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.

Comments

How

[PD]

How about a fricking link?

Here's a Link to the Actual Story

[nathanm]

Here's a link to the actual story. It'd be nice if the /. editors could include it.

OSF Mach

[Philbert Desenex]

"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.

The Question Isn't Whether UNIX is dead...

[Spencerian]

...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.

Re:The Question Isn't Whether UNIX is dead...

[Spencerian]

To add to the girl/OS analogies (loved the articles, by the way, John--thanks for the contributions):

BeOS was the super smart, sexy girl you lusted over, never asked out when you had the chance, and has disappeared from the Earth (probably married, likely dead).

OS/2 was that beautiful college associate professor that killed herself before you asked her out because she was a crazy recluse whose professors told her she would be passed over for promotion yet again.

Windows 3.1 was like that talking Barbie doll of your sister's whose hair you cut off after hearing it say "Math is hard" for the 3,000th time.

That would have made MUCH more sence...

[Matey-O]

If the article title was 'ALPHA isn't Dead. Unix's lifespan really isn't in jeopardy.

Unix is soooo hard...

[ryanvm]

Does anyone know of a website or anything that could perhaps show me the way out?

FUD through "positive assertions"

[mmusn]

That submission is rather like the underhanded question of "when did you stop beating your wife?". I can't quite tell whether the poster is deliberatly spreading FUD or whether he has just fallen too much for Microsoft propaganda.

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?

Silly people *tsk,tsk,tsk*

[powerlinekid]

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

Re:Silly people *tsk,tsk,tsk*

[josh crawley]

Trye, but has it changed? Programs still have problems (crashes). Still the major problems were SUID's.

Take good old colorview from SGI machines. It was a X-server color profile viewer, but it was suid. Guess what.... it didnt even look to see if it was a valid color profile. You could read people's mailboxes with this one, or the shadow passwd file. My personal opinion of older SGI boxes were that SGI didnt care a rat's ass about thier software. They just whipped crapplications up and gave them all root access.

Or next in the list, is the /dev/audio bug. This is NOT a crash, but just a weird setting. Older Sun boxes sold in the earliy ninties came with mics. Net admins usually connected it, usually for the novelty. Another detail is that these mics had no ON light or button (you couldnt tell if it's being used or recording) However, Sun screwed up (accidently) in the permissions. it was 0666. For those who don't know *nix, this means everybody can read and write to the sound device (essentially, listen and play over the speakers). Eavesdropping itself is *NOT* a hole. This just let users eavesdrop.

Bugs have always existed and will always exist. Just saying it really sucked then but now is ok is just a cop out. It sucked at first, cause software is revamped by developers. That doesn't just happen immediately.

Re:64-bit life?

[Refried Beans]

IRIX 6.5
"SGI Fifth Generation 64-Bit UNIX Operating System"
http://www.sgi.com/software/irix6.5/

AIX 5.1
"AIX is fully integrated to support existing 32- and 64-bit hardware..."
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/os/ index.html

Solaris 8
"Designed for multiprocessing and 64-bit computing..."
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris /ds/ds-sol8oe/

Tru64 UNIX
With a name like that, do you have to ask?
http://www.tru64unix.compaq.com/index.html

Any questions?

The question isn't whether Unix is dead...

[throx]

...but why Timothy is trolling. Are hits really that bad?

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Re:Meanwhile, in a parallel universe near you:

[jafac]

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.

Yes, but they're still cleaning up problems with Freud, because quite often, child processes will become attached to the processes that spawned them.