that it's 1) easy 2) user-friendly and 3) innovative. The power of marketing.
Marketing certainly plays a role, but I don't think you're giving Apple enough credit on the software side. My experience has been that some long time nix users will see Linux and Mac OS X side by side, see similar features, but sometimes miss how the presentation can make all the difference for the end user.
Take a look at this to see how nicely web administration is laid out in Mac OS X Server:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/theater/apache
Other Apache admin tools have similar fields to input data, but that's only one aspect of using the software.
Now, let's bear in mind Mac OS X Server is $500 whereas Linux is free... although many people and organizations (small design houses, for example) can actually save money and sanity by spending the cash upfront and not having to spend as much time figuring this stuff out.
But that's the nice thing about *nix, you can choose the flavor that suits you best. Even if you don't personally prefer Mac OS X to Linux, the entire community is helped by the fact that we have another alternative to Windows.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
They just switched to Windows2000 so their site isn't available any more. Of course, it must be the big unix corperations at fault!
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Equal news value as the headliner here.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Of course Unix isn't dead, it's snake oil. For the definition of 'dead' see VMS.
His PHB said "UNIX is dead".
He knew what does it mean by dead when 50,000+ candidates querying their examination results from that NT IIS server at once.
Linux, Unix, why bother to differentiate?
I don't have a link, but last summer in the Linux Journal, Dennis Ritchie himself called Linux the latest iteration of Unix. It's really just petty splitting hairs to whine about Linux not being based on a true-unix kernel.
If they were better, they'd have their chance. Welcome to the market, or Real World,[...]
How about you check out the real world? People don't care about operating systems, they care about the programs that run on them and other real-world stuff that has nothing to do with the quality of the OS. MS-DOS was a dog of an operating system. But it ran the programs that people wanted on cheap hardware. A large part of Window's early success was people wanting full compatibility with their old MS-DOS software. The fact that Windows 95's VFAT is a kludge applied to an inefficent, poorly designed file system is something they never knew, and it certainly didn't play a significant influence on thier OS choice.
Better frequently doesn't get a chance. because people have good enough. _That_ is the real world.
I would have to put at the top of my list the 'hidden' files specified with a . at the start of the name feature. This kludge introduces so many hassles into so many ways of trying to use Unix it makes me want to cry. Unix works, but it is a pig to use.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
The poster must have only considered machines he personally sees on a day by day basis.How could unix dead? Just image all UNIX machines on this world would just disappear overnight (or formated,(( or worst running windows tomorrow:o)). The world would stop spinning! Well at least nearsy that, we would have a crisis hundurt times bigger than i.e. the Black Friday. Stock market would stop functioning, the telphone network would be unusable, bonks would completly loose track on their accounts. insurances databases away. traffic control out of order. satellites uplink stations away, power supply control etc. etc. etc. etc. How can be something that is such a spine of our modern world even considered to be dead?
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
CNET said that Unix isn't dead? Wow, if CNET says so, then maybe there's something to it! You know, I've got that geeky guy with the funny hair working for me in the techie whatsis department, and he keeps trying to tell me about Lunix or whatever it's called, and how it's really good, but I never pay any attention to him. I mean, he stays up late writing a lot of programs all the time, but what makes him think he knows this business better than me? After all, the most successful system in the world is Windows, not Lunix or Unix or whatever, so it's obviously the best; how could some free program written by some commie kid over in Europe be any better than that? I mean, they don't want any money for it, so how good could it be?
And then I saw those ads talking about how hard that Unix stuff is. That's for sure. And it costs so much money, even if it's free! I just knew it! Sure, I don't mind paying nothing for my computer stuff, I just love it in fact. But those geeky guys with the greasy hair always want me to pay them so much money; almost as much as I get, and I'm the boss, can you believe that?! Then they just want to turn around and act like they're so much smarter than me! They just want it to be really complicated, so only they understand it. Well, my nephew Herb just took an exam and now it says he's a Certified Engineer, and he got my Windows stuff working after only about three days, and he only wants half as much money! I'd fire that geeky fellow, except first I need to find someone who understands how to make our email and Explorer stuff work.
I'm going to learn a lot more about this stuff, I really am. In fact I turned on my Explorer the other day, to check it out. (That geeky jerk always says I don't know how to use the Explorer; but he's always trying to confuse me by calling it the internetwork, or something.) I saw that TV ad and went to the Way Out homepage, but it wasn't working, but that's OK, it's completely normal for computers to go down sometimes, so I'll come back later. (The geek was laughing, because he says that homepage was first running on BCD or something, which is supposed to be the same as Lunix, and then they put it on Windows and it went down. But he must be lying, because it all works with the Explorer, I can see it right here.)
So anyway, I thought it was pretty clear that Lunix and Unix and whatever are all dead. But CNET says it isn't? Right there in black and white? Geeze, this stuff is really confusing, you know.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
being secure was never in unix original design. On the contrary, unix supposed all other remote servers to be 'good'. the security of unix has been added at a later stage.
And I'm not too sure that unix will survive in the long run. When there will be a big paradigm shift, there's a big possibility unix will 'die' (think biological computers, think quark computing - these ways of computing would be so fundamentally d iferent from what we do today that it might not even be possible nor wanted to run a unix derivate on them)
breaking down a large problem into smaller pieces is something unix do very well, but I'm not sure I would call it an idea of unix, it's an idea that existed long before and been applied to unix to a great degree.
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
This is a fine example of people fooling themselves. As soon as a patch is required the process of evaluation has to start again.
Hire a god sysadmin instead of getting this kind of pseudosecurity..
/. AC "Concrete lifejackets could get certified under ISO2002"
This quote from the article is quite amazing actually.
"Those larger companies are moving aggressively as well, trying to eke sales out of a Unix market that shrank 18.7 percent from $25.3 billion in 2001 to $20.6 billion in 2000"
Oh, and hey, in other news the market shrank from $20.6 billion in 2000 to $0 in 1970. Amazing really.
They don't develop it or sell it anymore, but everyone is forgetting that MS once sold Windows NT for the DEC Alpha. That's a 64-bit architecture.
Of course, I don't know how well it worked or whether MS abandoned it for technical reasons or because NT Alpha machines weren't selling.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because "Linux" an acronym for "Linux Is Not UNIX!" ;c)
"your mount point's off!"
"no it isn't!"
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Back in 1989, I had an account at Purdue on a Gould NP/1 that was a 64-bit system (en.ecn.purdue.edu, if anyone remembers). It was pretty much a standardish Unix; the biggest problem back then was that a lot of people simply presumed that ints and pointers could be cast back and forth, which failed miserably when your ints were 32 bits and your pointers were 64 bits. A friend of mine (hi Mav!) got nethack 2.2 to compile on it without much effort, sent email to the devteam saying how he'd gotten nethack to compile on a Gould NP/1, and got email back basically saying "what the hell kind of box is that?" Last I checked, though, it's still listed in the nethack credits as an OS that nethack has been ported to in the past.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I thought Sun was dead in the early 90's. They were last in price/performance and they pissed off half their users by pressuring them to migrate from SunOS 4.x to Solaris 2.x which in the beginning really did suck. I thought DEC was the rising star with fast cheap Alpha servers and OSF/1 while bloated at least was comfortable to both BSD and Sys V hacks. Sun continued and with the release of the UltraSPARC CPU was respectable again in price/performance but has been drifting back ever since. The company who has the current hot box will change every year; things like support and preserving your investment are as important as raw performance in business and Sun does a comparitively good job in the other areas. I can tell you horror stories about dealing with IBM when I managed RS6000's at my last employ. I'm not saying that I'd never buy another AIX server but IBM would have to convince me that they do a much better job supporting their hardware and software than they used to. Because of this I'll pay a hefty premium to get a Sun instead of an IBM.
With any strong UNIX skill set you can be extremely capable on any UNIX variant, but this is not true for windows..
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
At my last job, we experienced a change in management from a geek team to a bizdev deam. After the bizdevs settled in, you started to hear rumblings about getting all the developers to run Windows on their Linux boxes.
They did, for example, purchase an ActiveX accounting tool that any one of us could have written cross-platform in a day. (We were all supposed to use it, which is probably where the rumors started about installing Windows).
In any case, it was quite clear that we (the developers) had a lot of power over these bizdevs simply because we ran unix. We could type "rm webserver.conf" while talking to them, and they would have no idea. You don't get that same grace of power when you're constantly on the phone with Microsoft.
You would think that level-headed bizdevs would understand the bottom line in terms of licensing, etc. But the fact is, unix scares people. Windows is a lot more familiar and most ordinary management teams feel a lot more comfortable seeing it around the office.
We never switched, because switching would have destroyed our entire infrastructure. And I learned that 7 years into the web and 9 years into the NT project, Microsoft still can't build a high-volume webserver.
Microsoft has massive ground-level support from all the right people, which is scary. From a technical angle, it is still playing serious catch-up.
It occurs to me now that Microsoft may eventually be forced to strip down and server-ize Windows, because they aren't making inroads in the server market. And it's quite obvious why.
On one hand, you have these rackmount unix boxes, completely stripped-down and fast as hell. The LAST thing you'll see running on a unix server is a GUI like XWindows, because it's big and unstable and there's no point to it.
On the other hand, you have Windows2k, with its happy colors, transparency, shading, anti-aliasing, and Start! button. It's tweaked out to deliver Quake at framerates unheard-of on Unix, but there's too much cruft and feature-creep to run a simple webserver. It is, and always has been, a desktop OS.
Microsoft's primary strategy is to lower our expectations for performance. Failing that, they may have to strip the cruft out of Windows to compete in some markets.
In the end the good sysadmin is vital, but it's also good to know if your system implements certain features in good way.
Honestly, Mozilla isn't going to make/break Linux