NOTHING you've said makes any difference as to WHY Linux is separated from UNIX. I don't know WHAT your problem is with comprehending a simple and totally obvious (to everyone else reading the study) point.
The bottom line: It is important to separate UNIX from Linux because Linux is growing faster than either the dinosaur PROPRIETARY UNIX systems OR Windows.
"It is important to emphasize that I am talking about complete extinctions, not mere reduction in numbers; if left alone, populations almost always make a comeback, no matter how badly their stock is depleted. In other words, despite the fact that the American bison, pronghorn, African and Indian elephants, and all whales have suffered tremendous population depletions thanks to human depredations, all have made it back to sustainability (including the right whale). For the continents and oceans, such examples are the rule rather than the exception. For islands, things have gone in various directions, although mostly downhill (i.e., toward complete extinction). This is why I maintain that the biodiversity crisis has already come and gone for the world's islands -- susceptible species were pinched out during the initial spread of humans to these places. Continental extinctions seem to be quite a different deal. At least for mammals and birds, there have been relatively few of them in the last 500 years. (E.g., no mammal extinctions at the species level at all in Eurasia; one or two in the Americas; perhaps a dozen or more in Australia, the island continent.)"
"Peak Oil" is exactly the sort of stimulant nanotech would need to be fully developed. Nanotech can get you all the oil you want - or render oil unnecessary.
A space elevator is highly unlikely to be developed before it is rendered unnecessary by other nanotech-based technology.
The same applies to just about every other scenario you can come up with. Shortage of food? Nanotech. Shortage of energy? Nanotech.
The only shortage we can't live with is nanotech research - which is unlikely to occur even if the US is dumb enough to prohibit it under some rightwing religious (or leftwing political) nonsense.
Besides which, I said Transhumans will go off-planet - not every monkey-ass primate who can wipe his nose. If the latter die by the billions, it's NOT a disaster.
"The differences between Open Source UNIX and Proprietary UNIX are no bigger than the differences between one Open Source UNIX and another, or between on proprietary UNIX and another."
There are TWO big differences.
One is license.
The other is cost.
Last week at the LinuxWorld Summit in New York, E*Trade talked about its migration from Sun to Linux.
Here's the NetworkWorld quote:
"When you throw everything up on a whiteboard, you notice the only technology pricing that's been in a deflationary spiral is around the Intel architecture...E*Trade built server platforms on Linux and Intel for about $38,000 each that improved the performance of similar Sun systems, which cost the firm about $250,000 per server."
Read that again! Linux on Intel was nearly only FIFTEEN PERCENT of the cost of Sun servers!
THIS is what is driving the replacement of PROPRIETARY UNIX by Linux! It has NOTHING to do with whether Linux has the same system calls, or whether Linux is POSIX compliant, or anything else related to nomenclature.
Until PROPRIETARY UNIX is CHEAPER than Linux (and someone else suggested OSS Solaris on Intel, well, that's a possibility, but I note problems elsewhere), it is RELEVANT to consider Linux as an alternative to both UNIX and Windows.
And lumping Linux in with Windows for such as comparison is just stupid in light of the above economics.
However, I'd dismiss XServers because Apple is WAY behind in the corporate OS wars, let's face it.
And HP/UX doesn't seem to be getting much cheaper AFAIK. And IBM doesn't seem to be interested in open-sourcing or cheapening AIX.
So that leaves Solaris on low-end Sun boxes or Solaris on Intel.
Problem with that is you have ONE PROPRIETARY company competing against everybody else using Linux (eventually).
Doesn't bode well for Sun unless they really can build the same level of dynamic development community around OSS Solaris that Linux has and persuade the other companies to back it as much as they do Linux.
Since the primary beneficiary of that policy would be SUN, whereas backing Linux is mostly company neutral, I really don't see HP and IBM going that route.
"Actually it looks more like those people admitted that they didn't have any clue how to build and maintain a Windows system."
Thanks! I'll use that point when Microsoft trolls like yourself complain that Linux TCO is actually higher than Windows.
Let's see, the spin goes: "Microsoft sys admins admit they're too dumb to learn Linux!"
Or: "Windows suitable only for children, says TCO study!"
If you RTFP, you'll see the Oracle consultant had obviously experienced running Oracle databases on Windows servers, since "he wouldn't sleep nights" knowing that was the case. The hosting vendor said they expected superior uptime from Linux - most likely based on previous experience as most hosting vendors support both platforms to some degree. The company selling the software in the first place recommended Linux/UNIX over Windows.
It was a Microsoft-only consultancy that caused the client to consider Windows at all.
In other words, they decided Windows was the only way to go since they were "focussed", as you put it - despite the recommendations of the PEOPLE WHO BUILT THE FUCKING SOFTWARE!
Which makes you a moron.
And by the way, I'm been taking Windows OS courses for the last two years - the most recent being Windows 2003 Server this past four months. And what a complicated, bloated piece of crap that is! Anybody trying to run something mission-critical on that POS has never heard of the KISS concept!
The mainframe only exists because Linux exists. Even IBM has acknowledged that.
System integration with hardware? Oh, wow, talk about irrelevant. I suppose you program in assembler, too. In every case I've read, Linux on cheaper hardware outperforms UNIX on proprietary hardware (Windows? Don't even ask!)
Get a fucking clue.
Since I'm 56 and have probably more life experience than you do, why don't YOU go back to Mom's basement, junior? Some 30-year-old still on his first job telling me what's real is to laugh.
What are the odds that anything in the next fifty years is going to happen so FAST and WORLD-WIDE that all economies are going to evaporate and ALL technological progress is going to stop?
Climate change? Very unlikely. It would have to happen so quickly that the world's economies could not adjust or move from hemisphere to hemisphere.
Wars? Local. Even spasm nuclear war between the US and China and/or Russia would only destroy a percentage of those countries infrastructure - they would ramp back up in twenty years or so after it ended. The rest of the world (more scientific research is being done in Europe now than in the US, or at least more scientific literature is being published there) would be relatively unscathed.
Sure, major political, economic and social unrest would occur with any of those scenarios. But enough to STOP technological progress? Much more likely to STIMULATE even faster progress and on the most critically useful technologies to boot.
People are saying we had predictions of flying cars 50 years ago. Well, we had predictions of all-out Doomsday fifty years ago, too. Where is that? If you read the crap put out by environmentalists like Erhlich back in the '70's, we should all be starving today - India should be a dead nation. Doesn't look like it, does it?
"A nanotech that is capable of eliminating human stress on the environment is also capable of giving a single human being the power to destroy all life on the planet."
By George, I think he's got it!
Seriously, this is probably not quite the issue science fiction makes it appear. Certainly the threat is being taken seriously by a lot of people and it's likely that various safeguards and constraints will be in place before quite that level of capability is available to just anybody.
Groups and governments on the other hand are much more of a threat than individuals in this regard. I suspect, however, that those Transhumanists who are aware of the possibilities will be the ones who maintain sufficient control of the situation until the necessary tech for transmogrification is developed. And once that tech is in place and an actual Transhuman exists, nobody else is going to be a subsequent factor.
Because those billions of humans will either be: 1) Killed off. 2) Transmogrified into Transhumans. 3) Left to drop dead in due time from their own incompetence in providing for themselves.
Actually, 4) - all of the above - is the most likely scenario.
When I speak of off-world migration, I'm referring to a consequence of transmogrification to Transhuman status. Transhumans have no need to remain on this planet since they have no biological requirements that must be supported by this planet's resources.
With brains operating thousands of times faster than human brains, figuring out how to get off-planet without draining the planet's resources will be, uhm, a no-brainer...
(How many times do I have to start a post with that word?)
In fifty years, nanotech will eliminate human stress on the environment - long before any significant effect of that stress. By end of this century, humans will be irrelevant as Transhumans move off-planet and actually require LESS resources because of more efficient functioning.
Within another few hundred years, the Earth will regenerate as if humans had never existed.
Also, counts of animal "extinctions" are notoriously biased and inaccurate, from what I've read. Scientists don't even have an accurate count of how many species there ARE on this planet - they could be off by factors of ten or more.
Microsoft explicitly recommends running each server app on a DIFFERENT server. Don't run your Exchange on your Active Directory; don't run your license compliance app on the same server; don't run your SQL Server database on the same server.
Why? Simply because MS server app performance sucks because of "featuritis bloatware".
So how many of these new Windows servers in the study were actually running ONE-THIRD of what the Linux servers were doing?
As someone else pointed out, the roles these servers play have a bearing on the value of the figures.
While we can't know whether any Linux sales got mixed in with UNIX sales, they were supposed to be separated out.
More importantly, it is likely that proprietary UNIX servers cost more than Intel-based Windows servers. That is, the server hardware costs more, not the OS.
So probably there are more Intel servers being sold with Windows on them than there are Sun or HP servers being sold with UNIX on them.
This is no surprise. It reflects cost-cutting on the part of corporations in the wake of the economic situation, not really a preference - especially an informed preference - for one OS over the other.
This is also in Linux's favor, and undoubtedly one major reason why Linux is advancing so fast in the server market. Linux can run on both expensive server hardware and on commodity Intel servers - and the license costs are much cheaper, not to mention other factors that an INFORMED IT department might take into consideration.
As I've said in other posts, the real story will be told when proprietary UNIX is out of the picture and Linux goes head-to-head with Windows on servers. Naturally, I predict Linux will win that contest handily - especially once it makes more inroads on the desktop, which will tend to lead to additional server conversions.
Sure, no problem with that. But a consultancy with that kind of blinders on is not good for a client on the whole.
I know consultants (guys who teach at City College of San Francisco) who only work with UNIX and those who only work with Windows.
It's amusing to see the back-and-forth of college courses being proposed - somebody will set up a Windows-only course, then the UNIX guru will come back with a UNIX-equivalent course.
I take both kinds of courses since I know Windows is used everywhere, but that Linux is up and coming and generally superior.
Having knowledge of the stengths and weaknesses of both systems will make me a better consultant - even if I prefer Linux.
This guy works for the company that sold the application software to the client, not the client itself.
Also, he explicitly states that a Windows-based consultancy recommended the Windows servers. His company recommended Linux but accepted the client's wish for Windows.
YOU are the moron. Obviously can't read a post correctly.
For your edification: the poster explicitly stated that the CUSTOMER ordered the Windows servers based on the advice of a consultant. EVERYBODY else involved recommended Linux.
Notice the important point of this story beyond the fact that purchased Windows servers were exchanged for Linux:
Everybody involved (except the one Microsoft-based consultancy) KNEW that Linux had better stability and maintainability than Windows! Why? Because they've been there and done that with Windows and Linux!
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NOTHING you've said makes any difference as to WHY Linux is separated from UNIX. I don't know WHAT your problem is with comprehending a simple and totally obvious (to everyone else reading the study) point.
The bottom line: It is important to separate UNIX from Linux because Linux is growing faster than either the dinosaur PROPRIETARY UNIX systems OR Windows.
Period.
Read this for when an animal is considered extinct.
Read this quote from here:
"It is important to emphasize that I am talking about complete extinctions, not mere reduction in numbers; if left alone, populations almost always make a comeback, no matter how badly their stock is depleted. In other words, despite the fact that the American bison, pronghorn, African and Indian elephants, and all whales have suffered tremendous population depletions thanks to human depredations, all have made it back to sustainability (including the right whale). For the continents and oceans, such examples are the rule rather than the exception. For islands, things have gone in various directions, although mostly downhill (i.e., toward complete extinction). This is why I maintain that the biodiversity crisis has already come and gone for the world's islands -- susceptible species were pinched out during the initial spread of humans to these places. Continental extinctions seem to be quite a different deal. At least for mammals and birds, there have been relatively few of them in the last 500 years. (E.g., no mammal extinctions at the species level at all in Eurasia; one or two in the Americas; perhaps a dozen or more in Australia, the island continent.)"
"Peak Oil" is exactly the sort of stimulant nanotech would need to be fully developed. Nanotech can get you all the oil you want - or render oil unnecessary.
A space elevator is highly unlikely to be developed before it is rendered unnecessary by other nanotech-based technology.
The same applies to just about every other scenario you can come up with. Shortage of food? Nanotech. Shortage of energy? Nanotech.
The only shortage we can't live with is nanotech research - which is unlikely to occur even if the US is dumb enough to prohibit it under some rightwing religious (or leftwing political) nonsense.
Besides which, I said Transhumans will go off-planet - not every monkey-ass primate who can wipe his nose. If the latter die by the billions, it's NOT a disaster.
Oh, you're facing a die-off all right!
Believe me, when we Transhumans get cooking, your type of monkey will definitely be dying off!
Have a nice day.
And that connection is?
"The differences between Open Source UNIX and Proprietary UNIX are no bigger than the differences between one Open Source UNIX and another, or between on proprietary UNIX and another."
There are TWO big differences.
One is license.
The other is cost.
Last week at the LinuxWorld Summit in New York, E*Trade talked about its migration from Sun to Linux.
Here's the NetworkWorld quote:
"When you throw everything up on a whiteboard, you notice the only technology pricing that's been in a deflationary spiral is around the Intel architecture...E*Trade built server platforms on Linux and Intel for about $38,000 each that improved the performance of similar Sun systems, which cost the firm about $250,000 per server."
Read that again! Linux on Intel was nearly only FIFTEEN PERCENT of the cost of Sun servers!
THIS is what is driving the replacement of PROPRIETARY UNIX by Linux! It has NOTHING to do with whether Linux has the same system calls, or whether Linux is POSIX compliant, or anything else related to nomenclature.
Until PROPRIETARY UNIX is CHEAPER than Linux (and someone else suggested OSS Solaris on Intel, well, that's a possibility, but I note problems elsewhere), it is RELEVANT to consider Linux as an alternative to both UNIX and Windows.
And lumping Linux in with Windows for such as comparison is just stupid in light of the above economics.
And that's why the report did it.
Okay, good point.
However, I'd dismiss XServers because Apple is WAY behind in the corporate OS wars, let's face it.
And HP/UX doesn't seem to be getting much cheaper AFAIK. And IBM doesn't seem to be interested in open-sourcing or cheapening AIX.
So that leaves Solaris on low-end Sun boxes or Solaris on Intel.
Problem with that is you have ONE PROPRIETARY company competing against everybody else using Linux (eventually).
Doesn't bode well for Sun unless they really can build the same level of dynamic development community around OSS Solaris that Linux has and persuade the other companies to back it as much as they do Linux.
Since the primary beneficiary of that policy would be SUN, whereas backing Linux is mostly company neutral, I really don't see HP and IBM going that route.
"Actually it looks more like those people admitted that they didn't have any clue how to build and maintain a Windows system."
Thanks! I'll use that point when Microsoft trolls like yourself complain that Linux TCO is actually higher than Windows.
Let's see, the spin goes: "Microsoft sys admins admit they're too dumb to learn Linux!"
Or: "Windows suitable only for children, says TCO study!"
If you RTFP, you'll see the Oracle consultant had obviously experienced running Oracle databases on Windows servers, since "he wouldn't sleep nights" knowing that was the case. The hosting vendor said they expected superior uptime from Linux - most likely based on previous experience as most hosting vendors support both platforms to some degree. The company selling the software in the first place recommended Linux/UNIX over Windows.
It was a Microsoft-only consultancy that caused the client to consider Windows at all.
In other words, they decided Windows was the only way to go since they were "focussed", as you put it - despite the recommendations of the PEOPLE WHO BUILT THE FUCKING SOFTWARE!
Which makes you a moron.
And by the way, I'm been taking Windows OS courses for the last two years - the most recent being Windows 2003 Server this past four months. And what a complicated, bloated piece of crap that is! Anybody trying to run something mission-critical on that POS has never heard of the KISS concept!
Reread the post, please.
The hosting vendor ALSO said they expected the client would receive BETTER UPTIME with Linux.
Christ, can't anybody on
Really? And GNU stands for? What?
Look, stupid. Linux is the OS in question. Not AIX, not Solaris, who are lumped together in "UNIX" because they're dying dinosaurs.
Linux is not about preserving the legacy of UNIX. That is utterly irrelevant to anything that is going on here.
Who cares if Linux is 20% of the UNIX market - except to show that PROPRIETARY UNIX is being replaced by it.
What people care about in corporations is which OS is the one to use for the future.
And that ain't PROPRIETARY UNIX.
Which is why it's broken out that way.
Get a clue. Learn the difference between PROPRIETARY and OPEN SOURCE.
The mainframe only exists because Linux exists. Even IBM has acknowledged that.
System integration with hardware? Oh, wow, talk about irrelevant. I suppose you program in assembler, too. In every case I've read, Linux on cheaper hardware outperforms UNIX on proprietary hardware (Windows? Don't even ask!)
Get a fucking clue.
Since I'm 56 and have probably more life experience than you do, why don't YOU go back to Mom's basement, junior? Some 30-year-old still on his first job telling me what's real is to laugh.
Look at it rationally.
What are the odds that anything in the next fifty years is going to happen so FAST and WORLD-WIDE that all economies are going to evaporate and ALL technological progress is going to stop?
Climate change? Very unlikely. It would have to happen so quickly that the world's economies could not adjust or move from hemisphere to hemisphere.
Wars? Local. Even spasm nuclear war between the US and China and/or Russia would only destroy a percentage of those countries infrastructure - they would ramp back up in twenty years or so after it ended. The rest of the world (more scientific research is being done in Europe now than in the US, or at least more scientific literature is being published there) would be relatively unscathed.
Sure, major political, economic and social unrest would occur with any of those scenarios. But enough to STOP technological progress? Much more likely to STIMULATE even faster progress and on the most critically useful technologies to boot.
People are saying we had predictions of flying cars 50 years ago. Well, we had predictions of all-out Doomsday fifty years ago, too. Where is that? If you read the crap put out by environmentalists like Erhlich back in the '70's, we should all be starving today - India should be a dead nation. Doesn't look like it, does it?
I haven't seen it, but the premise as I understand it strikes me as one of the great STUPID concepts of all motion picture history...
Which is probably why I haven't been greatly motivated to see it. Spielberg's fascination with children does not interest me.
"A nanotech that is capable of eliminating human stress on the environment is also capable of giving a single human being the power to destroy all life on the planet."
By George, I think he's got it!
Seriously, this is probably not quite the issue science fiction makes it appear. Certainly the threat is being taken seriously by a lot of people and it's likely that various safeguards and constraints will be in place before quite that level of capability is available to just anybody.
Groups and governments on the other hand are much more of a threat than individuals in this regard. I suspect, however, that those Transhumanists who are aware of the possibilities will be the ones who maintain sufficient control of the situation until the necessary tech for transmogrification is developed. And once that tech is in place and an actual Transhuman exists, nobody else is going to be a subsequent factor.
I thought the Monkey People already HAD the planet.
Was I misinformed, monkey boy?
You want the real answer?
Because those billions of humans will either be:
1) Killed off.
2) Transmogrified into Transhumans.
3) Left to drop dead in due time from their own incompetence in providing for themselves.
Actually, 4) - all of the above - is the most likely scenario.
When I speak of off-world migration, I'm referring to a consequence of transmogrification to Transhuman status. Transhumans have no need to remain on this planet since they have no biological requirements that must be supported by this planet's resources.
With brains operating thousands of times faster than human brains, figuring out how to get off-planet without draining the planet's resources will be, uhm, a no-brainer...
But what happens with the next client? Maybe the figures reverse because of the blinders. That's my point.
(How many times do I have to start a post with that word?)
In fifty years, nanotech will eliminate human stress on the environment - long before any significant effect of that stress. By end of this century, humans will be irrelevant as Transhumans move off-planet and actually require LESS resources because of more efficient functioning.
Within another few hundred years, the Earth will regenerate as if humans had never existed.
Also, counts of animal "extinctions" are notoriously biased and inaccurate, from what I've read. Scientists don't even have an accurate count of how many species there ARE on this planet - they could be off by factors of ten or more.
Excellent point.
Microsoft explicitly recommends running each server app on a DIFFERENT server. Don't run your Exchange on your Active Directory; don't run your license compliance app on the same server; don't run your SQL Server database on the same server.
Why? Simply because MS server app performance sucks because of "featuritis bloatware".
So how many of these new Windows servers in the study were actually running ONE-THIRD of what the Linux servers were doing?
As someone else pointed out, the roles these servers play have a bearing on the value of the figures.
While we can't know whether any Linux sales got mixed in with UNIX sales, they were supposed to be separated out.
More importantly, it is likely that proprietary UNIX servers cost more than Intel-based Windows servers. That is, the server hardware costs more, not the OS.
So probably there are more Intel servers being sold with Windows on them than there are Sun or HP servers being sold with UNIX on them.
This is no surprise. It reflects cost-cutting on the part of corporations in the wake of the economic situation, not really a preference - especially an informed preference - for one OS over the other.
This is also in Linux's favor, and undoubtedly one major reason why Linux is advancing so fast in the server market. Linux can run on both expensive server hardware and on commodity Intel servers - and the license costs are much cheaper, not to mention other factors that an INFORMED IT department might take into consideration.
As I've said in other posts, the real story will be told when proprietary UNIX is out of the picture and Linux goes head-to-head with Windows on servers. Naturally, I predict Linux will win that contest handily - especially once it makes more inroads on the desktop, which will tend to lead to additional server conversions.
Sure, no problem with that. But a consultancy with that kind of blinders on is not good for a client on the whole.
I know consultants (guys who teach at City College of San Francisco) who only work with UNIX and those who only work with Windows.
It's amusing to see the back-and-forth of college courses being proposed - somebody will set up a Windows-only course, then the UNIX guru will come back with a UNIX-equivalent course.
I take both kinds of courses since I know Windows is used everywhere, but that Linux is up and coming and generally superior.
Having knowledge of the stengths and weaknesses of both systems will make me a better consultant - even if I prefer Linux.
The point of breaking out Linux versus UNIX is to indicate how fast Linux is overtaking proprietary UNIX, not just Windows.
Sure, a combined Linux/UNIX vrs Windows survey would show Windows an also-ran, and of course the FUD merchants can't have that.
But it's more valuable to see how Linux is doing on its own - and the report shows it's doing VERY well.
Reread the post, please.
/. posters?
This guy works for the company that sold the application software to the client, not the client itself.
Also, he explicitly states that a Windows-based consultancy recommended the Windows servers. His company recommended Linux but accepted the client's wish for Windows.
Is reading comprehension a problem for
I think SOOOOOO!
YOU are the moron. Obviously can't read a post correctly.
For your edification: the poster explicitly stated that the CUSTOMER ordered the Windows servers based on the advice of a consultant. EVERYBODY else involved recommended Linux.
Notice the important point of this story beyond the fact that purchased Windows servers were exchanged for Linux:
Everybody involved (except the one Microsoft-based consultancy) KNEW that Linux had better stability and maintainability than Windows! Why? Because they've been there and done that with Windows and Linux!