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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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If Red Hat isn't marketing a UNIX clone, then what's it marketing now? Last time I checked, Linux is a UNIX clone. Sure, it's not SCO UNIX(R)(TM), but it's still UNIX. Sometimes I wonder whether these MBAs really know what the hell they're trying to sell or if they just have a form process to market anything.
That asks "is $TECHNOLOGY dead?" is FUD.
Period.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
That doesn't quite wash. Several government agencies here in the US have made a steady migration from Windows to UNIX or Linux. It appears that more are getting on the bandwagon, too. Such being the case, I can't see UNIX losing too much ground, at least in business. Maybe in the home market it has lost ground, but there seems to be a healthy move in favor of UNIX in the workplace in certain areas.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
The more important thing that's dying is unaccountability in software - whether Microsoft or *nix from HP, Sun, SGI etc. Linux has ensured that s/w firms talk first about featiures from user's point of view, not the code itself. And that's a big victory - not whether Linux is taking marketshare from Unix or Windows.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I think is what they expect to happen. and they're probably right, I use Linux on a desktop, but I know too many people that can't even cope with Windows which (despite it's flaws) goes out of it's way to be easy enough for a child to use. Linux is great, but it's not for the masses, and there is no money to be made with Linux on the desktop (well not much) the likes of IBM invest in linux for servers becuase they can then sell the hardware and the support, but that means investment in making it a first class server OS, and not much on making it an easy-to-use desktop environment. I think redhat realise that proprietary UNIX's are their only real space to grow in.
.Sig. temporarily unavailable due to terminal lack of inventivness
What is this "rival OS Unix" he is talking about? AIX? Solaris? Tru64? BSD/OS? What?
I'd rather have RH aiming at MS' market share. If he just wants to compete with other Unices, then in the end MS will prevail.
The combination of Palladium in OS and hardware would be really uncomfortable for up-and-rising Asian countries.
I think that now is a big chance to gain a lot of market share with Linux or BSD. Those countries don't have a lot to spend (yet) and you can ask yourself if they will want to commit themselves to Microsoft vendor lock-in (read: License 6.0). I wouldn't if I were them.
So Linux/Un*x vendors should unite, and not compete (too much). If they will, then the third dog will grab the bone.
You and your brother OpenServer shan't be missed very much.
I disagree with his sentiment, however. It's just a matter of what runs best on what platform. Irix will still be best on SGI hardware, and Solaris will still be best on Sun hardware. And who knows....maybe Sun will bring it up to snuff when they start shipping AMD64 machines. People will run software that best fits their needs and the machine they're using. RedHat on commodity PC hardware might do most of it now, but it certainly won't do all of it.
and for a little walk through memory lane The UNIX Story. Also also lets not forget MS UNIX, Xenix IIRC
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
It doesn't seem any deader than usual to me.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
In the future there will be 2 os's. Windows and Unix.
I consider Linux/*BSD/Solaris/AIX/MacOSX/etc Unix.
Some variants may have orginal AT&T code while some do not.
But unless you get into the embedded market, Unix and Windows are the 2 main players.
#3 Netware is now going to turn into a Linux in the near future.
I agree though that opensource is eating up Unix more then Windows but its still unix.
http://saveie6.com/
"I don't use [product] any more."
"What? but, Agnes you've always used [product].
"Nope, now I've switched--to *NEW*, *IMPROVED* [product]. It's even tastier, more absorbent, and 22.6% faster-acting!"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Linux is not Unix. Essentially, Unix is something that comes from the Unix codebase, which, essentially, Linux does not. Linux implements Posix, just like a Unix, but it does so many other things better.
This is a good way to point out the similaries and differences. Linix and Unix both do posix. Linux is not Unix.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
how the hell did a troll end up as a story?
is that RedHat's bosses have moronic ideas.
From 'don't use Linux on the desktop' to 'UNIX is dead', and I'm sure they can do even better.
Just too bad that '640K ought to be enough for anyone' has already been said.
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)
Various reasons... but in any case...
The death of UNIX was predicted 20 years ago... it was prediced 10 years ago.
History is doomed to repeat itself in the eyes on unenlightened RedHat employees. Sorry, but although many Fortune 500 companies are now deploying Linux, very few of them are deploying Linux to replace their traditional UNIX systems which they have BILLIONS of dollars invested.
So give me a break... UNIX will be around for another 20 years, believe it or not.
Proprietary Unix is dead or dying, long live open Unix, i.e. Linux and uh.. BSD.
Quality free open software is, to state the fairly obvious, a category killer, i.e. software against which it makes no business sense to compete. This is good news if you are a user, bad news if you were a competitor.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
(Bashes head against wall) Someone wake me when all this UNIX is dead, dying, ect. crap is over.
I'm wondering if this Boss at Redhat is too far up the chain that he can't see the forest for the trees.
Is he only looking at profit statements when he voices his opinion? I would suspect that the business side of Redhat brings them the most moolah ($$). Hence, from that point of view his statement is valid.
However, he fails to recognize the desktop linux, small server farms that are using Linux or Windows and the battle that is going on there. I would suspect that most people using Linux in this environment are using a downloaded copy with a few using a purchased copy for support reasons.
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
Because Microsoft dominates so much in "the Windows Operating System" it has caused this kind of thing to become the norm in the press. That's what is so sickening.
Microsoft Windows XP is what most non geek people understand as an "operating system". If they even get as far as having operating system in their vocabulary. Most non geeks I talk to think that Office is part of Windows. MS Windows 2003 server by default is :
UNIX is really the foundation for a system which does not compete with Windows directly anyway, which is why there are so many vendors and flavours. Each has their own approach to one or many of the software options included but within the Windows Kernel, but within userspace and API territory. Especially stuff like file managers, browser integration, and multimedia.
Linux is just a kernel. You need another set of tools before you have anything half decent to run. Most people have GNU stuff, plus some other random addons from here, there and everywhere, plus for desktop use at least a window manager from KDE, Gnome or something a bit more minimal.
So UNIX cannot die, as an abstract concept. Maybe vendors who sell mostly UNIX will lose revenue or market share, but they all have Linux solutions too. HP, Sun (remember Cobalt...), IBM...
Microsoft, in their entire domination, have got everyone where it hurts - because they supply a COMPLETE system that, while each of the parts is not the best technically, is a package that nobody else is even pretending to supply, except maybe Red Hat, and the other big distros. The press just don't know how to explain that to the public each time so they come up with utter crap like 'UNIX is dying'...
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Remember all the Microsoft Certified gurus sounding this same death nell in 1999? We've heard this all before. Y2K proved that UNIX is not only viable, but quite often preferrable. The idea that there will be only 2 is a stretch in my opinion. 2 dominate, maybe, but tw total is rediculous and frankly shows that this guy must be in marketing.
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.
I got to say, his words lack credibility, especially if he can't even count the current number of major operating system.
If Red Hat isn't marketing a UNIX clone, then what's it marketing now? Last time I checked, Linux is a UNIX clone. Sure, it's not SCO UNIX(R)(TM), but it's still UNIX. Sometimes I wonder whether these MBAs really know what the hell they're trying to sell or if they just have a form process to market anything.
No, what he said was exactly right.
"We are making a product foo, which is a clone of bar. Foo competes mostly with bar, and will kill off bar within a decade."
How hard is that to understand?
Weavers are a clone of triscuits, and saying that "triscuits will be dead within the decade, killed by weavers" is an entirely valid statement.
May we never see th
UNIX is a philosophy about how to present computing resources to the programmer and user. Some components include hierarchial files, I.O devices are files, pipes of simple applications, and so on. AT7T, BSD, Linux, etc. follow this pretty closely, even if the underlying code is different.
Linux is freakin' *everywhere*.
Set-top boxes, watches, radios, DVD players, arcade video game cabinets, traffic lights, webcams, surveillance-cams, networking hubs, point-of-sale cash registers, automobiles, submarines, tanning booths, theme-park rides, oh, and lest we forget beowulf and the server/desktop worlds.
To say that "Unix is Dead" is to set up a straw man... lets argue about 'why unix is or is not dead' and in the meantime ignore the fact - *FACT* - that the Linux kernel is revolutionizing computing as we know it.
It is a totally free OS, and it is being used every day by hardware manufacturers around the world, in extremely diverse markets, to bring new product to light.
I wouldn't call that dead. I'd call anyone calling it dead a moron, though...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Slashdot article: Something is dead and/or dying
Discussion:
It's not dead, I use it all the time.
It's dead for the following reasons...
Flame 1...n (although highly informative flamewar)
Windows sucks.
Sun will go down biting and clawing, if it even happens.
HP has been focusing on their 64 processor SuperDome. What are you going to run on that, Windows, Linux (better) or HP-UX (best)?
IBM still has a major investment in AIX and will continue to push it. Why? Notice some of the stuff IBM hasn't released to the general public yet such as JFS2 (dynamic inode allocation, finally). If they were going to toss AIX they would more than likely give away whatever source they could, and that hasn't happened yet. That and not to mention those pSeries are very powerful and very, very expensive. I'm sure there are installations running SuSE on them but I would bet that 98% of them are AIX.
Novell know Netware is a dying breed (and won't come back) and will probably starting pushing Linux all they can.
The UNIX market still brings in billiions every year, why stop?
I just say two words: Big Iron.
See how e.g. OpenBSD had to fight to get the UltraSparcIII documentation [1]. That was the documentations for a freakin' CPU - not something like the complete drawings for a Boeing 777. If They can't even get the documentation for the CPU, how on earth can anyone else really be expected to interface to it. Ergo; either they die or they continue to sell their proprietary Unix running on proprietary hardware.
They, proprietary Unix vendors, AFAIK write operating systems that are intended to run on 32+ CPU's. In the case of e.g. Linux it was added as an afterthought, even if it might be good at it.
Imagine you need some big iron, let's say sustained >10GB/s I/O (disk) throughput and 1e6 I/O operations/s while crunching more numbers than I'd like to think existed, all from >100k different "clients". Insane? What about a bank central, or a hub for airline booking? Those numbers do add up...
Given even a tenth of these numbers as a requirement, would you seriously suggest a Linux solution (if anyone in the back of the room yells "Microsoft" they'll be kicked out, head first, from the 21:st floor)?
[1] (if it's really legal to withold even CPU spec's I leave to someone else to comment on)
IRIX?
Solaris?
When/where do you need these OS's anymore?
AIX: too many uses to list - most notably, on their larger servers. Also, when you want 5 9's or better.
IRIX: good question ;)
Solaris: Solaris is still *leagues* better than linux, for nearly anything. Large database servers, for example. Sun E15k's. Etc.
In the world today, there are two operating system camps:
The Microsoft Windows family.
And everything else.
"Everything else" are UNIX family and clone operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X, IRIX, Solaris, BSD, and more.
Windows is built by one company, and based on an operating system model that was flawed from the start.
The UNIX operating system was built with security in mind and has one advantage--there are far, far more experienced users, programmers and administrators who seek to better and strengthen the OS from malicious attacks than there are crackers experienced enough to attempt to compromise it.
Count the number of Windows-based viruses, trojans, and other malware, and then try to find a number for UNIX-based attacks.
Sooner or later, some malware will arrive that does the Unthinkable on a Windows box. A nearby Mac OS X and Linux box will likely go untouched. Watch managerial heads turn. Watch for the shift.
Microsoft could make this so easy and profitable for themselves by taking a Linux distribution (it's free), branding it "Windows LX" or whatever--and rewriting their software so that it compiles and works with every single UNIX that wants to use it. Talk about profit. Talk about security. (To some, talk about competition.)
A single-user architecture and flawed structure like Windows has doesn't have a lot of life. It merely has a lot of copies sold. Once damage from malware shows how unprofitable it is to use Wiindows in that sense, a shift may come. In some places, it has already begun.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
There are two OSes now! - Windows and Unices.
Is there anything else left? I dont think so.
Solaris.
Backup Farm (with the 15000 tape robot and 2TB on FC-AL)?
Solaris
Visualization Cluster?
IRIX
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Crap!
I finally figured out vi!
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Has anyone else noticed that Red Hat, recently, has been using the press to send Microsoft signals along the lines of "Oh we're friendly now. We pose no threat to you. We don't want to compete, we wan't to coexist with you on friendly terms."...........?
I mean, think about it....First, it was "Linux isn't ready for the desktop"...Now, it's "Oh, we're not taking market share away from Windows, we're talking it from Unix."...and about half a dozen little comments inbetween..
WTF?
My contempt for Red Hat, literally, is growing by the day. They've gone from a position of OS leadership into a feeble piss-ant of a company that gave up the reins to their competitors... Red Hat has gone from something we can be proud of, to a company that refuses to believe in the skills and the talents that gave them the fluffy paychecks stock options they're enjoying now. I, for one, want no part of the wholesale cheek-spreading that Red Hat is engadging in. My next distrib install will not be Red Hat.
The fact is, Red Hat _could have_ made a real play for the desktop. All it would have taken is time, and a developer incentive. The desktop/consumer-level (oh, pardon me.. "hobbyist") version WAS making them money, but they abandoned it. What kind of company abandons a _profitable_ product, other than a stupid one?
Bowie J. Poag
(Or maybe the limits of reality) - Roberston is in a position to market Linux. He has little or no control over whether customers choose to replace MS or UNIX systems with it.
Just try to define a business strategy here that would discourage a customer from migrating from UNIX to Linux - Red Hat could offer lousy support for migration, or actually tell sales people to encourage clients to stick with good old UNIX. They could publicly announce that they are there only to compete with Microsoft. Those are not what I would call good business decisions.
There's also the current climate of tight economics and heavy litigation. Why announce that your goal might be to take on MS toe-to-toe? If that was a long term goal, the company doing it would quietly work at areas such as deskop/GUI development, installer packages, and the like, and not discuss it much. Red Hat may not be David to MS's Goliath, but whoever is David is not going to make any noise until they have at least loaded up on rocks for their sling.
Who is John Cabal?
At last someone mentions hardware! Unix is just a good system to run on big machines. I don't think the unix vendors care that your print server runs MS windows. They do care that your 16 cpu, 128GB RAM, 6 TB disks system runs some form of unix. All unix vendors sell expensive big harware and some form of integration. That's where the money is for them, not the system.
And these big systems are far from dying as far as I can see. We generate much more data than Moore's law and algorithms can cope with and if anything, the trend is accelerating. So if, one day, I see a 1024 cpu machine (a la SGI) runnning some for of MS windows, then I'll worry about Unix dying, not before.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Big render farms are a small portion of the market. The web is still just a playground for most. MOST companies do "real" business like...
Paying their employees
Purchasing and procurement
Decision support services
Marketing, planning and data analysis
Selling their products
etc...
For these types of services, companies need the stability and support of the commercial unices, and they are willing to pay for it.
Apple has been dead what? At least 50 times now.
BSD, well, let's just not go there.
Linux clearly is on its death bed, what with all those lawsuits by good wholesome Utahmericans fighting communism and
MS is clearly making way too much money to be alive much longer.
Does Unix have any reason to live while others die at least once a week. I say, if Unix doesn't make up its mind soon, let's kill it ourselves!
Cheers.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
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.
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.
Because we all know that elvis was an alien robot.
There may still be a place for proprietary *NIX. We have yet to see any of the major *NIX companies go under. I think what is a more accurate statement is that Open *NIX OSes (primarily Linux and BSD) are changing the face of UNIX.
What we must look at is how companies have dealt with Linux/BSD. SGI is a prime example. SGI and IRIX were huge in Hollywood...production companies started using commodity (x86) hardware w/ Linux for render farms. Time went along, their staff became more comfortable with Linux and at some point in time, someone decided to replace a workstation with a Linux box. It's cheaper and in some cases it's actually better. So what did SGI do? They decided to make their primary focus x86 machines running Linux. They had to change with their customers to keep their business.
The same thing is happening with IBM...one day in the future, AIX will be a thing of the past. This is a fact that has been stated or hinted at by more than one IBM exec.
And then we have Sun. Solaris will probably go down as the last of the proprietary Unicies. Sun has problems both with support and coding. Solaris is still playing catch-up with features AIX had 10 years ago...and their OS still isn't there.
And last and certainly least, we have SCO...we know how they are dealing with Linux. Of course, when SCO is no more and the "authority" on all things on UNIX is gone, who will pick up the pieces...maybe Sun...
In an interview with Xzine and Unix, Unix tells
Xzine why it believes Gus Roberston will be dead
since in will be in the future. "A Guy (Gus) simply
can only live so long. If he won't last, why hire
him?" it said. However, Robertson countered,
claiming all rumours of his death were exaggerated
and that he was in excellent condition.
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
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
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
Only 2 ? the guy is dreaming.
.. they are just not relevant any more. Game over.
#1 OS - Embedded Linux & variants - running mobile phones, PDAs, cars, fridges, toasters, etc.
#2 OS - Free Unix variants - Linux, BSD, etc, running the desktops, front end systems and clustered servers.
#3 OS - Commercial Unixen, Solaris - MacOS - zSeries Linux - HPUX - Irix - as part of turn-key big mother mission critical systems.
#4 OS - Proprietry Commercial OSen, MVS (or whatever they run on mainframes these days), OpenVMS-II, Tandem Guardian, NSA super secret hackproof proprietry OS, and other weird ass stuff that does some very specific job.
Did I mention Microsoft at all ? no
Using your criteria, there is no difference between a bus, a train, or an airplane - as long as you keep your eyes tightly shut!
You and WireDog can choose to remain ignorant of the differences, but that won't make them go away...
Linux is to Unix as the child is to the father - superficially similar (two legs, one nose, etc.) but also very different, and hopefully better.
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