Slashdot Mirror
On The Death Of Unix
An anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Red Hat Asia Pacific boss Gus Roberston, he tells ZDNet why he believes Unix will be dead since in future, there will only be two operating systems left (for corporations). "We don't see ourselves competing against Microsoft. We are taking market share away from Unix," he said. However, IDC counters Robertson's claim saying Unix market share has actually been increasing in that part of the world."
And then there is the newest Unix on the block, a BSD variant, known as OS X. A User Friendly Unix.
Best Slashdot Co
What is this "rival OS Unix" he is talking about? AIX? Solaris? Tru64? BSD/OS? What?
You mean like this article?
Reality check, Red Hat:
We don't see ourselves competing against Microsoft.
Too bad for you, because Microsoft certainly thinks that Linux is its number one competitor. And don't kid yourself: they will do whatever is needed to crush you.
Oh, and if you think you can steal market shares from, let us say, Sun, without them making a fuss, I think you are mistaken too. Last time I checked, Sun is still worth more money than Red Hat...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Really? I just consider it one of the many forms. Most of the UNIX installations are high end hardware. IBM for example hinted that AIX will be replaced with Linux for its RS/6k line.
Its just that Linux is new and only recently got good. OThers such as Unixware and Openserver which are crap never made it to the big machines due to quality and features.
Early versions of SunOS and HP-UX were not that hot either but have mainframe-like capabilities today. Linux is rapidly getting there and 2.6 may match it. I do not know how good its hot swapable hardware support is but the scalability factor is certainly there.
http://saveie6.com/
So Linux/Un*x vendors should unite, and not compete (too much).
I couldn't disagree with this less. The whole reason MS sucks is that there is no genuine competition driving quality and innovation. And nothing driving them to satisfy the customer in a real sense.
By having strong competition between the n*xes we see a diverse marketplace, with a breadth of solutions offering something new, old, original, well tested and everything else thats out there.
Focusing on MS as 'the enemy' sets everything off on the wrong foot. And predjudices the objectives for everyone concerned. Surely becoming the best n*x is WAY harder and more fun than 'being better than MS'.
'Unite behind the dream' sounds a bit too much like communism for my liking - nice idea, never works!
Take a look at this which talks about the future MIPS machines, which will still run Irix. Irix, despite its weirdness, can still do things Linux can't. Go take a look at a very high end Irix server (something like an Origin 2k or 3k), and you'll see the difference.
Agreed. Linux is not JUST Unix. It's Unix with an ideology - of being open AND useful. Unlike Unix, it's aim is to change the computing paradigm and empower users. Unix, OTOH is just another operating system, like Windows.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
This is UNIX
A small portion of the text:
Today, the definition of UNIX (R) takes the form of the worldwide Single UNIX Specification integrating X/Open Company's XPG4, IEEE's POSIX Standards and ISO C. Through continual evolution, the Single UNIX Specification is the defacto and dejure standard definition for the UNIX system application programming interfaces.
Sad but true, Bourne (or you could perhaps argue POSIX) is the most portable but using Korn should work on the vast majority of UNIXes out there, Linux included.
mod parent UP!
So I guess my clients saving > $250k by deploying 40+ servers and 180+ desktops on Fedora instead of MS was a bad decision on my part eh?
Oh well, wait 'til we upgrade the kernels to 2.6, then if I get fired, I'll reconsider. (It's blowing the doors off 2003 in our lab tests, so why not?)
BTW, RH can keep spouting this nonsense til the cows come home. The clients seem to have figured out the savings, and don't give a shit, but it seems pretty weird to FUD your own product.
...a package that nobody else is even pretending to supply...
I seem to recall some obscure (read as #1 seller by number of units shipped) flavour of *nix out there that:
- comes in both desktop and server versions
- comes bundled with loads of users apps for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, digital media (movies, pictures)
- comes with utilities for both end users and admins
- comes with a free web server, web browser, LDAP server, mail server, mail client
- has what is often argued as the most consistant and easy to use user interface on ANY platform
- is supported by a major profitable corporation with billions of dollars in the bank
- and oh yeah, and it even runs Microsoft Office for those who think they can't live without it.
Any (cough) apple (cough) guesses?
Red Hat Asia Pacific boss Gus Roberston, he tells ZDNet why he believes Unix will be dead since in future, there will only be two operating systems left (for corporations).
The "Linux" API is a knock-off of SYS V UNIX. Only in SCO's eyes is GNU/Linux UNIX(tm). But even the company Bruce Perens was (is?) involved with, Progengy, had in their press release 'We are better because we arn't UNIX' then after it was posted on this very site and some of the readership pointed out how 'Linux is unix', the press release was changed.
He is right, the OS wars are over. Unix beat all commers, if you believe what Microsoft said about NT - It will be a better UNIX than UNIX.
While RedHat does not produce my my favourite distribution I get very tired of this bashing. RH has contributed probably more man-hours in terms of software development, maintenance and suport than (probably) any other company without charging a cent.
I challenge you to (honestly) say that for Microsoft.
z/OS is an operating system environment that includes several previously "independent" IBM products that are part of the mainframe environment(RACF, Language Environment, DFSMS...) IBM just formaly packaged them together and renamed it z/OS. MVS is the "kernel" of z/OS and is older than UNIX. The Art of UNIX Programming, by Eric Raymond gives a basic description but the best source is ibm.com. Just look up documentation on z/OS.
In some ways, z/OS is far superior to UNIX/linux and most likely, linux will never come close to it. To match the 99.999% uptime and 31 years mean time between failures of z/OS would require changes to linux that the open source community would probably laugh at and consider to be too complex or operating system bloat. The changes would go against the philosophy and style of UNIX described by Raymond in his book, even if you followed Raymond's book in implementing the changes.
The uptime and MTBF are not achieved by the z/OS alone but the combination of z/OS and the z/Series hardware. While the z/Series port of linux probably does a good job of exploiting the capacity of z/Series hardware, somehow, with only a 1% code change to achieve the port, it takes full advantage of it the way z/OS does.
With ubiquity of windows/unix/linux, none of them can do what z/Series does.
"Even today MVS and z/OS are responsible for moving much of the world`s money."
Indeed, +75% of the world's data exists in mainframe environments, and that is with 10-12 thousand z/OS or os/390 licenses.
i think we're talking two different levels. There's the OS, then there's tools. Shell scripting may seem like a basilar activity, but its really not a part of the operating system's core, which seems to define whether something is UNIX or not.
Now, given that GNU stuff is available everywhere, UNIX therefore -has- those capabilities if installed, just like anything else (Linux or otherwise). UNIX has not 'moved with the demands' as you say because those features have already been implemented, why reinvent the wheel, just install an rpm/pkg/whathaveyou.
since when does having X windows, or a particular app have any bearing on whether the os you're running is technically a UNIX, a Linux, a NeXT, a windows, etc system?
So if I ran DOS with Norton Commander installed, its not dos anymore because i installed something non-standard?
Anyway, IMHO, i dont think its a matter of 'switching to GNU', its simply 'using GNU'. Heck, even cygwin on windows can use GNU stuff for the most part. Installing GNU utilities on your windows box does not make it a unix.
Come to think of it, that may be the prime example. Cygwin looks like a unix, walks like a unix etc, to quote another poster, but its the kernel that really defines what the system technically is.
That's funny....
Apple says it is.
And as far as I'm concerned, Linux and BSD are Unix as well. If it looks like Unix, acts like Unix, etc. Now, had the question been "Will PROPRIETARY Unix die?", well, then maybe you'd have a point. But Linux and BSD have pretty much insured that Unix itself won't die.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It wasn't the original target...
:-)
Actually it was. The idea was not to have Linux be some super server to compete with a IBM Mainframe or 10 million dollar Sun box. It was to give one guy a good platform to work on, that didn't crash all the time. So actually Linux started out more as a "desktop" than a server.
I do agree that Linux is a Unix clone, but the core difference I see is the large number of developers working on Linux vs *OS. Were most Unix vendors focus on one area (server), Linux tends to focus in EVERY area, and with large dedicated coders in those areas also. For this reason, and total cost of ownership, Linux will be a very tough competitor to anyone.
I do find in VERY interesting that RedHat will not come out and say that they are competing against Microsoft. They are. Gartner had a report here recently that said that more people are switching from Windows to Linux than from any other platform. That to me is competition.
Having said all that, I agree that it will be a while before the masses switch off of Windows to anything else. When they do it will probably be cost related though...
Office Pro ~$600 + $100+ every two years.
Windows - ~$100/3 years
I see a time within the next year or two when Microsoft will have to make some serious price cuts to keep people from switching. Again this is competition.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Here's one quote:
According to Harish Pillay, chief technology architect for Red Hat Asia, the scalability of threading has increased from 1,200 to 32,000 threads with NPTL. This translates to significant performance boosts when running multithreading applications such as Java software and databases, he said. More importantly, the enhancement puts RHEL 3.0 in better stead against rival OS Unix, which has long been equipped with more advanced-threading capabilities.
Whaaat? This guy is the CTO of RH Asia, and doesn't even know WHAT his chief product is? If RedHat Linux is not a variant of Unix, then why is RedHat offering courses on Unix ?
And here's a quote from a RedHat document, titled " History of Unix, Linux, and Open Source / Free Software":
2.1.5. Comparing Linux and Unix
This book uses the term ``Unix-like'' to describe systems intentionally like Unix. In particular, the term ``Unix-like'' includes all major Unix variants and Linux distributions. Note that many people simply use the term ``Unix'' to describe these systems instead.
I can't believe this guy is so high up in RH hierarchy. Doesn't look good for RedHat.
``Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.'' -- rob pike, Bell Labs 1991
And I'm sorry to tell you that every bit of that applies to Linux and *BSD.
Of interest is also "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant".
Get the only OS that doesn't stink while you still have a chance:
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
(and now it's *really* OpenSource)
Plan 9 is what the creators of UNIX thought UNIX should have been. Here is the paper that explains why and how they decided to replace UNIX:
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html
uriel
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
Exactly. This is so well known that it has even shown up in
fiction. From the sf novel PDU-1:
"I nodded again, appreciating as always the genius of the
original Unix design, how it was in actuality more of a
philosophy and methodology, a way to approach problems, than a
code base. Because of this, it had been able to evolve, and
therefore survive, over the many years of its existence."
It's the philosophy, the approach, that matters. That's why Unix
will survive into the distant future, no matter what it might be called.
--ern
But under the UI, Mac OS X is significantly more Unix than Windows XP, 2k, and NT.
You're misusing an extreme to prove the moderate.
Just because Windows isn't a Unix, but it has a shell, then Mac OS X isn't a Unix, despite it having a shell.
Between those points though, if you were to plot BSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP on a Unix chart? Mac OS X would cluster much closer to BSD than to Windows XP, and Linux might actually fall in between OS X and BSD.
Cladistcally, OS X *is* a Unix. Trademark wise it isn't.
Cladistics however point out that Windows is not a Unix.
Cladistics defined!
Jobs begat NeXT, which used a Mach-derived kernel that was begat from Carnegie Mellon, and itself begat DEC Unix, and is the basis for Hurd.
NeXT then incorporated BSD, which itself was begat from AT&T Unix! Thus strengthened, NeXT was then ported into multiple platforms and begat OpenStep, which could claim in it's heritage the code from BSD-AT&T and from Mach-CMU.
OpenStep has begat Darwin and Mac OS X, which leads us to today.
Windows XP claims as it's progenitors Windows 2k, Windows NT, and OS/2. It too uses Mach, so there *is* a point of commonality between the two OSes.
GPL Deconstructed