IBM About To Buy Sun For $7 Billion

plasticsquirrel was one of several readers to send in the sharpening rumors that IBM is on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, as we discussed last week. The pricetag is reportedly $7 billion. According to the NYTimes's sources, "People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. IBM's board has already approved the deal, they said." After the demise of SGI, one has to wonder about the future of traditional Unix. If the deal goes through, only IBM, HP, and Fujitsu will be left as major competitors in the market for commercial Unix. And reader UnanimousCoward adds, "Sun only came into the consciousness of the unwashed masses with the company not being able to get E10K's out the door fast enough in the first bubble. We here will remember some pizza-box looking thing, establishing 32 MB of RAM as a standard, and when those masses were scratching their heads at slogans like 'The Network is the Computer.' Add your favorite Sun anecdote here."

Comments

Re:mac != unix

[e4g4]

Any OS requiring >90% of configuration changes to be made in a GUI does not count as UNIX

100% of configuration changes in OS X can be made from the console. There is not a single setting that *requires* a GUI.

Re:"commercial UNIX"

[larry bagina]

OS X 10.5 on intel is certified Unix 03 by the Open Group. Other certified Unix include Solaris, HPUX, and AIX.