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Unix Operating Systems Software

Unix Isn't Dead 441

Posted by timothy from the way-out-of-premature-burial dept.
windows bios world writes: "Compaq, Sun, SGI, and IBM are releasing new machines running Unix. From cnet.com: 'Compaq has begun shipping test versions of a new line of AlphaServer Unix servers using the EV7 "Marvel" version of the company's Alpha processor. ... As expected, IBM released on Monday its p670, a 16-processor machine that's essentially a smaller version of Big Blue's top-end 32-processor p690 "Regatta" server introduced in late 2001.' Also, Sun teamed up with Sony to release video-on-demand servers." And of course, there's OS X.
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Unix Isn't Dead More

Unix Isn't Dead

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  • How (Score:4, Informative)

    by PD ( 9577 ) <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Monday April 08, 2002 @04:46PM (#3305270) Homepage Journal
    How about a fricking link? [com.com]

  • who ever said it was? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dcstimm ( 556797 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @04:46PM (#3305282) Homepage
    Who ever said unix is dying? thats BS!! go to netcraft.com and see what 80% of the people use for their webservers, UNIX! GOD BLESS UNIX
    • but... i thought everyone used IIS?
    • Someone flag this user for Balmerization, he has dared to question The Truth of the Microsoft.

    • Enemy Mine (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Pac ( 9516 )
      People here spend so much time staring at Microsoft that without noticing they start believing the Microsoft Marketing Department holds keys to the future in its hand. So eventually every phrase said in Slashdot is formed as an answer to reality as marketed by Microsoft, even when no question was asked.

      Funnier still, since the [non-]linked article never states Unix was dead or dying.
    • This is slashdot, so a fair amount of stories tend to disprove things that nobody claimed were true in the first place.
    • It was the slashdot editors that implied that it may or may not have been dying. The article was just an announcement that there were several new products from various manufacturers coming out at about the same time.

  • Here's a Link to the Actual Story (Score:4, Informative)

    by nathanm ( 12287 ) <nathanm&engineer,com> on Monday April 08, 2002 @04:47PM (#3305288)
    Here's a link [com.com] to the actual story. It'd be nice if the /. editors could include it.
  • Unix isn't dead? What a relief! Come on, this is news? I mean, the only ones who even want you to believe that Unix is dying is Microsoft and Unisys.

    :Peter

  • FMS (FORTRAN Monitor system) has been dead for about 40 years. It is not expected to re-appear anytime soon.
  • the sky is more or less blue, the Earth is more or less round.

    Honestly. Everyone who uses Linux knows that UNIX isn't dead: on the contrary, it seems to be on the upswing.
  • A bit of "Unix isn't dead! Really! Wait! Listen! See? It's not dead!"

    Of course Unix isn't dead. OSX is a perfect example. It would seem that most of Apple's user base is well on its way to migrating over to OSX, as I see more and more posts on various sites where people are deleting their OS9 install.

  • But linux is killing unix..for better or for worse (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @04:55PM (#3305359)
    Linux has been rapidly peeling away proprietary unix market share for the past three years. A positive sign in that it signals the "arrival" of open source software, but there are some serious competitive considerations with respect to Win2k. Microsoft has demonstrated that they can move fast and will likely be a first adopter of pervasive system technologies (LDAP, integrated XML, etc.), and the linux community will be more dependent on shops like RedHat and IBM to migrate in this functionality in a purposeful manner.

    That said, both linux and Win2k are set to completely consume the server markets. Solaris, AIX and True64 simply won't be in use in ten years. On that I will bet.

    • This is at least partially because Linux and it's set of applications are FINALLY starting to mature. Mozilla is *nearly* there. (IMO, it's there - I've deleted Netscape 4.72 and I'm not looking back). Gimp, a few years ago was very rough, and now it's actually a useful app. And the windows managers for Linux are far better than they used to be. I think Linux's time has not yet arrived - but it is soon, my children. Soon.
  • Lots of startups that had great success with their smaller servers are now finding the loads way to high to maintain any reliability. I know of a company that was trying to run a POS server and was processing over a million transactions a day and couldn't keep up, with an outlook of millions more by the next year.

    I am sure that there were better software solutions for them to try and all but IBM looked too good for them. Now they are running a tru Unix OS and are sooo pleased with the performance of the IBM main.

    One thing you have to give to IBM is their stability. Just cant be beat. I know that a linux clustered could prolly do the same but most dont have the admins to even try to pull that off.

    I dont think Unix will ever die. It might turn into a speciality market type thing but will never die.

    Just my rambling :)
  • Every commercially available OS with the exception of Windows and its incarnations are based at their core with Unix.

    The internet runs on Unix based OSes for the most part. The majority of major system services had their origin and are mostly installed on Unix based systems. The homogenous Windows NT datacenter server farm idea is flawed and has IMHO failed.

    Unix is alive and well and if it was not Mickeysoft would never bother putting up sites bashing it. Micro$oft does not need to beat the dead horses (ever see them run ads today bashing OS/2?).

    ________________________________________________ __
  • The unix mindset has become too pervasive in the midrange computers. Nobody is implementing new ideas because everything has to be `posix compliant'.

    Better operating systems are not getting a chance, e.g. plan9, hurd (I am not sure about this myself).

    You could argue that unix can assimilate things, but that can only go so far. Some time we have to break out of the mindset.

    Linux is nice but has not advanced the state of the art.

    Even though Unix is not profit-making like windows it has the same power as microsoft in stiffling innovation (to some degree).

    • The unix mindset has become too pervasive in the midrange computers. Nobody is implementing new ideas because everything has to be `posix compliant'.

      What do you mean by midrange? Workstations? Small servers? Big appliances?

      What do you call new ideas? What do ideas have to do with posix compliance, or lack of compliance?

      Linux is nice but has not advanced the state of the art.

      Then you mention Linux, and state of the art. Does that mean OS X is fair game for me to mention?

      OS X adds displayPDF and vectorized resolution independent displays. It adds FireWire, Bluetooth, 802.11b, and gigabit ethernet to the hardware mix; it's pushing LCD displays (and the accompanying trend of color managment and color profiling of digital display technologies), DVD-R as a video content creation tool, and high end video, film, and TV creation tools on 'low end' hardware.

      That's not even mentioning future enhancements to the OS itself now that it has caught up to bar, in terms of memory protection, multitasking, multiprocessing, and stability.

      Can you tell I like Macs and OS X?

  • Well, since OS X was mentioned, I gotta say I went out and bought a new LCD iMac Friday and absolutely love it. I quickly figured out how to enable the root account and turn on a more normal boot sequence (that makes it look like a real unix system booting). Loads of good info at www.darwinfo.org [darwinfo.org].

    I was pretty blown away when I went into the "sharing" control panel, clicked on web sharing, and apache started up, all ready configured and eager to go. Then there's "remote terminal login" which fired up sshd (and not telnetd thank god).

    Next stop, the fink [sourceforge.net] site so I can install a rootless X server and all the GNU and other tools which are missing from it.

    Basically, the best of all worlds. Unix, the slick Apple GUI, and even IE and Microsoft Office.

    • Don't even bother enabling root! You don't need to. sudo is there for a reason, and anyone in the admin group can sudo *anything*. Need a GUI app as root? sudo open .

      Apple's pushing a good security model (I didn't say it was a perfect implementation) - don't ever use root, just use sudo and Authentication Manager to do various things as root.

      hey, at least I'm not going to deliver my rant against linux kiddiez thinking it's l33t to do everything as root on their box, get mail as "root@mybox", and then end up hosing the system inadvertently... or am I? :)
    • I was pretty blown away when I went into the "sharing" control panel, clicked on web sharing, and apache started up, all ready configured and eager to go.

      Linux distributions include an already configured Apache (yes, with Perl, PHP & stuff) for years.

      But when Apple does it, people are "blown away". I think it doesn't matter what Apple does, no matter what it is, people will say that it's 1) easy 2) user-friendly and 3) innovative.

      The power of marketing.

      If you actually want to run applications (gasp) on a computer, setting up a Linux-workstation is already a lot faster and easier than setting up any other OS and install every measly app afterwards. - Even if the OS itself is preinstalled....

      • OK, point taken, but I was talking about it from the perspective of a typical user. I've used Linux and Windows a lot. There's still no getting around how nice OS X is, in my opinion. I still think Linux is overwhelming for the average user. Yeah, it's nice, installs and only requires a single reboot. But then you hit the start menu, k menu, whatever, and a huge mess of cascading menus show up. It's quite intimidating to a novice. You then have to find the runlevel manager or whatever it's called and figure out where httpd is to enable it to start at boot and to start it then.

        I've ridiculed the Mac for years, and as head of IT at my organization, led the effort to ban them at our place as "unsupported." I now believe I've been part of a horrible conspiracy. Now that I have a Mac in my home with my linux and windows boxes along with a w2k server, I'll take the opportunity to learn how to integrate them and possibly support them again.

        btw, on that note, I can tell you right now that SMB support SUCKS WIND. It works, but no browsing. You have to enter an address like smb://domain.name;machine.name/share. Hopefully that will get fixed in a future release.

  • The Question Isn't Whether UNIX is dead... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @05:05PM (#3305439) Homepage Journal
    ...but why Microsoft Windows considers itself really alive.

    Windows is a teenager--and a rude, aggressive, unpredictable one at that--compared to the various Unixen out there.

    To paraphrase "Dark Paladin" in a recent article about his Mac OS X conversion: Microsoft Windows is like your class president that didn't do shit. Linux is like a super-smart, sexy redhead girlfriend that's also a bit insane. Mac OS X is like the geeky girl at school who shed her braces and became a total hottie--and still wants to spend all her time hanging around with you.
  • If the article title was 'ALPHA isn't Dead. Unix's lifespan really isn't in jeopardy.

  • Unix is soooo hard... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ryanvm ( 247662 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @05:09PM (#3305478)
    Does anyone know of a website or anything that could perhaps show me the way out?

  • FUD through "positive assertions" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mmusn ( 567069 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @05:10PM (#3305483)
    That submission is rather like the underhanded question of "when did you stop beating your wife?". I can't quite tell whether the poster is deliberatly spreading FUD or whether he has just fallen too much for Microsoft propaganda.

    Of course, UNIX isn't dead. A large part of our business and government infrastructure runs on it. Even more software is written using UNIX APIs, and this includes a lot of Windows software. UNIX isn't at risk: there is just too much of it, supported by too many vendors and on too many platforms.

    The operating system perpetually at risk is Windows, which is a single vendor solution and stands and falls with Microsoft. When Microsoft abandons Windows, there won't be any more. If you want to know what the future of Windows holds, just look at VMS.

    For now, let's ask the opposite question: how much of the supposed success of Windows is really hype? How many IT managers think that their infrastructure is running on Windows when it's kept together by UNIX machines? How many Windows-licenses does Microsoft double and triple count for machines that are running Linux or BSD?

  • Oh good, I was worried for a while. I've been going to that We Have The Way Out site, and they make a pretty convincing argument that Windows is the only way to go. But it's good to know that there's all these big companies using and selling UNIX - who would've thought?

  • Silly people *tsk,tsk,tsk* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by powerlinekid ( 442532 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @05:20PM (#3305540)
    Unix has been around 30 odd years. It runs graphic development machines (IRIX), industrial big iron (AIX, Solaris), desktop machines (Linux, MacOS X), gateways, routers, firewalls (*BSDs). And its been doing this for years. As the saying goes "if windows was built for the internet, then the internet was built for unix". Unix is clean and well thought out. It mixes commercial and open source and has a 30 year track record of being reliable, stable and once you get the hang of it amazingly easy. Windows on the other hand has been reliable for 2 years (Win 2k in my opinion is the only MS OS i'd trust for critical stuff, XP is too bloated and buggy, and we won't even get into the 9x line or older NT's). I think that this whole anti-unix campaign is pure Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Microsoft is scared. All of the markets (server, desktop, big iron, embedded systems) that MS is interested in, have unix challengers. I choose Mandrake and OS X over windows any day, even if it means some things I can't do as of now. But the thing about Unix is it's ability to adapt and grow. Between Irix, Aix, the hundred and 20 Linux distros, Free/Open/Net BSD, Solaris, MacOS X and countless others, thats a hell of a community working together. Most of these systems use GNU software (emacs, gcc, etc). Microsoft realizes now that they're not breaking into those markets as easy as they thought. They're not gaining server market share. They're not gaining embedded market share. They're definitly not gaining big iron market share (datacenter from what i hear is a disaster). And all this time, their one true market possession (desktop) is stagnet and is in danger of slipping in the future. MS realizes they can't compete with the raw numbers, and are hoping to save themselves some time or kill any chance of unix expansion. They're in a hell of a fight, the Unix world isn't netscape, lotus or any of those little companies. Unix is the big guys, like IBM, Sun, Sony (linux for ps/2 I imagine is going to be a future trend), Apple but more importantly Unix is also the faceless targets. The guy up at 3 in the morning hacking on gcc, or linux's vm system. MS just can't compete with that, and thats something I like to see. MS losing its own game.

    /powerlinekid

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @06:39PM (#3306089)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • And GW Bush ran against Clinton, not Gore. I think pretty much every republican for the next 50 years is going to have the privilege of running against Clinton. And the democrats are going to have the disadvantage of running against Reagan. *sigh*
    • Microsoft is scared? That's gotta be the "DUH!" heard-round-the-world. Microsoft has got to be the perfect textbook example of institutionalized paranoia. That's why they destroy their competition. Because they fear it. The degree to which they pursue this destruction is the magnitude of their paranoia. If there's been one obvious factor driving Microsoft's dominance and business practices, and all of their PR blather that supposedly justifies it - it's been fear.
  • In saying that Unix isn't dead, I thought that the only Unix was that from Bell Labs. Other operating systems ie HP-UX, xBSD, and GNU/Linux are not Unix, since Unix is proprietary AT&T software that has not been able to be sold since the mid 80's. Having taken classes from a former Bell Labs employee, this point has been engrained into my cranium. Loath to anyone who calls Linux/BSD/MacOSX Unix in front of a former/current Bell Labs employee from that era.
  • at least compared to windows. Just read this article [objectwatch.com].

    "Windows NT was redesigned from the ground up to have reliability, scalability, and security. Windows 2000 builds on the Windows NT base, not the Windows 95/98/ME base. It should be no surprise, then, that Windows 2000 has proven itself to be much more reliable than either Unix or Windows 95/98/ME."

    "In short, the Windows 9X [95/98/ME] operating system was not designed for today's networking environments... Unix, which was developed by and for scientific researchers and computer scientists, was not designed with security in mind either..."

    No, I don't believe this FUD, I just can't believe some of the crap that people say...

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @06:22PM (#3306003)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Do note that he says:

        "The competitive choice to Windows 2000, back when ARGO was choosing an operating system platform, would have been Unix. The Unix platform has more recently morphed into the Linux platform, Linux being the "industry standard" version of Unix, so we can compare Windows 2000 to Unix/Linux."

        He is very careful not to lump together all versions of windows, yet he lumps together all versions of unix. If he really intended to only be talking about a single version of unix, he should have made that clear. But he didn't. Isn't it nice how he says "back when" they were choosing competition for windows 2000 there was only unix. And it has "more recently morphed into the Linux platform". Doesn't it sound like way back when windows 2000 came out, there was no linux. Or that linux JUST came out recently.

  • From the article (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rand Race ( 110288 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @05:33PM (#3305638) Homepage
    Big Blue's newest machine will compete chiefly against the Unix servers from HP, long king of the midrange market, and from Sun, which will release its own midrange offering, the "Starkitty," on Tuesday.

    I can't imagine asking my boss to drop 150 large on a Starkitty.


    "Well sir, we can either go with the IBM p670 or the Sun Starkitty."

    "The IBM or WHAT!?"

  • Or should I say FreeBSD is not dead. I work for a medium-sized manufacturing company, and we are making the move from a data center hodge-podge of Windows NT/SQL Server and HP-UX/Oracle to FreeBSD/Postgres.
    Why? Microsoft, HP and Oracle's license schemes and pricing are completely out of control and unpredictable. FreeBSD affords us the opportunity to move into a very familar and comfortable environment while still maintaining the stability and robustness of a "real" UNIX.
    Microsoft is not the only priniciple behind this move. While it'll be great to get Windows NT completely off out network, it'll be even more beneficial to our company's bottom line to rid ourselves of Oracle's and HP's constant intrusions and high pricing as well!

  • UNIX was never dying in the first place (Score:3, Interesting)

    by southpolesammy ( 150094 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @05:36PM (#3305667) Journal
    Unlike many Windows servers, my experience with UNIX servers has been that its longevity is one of its endearing qualities. Services running on UNIX servers tend to have a very long usable lifespan, IMHO due to the fact that the underlying system runs well enough that the application tends to be updated before the system needs to be.

    But there is a caveat with using UNIX. The people who can successfully design, architect, administer, and maintain UNIX servers are a tight knit bunch, and as a result of its longevity, they don't tend to move around very often because a given server may be alive far longer than the average Windows server. Additionally, it's been my experience that the longer an individual concentrates on a given subject, such as a single UNIX server, that the more in-depth knowledge they begin to amass about that OS and therefore, they become even more valuable/pigeon-holed into a given organization's IT plans.

    This combination of longevity and expertise results in a decreased pool of available personnel available for UNIX projects to organizations at any given time, compared to what I perceive as a larger pool of available Windows talent at any given time. Does this necessarily lead to new projects being run on Windows because the only available talent is Windows? Perhaps...

    My vision of UNIX's biggest fear, is that it won't necessarily die, but be bred out of existence because new projects tend to be addressed by whatever resources are available at that time, and if there aren't any available UNIX experts, then nature abhors a vacuum and the projects will be filled with whomever is available at that time.

  • I'm not dead yet! (Score:3, Funny)

    by angst_ridden_hipster ( 23104 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @05:36PM (#3305671) Homepage Journal
    I'm not dead!
    I'm not!
    I'm getting better!
    I don't want to go on the cart!
    I feel fine!
    I think I'll go for a walk.
    [singing] I feel happy. I feel happy.

    (etc. Credit due the fine fellows of Python)

  • Well shit, I guess that means I have to go to work tomorrow. Hope my co-workers see this story
    or else I'll be all alone in the office.

    Outright stupidity on the front page is nothing new, but somedays it's hard to believe the editors don't know better.

    cheers,
    mike

  • Meanwhile, in a parallel universe near you: (Score:3, Funny)

    by cosmo7 ( 325616 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @06:03PM (#3305868) Homepage
    Microsoft releases Windows/X, a BSD-based unix with an open-source layer called Freud and a graphical interface called Water. The OS uses twin APIs; a cleaned up Win32 called Soot and (uh) Chocolate.

  • The question isn't whether Unix is dead... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by throx ( 42621 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @06:15PM (#3305952) Homepage
    ...but why Timothy is trolling. Are hits really that bad?

  • The Flanders test (Score:3, Funny)

    by ocie ( 6659 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @06:28PM (#3306035) Homepage
    I don't think this story quite passes my "Flanders" test:

    [Rod shows Todd a headline: "Playtime Is Fun"]
    Todd: [gives thumbs-up] Go with it!

    If your headline can be substituted for "Playtime Is Fun" in the above, and it is still funny, then the story has failed the Flanders test.
  • "unix isn't dead".

    Is this a troll or something? Seems like an editorial troll to me. Of course I don't have to mention that each and every person on this board knows that unix alive and kicking. Why the silly headline???? Is this the first Slashvertisement or something?
  • It was resting...and pining for the fjords.

    I'm sure John Cleese would back me up on this one.

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