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The Future of Commerical Unices?
An anonymous reader asks: "I was recently wondering about the state of the commercial Unix world and what their plans are for the coming releases. I know Sun just released Solaris9 and HP is killing Tru64. But what about others like IRIX, HP-UX, SCO, etc? How has the rise of Linux affected these companies plans?"
Well, Apple just released the OS X 10.2.1 Update to Jaguar 10.2, and 10.3 is expected in 2003.
Linux hasn't affected development.
IBM with AIX and Caldera with OpenUNIX are pursuing a linux compatibility layer strategy, which should allow Linux binaries to work out-of-the-box. I've not had the greatest success with OpenUNIX, but that doesn't necessarily reflect on Caldera. I guess you'll be buying support and hardware specific tuning (in AIX's case) while taking advantage of the masses of development done on and for Linux systems.
I think *BSD is dying, but beyond that I really couldn't say.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and be very opinionated and biased - but hey, it is an opinion question.
I think Solaris will be the only commercial unix to survive more than a few short years from now (here I define survive as being useful, current and having a decent market share and attracting new users - technically Netware still survives today, but it hardly meets my definition, it's just slowly dying off as legacy users switch away).
That being said, I don't think Solaris has much of a future either if they don't change their ways soon. They've already been trounced for web and application servers by thin cheap commodity linux stuff. They're only real foothold at the moment is large databases (think E10K-E15K class machines, 20TB databases, etc), and highly available databases at that.
They're currently in the process of losing this to Oracle9's RAC linux clusters, which blow Sun away in terms of bang for the buck, and can scale just as well in overall bang and reliability.
Now - all of the above is from the perspective of someone who believes only in the technical data and is willing to be on the slightly bleeding edge. When you factor in typical corporate environments/attitudes and whatnot, the picture slows down and pushes off into the future a bit further for the mainstream unix consumers.
None the less, I think my assessment here will prove to be accurate over time, with all commercial unices eventually falling to Linux, with Sun being the longest and strongest holdout.
Of course, in this long term sense, I really mean "the idea of Linux" when I say Linux. Linux could be supplanted by some other GPL (or GPL-ish) kernel down the line that re-uses a lot of the drivers and OS componentry from Linux and not really change my point.
And for one final caveat, since I can't really see the future, I don't know for sure that Sun won't manage to correct their currently tragic course and get back in shape and survive. If they were smart, they'd stop trying to marginalize linux as a thin edge device, and start contributing large amounts of their man-hours to perfecting linux on the sparc64 platform as a way of protecting their hardware and support businesses against the demise of Solaris.
11*43+456^2
I just do not see Sun and SGI going backwards in order to run Linux on their proprietary mid to high-end systems. Why would they abandon or por resources into duplicating what they already have?
That said, I do see Linux and perhaps *BSD becoming more prominent running on new hardware from the above and a couple of other vendors.
My understanding is that components from Tru64 will be integrated into HPUX in future releases. This article states, "HP Tru64 UNIX, an integral part of HP's UNIX portfolio, also showed strong results in the DH Brown report, earning top marks in two of the report's five categories. As part of its ongoing plan to continue enhancing the functionality of HP-UX, HP plans to bring key features from Tru64, including its TruClusters and Advanced File System capabilities, into future releases of HP-UX11i."
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
IBM seems the most likely (having publicly stated as fact, at least) to give up their commercial *nix in favor of Linux. But, as good as Linux is (and I have it everywhere), it still has maybe a decade to go to have the sort of stable lineage of the other commercial *nix products.
.NET... it's the price tag that will kill it.
That isn't to say it's less stable, exactly. It's just a matter of how many times vital features have been tested, added and changed. HP-UX, as an example, has a bright future. HP is integrating features from Tru64 (volume management, etc) to an already supremely stable platform.
By comparison, DG/UX (Data General) still has more advanced features (NUMA, NUMA, NUMA, etc and did I mention NUMA? HP doens't want to listen on that one), and development died on DG/UX years ago. But HP-UX soldiers on because of stability and compatibility with large installations. Heck, even the old K's are going for a premium now because some customers won't give them up.
I'd even suggest Solaris might be in the same boat. The install base is huge. The reliability is outstanding. Linux and BSD can compete, but they have a ways to go to get that install base.
I'd say the future is less bright for non-*nix commercial operating systems. Netware has the user base, but I don't think it's grown in a few years. NT/2K is growing, but companies won't stomach the restrictive and expensive licensing for long. Forget about the promise of
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
I talk to a lot of old school Unix guys (who prefer Solaris for it's Unix pureness). They seem to agree that the desktop isn't important. I think they're wrong here though. The future of any Unix is tied to the desktop.
Microsoft first controlled the desktop operating system. Then, they used the desktop operating system to control desktop applications. Then they used desktop applications to control network services/mid-level servers. (Outlook/Exchange, IE/IIS). Now, they are trying to strengthen their hold on mid-level servers and break into the high-level applications department. (Not through high-level servers but a bunch of mid-level ones).
They may or may not ever get the high-level servers, but I think if history proves anything, they will eventually. Not because they have a better product, but because they are able to use existing dominations to leverage into new markets.
Therefore, unless Unix makes headway on the desktop, there's no way they'll servive as servers. This is why there is hope in Linux as a desktop. Without it, Unix will eventually die.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
I see commercial unixes continuing to thrive for at least a few more years. Linux still isn't mature enough in the opinions of many corporations and sysadmins to handle the workload. Sure, the kernel support, etc is there, but until the Itanium becomes mainstream and middle ground software vendors begin supporting, en-masse, linux or another free operating system, the enterprise will still be overall lukewarm.
The Itanium will be a very positive thing for Linux, as it will likely be the Intel unix that replaces SCO and DG-UX's niche. There's another whole topic that can be written about the future of commercial unix processors.. AIX and HPUX run on Itanium natively. Solaris may or may not (they got it to run back in '99). The SPARC processor, long one of the leading hardware architectures, is going to suffer to the EPIC/VLIW capabilities of the Itanium, from what I can tell. The future looks grim right now, but don't count commercial vendors out yet. I'm sure there are a few tricks up sun's sleeve - they're already looking towards preliminary designs for the sparc VI and VII, and multicore sparc chips.
This is the kind of argument i dislike getting involved in, but i felt compelled somehow to put my $0.02 in. Being an objectivist on slashdot is akin to being a gay atheist in a Baptist church. You either get converted or killed, and most people don't bother with conversion anymore.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I think people get slightly over excited about the features of linux. Yes it's good, yes it runs on lots of hardware, and yes it even runs on quite big iron.
But, until the software support for linux is at the level it is on IRIX you won't see anything. One of the main reasons we keep our 64bit IRIX boxen about is the visualization software that we simply cannot get for linux. I'd also wait quite a while for 64bit mainstream processors settle before I'd expect linux to make much of an inroad into that market.
There really isn't much of a move on the software front, even still. We'd prefer to be a linux only shop, mainly for support reasons, but it's nowhere near possible at the moment.
The level of support we've received from SGI has also been nothing short of first rate. The cost isn't really that much of a concern, so linux doesn't really attract us from that angle. An open-source OS would be a bonus though (we're an R&D shop, so transparency is great).
Give it time...
jh
LiBSDnuxFree will be the dominant commercial Unix.
Everybody in unix is sharing code like some big frat party in the land of loose women.
Open Source has changed the rules of the game in this respect.
OS X, probably the highest volume commercial license out there will continue for the next decade, and all the variants that currently exist will continue to exist-- in name only if they're proprietary-- and in caode and many more flavors if they aren't.
Operating systems are becoming pretty much a branding opportunity. How much of Solaris and OS X are in common? At the OS level, a fair bit.
So, everyone keeps current, everyone shares code, everyone keeps their "proprietary" brand and sells their stuff, plus whatever value add they bring to the table.
The real question is how long does Windows have to live? Probably the next ten years for sure, but forever?
Really, with OS X its become Microsoft on one side and everyone else on the other... and there are more smart people combined working on/for Red Hat, Apple, IBM, Sun, HP, Debian/Linux, FSF, and all the others I'm sure someone will remind me of.
No matter how many people MS hires, most of the brains won't work for them.
Sure, there will be variations, but not in what's important. For instance, say the Debian project comes up with a killer filesystem that nobody else has, and its open source (of course) then when it becomes a competitive advantage for Debian, Apple will adopt it, IBM will adopt it, Sun will adopt it. Suddenly, not just Debian is working on this filesystem, everyone is. (You can switch any of those players for Debian. IF apple came up with the new killer filesystem, then everyone would eventually support it because Darwin is open sourced. Its only a matter of time, and the fact that it isn't compelling, that Linux (for instance) doesn't support HFS+ better than it does.
So, with everyone united behind the OS Unix codebase, they will keep selling their brands and their value adds, but all the competitive advantage will be shared. And united against Microsoft.
In a way, all of them have gone away as commercial unixes, and in a way, all of them are thriving.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
'Tis a shame, really. Back in the day, IRIX was the best Unix out there, bar none (my opinion, of course). It has some fantastic technologies that still aren't matched in most other Unices (guaranteed rate realtime I/O - would love to see this in OS X, NUMA, hundreds of processors running off a single system image, OpenGL integration, more) and had the best/easiest user interface and admin tools at the time. Sadly, SGI has struggled the past 5 years and has done little of interest with their OS. As others here already said, I recall reading that they're working on adding some of their high scalability technology to Linux so it will run on their big iron. If this is their current direction, R.I.P. IRIX.
I still like my O2 at work, but now I'm just bummed that my request to replace it with a new PowerMac was denied. OS X rocks.
Say hello to zMac.
Idiot, not only has HP not killed their project to port HP-UX to Itanium, it booted on Itanium before Linux and Windows did! You have been able to buy an Itanium machine from HP running HP-UX for over a year now. Geez, why in the world do idiots post about stuff they know nothing about?
MAC OSX is a commercial UNIX and it
/.
seems to be taking bits and pieces of
market share.
It is tangential to the original question,
but hey this is
--User0x45
- Cheaper
- Runs on a wide array of hardware
- Is rapidly evolving
- Supports the latest hardware gadgets
?Well, the reason people in some cases will proprietary unixes is because the above advantages are not free or does not matter. Eg:
- Cost. When you also take into account the hardware, training, saleries, the low (zero) cost of the OS is not that much.
- Vendors do not care if a modification/optimization will not work on a peice of hardware they do not support. "Ohh this optimization will break on Pentium3" - the vendor does not care if he does not support Pentium3 and is thus able to do some optimization that Linux cannot. Vendors are also more willing to create two versions for low-end and high-end hardware.
- Linux is evovlving. The flipside is that it not stable (as compared to proprietary unixes). With a proprietare unix you get a release which has been tested. And you receive patches. And documentation on the patches. For a system administrator this is important. It is also important for ISVs who are sometimes asked to guarantee that their software/hardword works on with customers hardware/software. It is much easier to guarantee for a stable prorietary unix than for a Linux system with unknown/custom kernel.
- Support of legacy hardware. Vendors will usually do much to support legacy hardware. Linux can afford to say that an old piece of hardware is junk and will not be supported. A vendor cannot do that.
Sometimes a proprietary unix can support specialized hardware sooner. Eg. assume that a vendor is developing a WizBangUltraBus which can automatically page out memory to disk, directly interact with the onboard DSP, act as a hardware watchdog, and lots of other things. It is much easier to add support for that in the vendor's proprietary unix than spending months convincing the linux-kernel-mailinglist that support should be added.Proprietary unixes also has some features that do not exist (yet) for Linux. High-performance distributed lock manager in cluster systems? I would use TruCluster DLM. Want nice administration of a bunch of machines? I would use AIX's DSMIT. Want native support for Veritas filesystem? Try HP-UX. Want LPAR? Try Solaris or HP-UX.
There are also a few other issues such as support for hardware with NDAs. There is also the CYA factor.
It's like a nasty dripping undead zombie shambling through the world of IT. And it's not going away.
I admin four HP-UX boxen, as well as Sun, Linux, and Tru64. I have (in prior lives) adminned very large VMS systems, and I'm fairly competent with Novell and NT with a smattering of MVS/OS390 and OS/400. I have used Mac and OS2 on my desktop in the past, and currently I have linux and win98 boxes in front of me. I've written a lot of code on Apple 2 and RSX-11m, which really dates me!
Anyway, from my considerable experience I'd have to say HP-UX is the worst unix I've ever had to deal with. From the awesomely kludgy "depot" system of software management, to the insane half-BSD layout of files and directories, to the ludicrously proprietary extensions and antique utilities, to the ridiculous implementation of ACLs, well, I could go on but you get the point.
The principle selling point of an OS like linux is that it gets patches and new software mechanisms extremely rapidly. Patch for the "Ping of Death?" Two hours after the exploit was described. ReiserFS? First implemented on linux, I believe.
The principle selling point of an OS like HP-UX is that it changes in slow motion. Don't expect any recent awk, grep or ksh syntax to work! Don't expect a patch for a remote root exploit in less than two weeks!
App vendors LOVE that about HP-UX. That's why this great shambling abortion of a hardware-bound OS survives - the kernel *sucks* in pretty much every revision, but it sucks *the same*. For a unix, it's pretty much *static*. Thus application vendors can concentrate on including new features instead of having to endlessly rewrite to accomodate OS changes.
Bad programmers love HPUX too, for the same reason.
And lazy sysadmins who hate to learn new things love it (once they get over the typical proprietary unix learning curve) for the same reason.
Any OS that evolves at the speed of molasses in January has a market niche created by that sluggishness. That OS is HP-UX.
Mac just released OS X.2 and while it is BSD and not really UNIX
Who's Mac? I think you mean Apple (or really, NeXT). BSD is very much pure UNIX, it's Berkeley's fork of AT&T's UNIX from long time ago. BSD has been a major influence on "modern" unices, take a look at some of the UNIX family trees / timelines. Though SunOS 5.x (Solaris 2.5 and newer) has a lot of AT&T System V in it these days, it was once almost pure BSD... as were most west coast flavors of UNIX.
IRIX is alive and kicking, it gets a major overhaul every quarter, as does most of its major subcomponents. Over the past 24 months, revisions of IRIX 6.5 have rolled in seamless support for SN2MIPS (O3K/O300/Fuel), VPro/Odyssey graphics, InfiniteReality3&4 graphics, as well as a major compiler and runtime upgrade (MIPSpro 7.3), clustered/distrbuted filesystem (CXFS), and gobs of media and gl libraries. The help system was recently totally overhauled, CXFS continues to get major upgrades (and more cross platform support). Recently announced were still more major overhauls... MIPSpro compilers will be upgraded again in October, Performer is getting a huge upgrade by the end of the year, Java is being beefed up, the freeware.sgi.com archive is growing. Plus there are a lot of things that just work... I wish other vendors had *half* of the performance profiling tools that IRIX includes. SGI kit isn't cheap, and parts of it aren't too flashy, but it's hard to beat if you need the torque.
The version numbers don't increment much, but there's been a lot of behind-the-scenes work and gobs of improvements addressed across the board. The rest of the industry has been moving so fast that one no longer needs an SGI to do most 3D or video work, but should you need several pipes of graphics for a simulator or need to shuffle several streams of uncompressed 1080i, then there's no better platform. It's a tough industry, and SGI's financials suck, but they're not doing too bad.
Yeah, I wish SGI would update their desktop a bit more, but then I also wish Cray would implement some major changes in UNICOS userland too... but it looks like I'll have to wait for both.
Darwin, the BSD fork that OSX is built upon, is AFAIK developed openly and independently from the Aqua GUI. I have not tried it but you can download XFree86 for Darwin at osxgnu.org
Accordign to Netcraft and IDC, Red Hat have more market share than every other Linux distro combined - I think commercial Unix is doing quite well, as long as the business model doesn't involve proprietary software.
Unless you didn't mean commercial Unix and instead meant proprietary Unix which I think has a limited lifespan and will be relegated to the truly high end for the next five of six years as (likely commercial) Linux erodes their market from the bottom end up.
Why would they abandon or por resources into duplicating what they already have?
I can't speak for Sun but where do you think Linux got OpenGL and XFS from? SGI most certainly is spending time and money porting their stuff to Linux. From their perspective if they can port over enough stuff they can get out of the OS business and focus on hardware (where they can make money).
I think its important to take a question like this and break into the 5 main markets:
1) Home user / small business
2) Corporate desktop
3) Departmental server (large business)
4) Enterprise class server
5) Embedded system
Home / small business is territory firmly under Microsoft's domain. Historically none of the Unixes have penetrated area (1) very much. In terms of Unixes Linux and OSX are the only Unixes even trying. IMHO they are likely to separate on price. Since the death of Commodore the under $500 market has been wide open and Linux has a chance to make a real entry at this price point, where the cost of Windows XP is a real factor. At the higher price points, IMHO OSX offers the more compelling package with OSX being a much easier to use desktop and OSX Server being a very inexpensive and easy administer small business server.
In terms of the corporate desktop the death of terminals and the rise of the PC desktop established Microsoft firmly in area as well. This market is also cost sensitive and here the cost is not only Windows XP Professional but also Office. The real question comes down to whether the cost of Linux desktop support eats up the cost savings on the software. Sun has wanted this market badly but has never offered a product that interests the corporate desktop market. Outside of Sun I don't see any of the commercial Unixes even trying. The is one odd possibility that United Linux is very successful and you end with a commercial Linux taking a good chunk of this market.
In terms of departmental servers Linux is really shinning. More and more the x86 hardware is able to handle most low-medium loads comfortably and administrators familiar with Linux are readily available. The fact that Linux offers one of the best "working environments" of any Unix means IMHO they could easily end up owning this environment outright. The real competition is Microsoft's server line with its:
1) GUI that works off the familiar Windows GUI
2) SQL Server / Access line up for ease of development and deployment
3) Active Directory providing real added value over DNS
4) Its already strong presence
I don't see much that the other Unixes have that Linux doesn't.
In terms of Enterprise class servers the nice thing is that Microsoft isn't a player.
I think its worth breaking this into two sub-areas:
a) Supercomputing
b) High reliability computing
In terms of supercomputing Linux is actually doing quite well. Between IBM and SGI working with expensive hardware and Beowulf working with lots of cheap hardware Linux is making a strong showing. The strongest competition here is AIX and IRIX and since they are made by IBM and SGI respectively Linux's odds look quite good.
In terms of High reliability computing Linux really hasn't made a strong play. This is the stronghold for Solaris, HP-UX, AIX.... I don't know if open source methods end up working here, the desire for rapid improvement and incredible boring tedious work required to get from 3 9s to 5 9s might mean that Linux can't win here. To be honest though I really question whether Unixes should be here at all. This seems like a much better place for systems designed with higher security from the ground up: Z-OS, VMS, EROS, etc... IMHO should own this space though they seem to be losing ground to the Unixes.
In terms of Embedded systems I think its early to call. Thankfully Windows CE is not a success so this area has remained competitive. Here I'm not even sure a Unix will end up winning. QNX has a great product and this is sort of Unixy. Palm has bought BeOS.... Linux is popular. I have no idea how this one plays out.
Is it funny or something?
I took it for a troll. I thought about making a "mod parent down" post when I read this comment earlier (It was Score:1 at that time) but thought it was so obvious that the mod down was inevitable.
So what am I missing? I'd really like to know.
> Uhh...O3ks are SN1 machines, not SN2 unless I'm
> missing something. As the O2k are SN0 machines.
That's a good point. IRIX is doomed.