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

Re:Uh huh

[gstoddart]

Combine that with the fact that Solaris is now in the hands of Oracle, who are squeezing out everybody who doesn't have a support contract and pissing off people who used to use it ... or that HPUX is still in the hands of HP (where technology goes to die) ... and what's even left?

AIX is still around, but I have no idea of how widespread. Beyond that, I'm hard pressed to think of another commercial version of UNIX I've encountered. (That doesn't mean they don't exist, but they were never in any shops I was in.)

That pretty much leaves Linux as the primary UNIX-like-thing for most people.

Re:Uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is the reason that my employer is switching from Solaris to Linux. We were one of Sun's biggest customers, too.

Moronic analysts

[wiredlogic]

Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner, concurs that the primary cause of Unix weakness over the past decade is migration from the RISC platform to x86-processor based alternatives, which can run many Unix workloads, usually at attractive price/performance ratios.

x86 has been implemented on a RISC based core ever since the PentiumPro. RISC won. It didn't wither away. That transition made possible a performance boost allowing Intel to compete against the home-grown processors of the traditional Unix vendors who lacked the cash to invest in fab advancements needed to match pace.

Such are the fools pandering their vaunted "analysis" to the media these days.

Re:Moronic analysts

[Em Adespoton]

Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner, concurs that the primary cause of Unix weakness over the past decade is migration from the RISC platform to x86-processor based alternatives, which can run many Unix workloads, usually at attractive price/performance ratios.

x86 has been implemented on a RISC based core ever since the PentiumPro. RISC won. It didn't wither away. That transition made possible a performance boost allowing Intel to compete against the home-grown processors of the traditional Unix vendors who lacked the cash to invest in fab advancements needed to match pace.

Such are the fools pandering their vaunted "analysis" to the media these days.

Sorry, but it didn't win. RISC didn't get clobbered by CISC or vice versa; rather, they both got consumed by VLIW. VLIW pipelining made the debate over instruction set complexity meaningless, as you get custom sets based on which pipeline is used, due to long instruction chains. You could argue that at the core of each VLIW chip you have a RISC; but you could also argue that the result is really an extremely CISC. It's kind of like arguing about Toyota vs Ford, when in reality, they both have components made by Honda and Mazda, as well as each other these days.

So Errol Rasit's observation is valid. There was a migration -- I know, because my old 32 and 64-bit RISC code is a headache to port to x64, unless it is abstracted. The current registers however handle old CISC x86 code just fine.

System V

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience was on AT&T Unix System V. I used to jokingly refer to it as REAL UNIX with a hint of faux snobbery and a straight face.

While working on a Linux system, I was using some command line utility (doesn't matter) and the command kept wrapping. Ran it - errors. Retyped - errors. Retyped - finally worked.

Anyway, a skilled Linux user was watching me, typing away and then running my command - the syntax worked like it was a AT&T System V UNIX, BTW.

Said Linux dude said, try this - and he proceed to do the same thing with the same program but with like one or two flags and then the args.

It worked.

There have been quite a few time savers (I won't call them improvements) built into Linux.

I can't blame them - some of the most common things that we did in Sys V were overly verbose.

Anyway, wanted to share that - gotta go; there's a Matlock marathon and it's Pizza and Banana pudding night! Betsy has got the hots for me and she so young - 68! I'm gonna have a GOOD time tonight!

Re:Uh huh

[gravis777]

No kidding. I had to go back and read the headline twice after reading the blurb and the article before it made sense.

Well, no DUH that Unix is loosing ground to Linux. I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw a data center with true UNIX machines (oh wait, yeah I can, it was 14 years ago, unless you want to include OSX as a UNIX, in which case that was five years ago). This has been happening for like 15 years.

When I saw the headline, I was thinking "*nix is loosing ground to Windows?" (which also wouldn't have been a huge surprise).

No news here.

In Engineering - Unix is nearly done

[toast-]

In the Engineering CAD world, Unix has nearly run its course. All companies have dropped Unix support for the newest versions and only some maintain Linux/OSX versions for newer unix-like machines. Most are Windows only. Automotive companies, which are notoriously slow in technology adoption have mostly abandoned UNIX

Ford will retire their UNIX workstations (HPUX) for suppliers and customers in February 2014. These are largely HPUX 11.11i.
Unigraphics NX stopped UNIX support (HPUX, AIX, etc) as of NX 6 but opened support for Linux and OSX as of 8.
Dassault systems CATIA supported HPUX, AIX (6.1+) and Solaris on V5 - but as of V6 in 2011 they have ended UNIX support and are Windows only.
Pro Engineer quit most UNIX except Solaris until Pro Engineer / Creo 4.0 - at present they are Windows only.