Apple and Windows Will Force Linux Underground 554
eastbayted writes "Tom Yager at InfoWorld predicts: 'At the end of the decade, we'll find that Apple UNIX has overtaken commercial Linux as the second most popular general client and server computing platform behind Windows.' That's not a gloom-and-doom omen for the ever-popular Linux kernel, though, he stresses. While Apple and Microsoft will grapple for dominance of client and server spaces, Linux will be 'the de facto choice for embedded solutions.' And by 'embedded,' Yager means 'specialized.' With a push of a button and a flip of switch, he predicts, you'll be able to create a configured database and a mated J2EE server — all thanks to Linux."
Embedded. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except for the fact (Score:3, Insightful)
OSX is substantially slower on most benchmarks than Linux and Windows.
OSX isn't a serious solution.
-bms20
Is this bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
overtaking linux at whose expense (Score:5, Insightful)
And have they figured out how to count Linux installations yet? (A very hard problem since you can just download Linux off the internet for free, so there are many more ways to get it)
skewed vision? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Not following the "logic". (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
You're making "predictions" without explaining the "logic" behind them. Why will all those countries / governments / cities currently deploying Linux drop it?
If they don't drop it, why will other ones go with Apple?
And this will fail to drive Linux adoption
If anything, that would seem to me to be something that would drive Linux adoption.
Current Commercial Investments (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple Picking (Score:2, Insightful)
With all of the Mac crowd self-gratification going on, perhaps it's time we stopped calling Cupertino's golden child "Apple", and instead refer to them as "Fapple".
Re:Except for the fact (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to talk about Apple on the desktop versus Linux then I'd listen to the argument, but in the server world you can't compete. I really just wanted to respond to this article with a gigantic Simpson-esque "HA HA".
Reality Check: No change here. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask a bloke on the street if they've heard of windows, or apple. Even if they don't own a computer, they probably have.
Linux has made great strides in the past 10 years, but let's not confuse what it is. Linux is the survivalist to windows' soccer mom.
Developing world? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article also fails to explain why companies such as IBM and HP, who've invested much in the server side of Linux, would just walk away from that investment. I'm sure that IBM consultants will sell Apple products in the times where they are the exclusive fit for the need, but they can't control or steer Apple's direction the way they can Linux, which is one reason they push it so hard.
Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Well duh, Apple OSX (or whatever it's called by then) costs 100$. Ubuntu Linux (for example) is free as in gratis. How many Ubuntu licenses do you have to sell to reach the revenue of one "Apple Unix" license?
By mid-2008, Apple's sales of systems with factory-installed Apple UNIX will exceed the total combined sales of x86 systems factory-shipped with commercial Linux.
That's very well possible, since there are hardly any systems (specifically in the Desktop realm) which come pre-installed with Linx. Usually you flatten the hard disk of a Windows taxed box, or you build from scratch if you want to run Linux.
You sir are either dim, dishonest or just a plain old idiot.
Re:skewed vision? (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely. Sales data!=Market share.
And just to bring that point home, OS X fans believe OS X's share of the market is rising because Mac sales are rising. One does not lead to the other.
Everyone I know who's 'switched' to a mac has bought it expressly to run windows. Sad, but true.
US-centric outlook (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Except for the fact (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and if companies can save money on technical staff by having an OS that's more user friendly, they'll do that. That means more to most businesses than benchmarks.
OSX is a potential solution to anyone using Windows who doesn't like it. It's more secure, more stable, and doesn't require the technical retraining (or rehiring) that a migration to Linux would. Sure, some people and companies require more power and freedom than OSX has, but many don't. As OSX becomes more popular for personal use, it will become more popular for business use.
The myth of vendor lock in. (Score:5, Insightful)
ANY choice made in IT means some kind of lock-in. If I go all OSS I lock myself into something else. Of course one could argue that with OSS you can alwais "fix or change it yourself", but then again, most companies and users do not want to do that, they want to use functionality. By chosing OSS you lock yourself into that path, which is effectively no different from the vendor path.
Sometimes it can me more cost effective to do this, sometimes the option with "evil vendor lock in" is actually more cost effective.
The longer I am in IT the more just pick the tool for the fucntion. looking at the staff available, strategy of the company etc..
Vendor lock in as such is a myth, there is alwais a path that's being closed with every choice of tool...
To be honest, in a lot of cases MS actually provides a good sollution...
'..fact'?? Dude... you forgot the fact(s)... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's still more Open Source [macosforge.org] than Windows.
On the server?
On the destkop?
Care to elaborate?
Links perhaps?
Really?!?! Based on all the facts you provided I suppose we will have to believe you!
This is YOUR fault (Score:5, Insightful)
When I found this place I didn't even know how to SAY linux. I said it "LINE-ix."
Over the past 6 or 7 years I've heard a ton of predictions about linux breaking into the home market. A million reasons have been given, and later, a million excuses.
I use linux lightly in my (development) job. I'm occassionaly tasked to do website stuff and all of our webservers run LAMP.
I enjoy using it. Partly because I'm an elitist prick who likes things that other people don't know much about. Also because it's sort of straight-forward. Things are a heirarchy, not an unorganized collection of windows, tabs, dialogs, and buttons.
I enjoy windows, as well. I make a living developing windows software. And there is absolutely no question in my mind that for the huge portion of users, Windows is a superior platform to Linux. If for no other reason then it's actually USABLE by mortals.
My point in this is not to make 1000 people hate me. My point is that SOMEONE needs to do to linux what NeXT/Apple has done to BSD.
Yes, I know that Linux has shells, but these are after-thoughts. They don't come close to the experience of OSX or even Windows XP.
If all the OSS guys HATE microsoft so much, and they think Microsoft sucks so badly, then why the hell can't they build an OS that is actually able to beat windows at its own game?
The strength of Linux is in it's stable and secure kernel and low-level "plumbing." The same as BSD. An OS that includes a "Windows" experience on top of this solid foundation would for teh first time attract real attention and a real user base.
I know this isn't easy, but look at all the time you've had. People slam MSFT for taking 6 years to put out a consumer OS. How is it better to take six years to NOT put out a consumer OS?
Right now Linux is like a Hamm Radio. Adored by hobbyists but foreign to the public. Everyone has a radio, but it's closed-source. They can't tinker with it. They can't do much at all, except press its buttons and turn its dials. The Hamm operators know that their setup is superior, but that's a fact that's lost on the population as a whole.
I would LOVE to have a real alternative to Windows. But I don't. Maybe I never will, at least not in the form of linux. But the way people grasp linux with religious fervor makes me wonder why they don't do what it takes to actually build it into a windows-killer.
Maybe linux-devs and linux-fans really don't want to supplant Windows. As crazy as that sounds, I think it has some merit. What I'm suggesting is that you work to "dumb down" linux a bit. Build a linux that appeals to the novice. But I think the linux camp is waiting for the novices to "smarten up" and adopt linux. I just don't think that's ever going to happen.
Before you slam me, understand that I'm advocating linux. Yes, I'm criticizing the Linux community, but I'm doing it because I (somewhat) agree with the goals of that community.
I would love to see a world where Windows has a 75% market share.
Re:Except for the fact (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you saying that Apple-products lasted long because they used PowerPC? Now that they use Intel, they are more likely to break?
What's that when it's at home? (Score:4, Insightful)
Missed the point (Score:2, Insightful)
First off, the headline for this article has flamebait written all over it.
Secondly, I've seen some interesting things from Linux in terms of how they're handling support issues. I think the press about the whole community driven support is intended to speed up the development process more than that of providing adequate technical support for commercial use. If you really want commercial support from Linux you're going to have to pay between $50-$2500 depending on your needs. I think the article attempts to state an opinion yet can't carry any depth into how Linux vendors are handling their attempts towards market share. Call it free, call it community, call it whatever, in my opinion it's an open development for a business model continuing it's pursuit to perfect itself. If that makes it underground then I think someone missed the memo.
Re:Except for the fact (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no "probably" to it. Why would Apple support something they didn't sell? They don't qualify MacOS X to run on anything but their own hardware. This is not to desparage Apple - it is their business model.
Oh, you do realize that the entire article is just a troll to get Mac fans and Linux fans angry at each other, right? There is no factual basis for this arguments presented in the article at all.
Linux install count : (Score:4, Insightful)
So you just have to ask Redhat, Mandriva, Suse... without any consideration for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware, Gentoo and others...
Worthless if you ask me. I wonder if Apple hasn't already more market share than combined commercial Linux distributions (in units) (*). And the end of the decade is in four years. Big deal.
Now IMHO, the whole author opinion is worthless...
(*) From what appears in some web hits statistics
Re:Apple Picking (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, practically speaking you're absolutely correct that you don't need to read about it if you don't want to add a Mac to your fleet of computers. After all, when it is available for your system, you'll read about it anyway.
Bert
Re:Except for the fact (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Except for the fact (Score:4, Insightful)
I would guess that your parent poster would answer 'No. I don't think that. But those who would make that argument, have a much weaker argument to make.' But that's just my guess. The point is, settle down and be graceful with the posts of other people.
-Combatjuan
Re:The myth of vendor lock in. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but its what you are locking into and to what degree.
UNIX and Linux (excluding OS X) is much more stable in terms of APIs, backwards compatibility, open standards, and the like than Apple OSes or Microsoft OSes. No, this is not absolute. Yes, I've frantically debugged some code I wrote after applying patches to an AIX box. Yes, I have had much more issues with Windows and OS X (with and before OS X) with gotchas after updates.
To put this in perspective, Sun has a current patch set for Solaris 2.5.1 that came out August 16th of this year. 2.5.1 came out over 10 years ago. Where I work, it takes months to validate a Windows service pack and document its gotchas. When I update my Macs, its a crapshoot if everything is going to be OK.
UNIX and Linux are THE OSes for server side "real work" (TM). Migration within and between them is relatively easy. You are making some kind of a lock-in, but that is a generic platform lock-in, not a specific vendor lock-in. Apache or any other web server will run just fine on any UNIX or Linux box. Sure, it runs on Windows too, but there are tons of gotchas and differences between UNIX and Linux vs Windows. NFS is basically the same on AIX, Solaris, *BSD, Linux. NFS is available on Windows too, but its going to cost you and its robustness is going to be on your reputation, not mine.
Re:Except for the fact (Score:4, Insightful)
As I recent migrant from Windows to Ubuntu - I found Linux to be far more enjoyable than my iBook (or Windows) ever was. And this is not a grab for karma, I have more than enough already. Just look at the stuff modern Linux has:
- XGL/Compiz - more impressive than OS X, although admittedly in alpha.
- Screensavers - (don't laugh, apparently new computer users spend a lot of time messing with these) xscreensaver comes with dozens of impressive, customisable screensavers.
- Installation - on Ubuntu, almost everything installs with one click of the mouse, with browsable game/app libraries.
- Game support is a little lower than OS X but neither are worth mentioning compared to Windows.
- Takes the better parts of OS X (Expose, Spotlight/Beagle) and drops the ones I personally dislike (Dock, Finder)
- Unique apps like Amarok, which is more enjoyable to use than iTunes; Tomboy, etc.
Plus if you're into development and compiling stuff yourself, you get the rewards that come with that as well. I was a long-time Windows user, and I've tried a whole bunch of distros that were completely horrible to use, or bug-ridden, or bad at detecting my hardware. But I really believe that desktop Linux is beginning to emerge now, and it's actually becoming that can be used by your average consumer (if it weren't for MP3/etc. licensing restrictions). Apple will always have the lead in music/video/graphic production, but for desktop use, Linux is rapidly catching up to OS X, and considering the price difference, I don't see the scenario in TFA happening.Re:Except for the fact (Score:4, Insightful)
What's that about laptops again? the GP was talking servers, are you running your servers on MacBooks? And speaking of facts-checking, do show me a 4P+ XServe, please. I'll not even ask for heavy-hitter systems with almost everything being hot-pluggable. Yeah, XServe is a very economic choice - if money is your main concern.
And to justify my 4P request - the hot thing nowadays is server virtualisation (you know, more efficient use of resources and all that jazz) and 4P-8P systems are just what the doctor ordered. Running
apple has always been reasonably priced they just appear expensive due to the face they don't do the low end tower which best buy flogs for $299
Again, you seem slightly confused about what server hardware is. Let me fix that for you: "Apple does flog low-end servers (well, they will as soon as they start shipping xserves) at $2999". The funny thing is, Linux is making a killing in that market and Apple has nothing to stop it.
Re:The myth of vendor lock in. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me explain the difference with an example (If it's too long just skip to the last two lines):
"Hi, we bought your product X but we have a serious problem with it..."
"Sorry, that product is discontinued."
"But it is mission critical to us!"
"You must exchange it with something else then."
"Sure, we will. But that takes time and costs millions. Until then..."
"Good luck."
"No, I mean, can't you help us with the problem?"
"No, that product is discontinued. We don't touch it anymore."
"We'll pay you lots of money!"
"Uhm... Well... No, sorry."
"You really don't care about it?"
"No. Please buy our new product or go away."
"Can we have the source and get someone else to fix it?"
"No."
With open source you're not locked to the vendor. It's just a bit of scotch tape holding the door, not a lock.
Re:Except for the fact (Score:3, Insightful)
I would also expect things like this to change a lot when you change architechtures as Apple recently did.
The above is not ment to say that Apple is great just that the article the parent linked to might not be up to date or ever a reasonable comparison.
As for Anandtech being trustworthy I would suggested looking around the web a bit, they have been having problems lately although I don't think this article would be one of those.
I don't think so. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Except for the fact (Score:3, Insightful)
That depends entirely on what you mean by 'business use'. Those of us running high-traffic and/or computationally intensive services in our data centers are unlikely to switch to the Apple brand of Unix any time soon. The fact that many of us are using it on our laptops and desktops doesn't make us any more likely to use it on our servers. It just doesn't perform. And the GUI -- the only real selling point of OS X, IMO, is that it lays a great GUI on top of Unix -- doesn't matter a damn in this part of the market. We aren't managing our servers through GUIs anyway.
I also think that those using Windows in the server space are unlikely to consider OS X seriously in the near future. Those people aren't just locked in to the operating system -- they're locked into the application stack. I know so many people whose companies function on a day by day basis around Exchange, Outlook, AD, etc. The cost of migration for those people would be very, very high, even if there were an alternate solution on another platform that did everything they need.
So my suspicion is: us Unix people can run our server applications on OS X but won't, and the Windows people can only run their applications on Windows and for the most part will continue to do so.
Re:The myth of vendor lock in. (Score:2, Insightful)
the trouble with being locked in to a certain solution is the possibility of getting locked out of your own data. if you have a whole series of business processes that are built around an app, or series of apps, and that app becomes unavailable for any number of reasons, you end up in a situation where you will have to pay to keep using your data in one of the following options:
option 1) keep using your older computers and software and pay increasingly higher prices as parts and service become more and more rare
option 2) keep using unsupported software and pray that your new computers and OS's will still be able to run it
option 3) pay a consultant or other vendor to convert your data to a new application and change all of your business processes
you see this a lot in healthcare. for example, in the early 90's a hospital fielded a database system and clients based on a 16bit app and database. as the years go by, the vendor changes direction in order to "focus on it's core business" or gets bought by a competitor and has it's product line retired or just plain goes out of business, and you have hundreds of thousands of records tied up in a database that is no longer supported. first, the hospital resists upgrading (option 1), spending money to keep the replacement desktops replaced in 1998 alive until 2002. then, the company decides to move to more modern infrastructure to reduce support costs (option 2), and finds that the dos app does not run well on xp, and decides on 2000 professional. fast forward to 2007, with no more support for 2000 professional, the company decides to embrace vista and SQL server (option 3) and pay thru the nose to have the old proprietary database converted over to SQL (or SAP even) and have a new front end created. plus the retraining costs for the changed processes.
at least with FOSS the company could have gone straight to option 3 and saved money on licensing, not to mention having source code access to fix bugs and add new features should the need arrive.
Re:This -is- (Y)OUR fault, kinda (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the Linux support community is a stretched a little too thin, and getting support for Linux from a real person can be tricky at times. That, in my opinion is the thing stopping most people from adopting Linux on the desktop. I always like to say "No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft" just like no one ever got fired for buying IBM. Linux is getting there, but look at how long it took to get from Win 1 (1985) to XP. The linux kernel was started in 91, so in 15 years a people have volunteered (most as a side project) and created a great OS. In the same amount of time(85-2000), a HUGE corporation (the founder of which is now the world's richest man) we went from Win1 to WinXP (I know MS-DOS was probably around a little longer than Windows, if anything that only furthers my point that Microsoft has had more time to iron out the bugs than Linux). I'm not dogging XP, its a decent OS, give credit where due and all that, but the only real problem with Linux on the desktop is people. Either lack of support fot the hundreds of Linux distros or the unwillingness of people to change. Linux on the desktop is a real possibility. It is no harder to use than Windows, just harder to set up initially (though pre-imaging installs w(c)ould easily take care of that).
Re:Article's author scared of free software (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The myth of vendor lock in. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I choose Linux as my server platform, I can run it on hardware produced by Dell or HP or IBM or any one of about a hundred other OEMs, in any combination I choose. I can choose Fedora Core, or Ubuntu, or Debian, or any other distro.
If I choose OS X as my server platform, I can run it hardware produced by Apple, or by Apple. I can use either this year's model, or last year's model. If they still offer it.
OSS gives the customer many times the options of integrated/proprietary solutions, beyond just "modify the source and compile it yourself". I do not consider that to be lock-in.
Re:Except for the fact (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The myth of vendor lock in. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a real world example to you: VB6. Thousands of corporate internal programs are written in it. And there's no more support. It's dead. Now all those companies have to rewrite their code, or keep using it and hope it still runs on Vista or whatever comes after that. If Vista happens to break something important (say, ADO, or some big vital third party component) you'll be stuck in a very nasty situation.
Compare with say, C. MS may drop their C compiler, but so what? You have lots of others to choose from. It might require minor changes to make it build on GCC, but it's something perfectly doable without rewriting the whole thing in the beginning. Should C disappear completely and GCC development end, the source will still be there. If something prevents GCC from working on a new system you can fix it.
OS X is not my choice for a server. (Score:3, Insightful)
* It doesn't run on generic server hardware, like all of its competition do.
* It's much easier to administer through a command line than Windows, but far harder than any other modern UNIX platform.
* It shares Windows' poor support for "headless" operation.
* It is missing a lot of APIs that its competitors have retained, including the ability to easily run native servers chrooted and standard UNIX tape drive interfaces.
* The native file system, HFS+, is far more fragile and easily damaged than the typical modern UNIX file system like UFS. It doesn't have Linux' wide variety of file system support.
* Its NFS support is extremely nonstandard, and running a normal automounter on it is a recipe for disaster.
* It's missing the "super-chroots": things like FreeBSD's jails and similar facilities in Linux that give you the encapsulation advantages of virtualization without the overhead.
* The Mach kernel still gives it far more system call overhead than its competitors.
All in all, OS X is a mediocre server platform when compared to other variants of UNIX, even if the inability to run it on generic hardware wasn't holding it back.
Re:This is YOUR fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Lack of ambition.
The aim of all the GNU project was to re-create Unix. It wasn't to create something new and original that's significantly better than what has come before - it was to create free versions of the tools that made up a typical Unix system. Sure the tools got tweaked and improved, but the same basic model was followed. It was a project aimed at making tools for hackers, not for making a general purpose computer systems usable by everyman. This was not really ambitious.
Linus wrote the Linux kernel because he wanted essentially to recreate Minix. The ambitious part of this was to do it by himself, but overall it was not really that ambitious, since it had been done before.
The aim of most projects written for GNU/Linux is to recreate something that has been done before. This too is of course not all that ambitious.
It is quite possible to produce something that's newer and better than Unix. It's possible to create a new UI system that is newer and better than X-Windows, Aqua, or Windows...
I could continue, but I think I've burnt enough Karma for now.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Well then, I better go tell the guys who maintain our Xserves to shut them down and throw them in the trash. Yep, the RAID arrays too. Oh, and the mail server.
MacOS still remains a consumer OS for people unwilling or unable to understand the guts of a microcomputer
I agree, that's why I removed all the gauges on my car's dashboard too, after all gauges still remain for people unable to understand the guts of an engine. Oh wait. That's not right. Gauges are useful. And so is the GUI layer on OSX Server.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Then determine what percentage of the backbone bandwidth is porn.
Also determine who the only paying customers who had significant levels of traffic on the early commercial Internet were.