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Dell CIO Says "Unix is Dead"
An anonymous reader writes "I thought this might spur some good discussion on this board, including jabs at Dell and MS, which I always enjoy reading. Dell's CIO believes that the end of Unix is here, in fact his opening slide in a recent presentation was "Unix is dead." Specifically, he talked about the savings he claims in moving Dell's Oracle databases from Solaris to Red Hat.
For those of you who came in late, Unix and its workalikes (Linux etc) have grown in use exponentially since 1980.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Unix is not dead, it just went home.
Gee ... you think he'd at least be able to SPELL B-S-D.
(it's funny, laugh!).
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
It's the same old debate. Unix, apple and BSD are all dead. Have been for years....right? Oh wait, nevermind.
He must mean /commercial/ UNIX is dead...
With HP-UX and Solaris based projects getting ready for launch in the next few years I imagine that Enterprise Unices will have a long life to live.
If that's truly the last remaining solaris web server, we just slashdotted it.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
The DELL CIO is dead!
Unix is dead ! - Long Live the King !
The King is Tux !
Ling Live the King !
Someone pass me a napkin, I have a tear in my eye...
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
To make such a strong statement, I think he's growing fearful in the face of growing linux use in both the home and server market . . . or he's just B.S.'ing everyone, which kind of works in the business world. It's just a polite way of sucking c0ck.
Long live UNIX!
0 1 - just my two bits
Isn't this a little like those trolls that post obituaries on /. for people who aren't dead yet? Anyway, I sort of agree with him, moving to Linux makes the most sense for traditional UNIX vendors that want to keep up with the market.
Anyways, so what?
-Sean
It is official; Dell's CIO confirms: Unix is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Unix community when IDC confirmed that Unix market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of any computer. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Unix has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Unix is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Unix's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Unix faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Unix because Unix is dying. Things are looking very bad for Unix. As many of us are already aware, Unix continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood (and when hasnt it?)
Unix is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Unix developers Some_Engineer#1 and Some_Engineer#2 only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Unix is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Unix leader Linus Torvalds states that there are 7000 users of Unix. How many users of Unix are there? Let's see. The number of Unix versus Wannabee posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Unix users. Unix posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Unix posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Unix. A recent article put Unix at about 80 percent of the Unix market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Unix users. This is consistent with the number of Unix Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of nobody, abysmal sales and so on, Unix is going out of business and is being taken over by Microsoft who sell another troubled OS. Now Unix is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Unix has steadily declined in market share. Unix is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Unix is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Unix continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *nix is dead.
Fact: Unix is dying.
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Hmm, what he's missing is that Linux is the next jump in the evolution of Unix. So it's like noting the ascendency of Cro Magnon over Neanderthal, and deducing that "cavemen are dead". Nope, it's just evolution at work, and it's yielding impressive results.
I thought he was including linux in when he said "unix is dead".
I guess not.
Well, I wonder if he's *ever heard* of freebsd or openbsd or netbsd. They are real unix. They won't easily die for a long time.
Liberty.
Then which OSses HAVEN'T reached their end?
BeOS? Dead. (the open source clones/alternatives are far from ready)
Windows? Even 2000 and XP aren't nearly as stable as Unix and are completely non-portable.
Sorry but I don't see any other OS ruling the server market for quite some time.
Large financial organizations are typically *just* moving away from COBOL based apps running on VMS and SCO to Java and C apps running on Solaris on Sun Hardware.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Granted Linux isn't considered a "true" Unix but its still considered a varient of unix. so how is unix dead if they are moving to a linux platform for its db needs? DISCLAIMER I am not a linux fan, so now you have merit to mod me down :)
[fineprint]UNIX was a trademark of Bell labs.[fineprint]
Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Obviously, This guy is smoking dope.
Despite the provocative headline, I don't think Unix can be dead if Linux is alive. Despite the different origins, they are functionally very similar.
Maybe you should have made the headline "Dell CIO Says Closed-Source *n*x is dead". Oh, wait, that might not be quite as good at causing knee-jerk reactions.
Amazing magic tricks
Unix is dead? Holy crap! This means that since we are all using it, then are we all dead too? Flashbacks of The Sixth Sense here? Noooo!!!!
Suhit
Is OS X still "Unix"?
Unix is dead! Long live unix!
When you spend hundreds of thousands to millions for custom software running on a mainframe, you arent going to be replacing the hardware every year.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered UNIX community when IDC confirmed that UNIX market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that UNIX has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. UNIX is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict UNIX's future. The hand writing is on the wall: UNIIX faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for UNIX because UNIX is dying. Things are looking very bad for UNIX. As many of us are already aware, UNIX continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
*BSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: *BSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Linux leader Linus Torvalds states that there are 7000 users of Linux. How many users of Solaris are there? Let's see. The number of Linux versus Solaris posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Solaris users. AIX posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Solaris posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of AIX. A recent article put RedHat at about 80 percent of the UNIX market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 RedHat users. This is consistent with the number of RedHat Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, SCO went out of business and was taken over by Caldera who sell another troubled OS. Now Caldera is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that UNIX has steadily declined in market share. UNIX is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If UNIX is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. UNIX continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, UNIX is dead.
Fact: UNIX is dying
"I thought this might spur some good discussion on this board, including jabs at Dell and MS, which I always enjoy reading"
You'll get the latter, but did you really expect the former to happen?
(The site seems to be loading slow already, so here is the article's text.)
"""
Dell and Sun executives provided one of the more interesting behind-the-scenes battles at last month's LinuxWorld.
In one corner was Randy Mott, Dell CIO. In his keynote presentation, Mott urged IT managers to consider a cultural revolution that would involve ditching Unix. Mott's opening slide was a mock obituary with the headline, "Unix is Dead."
In the other corner was Jonathan Schwartz, Sun software czar. Dining with journalists and customers, Schwartz reminded us that there are some tasks for which Unix remains the only viable solution. To underscore his point, he noted that Dell still uses Sun-based systems to manage its supply chain.
Although such hyperbolic sparring is typical of this industry, I decided to probe a bit deeper into Dell's talk of revolution. Dell's response: The company is in the process of migrating off those Sun-based systems. If true, this would be consistent with a key point in Mott's presentation: CIOs and IT managers need to focus the lion's share of their IT resources on innovation rather than maintenance of the status quo. "Otherwise," said Mott, "companies and even entire industries will never realize their full potential."
"Industries that don't plan for obsolescence will get out of date and they will turn out to be different industries than what they could have been." said Mott. "Look at the airlines, an industry with big possibilities. A lot of that was realized, but it got to a point and then it stopped. Look at the big failures: Eastern Airlines, Swissair, Pan Am. That industry's potential went unfulfilled because of dated processes and obsolescence. Just think about what could have been with technologies in the airline industry in terms of speed, capacity, lowering of fuel costs, and less overhead."
No industry was safe from Mott's barbed tongue. According to Mott, "The railroad industry's failure to plan for obsolescence resulted in competitive pressures, technology hurdles, regulatory issues, schedule delays and missed opportunities."
To get out of the rut of obsolescence, Mott recommended a cultural shift. Rather than spending 85 percent of a company's resources on the status quo or "keeping the lights on," and 15 percent on development and innovation, the ratio should be turned around.
Mott plans to put his money where his mouth is.
Dell has turned the Internet and a fully, software-greased supply-chain into huge competitive advantage. Without an emphasis on those systems (and some leverage Dell can bring to bear on its suppliers), the company's direct model might never have transformed the technology industry's channel the way it has, nor might have Dell been as successful at lowering its DSI. Few companies have streamlined their supply-chain to this degree. But Mott is not willing to rest on Dell's laurels. Staying far ahead of the obsolescence curve, says Mott, has incited a cultural revolution within his organization that will lead to a long term reallocation of Dell's resources.
But these revolutions take time. Mott's roadmap shows Dell getting to the 15/ 85 status quo/innovation ratio by the end of the decade. By the end of Dell's fiscal year 2004, Mott predicts, the company will achieve a 45/55 split. By 2006, it will be 25/75.
This is where the Unix issue plays a key role in Mott's plans. To reallocate resources in this fashion, Dell has to do more (or at least the same) with less. Because Dell's systems are based on Oracle, and Oracle is available to both the Sun Solaris and Red Hat Linux environments, Mott says that Dell looked into switching to Linux. The company determined that such move would yield a configuration 89 percent faster and 41 less expensive. Keeping in mind that Dell has strategic sales relationships with both Red Hat and Oracle, it's hard to say how much of this reconfiguration is mandated. On the other hand, I can't believe that Mott would risk his career and his company's future on a move in which he did not have full confidence.
That move, says Dell spokesperson Wendy Giever, is now underway. "Schwartz is right. Currently, our order management, customer transaction information, manufacturing flow, and software downloads (as a part of our build-to-order manufacturing process) all involve Sun-based Unix systems. But that's all being moved to Dell-based systems running Red Hat Linux and Oracle 9iRAC. So far, 14 Sun systems are gone and the plans are to complete the 'Sun setting' exercise this year."
"The importance of the Unix era vs. Linux era," says Mott, "Is that Linux is based on open standards that will allow CIOs to build flexibility, affordability and performance into business computing platforms."
Indeed, Linux on Intel may be an enabler of those Holy Grails sought by CIOs. But calling any primary part of the combined platform an open standard is a stretch. While Intel's architecture continues to dominate the industry, it is by no means an open standard. Oracle 9iRAC isn't even close to an open standard (although it supports many). And what of Linux? Does open source an open standard make? That's a question I'll leave open to you and Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, who told me that trusting your systems to open source could be a mistake.
Said Schwartz, "I don't think businesses are really prepared to trust their mission critical systems to technologies where, if something goes wrong with the open source, nobody is responsible for fixing it and doing all the testing on a timely basis. With Sun, you've got a single throat to choke and we can respond instantly."
Apparently, Dell's Mott doesn't see the risks the same way. And neither do some of ZDNet's readers, like Steve Goldsmith and Rick Proctor.
Reported by ZDWire Plus via NewsEdge.
"""
Considering that I've migrated from systems such as NeXT and AIX to Linux-based solutions with very few problems, I'd put forth the assertion that any Linux distribution would qualify as `UNIX' to most lay definitions of the term. I've even taken applications from Oracle/WinNT to Oracle/RedHat with minor issues. Computer operating systems are simply getting better; more commoditizied, which is why Microsoft is afraid of Linux right now. The "UNIX vendors" are still shipping machines, but with Linux installed instead of their "big iron" legacy UNIX systems. I think that he should have said "Operating Systems are Dead" instead -- which is how it should be; the computer should simply get out of our way and let us get jobs done in an efficient manner.
What used to be home-user shops, such as Dell, can now ship high-quality UNIX solutions thanks to Linux and BSD. Quibbling over the proper definition of UNIX seems silly. If it looks like UNIX, acts like UNIX and runs the source found on "legacy" UNIX systems, well, what is it?
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Tomorrow's sysadmins and software chiefs are mostly today's CS students. Considering the enormous popularity of Linux with students (for obvious reasons), these new faces will enter the field with much more programming experience and familiarity on Linux than [insert properietary UNIX here]. So, except for very specialized scenarios, I don't think Unix stands a chance.
Just my 2 cents.
-- A humble CS student.
Hmm... Could it be that Dell has an interest in actively killing enterprise-class unix, given that Dell doesn"t manufacture any serious unix hardware. (I know you can installed various flavors of unix on Dell servers and workstations, but Dell has clearly and intentionally linked its own success to Microsoft's.)
This is about as surprising as Microsoft claiming that open source software is crap.
To me, This just smacks of wishful thinking and marketing.
John C. Dvorak writes "Unix is Dead! Wanna Fight??".
Also, here is a funny comeback from http://www.superhero.org "Windows 95 is finally out, and I keep reading in all the consultants' columns that UNIX is dead. I believe them, of course--they're paid well to make such pronouncements--but UNIX seems pretty lively for a corpse. Whenever a hardware vendor brings out the latest hot box, it seems to be running UNIX; the telecom industry still likes UNIX pretty much; and there sure seem to be a lot of UNIX users out there on the Internet. If UNIX is so old, how can it be producing offspring like that little scamp, Linux?
"Maybe these consultants are confusing dying with age. UNIX is old, a lot older than the other operating systems that have long since passed on. In spite of its twenty-six years, however, UNIX continues to crunch numbers while younger systems can only gum them till they're mushy. What explains this mysterious longevity?
"I have a theory. UNIX survives because, unlike other operating systems, it lacks doubt and guilt. UNIX does just what you tell it to, as quickly and efficiently as it can, and then it waits for more work. It doesn't worry about whether what you asked it to do was fair, beneficial, or even sensible. It just does it.
"By contrast, Windows frets about you. It offers you hints and choices and dialog boxes. Help is everywhere (for what it's worth). And if you ask Windows to do anything of consequence, it asks you to confirm your request, and then it tells you what it did. Delete a large number of files, and Windows is exhausted. It's not the work, it's the *stress*. It's no wonder that Windows systems tend to freeze up where a UNIX system would crash.
"UNIX snorts at Windows-style solicitude. UNIX doesn't ask you to confirm--if you didn't want it to do what you asked, why did you ask it? Similarly, it won't annoy you by reporting the consequences of what you did. Why would you enter a command if you don't first know its consequences?"
Suhit
Is BSD Dead?
In Soviet Russia UNIX kills Dell!
...anonymous,when u provide a link to his site,with everything from what he does to what he is going to do is documented:-).?
Did somebody here change the definition of ANONYMOUS?
/.'ed already? Must have been served off UNIX...
fsck -u
It's pining for the fiords!
Message: Never believe any predictions from someone who has something to gain ($$) from them becoming true.
-Sean
"Because Dell's systems are based on Oracle, and Oracle is available to both the Sun Solaris and Red Hat Linux environments, Mott says that Dell looked into switching to Linux. The company determined that such move would yield a configuration 89 percent faster and 41 less expensive."
Before all the people who don't RTFA (or only read the first paragraph, he means "Old-style" Unix, not Linux. Carry on.Specifically, he talked about the savings he claims in moving Dell's Oracle databases from Solaris to Red Hat.
If I had a company using Red Hat or Solaris, i would want them to die out too.
Slash-for-Thought
To Dell's CIO:
Do you see planes landing where you are?
Are you standing next to a short guy named Tatu?
I only ask because, I think you're living on Fantasy Island.
UNIX is not dead. Windows is dead.
I a world without boundries or borders, who needs Windows and Gates?
Hmm... I'll make sure he gets a copy.
From Dennis Ritchie's point of view, Linux is Unix. So, if Dell is switching from Solaris to Red Hat, then Unix really isn't all that dead.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Unix is being phased out by Linux which is a Unix clone, so in a sense Unix is more alive then ever.
I guess the traditional Unices are becoming less popular mainly due to all the Linux hype. When it comes to server environement Linux is no better then commercial Unices.
As the boss of Silicon Graphics once famously said: "Linux is the Future of UNIX". UNIX isn't dead - it's just had a major rewrite/cleanup. That's hardly suprising for a 30 year old software package.
The code has changed completely - but the core ideas are exactly as they were back in 1976 when I used UNIX on a PDP-11.
There are more people using UNIX-like OS's now than there have ever been.
www.sjbaker.org
Being a pre-linux supporter it does nothing but bad for Sun, HP, and IBM. Linux spends almost no money in R&D and Sun spends like 2 billion. Stop ripping their shit off and come up with your own stuff or Unix will die.
I thought which it is a BIG lie.In this last years the Linux show to the world of computing your big progress.This guy who talk this is a bigger idiot.Ah just a answer:in your opinion what are the best distro of Linux?Debian,Suse,Mandrake???best regards Blueice88
Paying for unix may be becoming dead. Unix (linux, BDS) is alive and well.
A few years ago, one of the ops at my place of work put a magazine in my (real-word) intray. It was a copy of Byte Magazine with a front-cover headline "Is NT the end of UNIX ?".
:)
At the time this was a common headline in the popular rags...and then I noticed the date - February 1992
This crap appears every five years along with "life on Mars" and "possible cure for cancer".
The words "snake" and "oil" come to mind.
LONG LIVE UNIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I guess we will all be switching over to somethig better like Microcrap. Whoops did I spell the company name wrong? hehe
...that when I troll it doesn't just disappear in the mod trashcan but gets reported in the news and even appears on the fron page of /.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This was the title to a post I made a few years ago on slashdot on an article that talked about the future of UNIX, and where I was quickly beat down by people who suggested I was arrogant and condosending, out of touch, blah blah blah.
The fact is that Linux dosen't have anything they couldn't have - it's just too many people are trying to create some type of equivalency relationship between (or even worse claim superiority to) software that is free and software that is not. I wish people would get it. Freedom matters, and free markets are not about markets but about freedom - and people using that freedom to become successfull.
Linux just goes to prove that when you have freedom, markets tend to come about naturally as people use that freedom to seek out their own best interests and desires. But when you have markets that does not necssairly lead to freedoms as people who are still trying to believe in controlled software are suffering for failing to understand.
Dead? Well, it did feel a bit slow this morning :-)
BAHAHA...thats hilarious..unix is dead...i think he is dead and speaking from beyond the grave :rolleyes:
"Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet..and we are the cure"
...unix is the "unix" that we used to write u*nix for or un*x, etc, because it was supposed to be trademarked or something.
it's not *BDS, including OS X.
It's not Linux.
And, honestly, when was the lastt ime you heard anything about Unix, proper.
I agree: unix is dead.
who's been posting those BSD is dead messages almost on every story? Or has he been reading those?
the majority of "dell's" systems are running off HP/Compaq tandems
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
Considering how Dell feels about other operating systems other than Windows, I'd say its in their culture.
Unix is dead !
Long live UNIX!
Someone better let Blizzard know!
I remember that infamous issue too. It's funny though that only a year or two later, Byte itself turned up dead. Too bad really, Byte was one of my favorite mags.
In any case, with the growing popularity of Linux, it really doesn't make sense to say Unix is dead. Granted, a gaggle of lawyers will tell you Linux is not Unix, but in practice the diffs are minimal.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
As a system administrator who works on a large Government contract, and previously worked for NMCI (where Dell is the prime vendor for Wintel hardware) I can say Unix is alive and well. NMCI's Enterprise Services run for the most part on Solaris (Oracle, Remedy, Tivoli, Veritas NetBackup, etc.). In the 18 months I worked NMCI the Windows guys were pulling their hair out with nmerous problems and the Unix team was "chillin"! Maybe Dell's CIO is predicting the death of Unix based on their sales to the Government (where virtually every desktop is a Dell). And the project I am working on now uses Solaris and AIX for SAP R/3 and Oracle, as well as Tivoli. I wouldn't exactly "bet the farm" on this because eventually the Government will figure out that Dell is selling them a "pig in a poke"!
(Yes, Byte lives on in an electronic version - I even subscribe to it - but it's a fading shadow of its former self. It's a lot closer to death than UNIX.)
This implies that anything which is sysV based is going to "die." I don't see HP/Compaq stopping the shipping of new hpux boxes, which is basically original sysV with thousands of security patches and an add on crappy clustering system. I certainly don't see sun stopping the shipping of Solaris products (yes sales have declined, but it's not "dead"). IMO, this is just a feeble marketing/PR attempt by Dell to put an emphasis on the OS' which they ship (MS win/Linux products) and make everyone forget that their two biggest competitors are still shipping these things. Weak.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
You quoted the Dell guy verbatim.
Linux is just as shitty and hard to use as Unix and its FREE so who in their right mind would see commercial Unix surviving any sustainable length of time?
mje0w!!!1!
Otherwise, you can say "Windows is dead" with the release of XP, because MS replaced the last of the old Windows code with a whole new 32-bit implementation.
how anonymous do you want to be when you link that to your personal site which is a "showcase of your life"?
Tux has already killed once. Don't think he won't kill again.
We can't convince the blasted old cuss to lie down in the coffin.
KFG
E.g. Stallman insists that man pages are obsolete and refuses to support them, which is incredibly wrongheaded.
Ironically, the last person I heard complain about that was a Debian developer. I seem to recall he also said that Debian policy is against this and in favor of having man pages for everything anyway. There's probably a happy medium ... but I definitely agree (and so does Debian?) that a goal of the extirpation of man pages is silly.
Personally, I don't care how "pure" my "Unix" is either. It works the same way, and I like that :3
There are companies that are still using very old, antiquated operating systems and software. The reason is justifiable though -- they still work for what they need them for.
I'm sure Dell's CIO was just stating that for Dell UNIX is dead, and sure, he's probably right that Oracle+HP UX is more expensive than PostgreSQL+Linux even though they can both do the same thing. No one would argue against this.
I mean, just look at Slashdot. There are several other codebases for dynamic websites that are now incredibly more complex than Slashdot's own Slash code project. But they still use Slash code because it fits their needs mostly, and porting it over to PostNuke or Scoop would be a lot of unnecessary work.
So yeah, UNIX is dead in terms of new solutions. But somewhere, somehow, there'll always be a VAX computer, or a COBOL program, or some other very old legacy code that still works wonders, even today.
31 people regularly point & click my G-spot
No really, STFU...damn, i don't even know how that got considered funny, its great being behind a computer where no one can see you....how many sexy females would actually read slashdot??? and yes i am saying that you are not a sexy gal...i'm thinking your a fat bastard
Linux is Unix! Jesus Christ how can a Dell CIO be this stupid!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
"Unix is dead, but no one bothered to claim the body" (1986) (from this source.
Of all the pundits out there, Dvorak must have the largest database of being both for and against the same thing; perhaps multiple times. I can even recall him claiming that the Internet was dead. His credibility for me has been zero for several years. I'm amazed anyone reads anything he writes any more.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
"Dell is dead!" --Unix
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Important Stuff:
"The importance of the Unix era vs. Linux era, says Mott, Is that Linux is based on open standards"
Huh? Funny that Linux appears as a branch in the tree diagram of the history of unix. The guy must have most proprietary definition of unix possible. "Unix vs. Linux"? He seems to be under the impression that unix has no open standards, forgetting about all the *BSDs etc in the process - ie. Unix = {SCO Unixware}. I hope this is intentionally using the terms incorrectly to get people's attention, rather than a genuine lack of understanding for them as Dell CIO.
Sort of like how many Hawaiians insist they are Hawaiian, not American.
The idiots at Dell obviously don't know what goes on inside real a real data denter.
In my shop, if the data is critical it's on either Mainframes or UNIX boxes. If it's crap (this is true) it's allowed to reside on NT servers.
As long as Mega-Banks like mine have the need, 'dead' technology like UNIX and The Frame will continue to live.
End of story.
Huh?
Important Stuff:
Jay
proudliberals.com
Apparently it's a common problem at Dell:
http://nypost.com/news/regionalnews/68896.htm
What was the last thing that Dell innovated? They get on board of every industry group and use the products of that group, but they NEVER contribute anything. All the other majors drop big coin on R&D, but not Dell. That's why they make so much money. Licensing is cheap compared to research.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I've been in the computer bidness since 1988 and I have heard "UNIX is dead" at least 15 times since then. Every time, it refuses to die.
Here's why Randy Mott, Dell CIO, is wrong:
1: DELL only deals with Intel-based hardware. Intel is cheap-assed commodity based bargain basement garage sale type of junk. Yeah, it works and the speed is increasing more quickly than other architectures, but it's cheap and reliability among different Intel-based systems is inconsistent. Read as: Not big-money mission critical trustworthy.
2: Extremely large database installations running Oracle still choose HP 9000 RISC based machines running HP-UX, Sun machines running Slowlaris, SGI machines running Irix, or IBM machines running AIX. BTW, it's not Linux that isn't trustworthy, it's the chintzy hardware that it runs on.
3: Corporations still want highly reliable iron to run their mission critical processes on. Intel based junk can do it in some cases, but the bigger iron has had better regression testing done on it, and has a better redundancy infrastructure to it, which these companies are willing to pay for. This big iron still runs UNIX, and UNIX still rules the big iron, and rightly so. UNIX -is- however, losing out in the "little iron" and is losing market share from mid-size down, but it's not "dead."
4: Corporations are still willing to pay for all this testing and corporate support for the big iron, if that'll mean big uptime.
5: The only UNIX that is REALLY threatened is the actual AT&T System V that is now owned by SCO-Caldera-SCO again. I used to work for a SCO dealer, and was told by SCO at the time that Unixware 7 was going to revolutionize UNIX on Intel. I told my salesman and managers not to hold their breath waiting for people to line up at the doors to get their copy of SCO Unixware 7. I was right. We sold about three copies of it in two years. We sold ten or twenty times as many of the old Open(Archaic)Server 5.0.x licenses in the same amount of time. Eventually, the new installs became mostly Linux or Winblows, but we only dealt with Intel based junk.
Had Mott qualifed his opinion to mean Intel only, he might be getting close. UNIX isn't dead. I still have clients who would rather run a Sun or HP 9000 any day of the week over an Intel-based machine.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Maybe I should call my IBM rep.
I know that this is included with Red Hat Linux but are features like LVM logical volume resizing, journaling filesystems, and logical volume mirroring really ready and stable enough to be used in production systems?
This is no diss on Linux. I really enjoy using it and think it's great but I have my doubts at the moment that these features really work as advertised by Red Hat and SuSE.
Anyone using them and can affirm that they really work and are stable and you don't risk data-loss?
btw: I'm pretty comfortable with using ext2 and other standard linux stuff but I have my doubts with these high end features as I haven't been keen enough to try them out on a production system yet.
Unix is dead, Apple is dead, Apple uses Unix, so Apple is double-killed super dead!
Apple is deader than a hippy at an NRA convention...deader than a drunk dear on a highway, deader than a l33t coder who ran out of caffeine...
You can't take the sky from me...
2. Dell has some of the worst-managed IT projects in existance.
3. Randy Mott is an idiot.
That about sums it up.
No sig, sorry.
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/the_brand.html
Um... Linux IS unix, isn't? Not the traditional semi-closed sorce kind, but the ideas (and strengths) are the same.
There is a difference between "unix" and "UNIX(TM)". And possibly there is a case for claiming "UNIX(TM)" is dead.
Admining a "UNIX(TM)" system is always a pain and I for one wouldn't be sorry to see the back of Solaris.
But unix?
Darwin
*BSD
Linux
Seem alive and kicking to me. It also seems to me that as they are better supported and easier to maintain SysAdmins are going to fight to ensure they are around for a long time to come.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Linux is Unix. Even Windows NT is based in large part on Unix. Mac OS-X is based on Unix. Until we've all migrated to something other than BSD/Linux/Windows/MacOS, Unix is still very much alive, unfortunately.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
it's not Unix. it's Solaris. if Mott's going to be taken seriously, he should define all his terms appropriately.
Said Schwartz, I don't think businesses are really prepared to trust their mission critical systems to technologies where, if something goes wrong with the open source, nobody is responsible for fixing it and doing all the testing on a timely basis. With Sun, you've got a single throat to choke and we can respond instantly.
This is exactly right. And this is why Dell is very wrong. Them saying Unix is dead is like me saying "Ford is dead" because I personally don't own a Ford. What one company uses is irrelevant. Unix is going to be around for a very long time. Companies don't change platforms willy-nilly, and those that do usually aren't around for very long.
Long live Plan 9!
Dell wants Linux on Intel to beat Unix on 'big iron' because DELL MAKES INTEL MACHINES.
Dell wants people to focus on adopting new infrastructure rapidly because DELL SELLS INFRASTRUCTURE.
Make way, Unix ... Tiax rules! Unix is dead because Tiax wills it!
... he may be a vampire in disguise.
Funeral to be held in Athkatla. Just beware of the Gates in the cemetary
Unix doesn't have a cute and cuddly mascot. Look at its /. topic graphic, just a word, boring. Its not a cute little devil in sneakers or an adorable penguin, oh, excuse me, GNU/Penguin. Unix needs to find itself a mascot to survive, and maybe change its name to not sound like another word...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The effects of this system were far-reaching. Even the shell of a crappy OS like DOS used Unix-like syntax, especially for I/O redirection. Heck, even Microsoft put its bets on Unix through XENIX. The present-day derivatives of Unix rely on some standards that stretch waaay back into the past. (Think rock-solid substrates like the x86 instruction set or IP.)
Presumably, the reason Unix proper is almost dead today is unnecessary and pathetic license-haggling, its non-affiliation with free-as-in-speech software and its 'hijacking' by other companies, such as Sun's Solaris.
Also, the needs of computing have changed drastically. We are seeing the era of more mobile, wireless and embedded computing, for which lean embedded Linux kernels are much better suited.
Ending with a question: what present-day OS would people consider as the successor of Unix (however you interpret that)? Any thoughts?
Thank god GNU's not Unix
Even I replaced my old dualpentium SINIX (from Siemens) server with slackware last week :)
I believe with the coming 64bit processors that it will make a large blow to Unix/Sun in the future.
While it may take a little more than that to kill them off, I think it is a HUGE step.
WHAT??? This is a horrible combination of bad English, bad logic, and ignorance. I'm not sure if they are saying there are 7000, 700 or 36400 users of Unix, but I can assure you that every engineering student at every university is a regular user of Unix. Almost everyone in research that requires any type of simulation uses Unix. Almost all design work and large databases systems use Unix. Not to mention banks, webservers, etc.
This shows that you can never trust numbers spouted off by people with an agenda.
Unbelievable!!!
My advice has caused a few dozen, if not more, purchases of Dell computers. Dell was cheap and reliable. Hell, they probably still are.
;))
Ah, but for morals.. I can't support a company that spreads such FUD. Sure, Linux ain't Unix(tm), but it's close enough that the crap spewed by Dell can hurt it.
So, let's see.. First, Dell refuses to sell acomputer to a (local - well, ~15 minutes away from me) firearms dealer. They insist it was just a 'mistake' once the publicity shit hits the fan, and offer the guy a free computer. He refuses. (Good man. And I believe there was a Slashdot story about this awhile back.
Next, they hire that annoying kid who probably caused an increase in the purchase of firearms nationwide, in case anyone would've run into him.
Now, FUD against Unix. Ah, now, that's the last straw.
Dude, yer gettin' an HP, having me put a box together for you, or even buying a Mac if you come to me asking about what kind of computer to buy now.
Specifically, he talked about the savings he claims in moving Dell's Oracle databases from Solaris to Red Hat.
So unix is dead, but a unix-like os is its replacement? He should have said something like bsd based unixes are dead.
Let's look at the server market:
-IBM has chosen to eventually replace AIX with Linux. This will take for a while, but in a few years >90% of IBMs server will run Linux instead of AIX.
-HP is ditching it's PA-RISC CPU. HP-UX doesn't have any advantages compared to Linux on Intel platform.
-SUN is the only one who invests in own UNIX (Solaris), but it still plans to use Linux in blade servers.
Sure they will be people who will use various BSDs in the future, but from the commercial perscpective UNIX will be dead quite soon (=no new development).
Wow, this sounds just like MS FUD! I must say, I'm a whole lot more comfortable fixing my large Linux systems myself, and contributing my fixes back to the community than I am with waiting for Sun to get back to me.
I can't remember a time when Sun responded at all, let alone on a timely basis. What a giant load of crap!
"Specifically, he talked about the savings he claims in moving Dell's Oracle databases from Solaris to Red Hat."
To be honest, I was half-expecting him to talk about the savings in moving from Solaris to Win2k Datacenter.
If Unix is dead, then we're all zombies... Imagine the movie potential! I can see it now...
Zombie Process: Zombies in Manhattan. Zombies from around the world arise from the dead and "kill -9" countless in the relentless pursuit of the Dell Dude.
Zombie Process II: Zombies in Redmond. After successfully slaying the Dell Dude, the zombies point their efforts towards Steve Ballmer. Lots of loud, undiscernable yelling would take place this one.
Zombie Process III: Zombies Everywhere. In this exciting wrap-up to the trilogy, the zombies chase around anyone who is found to be using a Windows computer. Mayhem breaks loose in server rooms and homes across the world, and in the end Unix systems supplant all Windows systems. What a happy ending to the trilogy!
Zombie Process IV: Zombies in Space. In a somewhat odd extension of the trilogy, this movie would have an unclear, poorly-defined plot, but it would take place in space! Lots of exciting lasers and spaceships for sure.
It would be nice to hear a similary announcement from HP (HP-UX is a pain in the ass). IRIX can't be too long for this world, since SGI can't be long for this world. Of the non-free UNIX offerings that leaves Solaris. It would be a good thing if Linux, BSD and Solaris were the survivors. That would mean enough competition, which is *always* a good thing.
Is he smoking the same stuff the dell d00d USED to get?
Long live Unix!
Isn't that basically going from one flavor of Unix to another flavor of Unix? How then does he consider this to be the death knell of Unix?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I think most people here missed the more important part of the speech/article, because of the unfortunate headline. The interesting thing about the article was the vision Mott has for IT in general:
a key point in Mott's presentation: CIOs and IT managers need to focus the lion's share of their IT resources on innovation rather than maintenance of the status quo. Otherwise, said Mott, companies and even entire industries will never realize their full potential.
Industries that don't plan for obsolescence will get out of date and they will turn out to be different industries than what they could have been. said Mott.
...
To get out of the rut of obsolescence, Mott recommended a cultural shift. Rather than spending 85 percent of a company's resources on the status quo or keeping the lights on, and 15 percent on development and innovation, the ratio should be turned around.
Now, how doe this square with the responses to the earlier Ask Slashdot about Pointless IT Innovations Considered Harmful? Most people there seemed to agree that a lot of the "upgrade cycle" was pointless, but here we have someone from Dell claiming that we should spend even more on useless upgrades becuase the industry depends on it. Hmm.
Linux IS Unix. Yes, I know it has no "standard" Unix code. Yes, I know Linus Torvalds doesn't have a license to call Linux a Unix. So what?
So what makes something Unix? All of them have some differences, but there are a number of commonalities. You'd never mistake an MS operating system for a Linux system, for example. Though it's not correct to say so in some circles, I say that Unix is as Unix does. If it looks like Unix, and more importantly, ACTS like Unix, it's a Unix.
Basically, if it uses most of the standard Unix commands, and it uses one of the Unix shells (Bash, Korn, etc), and the OS code looks like a Unix (Kernel, Shell, Window system, etc), its a Unix. Even the Kernel isn't as thorough a guide now, as there are enough signifigant differences in "real" Unix systems to make this factor somewhat iffy (monolithic kernels vs. microkernels, for instance).
So to say that Unix is dead because Linux is replacing many traditional Unix systems seems a little disingenous. Just my 2 cents on the issue...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Why would he say anything else? Considering that he's referring to commercial/proprietary UNIX systems, it obviously is in his best interest to make such a statement as the commercial/proprietary UNIX systems out there are usually tied to a specific type of hardware. Plus, Dell generally seems to target consumers and end users in corporations, not server rooms.
Although Pedants will remind us that "Unix" is copyrighted, in practical terms, Linux is as much Unix as Solaris.
The claim that the fellow is moving "away from unix" is ridiculous and misleading.
Redhat is not Unix.
.NET in mind". "This is all too confusing."
We all know Redhat is Linux. Or more correctly of course GNU/Linux.
GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix.
Therefore Redhat is not Unix... This is all really simple.
In a related story, Manager Buzzword journal reports this month that the fragmentation in the Windows market spells the end of Windows. "Developers need to write their apps with Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP and not
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
Its not the structure, its the history. Linux was based on MINIX which is not [exactly] a true UNIX. Actually MINIX was really not related to any UNIX, it just had UNIX's characteristics (though I think it might have been inspired by System V, Andrew Tannebaum never said). The *BSDs are directly based on BSD 4.4 UNIX which is a true UNIX, a version of one of the two first distrobutions (AT&T and BSD).
The penguin rage building up in every Slashdot nerd, just waiting to be unleashed in a hail of enraged letters, thinkgeek.com shirts, and calls for Dell boycotts...
"Oh, they didn't mean Linux, too...Yeah! UNIX is dead!"
Hmm... Lets see... a huge distributor of PC hardware makes a decree that UNIX is dead.
Many of us know that the PC platform is unpopular as a hardware environment for commercial unices.
Could it be that Dell's CIO is really saying "The hardware that runs UNIX, such as SPARC, for example, is dead. Buy a PC with Windows or Linux and never have to worry about having obsolete hardware."
That's what I read between the lines anyway.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *Unix community when IDC confirmed that *Unix market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 15 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *Unix has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *Unix is collapsing in complete disarray.
Not even the obscure and unpopular operating system known as Linux could stop it from happening.
...
(Movie at 11)
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
That was such a terribly written article. There was No backing to his argument. Why is /. posting this garbage? Do they read the articles before they post them...
Have you NOTICED the market lately? Have you heard of the squeeze on I/T spending?
And you're going to tell me that a 40% markup is no big deal?
Even if "unix is dead" surviving only in its decendants, geeky son BSD* who nobody can understand, and a whory daughter, gnu/linux*, who'll hop on anything, I severly doubt this will nean an end to sun. if anything they a poised to become a big player in free softwre, they after all are the only hardware vendor that uses an industry standard chip
/ 76613.html)
(great article here: http://www.zdnetindia.com/news/commentary/stories
-troy
*note: I love both of these platforms, dont tar and feather me.
You were mislead by the trolling story submission. This article has nothing to do with MS (despite them being oddly mentioned in the submission), nor Windows.
It's about commercial Unix vs. Linux. I bet not a single person understood that until they read the complete article. Seems to me the submission commentary itself should be moderated as OffTopic.
... or so they've been saying for the last 20 years
but no one has listened to that either. They make middle of the road, over-priced, under-performing crap in the home market, and barely decent business class hardware. Why should a vendor drive the market vs. the consumer ? Let Dell make all the stupid comments they want, we'll see who's in business in 3 years...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Or maybe a more accurate thing to say is that proprietary operating system software is dead. Applications are what provide value to the consumer.
In Mac os X i have to pipe man output through less to be able to navigate both ways in the man page*. So since this thread reminded me of info I tried it out, and it works fine! I can navigate both ways. I'll stick to info from now on. Thanks for reminding me. :)
*)Note that this has probably more to do with "os x" more, and less to do with man.
I dunno, it all tastes like chicken to me.
The argument that open source is better for reliability just because alot have access to the source is not really true. No one had source to Unix but it was reliable. Also Doesn't BSD have a better uptime than linux?
Linux comes without the single-source hassles (even if it's open sourced) and is being updated and repaired by more people.
But it's still not the plug-and-play quality you get from M$ operating systems.
They have their flaws, but their strength is you don't have to rewrite device drivers and patch headers to work around their flaws.
I think that Randy Mott is right on track here, it is time for change, I dont see why anybody would need to use Unix over Linux. And SUN dont seem to innovate as much anymore. I really find its SUN that are "Dead" as apple and other companys have done a great job of innovating with Unix. Well actually its mach apple innovated with.
Down with propartary software, down I tell ya!
Wonder if by respond, they mean the response that I usually get from Sun: "That will be fixed in Solaris 12...and don't forget to renew your maintenance contract, it expires at the end of the month."
Ha ha ha...respond instantly my ass. I'll take the open source response to bug fixes any day.
If it looks like UNIX, acts like UNIX and runs the source found on "legacy" UNIX systems, well, what is it?
We call that "UNIX compatible" or, possibly, "POSIX compliant".
Another question to ask, though, is: what do we do with companies that claim that their systems are "UNIX" but really are rather different beasts. For example, IBM's AIX has changed things so much that porting to it and administering it is somewhat of a headache. Linux is more UNIX-compatible than IBM's AIX. And the same is true for a number of other vendors that claim to be shipping "UNIX".
Said Schwartz, "I don't think businesses are really prepared to trust their mission critical systems to technologies where, if something goes wrong with the open source, nobody is responsible for fixing it and doing all the testing on a timely basis. With Sun, you've got a single throat to choke and we can respond instantly."
The thing is, that level of support comes with support contracts, not with simple purchases. Once you start making the case that the superiority of your OS is based on how you will respond to support contracts, however, you've gone pretty far down the slippery slope, IMHO. Perhaps it is impossible for a Linux distro (or some third party) to ever offer that same level of support, but I wouldn't bet money on that. What will Schwartz say in Sun's defense then? Of course, he may be working for a commercial Linux distro by that time, and will have no interest in trying to come up with a defense for Sun, anymore. Who knows?
The thing is, I don't find that "something goes wrong" with the kind of regularity that Schwartz seems to fear. Most of the time when we have Sun or Dell out here to service a server, it is to replace a hard drive in an array. The service contract is basically a way to avoid having replacement parts around for mission-critical systems. Is that enough reason to go ahead and buy the extended warranty on your OS when you make your purchase? I guess businesses will continue to decide that over time, as Dell has.
"I thought this might spur some good discussion on this board, including jabs at Dell and MS, which I always enjoy reading"
If you read the article, you'll notice Dell is saying Linux on Intel is killing traditional unix on Sun/HP/IBM etc.
Vote for Pedro
Apparently this guy doesn't pay attention to the market.
l
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030228/sff039_1.htm
But perhaps Plan 9 from Bell Labs has a more direct claim on being the direct successor to UNIX. And, for better or for worse, I think Plan 9 embodies more directly a traditional clean, minimalist UNIX philosophy. That may not be as practical or comfortable to live in as Linux, but, then, neither were the traditional Bell Labs versions of UNIX.
It's a shame that the Plan 9 license is too restrictive for it to catch on much in the open source world, because it would be interesting to see how competitive it could be in the real world.
Dell's perspective is: if Unix, that is, Solaris, dies and along with it Sun, then we can sell servers.
Another interesting thing is that in the face of a shrinking PC market, Dell's CEO tells Dell's CIO to cut costs. The Dell's CIO -- brilliant accountant -- thinks: "I can sell off this Sun hardware and make some bucks (never mind that it is less than I paid for it), then replace it with some free Dell PCs that are wasting away in inventory (never mind the revenue that they would have eventually generated when sold).
Unix, that is, Solaris my be dead in the realm of Dell's CIO, but Dell's CIO may be fired (as good as dead?) before Unix dies.
Dell is the analyst's darling. RAH, RAH, buy the stock. Dell's got a commitment to buy its own $26 stock at over $40 a share, so we need to game the price up there some how!
Rah, Rah. My name is Michael Dell. I am out of my skull keeping that CIO around!
If UNIX is so old, how can it be producing offspring like that little scamp, Linux?
Mis-Quoth the Doors, and twang the simitar:
The Penguin awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you
Dude, he did the Oedipus Tux! Get that asshole out of my club, you guys make me sick!
Yes, that is sick talking about killing and fucking. GNU's Not Unix, it's better because it's free and free could care less about it's parents one way or another. As free software becomes beter, Unix will become free. Sun will continue to make great hardware and they are already putting Linux on it. As for all that M$ junk? They can free it but no one will want to use it. The only real death of code comes from closure and denial. Closed source stagnates as the copyright holders prevent it from being used.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Syscall Tracker
or...
SNARE System iNtrusion Analysis & Reporting Environment
Maybe we're not C2 now, but I don't think there's anything we can't do in Linux that you can in Solaris (except STREAMS, but that has questionable merits... there hasn't been a need in Linux really).
If you want an analogue to Trusted Solaris, there's always NSA SeLinux. But some people don't trust it.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Never buy your servers from Dell. Where does your price advantage go then? I would stick with the Sun then; I am going to get better support for my OS from the hardware vendor in that case.
h tm ::salivating:: garrrgllle.... only $4000 with 4U rackmount. Add CPUs, RAM, U160 Seagates: $15000 easy.
I would rather spec up one from parts + advanced server from parts, especially if I had to set it up myself anyway.
http://www.zrelsa.com/product/supermicro/P4QH8.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Various sources show Unix market share to deviate between 2.8% market share and and 10%
Now, let us analyze these numbers in order to form an educated opinion on the matter.
Some of our sources tell us that Unix shipped
roughly 1.5 million computers. Let us realistically look at this number.
Assume
that 1.5 million computers were shipped to 1.5 million unique customers, so there are
at least 1.5 million Unix customers for the year 2002.
The truth is, the way technical progress is going, most customers upgrade their computers
at least twice a year, so now we only have 500,000 unique customers. However, if you
spend some time on the Unix use groups, you will realize that out of 7000 people registered
in those groups, four out of five users only pretend to be Unix users for the coolness factor.
So, applying the same logic, gives us 100,000 true Unix users out of 500,000. The number of shipped computers does not reflect the simple reality, that about 20% of all bought computers are returned back to the company, so that makes 80,000 unique customers left. The people who buy
Unix computers and actually use them is even lower. Only about 70% of all bought computers are
put to some real use, which leaves us with 56000 customers. Out of 56000 50% are constantly stoned.
28000 sober users is still a
large number, Unix should be proud of the numbers of their true followers. Of-course, you have to
take into account that about a third of all Unix computers are sold outside of the USA, which
makes it impossible to say anything reliable about the customers outside of the country, so lets just
discard these, and this leaves us with a healthy 20000 customer user base. About half of all
computers are connected to the web, which makes them the true computer users (the rest are superficial
and do not deserve our time) so 10000 still sound pretty darn good for a company named after a potatoe farm.
About 10% of all Unix users leave in Texas and 10% in Utah, and since we do not consider these
people to be civilized enough to use anything more complicated than a toaster, let's only focus on the true, sober 8000 power users. Out of these 8000 customers about 20% has switched to Microsoft
products after success that MS displayed with their innovative and pattented UnSwitch compain.
So we still have 6400 users. In general, Unix users are known to be very vocal in expressing their opinions, which puts their already fragile health in strenuous conditions, such that they seem to have a disproportionaly high number of heart attacks and strokes when compared to the general population.
So, out of the surviving 400 users (which is still a great user base and a market share) 50% are
female, and seriously, seriously, can females be considered computer users? I mean they must do
something with the computers they bought, probably most females bought their Unix machines as gifts and decoration items.
Out of the remaining 200 men, US-Statistics Office reports, 120 were charged with
criminal offences of varying gravity, 40 were found to be linked to Al-Qaeda and a group of 12 were last seen four months ago going North.
28 people left to account for. I personally know 20 Unix users, out of which I consider 10 to be total A-holes, so they don't count.
18 rock-solid, head-strong Unix followers, of-course from this number we have to exclude the blacks, the atheists, the homos, the vegetarians.
This leaves us with 1 user. We have identified this truly great, unique individual
who, on his tremendously powerful sholders carries gigantic burden of sustaining profitability of this money making machine, who some of us love to hate and the rest call Unix corporation.
We are here
to conduct an interview with this incredible person, with this true follower. He gratiously accepted
our interviewer. The interview took place in the house of this incredible person, the spectacular
97,000,000 dollar mansion located on the shore of the lake
Washington [goehner.com].
-I really like Unix, I use Unix daily, they never failed me. - These are the customer's words from the interview. -The only thing I don't like about the Unix computers, is that their keyboard lacks the Windows button on it, everything else is great!
You can't handle the truth.
The same is going to happen with databases. While there doesn't seem to be a good open source, distributed, redundant database for Linux yet, many people are already effectively building such databases out of MySQL. Yes, MySQL. You see, not only can the hardware be less than stellar in redundant, distributed systems, the software can be as well. And if you like a COTS solution for Linux, IBM already offers it.
Scalable databases will become as simple as buying a bunch of PCs with large disks, plugging them into a high-speed switch, and network-booting them. If you need more power or one breaks or goes down, you just plug in another one.
In the end, combining lots of redundant, cheap units gives you much better reliability for less money than the overly expensive and overly engineered "reliable servers". Because, no matter how reliable a single server may be, sooner or later it is going to break, even if it just because someone spills a comp of coffee into it. And the solution to that people are using right now? They are buying two very expensive high-end servers and use one as a hot standby.
So what he's really saying is Unix is dead, long live Linux.
Rename Linux to Unix which will probably happen anyway, and then you could say, long live Unix.
See a cycle anywhere?
AH HA, I found it... March 25, 2000
d =1 172882
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4452&ci
notice the moderation points. slashdot seems to have unthreaded all the replies, but looking thru the parent article there were a ton of them (mostly negative)
I have been using stuff like that in it's beta iterations for awhile now without problems. Just stay away from risque el-cheapo hardware and all is well.
Ext3 and ReiserFS are very good. LVM is a dream too. No shortcomings yet.
Also, look at PVFS. It's a weird hack of an idea, but it totally rocks on gigabit backbones. (Let's you multihome a volume of files across machines, load balancing by locality)
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
It just makes sense that once Apple incorporates a bit of Unix in it's OS, Unix will be dead. I mean, Apple has been dying for years, therefore anything it touches must be dying as well. Didn't the Dell CEO say Apple was dead a few years back as well?
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
Solaris offers *complete* binary compatibility on *every* sparc-based Sun box ever made. Show me something made today on a P4 with all the latest bells and whistles running on a bare-bones 286 (no matter how slowly), and I'll agree with you on whether they need to get their architecture "up to speed."
(Score:-2, Flamebait)
I see the arguments below regarding trademark and so fourth but I have to agree with you. Linux feels like a Unix it acts like a Unix and in every respect other than legally it is a Unix. Linux is more similar to Solaris than SunOS is. I think Unix is an idealogy more than a trademark and Linux is part of that idealogy in many ways closer to that idealogy than most commercial variants.
Yeah, let's see how fast Dell moves off of those Tandem/Compaq Himalaya servers.
give me info files, but don't make me dig through some disorganized doc directory and don't make important docs available only as .html, .sgml, .ps or whatever, pretty please? Not every system has the tools to read those. If I'm using ssh to admin some server that's maxed out on some clogged pipe, I want small simple tools and concise man pages. Most of the time, I can't remember what flag does what. Frankly, sometimes I can't even remember the name of the command I want, and 'apropos' comes in handy if the command has a man page.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Rad Hat said that it was going to set out to conquer Unix as a server platform. After that it may look at the desktop.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Actually Sun has a pretty good theory of Unix relative to NT. Basically that the Unix market tends to lead the PC market by about a decade.
So during the 1980's you had: PC's which were glorified typewriters while Unix boxes were used for real computation (the workstations)
During the 1990's you had: PCs which were power individual workstations while Unix boxes provide network services (the servers)
During the 2000s you will have: PCs providing workstations and small local servers while enterprise apps and enterprise consolodiated servers become key (essentially Unix as the corporate mainframe)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!
...
As as person who spent several weeks with Solaris 9 on an Ulrta 5 (and a large personal history with Sun in general) and who now waits for Gentoo to finish building X on his Sun Ultra 5 architecture, I have to say I find the discussion here really funny, almost unimaginably so.
Comparing my Athlon MP system (going through an emerge sync; emerge --update world) to my Ultra 5 (going through an emerge xfree) is like compraing the stone age with he future.
Does it really matter?
Is UNIX dead? no
It has just evolved futher.
Linux is the future of unix, you cannot shrug off thosse distant relatives that brought you into being, you are stuck with your genealogy no matter what.
Forget the marketing bollocks that turns up at these sales related meetings: the technical history remains.
bring back 1992-1994... sigh... cannot explain...
LP!
Unix has been dead or in imminent danger of death according to pundits since very nearly the day it first appeared. Much like Apple. What I wonder is: which has been accused of being dead or about to die more often? Unix has been around longer, so it's had more years to be about-to-die, but Apple probably gets more coverage in the mainstream press.
Googlefight suggests that "apple is dead" is the more popular sentiment. (Of course, this hardly constitutes a scientific survey.:)
...it must be in zombie state
Linux is a perfect example of a disruptive technology. Once it becomes clear that a dominant technology is in a downward spiral it is much too late to jump on board a distruptive technology.
Dell can't stay loyal to Microsoft and not go down with them.
In other news, Michael Dell - CEO of Dell Computers - was found dead in his home tonight, an apparent victim of gang violence. FBI and local law enforcement are closely studying spray painted graffiti left at the scene for clues to the perpetrators. A source close to the investigation reports the grafiti contained cryptic messages such as "UCB Rulez", "rm -f Michael" and "mv MichaelDell /dev/null".
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
Old, proprietary UNIcies are dying...
... as more and more companies make the switch to Linux support, they will bring their developers and source code ...
...
... But it doesn't have the shock factor ...
... the only thing that would probably make a company do this would be the recognition from the community ...
But this is a good thing for *NIX
SGI and IBM have both embraced Linux
I think this should have more correctly said "Proprietary *NIX is Dead"
The question is, will someone ever pay to get Linux certified as a true UNIX OS??? The problem is, there is very little to gain by a company doing this (as their competitors also get the benefits)
Microsoft memo: Brain wash companie's CEOs into thinking that if unix exists then microsoft will disappear. If only Dell knew knew they are a hardware company that can create its own software products.
Long live GNU!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Unix is NOT the name. It's NOT the copyright. What is it is, what it has become, is Linux. They are the same thing. When I ask a guy if he is a unix-geek I mean is he a linux-geek and I suspect that is what most of you mean as well. There may be proprietary OS's that look like Unix - Solaris, HP-UX, etc... They are not Unix. They only stole the name from something that does not care about copyright law and will exist long after copyright law is dead.
"very like a whale..."
There needs to be a little JAVA applet or something so I can keep up.
If Unix is dead, and Linux is based on Unix, why is Red Hat better than Solaris?
I think what's dead is the concept of Unix being a high-end-several-thousands-of-dollars solution.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
You forgot one.
Never read AC posts because they never contain worthwhile content. Especially the ones containing insightful, provocative and reference supported details regarding the subject matter.
Those AC's just don't know what the f-- they are talking about.
This is no more than a cheap sensationalism to sell more Dell servers by dividing and conquering the Unix and Linux community, and would also strengthen MS in the high end server market which is still dominated by Unix.
By it's own admission, Dell profits from other people's R&D budget. This is one of the richest company in the computer industry with no technology other than cheap box making skills and makes zero contribution to the world. It's well on the way to become an MS-like monster playing every trick in the book to kill its rivals.
I for one can't bear the thought of a world full of ugly Dell boxes with dirty Windows. For the sake of our industry, we need the innovations of Apple, Sun, IBM and many others, so let's boycott Dell boxes - they are not even cheaper anymore.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Hacker OS UNIX was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to nerd culture. Truly an American icon.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
Once the PCs become the mainframe, what niche is left for Unix then?
I consider Linux is just a dialect of Unix, much like BSD and Mac OS X. The enemy of Linux is Windows, not Unix. Dell is simply trying to grab more market share from other Unix vendors by dividing and conquering its competitors
RMS already addressed this issue 1985 in The GNU Manifesto:
Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU's Goals
"Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means they can't rely on any support."
"You have to charge for the program to pay for providing the support."
If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free without service, a company to provide just service to people who have obtained GNU free ought to be profitable.
In other words: the choice is not between closed-source/commercial-support and open-source/volunteer-support. Customers can get open-source/commercial-support if they want.
"Said Schwartz, I don't think businesses are really prepared to trust their mission critical systems to technologies where, if something goes wrong with the open source, nobody is responsible for fixing it and doing all the testing on a timely basis. With Sun, you've got a single throat to choke and we can respond instantly."
I'll bet only their top 10 customers get that kind of support.
In Soviet Russia, IT FAILS YOU!
A better argument is to say that proprietary UNIX and UNIX-like implementations are on their way out.
GNU/Linux is currently undercutting many of these proprietary implementation in both cost and performance. This is why many of the old UNIX holdouts (namely HP, IBM, and SGI) are now embracing GNU/Linux.
GNU/Linux *IS* a UNIX-like OS. GNU/Linux, if it gets even more industry support, WILL supplant all other UNIX implementations eventually.
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Also....
:)
Forgive my reply to my own article, but has anyone considered that this might be the impetus behind the owner of the UNIX trademark (namely Caldera/SCO) is suddenly looking into patent enforcement (not to mention hiring a high powered lawyer) when it comes to their UNIX related IP?
Just a thought...
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I soon expect to see a /. article entitled "Dell CIO Jabbed to Death by UNIX Junkies."
Thank you very much for mentioning this! I find the lynx style of navigation much nicer than the native info user interface.
Debian has a package called pinfo that provides this.
# apt-get install pinfo
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Ok. Yes I like linux just as everyone else does. As a professional though I'd never put a customer's database on it. Going with Linux provides only negligable cost savings. Lets look at the cost of Oracle itself. $40,000 per cpu. That jumps to $60,000 PER CPU for 9iRAC. Having done RAC myself it's not for your average DBA. The fact that you're even considering it means your business needs are VERY high in the first place. Lets say you need 8 processors to accomplish what you need to do with your DB. Drop $100k on a V880 from sun plus 40kx8 ($320,000). Let's say $420,000 with of hardware and software going with Sun. Then lets get 4 dual cpu Intel boxes. Lets say fully loaded they're $10k each. That's only $40,000 with of hardware. (or 2 quad boxes about the same price) But now we have to use RAC. That's 60kx8. That's $480,000 in oracle licenses plus $40,000 in hardware. But now you also need a SAN to attach all those machines to shared disks! Well into the $600,000 range now. Which is cheaper? Which is easier to manage? Now the RAC solution may have better availability but...
I love linux but on Intel crap hardware it's not ready for the Enterprise.
The Amiga is dead. The Newton is dead. BeOS is dead. Unix is not dead. It just evolved into Linux and BSD. NeXT evolved into MacOS X. DOS was forcibly mutated into Windows XP much like the animals on Dr. Moreaux's Island wer forcibly mutated into something vaguely resembling humans. "Are we not men?" or in this case "Is Windows not an OS?"
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Except where functionality is actually removed. E.g. Stallman insists that man pages are obsolete and refuses to support them, which is incredibly wrongheaded.
I'll second that.
Info always was a pain in the butt - especially for those who don't use emacs as their preferred editor. And now that HTML (and its augmentations) is here and browsers are essentially universally available, info (which never achieved the user penetration of man) is itself at least as "obsolete". Considerably more so, in fact, precicely due to that lack of penetration.
Sometimes an adequate standard is better than a "better" multi-standard solution. Books, for instance, are not obsolete (even if clay tablets have been depreciated for a while.) Man is just a convenient online set of loose-leaf notebooks (suitable for hardcopying for those times a spare square-yard of screen isn't handy).
Needing a mix of tools to read the minimal subset of manuals is so broken it hurts my head just to think about it. The "man is obsolete and gnu won't support it" case of Not Invented Here is one of the biggest impediments to general conversion from proprietary software to Gnu offerings.
Fortunately there are info-to-HTML translators. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet one that conveniently ports all the info functionality into the browser environment - which is a problem, since the "info" manuals were written assuming it and pretty much require it for effective use.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
not meaning to cause flames here (albeit I suppose my comment may unavoidly cause it anyways) but the fact that slashdot (and other tech news sites) repeatedly put up these one person comments of the form, "This is (dead|stupid|too bug ridden|too expensive)..." is really getting old. There are some things I want to know, but I don't want to know what every Tom, Dick, and Harry has to say in the tech industry, no matter what title they hold.
"Apple is dead", "Unix is dead", "Linux will never reach the desktop because ____", "Linux is ready for the desktop because ____" ... Single person reviews from Tom's or Anand's or some things on osnews.com are ok, but a lot of the comments I see just bore me to tears, because all it brings is repetitive arguments that have all been heard before. It brings to mind the episode of Star Trek Voyager about the Q that wanted to die... Just give me the meaty stories, not the bland appetizers, please!
I wonder what Dell's CIO would say about Apple's status/future.
You've got to be kidding me. Oracle probably costs more than the software and hardware of a proprietary UNIX machine combined. What a total nitwit. They could be running... Solaris, for all the cost of the OS matters in such a situation. Does he have any idea how much Oracle costs?
--sdem
After reading through the majority of posts; it seems like most people think that he is bashing *NIX because it is not Microshaft... that is not necessaritly true.
If something breaks who can he call? RedHat has support contracts, but they will not be able to give him device driver support during a critical time... he wants support across the board. For someone to be responsible for the product.
IMHO, he is correct to some degree.
...or did it?
There's virtually no other Unix platforms [than Java/Solaris, C++/Solaris, scripting/database, or COBOL/mainframe in banking legacy.]
In telecom legacy there's UTS - which is SVR4 (and a legacy SVR(3?)) for mainframes from Amdahl (now Fujitsu). It's also used in commodities brokerages and other "one hour downtime = several megabux down the drain" financial applications.
Ever see an uptime of multiple years? B-)
And yes, virgina, "Real Programmers" DO sometimes edit on 3270 emulators. (And you can even get decent unix console and terminal behavior out of 'em.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
locked into a system with little or no room for growth, an underperforming BIOS, with low end components as cheap as they can be had. I don't dispute they are decent, middle of the road, but they advertise them-selves as the high performance. Even their business class servers are just "ok" on the performance side. My use of the term 'crap' is not warranted, you are correct.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
"Unix is dead." --Dell CIO
"Dell CIO is dead." --Unix
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
While I run linux on my desktop at home and on the desktops at work, I have been a Solaris admin for a decade now. I watch the innovations fairly closely, but Linux just seems to keep falling short on serveral higher-end issues. Linux just feels too much like something made from a "hacker in a basement" with no thought to enterprise issues.
/etc and other file systems, along with whole subsystems moving/disappearing/being replaced. If we ran enterprise legacy apps on a Linux box, we would not dare upgrade it, ever.
Here's my (admittedly anecdotal) experience:
* Intel hardware just does not have the bandwidth to keep up on general business apps. We do quite a bit of batch processing under Oracle, churning through tens of gigabytes of data per day, and every time I test the same apps under Oracle or MySQL or Postgres on a Linux box, the machine just endlessly grinds away, even when the Intel gear is running radically higher clock rates.
* Linux seems to collapse under higher processing loads. We routinely get our V880 to load averages of 12 or more, with 1000+ processes, and all it does is get progressively more sluggish. I have yet to see a Lintel machine stay above a load average of 4 without falling apart.
* Linux apps/developers seem to be enterprise-hostile (or at least unaware). When we switched away from Openwindows, we tried KDE, but had trouble setting a common launch menu for all of our users (attached to the Sun via X terminals). Worse, some logins had to stay Openwindows (for a variety of reasons) and there seemed to be absolutely no way to keep openwin-menu and the binary KDE menus in sync. A message to the KDE developers asking for advice resulted in childish responses about our organization living in the past. We went with Ximian Gnome for the menuing support. The sick thing is that the most recent Ximian Gnome (1.4?) gets confused when the same person logs in from multiple terminals. A message to the Gnome developers asking for advice yielded no response. There is still no graceful way to systemwide disable xlock. 50 users running xlock on a central machine eats up the CPU and floods the net. We have a hack that we do to keep xlock off of the machines, but it gets overwritten by each Gnome upgrade.
* Solaris, and I presume AIX and HP-UX, are very upgrade friendly. We have come from Solaris 2.2 to Solaris 8 and swapped the server hardware twice over the past 10 years with no disruption to our 1000+ custom legacy applications. The worst problem we ever faced in an upgrade is that we run a non-standard sendmail and Solaris will occasionally stomp on it in an upgrade. Each new Linux upgrade seems to bring new layouts to
Hopefully Linux will grow up and be ready for larger installations. I am still waiting.
He claims that unix is dead because they are switching from one unix variant to another unix variant??
Is this guy stupid or something??
Linux is the biggest road block to a *nix OS revenue stream. This is an absolute fact... and everyone knows it.
The guy is running the tech for the only currently-successful PC clone operation. In fact, Dell is often held up as a paragon of effective use of technology in the supply chain.
How is this not a real job?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
don't make important docs available only as .html
What's the significant difference between browsing .info files with info and browsing .html files with w3m?
Will I retire or break 10K?
long live unix...
I have hot swapable drive support. HP is working on this for w2k but does dell have this?
Mac OS X has had this since version 10.0. It's called FireWire(tm) brand IEEE 1394 serial bus technology. FireWire storage devices are hot-swappable, and there's no reason a hardware manufacturer can't make a cage that holds a couple dozen FireWire drives.
Every version of the Microsoft Windows OS since Windows 98 and Windows 2000 can speak IEEE 1394 as well.
Int64
The i386 architecture can already handle 64-bit long long variables straightforwardly, just not natively. The x86-64 architecture processors (AMD Athlon 64; AMD Opteron) will fix this deficiency. (Yes, I know Dell doesn't currently sell AMD CPU based machines.)
I have a scalable server that has supperior clustering software that NT and Linux lack. With up to 128 processors I can have one fast mutha.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of PC blades? If not, what clustering feature does the Solaris OE have that the GNU/Linux OE lacks?
Linux has serious VM problems
I've been told Linux 2.6 will take steps toward improving the kernel's scheduler and VM.
If a chip fails you can have an engineer from Sun with a replacement part be at your office within a matter of hours if your a gold member!
Dell has only begun to compete with Sun. How do you know Dell won't introduce an analogous "gold" program for its machines?
Will I retire or break 10K?
There is no Unix company.
Then what's The Open Group?
Will I retire or break 10K?
After reading the article, Dell plans to Migrate off of Sun and use RedHat Linux with its software. If Dell's CIO is saying that "Unix is Dead", isn't Linux just another hybrid of Unix? His opening slide should have said "Sun is Setting". Dell's CIO needs to go back to Computer Science 101.
Vince
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
In SOVIET RUSSIA, Josef Stalin misspells YUO!
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I've heard this rant 5 times over the course of the last 10 years 1992-2002.... "RUN, UNIX, RUUUUUUUUNNNN!!!!!" :)
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Bad jokes about our bad tempered hero aside, it's very odd that someone as high up as that person at Dell not knowing what unix is. I bet everyone with a degree in anything vaugely technical at Dell would cringe at his comments. At this point (and any point proir) I can't see how anything other than small pockets of the net could survive without all the various breeds of unix boxes holding it together.
I'm leaving a wakeup call for when somebody from Dell says or does something intelligent. I have a feeling I'll probably beat Rip Van Winkle's record in the meantime. ;-)
It seems most appropriate here...
"Don't advertise your own stupidity.'
Unix is dead, 640KB is enough for everyone.. It's a new economy... etc
Just don't.
greetings,
...
towards the end of the '80s (the) rob pike said:
''not only is unix dead, it has started to smell bad''.
he was not talking about the trademark. just as when dennis richie says unix now, this is a case of unix is bsd is solaris is linux is
bengt
No..not the windows that we all use today... The original one... 1.0... the first one...
Unix is dead... Yeah... that's true too.
So what if dell says that unix is dead, there only saying that becuase there basicly in bed with MS so insulting a compete operating system might improve there sales
This sig was generated by a barrel of trained kittens for SeXy_Red (550409).
So it wouldn't be for all those naughty goatse pictures then?
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Clear then this article was little more than an argument between Dell and Sun over Dells switch from Solaris to Linux. How this spells the end for the UNIX model is quite beyond me.
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
Somehow, strangely, someone at Dell claiming that Unix is dead fits this bizarre, ongoing story, given that Apple has become a Unix machine.
"Linux is not Unix" - and believed it.
...it's just sleeping.
I use to tell this to my kinds when they were little and saw a road-kill.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
1.)I have hot swapable drive support. HP is working on this for w2k but does dell have this?
How about hot swappable CPU's and memory? I know SGI hardware can do it.
4.) I have a scalable server that has supperior clustering software that NT and Linux lack
Don't forget platform dependent applications. For example, XFS (on SGI) and their graphic cards will simply kill any dell machine running Windows. I'm sorry for the Dell dude, but there is simply no comparasion possible. Heck, what's the filesystem or filessize limit on fat32/ntfs? How about 2TB for a single file on XFS? Can the dude do it?
5.) With up to 128 processors I can have one fast mutha.
How about 1024 for SGI machines? Think the dell dude will get close to that number (on a single image machine, not a cluster!)? Windows can scale up to 32? 64 maybe? I haven't even seen a PC with more than 4 cpu's anyway. But correct me if I'm wrong as I'd like to buy an 8CPU linux box.
6.) World class stability.
Windows != stability. Let's just say that I'm glad I don't have to deal with windows servers anymore.
7.)WOrld class support.
This is where I have to admit that Dell seems to be doing pretty good. On the desktop side at least. I couldn't say about their server support. I'm not trying to have a vendor war here (we mostly have SGI's here), but I know SGI can be on site withing 4 hours with a spare part. I'm sure this is common for every unix vendor.
On a personal note, if unix is dead then why is Microsoft considering Linux as a threat? Why is Apple going to unix with OS-X? Why are major graphic shops going to Linux? Why don't you see Windows machines in research dept?
Basically: Where is windows other than your desktop and mom & pop servers?? NO WHERE!
-- Leeeter than leet
Seriously. I don't think I've ever used an info, .ps, .doc, or .html manual page on Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, or IRIX. Every system utility still has man pages. My outright, adamant refusal to use GNU "info" hasn't gotten me into trouble yet.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Of all the pundits out there, Dvorak must have the largest database of being both for and against the same thing; perhaps multiple times. I can even recall him claiming that the Internet was dead. His credibility for me has been zero for several years. I'm amazed anyone reads anything he writes any more.
Ever hear of "playing the devil's advocate"?
For many people, writing arguments on both sides of an issue helps us to clarify our thoughts, and it's often useful to other people who might not have heard of or thought of some of our ideas.
There's something very wrong if you believe everything a particular author writes.
Not all writing is a reference book. Articles, especially, should get you to think. An author would be doing his readers a disservice if he didn't present good arguments for both sides of an issue.
Well, info is a stand-alone shell command. So, you'd have to use lynx to prove your point.
So was w3m (syntax: w3m index.html) when I last installed it on Red Hat Linux. Apparently, so is links.
You do have a point that Emacs-W3 doesn't come with the official FSF source distribution of GNU Emacs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Unisys sells some 8 CPU boxes, see here: http://www.unisys.com/products/midrange__servers/e s2085r__8_d_processor__server.htm
We have a 4 CPU version at work, its a pretty bad-ass PC
---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
Just resting.
Not that you'd want to actually *use* Solaris on x86--if you can afford Solaris, you *need* huge Sun hardware. And unless you love Objective-C and the OpenStep API, you don't own a copy of OPENSTEP. And who in their right mind would want SCO? But you *can* run these things on Intel hardware....
Otherwise, this means that the industry is converging in more less the same standards.
Thus spake the master programmer:
"A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program
is its own hell."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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