The Steady Decline of Unix

stinkymountain writes "Unix, the core server operating system in enterprise networks for decades, now finds itself in a slow, inexorable decline, according to Network World. Jean Bozman, research vice president at IDC Enterprise Server Group, attributes the decline to platform migration issues; competition from Linux and Microsoft; more efficient hardware with more powerful processor cores; and the abundance of Unix-specific apps that can now also run on competitor's servers."

Comments

Uh huh

[MightyMartian]

So the bulk of Unix's decline comes from competing *nixes, in particularly Linux.

News at 11.

Re:Uh huh

[localman57]

Why would anyone in their right mind switch servers from HP-UX to Windows?

Why wouldn't one? Based solely on who_stole_my_kidney's anecdotal argument, and your rather content-free counter-argument, I'd be inclined to follow his advice.

Re:Uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we even need to have this conversation? If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck it isn't a duck unless it is branded a duck? This is so fucking stupid. Linux is a UNIX type of operating system, so UNIX isn't in decline.

Re:Uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we here at Slashdot like to be accurate, especially when poking holes into other's arguments.

Linux is a kernel, nothing else. It's the distributions which are supposedly eating into UNIX's market share, but really just chewing away at Redmon's marketshare.

UNIX market share only appears to be dwindling because it takes less hardware to do the same jobs they were doing just a few years ago.

People are consolidating 10 to 20 servers onto single or two small/medium sized servers.

Total server counts go down, productivity goes through the roof - the numbers are just that numbers, without any details as to why they've shrunk.

Re:Uh huh

[Shatrat]

Because instead of replacing 1 HP-UX server with 8 Windows servers, it could have been replaced by 1 Linux server.

Re:Uh huh

[MightyMartian]

Other than to honor market doublespeak, so far as I'm concerned, you can lump Unix in with Linux, OS-X, QNX and the other variants and -likes that make up the *nix ecosystem. It's a helluva lot easier to port an application from Unix to, say, Linux, than it is to port from Unix to Windows, unless you use a compatibility layer like Cygwin. Man, I wouldn't want to use Cygwin too much on a production server. The only time I ever did it was to get a decent radius server running on a Windows machine. It worked reasonably well, but I was very happy to move to a Linux server due to glitches.

Re:Uh huh

[Chris Mattern]

Thing is, its amortization schedule was roughly 2 decades at least if I were to guess. They bought it in 1984, I last saw it in 1999, and I bet it's still running today if their CFO has anything to say about it. Anything after the amortization date is pure gravy for them, methinks.

If only it didn't require power and A/C, and if only it didn't require support. Power costs for one of these beasts is most likely all by itself more than it would cost to buy a modern replacement.

And support from IBM is astronomical, if it's even available. If you're not paying for support, well, that's another kind of cost. But you won't find out about it until the bill comes due.

Re:Uh huh

[fahrbot-bot]

Linux is a UNIX type of operating system, so UNIX isn't in decline.

The article is mainly talking about the Unix versions like HP-UX, Solaris, etc... and the iron used to run them, focusing on installations that require many 9s of reliability, fault-tolerance / fail-over and up time. Their argument is that those systems are more mature, reliable and capable (and more expensive) than most Linux systems. Many installations are realizing that they don't need that all that and less "capable" Linux and/or x86 systems are just fine - for many things. Personally, I believe in using the right tool for the job, not necessarily the best and/or most expensive tool. The trick is defining the job correctly.

Re:Uh huh

[amorsen]

Because instead of replacing 1 HP-UX server with 8 Windows servers, it could have been replaced by 1 Linux server.

Only if the software runs on Linux. Quite a few important commercial software packages started out on HP-UX and Solaris (and AIX if you were "lucky") and was then ported to Windows once people started using x86-based servers and workstations. Porting to Linux would obviously have been a lot easier, but it didn't happen until later or not at all.

Running such software under Linux either meant running Linux on RISC hardware and using a compatibility layer or running the Windows version in Wine. Neither was particularly appealing.

Re:Uh huh

[fahrbot-bot]

Many installations are realizing that they don't need that all that and less "capable" Linux and/or x86 systems are just fine - for many things.

Are they? Or are they just realizing that a cluster of redundant, possibly virtualized, machines is just as reliable even if each single machine is not? Two linux boxes with 99% uptime each running the same service redundantly is equivalent to one machine with 99.99% uptime but I bet the linux boxes are cheaper.

That all really depends on the requirements and usage. The HP systems I've used are very capable with hardware and software support for redundant and/or fail-over NICs and SCSI etc... as well as a large back plane and LOTS of RAM and CPUs (I once used a Unix system at NASA with 1024 processors.) A cluster of real/virtual systems is not always equivalent. For example, we once had a CPU fail on a T600 and the system simply deconfigured it and rebooted - note: there are / were Unix systems like Tandem Non-Stop on which *any* component could be replaced on-the-fly. Most Linux systems are not as capable in this respect - perhaps we are talking about different types of "reliability."

The upshot (and the point of the article) is that there are more choices and people are taking a harder look at what's actually required. In many cases, smaller, less capable/expensive Linux (or BSD) systems are adequate, but sometimes you really do need something more. It's not a dig against Linux, just that there are different tools for different jobs.

Re:Uh huh

[Archangel Michael]

All of the redundancy you just mentioned, is now available in VMWARE, abstracted away so that the Hardware practically doesn't matter any longer (as long as it is x86/x64). A failed CPU on a VMWARE box would cause the machines to migrate over to a standby, and be up and running before anyone even knew. And I would get a notification and swap out the blade out of the chassis and be ready for the next "fail over".

As for the upgrading of hardware without ever downing a system, that is easy. VMWARE already handles that by migrading the virtualized box off the affected machine, you upgrade (add ram, CPU etc), reconfigure the VMWARE stack and migrate back. I can migrate the data stores with live data as well. I've replaced both Hardware(CPU, RAM) and Drives Systems(Equalogic to Nimble) while machines were running. This has nothing to do with "Linux" being able to handle it, since VMWARE does it without "Linux" (or Free BSD, Windows ...) ever knowing.

I won't install Server on bare metal ever again. It is more expensive to install on bare metal, but only if you value your time.

Re:Uh huh

[UltraZelda64]

Exactly! If GNU wasn't ESSENTIALLY Unix then RMS wouldn't have bothered to name it that! I mean, come on, Unix is right there in the name. Why name it that as opposed to giving it a whole new name of it's own that speaks to what it IS rather than what it ISN'T unless he knew that Unix was so much a part of it's identity that he had to try to define it as not Unix in it's name?

Yep--it's even in the original announcement: it's a "Free Unix!" and a "new Unix implementation".
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html

I'm pretty sure the name was intended to be somewhat of a joke, and with their love of using recursive acronyms to come up with "clever" names (just look at the Hurd...) that's probably the case. But in a way the name is kind of ironic, and likely on purpose, because they weren't allowed to actually call the system "UNIX" and I'm sure they knew that, while at the same time it gets the point across quite well that it's not "really" UNIX--it is a clone.

I thought OS X was Unix

[cyfer2000]

If OS X is Unix, what do you call iOS. And if we take Linux as a kind of Unix, how about Android? Or maybe the title should be written as "the steady decline of Unix Server License sale"

A distinction without a difference

[Fished]

The distinction betwen "Linux" and "UNIX" is virtually meaningless. All of the traditional proprietary unixen are massively customized from the original System V/System 7 sources over the past thirty years -- such that it's hard to say that they have a common core even. The only real difference is a marketing difference.

So, say it with me!

Meh.

The king is dead, long live the king

[dwheeler]

"Unix" - as they define it - is going away. But what's really happening is that old implementations of Unix are being replaced by modern implementations and re-implementations of Unix.

Servers are increasingly using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. On the client side, the #1 smartphone (by popularity) is Android, based on Linux. The #2 smartphone is iOS, based on Unix. On the desktop, Macs are running MacOS, also based on Unix.

What's this?

[joh]

Neckbeard teasing? Or what?

Unix (in some incarnation) is running the world. It runs on servers, on embedded systems and basically all tablets and smartphones (both Android and iOS are Unix).

I cannot believe I'm wasting 30 seconds on this. Die, Slashdot, die.

I'd mod the OP Flamebait

[dickens]

Between OS-X, IOS and Android, this discussion is more than a little comical.

The alternatives got better

[sl4shd0rk]

I was soooo glad when we finally decommissioned our last Solaris box. It's not that Unix got worse it's just the alternatives got better. Also the proprietary RISC based hardware underpinning much of commercialized Unix lost out to cheaper PC commodity stuff. Again, it's not that RISC sucked, it's the fact that the lazy proprietary paradigm couldn't figure out how to evolve past the "Screw, em. They're locked in. They _CANT_ switch" model.

Re:Overlooking the obvious

[danlip]

And by "very large percentage" you mean 7%.

(hey, I'm a big OS X fan myself, but describing its market share like that is pretty baffling)

Re:Overlooking the obvious

[Above]

Perhaps the AC doesn't know, the Open Group, you know, keeper of the Unix specification, has a certification program. Apple participates, and has the certificates to prove it.

Mac OS X Version 10.8 Mountain Lion Certificate, from the people who own the Unix(TM) specification.

Nonsense

[gweihir]

While true UNIXes are in decline (a true UNIX shares source-code with the original UNIX), clones (Linux) are very much alive and that is what counts. Even some true UNIXes (free/open/netBSD) are not doing too badly. There are even more interface-compatible systems that follow the UNIX philosophy. In a nutshell, the only "OS" today that is not UNIX-like and matters is the Windows isle of incompatibility.