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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.
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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 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.
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.
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