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."

Comments

Which Unix?

[wiredog]

Linux is, essentially, Unix. So are the various flavors of BSD.

And then there is the newest Unix on the block, a BSD variant, known as OS X. A User Friendly Unix.

On the death of Red Hat...

[Noryungi]

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...

Re:Taking a moment for clarification.

[Loconut1389]

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.

OSX isn't Unix?

[DesScorp]

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.