The end of the world is near. At last that of the Unix world. That’s the prediction of Donald Feinberg, vice-president of Gartner. “Linux is coming, Unix is dead.” But there’s no need to panic. Not just yet. The end is not going to come overnight or even in next week or year, but it is certain, or as he puts it, “an absolute”.
EconomicTimes: Unix is Dead, Linux is the Future
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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UNIX is dead! Long live *nix!
UNIX is dead! Long live *nix!
No doubt. In 5 or 10 years, Linux will likely be replaced by another *nix…and we really won’t notice much. These days, Linux is unix even if it is not officially UNIX(tm).
only if EVERY single programmer on linux was to give up and move over to this new system…. and then there would be nothing to stop someone else coming along in the future and starting off again with linux…..
see with open source that is the way things work… and this is what windows fanboys like you cannot see
only if EVERY single programmer on linux was to give up and move over to this new system…. and then there would be nothing to stop someone else coming along in the future and starting off again with linux…..
see with open source that is the way things work… and this is what windows fanboys like you cannot see
I’ve used Linux _exclusively_ since 1996 on all my PCs except when testing out Solaris and on my Sun and Power (AIX) systems.
Please go back and read what I wrote — it’s not what you think you read.
Unix is dead and, oh yea, we’re going to be scanning cars at toll booths in the future…or something. But, yea, Unix is dead.
Maybe it’s a bad link, but that article was essentially content free, at least as far as the topic goes.
I’ll consider Unix operating systems like Solaris 10 dead when Linux can *finally* dump core to a swap partition then extract it on boot. I’d consider this to be a very basic debugging feature which Linux has never bothered to implement.
There’s a few projects working on this, but they’re far from general purpose usability.
Until then, yo ho yo ho Solaris 10 for me…
One basic feature maybe enough to excite you, but for the rest of us we shall enjoy our Linux. I don’t know though the article really dosn’t address where Sun is taking OpenSolaris, I think they are just focusing on the obviously dead and smelly UNIXs of yesterday.
YAWN
We have been hearing dying talk like this for years.
Fact of the matter is there is tons of apps for Unix and the scientific world loves it.
Take a look at all the servers here with the longest uptime
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
Apple has opened hundreds of stores all selling Mac OS X which is based on Unix. 25 million users and growing.
Yep Unix is dying alright.
BSD != UNIX
true
BSD is not UNIX
Bsd is Unix
UNIX is a trademark that SOlaris, SCO, Plan 9, AIX can use
Unix is a description that BSD, Mac OSX, Solaris, Plan 9, AIX and Linux can use.
“BSD is not UNIX”
That’s true, because as you mentioned UNIX is a trademark. But, let’s not forget that BSD did have UNIX source code in it at one time which makes it a direct decendent. Not a copy, not a work-a-like, but a direct decendent. We can’t say now that BSD has Unix source code, but we can say that Unix source code does have BSD source code in it.
I probably shouldn’t reply to you because you smell disturbingly like a troll, but they meant “real” big-iron traditional UNIX.
HP-UX, AIX, Irix, SCO, Tru64 and Solaris. Of these, Tru64 is unfortunately pretty much already dead. SCO, well we all know where their software is going. Irix, AIX, and HP-UX have pretty much already been put into an almost deprecated status by their respective vendors in favor of Linux. Solaris will probably co-exist for a long time, especially if their OpenSolaris initiative takes off. I’ll admit, if I had a computer capable of running it, I’d seriously think about switching away from Linux. Solaris running on commodity hardware is a geek’s wet dream. (It’s real UNIX open sourced!)
The BSDs (which Apple’s Darwin and Mac OS X are derived from) are for all intents and purposes their own special branch of the *nix family tree. Think of them as extremely close cousins of UNIX, but not really having any UNIX “blood” in them anymore. They are very much along the same vein as Linux, UNIX work-alikes that share absolutely no source code with their System V-derived cousins. (Well, technically some of them have ripped drivers and networking code and the csh out of them, but there is no UNIX code in the BSDs.)
So, despite what Apple wants to tell you, Mac OS X is not really a UNIX. Neither is Free/Net/Open/DragonFlyBSD or Linux.
Ultimately, the UNIX space will be partitioned among the open source *nixes and Windows Server, with most of the pie going to Linux. UNIX will live on in a niche role, much like OS/2, Multics, and VMS before it.
This is a pretty uninteresting article all and all. Kind of a “Thank you Captain Obvious” thing.
I also predict that OS/2 and VMS use will continue to decline as well. Big whoop.
“Irix, AIX, and HP-UX have pretty much already been put into an almost deprecated status by their respective vendors in favor of Linux.”
Not at all true for AIX. All of IBM’s new hardware features are available first on AIX, and IBM essentially considers AIX part of the DB2 software stack.
You’re really mixed up in your understanding of the UNIX space. Tru64 has been deprecated by HP-UX, which in and of itself is beginning to die along with the Itanium architecture. Windows Server doesn’t fit anywhere in the UNIX space. If you have UNIX applications, you don’t run them on Windows Server. IBM pSeries is the biggest selling and fastest growing enterprise server platform in the UNIX space, and while IBM is pushing Linux on POWER (OpenPOWER), there is no roadmap that calls for offering Linux on pSeries. Similarly, Sun is committed to Solaris on SPARC, and even positions Solaris (alongside Linux) on x86-64.
Many of the OS names you pulled from the graveyard have no relevence to the discussion, historical or otherwise. Multics was written for the GE mainframes in assembly and wasn’t portable. VMS runs on three dead or nearly dead architecturs: VAX, Alpha, and Itanium. OS/2 is a desktop OS that was created as an IBM fork of MS-DOS with the cooperation of Microsoft. It is officially EOL at the end of 2005.
The point is, proprietary UNIX (including Solaris, which is still proprietary to Sun even though it is open source) lives or dies on the back of its hardware platforms. HP-UX depends on Itanium, Solaris depends on SPARC, AIX depends on POWER. Linux (adoption) depends on x86. Despite its support for all of the previous listed architectures and more, corporate IT won’t choose Linux on anything other than x86. Linux has been so successful because x86 has been the fastest growing segment of IT for years, while the proprietary UNIX vendors largely ignored it.
Very well put, except one thing. Linux and now apparently OpenSolaris is not centric to only arch by any means. Right now I have an ibook and an amd64 box both running Linux. I just read that OpenSolaris has been ported to ppc. Also IBM has big stakes in getting Linux happy on their hardware, such as their work with the 970FX power management in Linux.
IO don’t know why VMS was even mentioned here. it is NOT a unix variant at all. Completely different.
Solaris running on commodity hardware is a geek’s wet dream. (It’s real UNIX open sourced!)
This may be the case in a few years if community developers get involved, but for now, I hate using Solaris. It has a lot of power, but it lacks a lot of the great tools that come standard in a Linux distribution. At least that’s my view.
That’s funny, I saythe opposite all the time. Using linux is painful because its p-tools suck, it doesn’t have dtrace, mdb, dbx, resource management, etc.
What tools do you think Solaris is missing?
“Well, technically some of them have ripped drivers and networking code and the csh out of them, but there is no UNIX code in the BSDs”
Ahem. (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/sys/timeb.h?v=RELENG6
There are other files with the USL copyright in them. I’ll leave finding them as an excercise for you.
Do your homework next time. The BSDs damned well do have UNIX code in them, although not much.
Your completly right, Linux is a prpbably a great OS (i use it ocationally) but it still lacks some of the strenghts that Unix has. Off course there are a lot of Unix’es. One of the things that point out that Unix still is’nt dead is the fact that IBM for example are still making shit loads of money on AIX, more than Linux. But in the future i think IBM will focus even more than now on it’s effort to bring Linux to the enterprices and let AIX die, but the time is not now.
—
http://bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits.
But he is right. Many companies have already been transitioning from UNIX to Linux over the last 5 years. Sun will hang on to the carrier grade stuff and existing support contracts for a while but x86-64 and Linux will make faster progress.
Hell, even Microsoft has come a long way on the server side lately but after doing it wrong for so long I am pretty sure nobody noticed.
Who cares…why even give credit to these Gartner morons for their dribble. Whatever, Unix still has plenty of kick left and fulfills requirements that Linux or Windows could never dream of fulfilling.
ooohhh aaahhhh linux…wow!
These palooka’s probably hadn’t even heard of Unix until the tech bubble.
I think that Linux has it’s place, Unix has it’s place, and ….. yes….. even Windows has it’s place. I don’t believe Unix will die off, besides…… Linux is a *nix. The two are not that much different, except linux has made some strides to become more desktop friendly and generally has better driver support.
The BSD’s are awesome os’s (and are Unix proper) and I don’t see them fading away any time soon.
Unix is more of a way of thinking than it is an OS… Perhaps the would should learn how Unix-land (including linux) thinks and implimen the good into their os’s.
after all….. there is a reason the vairous *nix’s account for the the massive majority of servers on the web.
Unix is more of a way of thinking than it is an OS…
And it will be a said day when linux looses it’s unix and becomes windows.
The “everything is a file” is an awesome concept. But it seems to be fading as desktop Enviroments ie. KDE and Gnome Slowly whitle it away.
– Jesse McNelis
The “everything is a file” is an awesome concept.
I like the concept too. It’s a good simple concept that has lasted for decades. Although, after the years of experience I’ve had with AS/400’s (iSeries it’s now called) I am liking the concept of “Everything is an object”.
If you’ve worked with AS/400’s and have taken the time to appreciate them, then I’m sure you know what I mean. It’s an elegant and powerfull concept. AS/400’s are good machines for what they do, although they’re a dying breed. I wonder which will die first, the AS/400 midrange computer or the Unix midrange computer.
All that seems to be lacking is UNIX certification- Various distributions (ROCK Linux, I think, and maybe Caldera?) over the years have applied for and won POSIX/Single UNIX specification. Linux can be UNIX when it wants to UNIX if you want to put the effort and money into making it compliant.
Sure, traditional big-company sponsored proprietary UNIX like AIX, A/UX, HP/UX, DEC Unix, System V, Xenix, etc… They’re dying out. But what’s replacing them is UNIX. Just a UNIX with a different mindset and no certification.
Oh, now I do. The ones with shared code from the *original Bell UNIX* are dying off…
In terms of UNIX anyone actually uses, it’ll basically be only Solaris in non-legacy deployments. This is fine, IMO, since Solaris arguably ‘won’ the UNIX wars, and Linux has been and will be a complement to Solaris.
I don’t think people should bicker so much but be happy that the OS market is further consolodating to a few major players…and at the expense of Microsoft, too, no less.
The reason I can say it’s at Microsoft’s expense is that Linux and Solaris are driving huge leaps forward. For example, Solaris 10 has borrowed from GNU-Linux traditions (GNOME, GRUB, GCC, etc.), packaged it under Sun’s engineering processes, and made a better OS for it. Solaris 10 makes Windows servers cower in shame.
Did anyone RTFA? It has two short paragraphs on Unix ending, with no justification, then the rest of it (7 more paragraphs) is about data storage. Strange. Why would the Economic Times give it that title?
Exactly! That was my first thought.
I don’t believe UNIX is dead. Linux is just the new face of UNIX. What UNIX has evolved into, per say.
Why does someone give editorial access to someone with absolutely no clue as to the value of Unix. Linux will die before Unix will. So, for that matter, will Windows. Unix was here before most of you were born, and it will be here long after you’re gone.
Linux will die before Unix will
not worth even replying too – dunder****
“Not only is UNIX dead, it’s starting to smell really bad.”
Of course by then he and the folks at Bell Labs had been using Plan 9 already for some years.
What I find funny people that thinks Linux is any different from Unix, Linux is just another Unix clone like many others, and it shares the same fundamental problems (for details see http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html and http://herpolhode.com/rob/ugly.pdf )
First off, he can’t even make up his mind. he says 10-15 years for a “phase-out” of “Unix”, and then a paragraph below that he says that linux and windows will be the only operating systems left in 5 years.
And we’re also to believe that OSX is gone, along with the BSDs and Solaris. Bah.
It’s really about Open Unix vs Windows, with OSX somewhat in the middle.
Just in regards to UNIX’s; the death will be proprietary, unjustifiably over priced UNIX’s.
SCO, HP-UX and IRIX are going to be relegated to the scrap heap; SCO because its lack of investment into their products, coupled with the opensourcing and under cutting of Solaris (and its ability to run UNIXWare executables on Solaris); IRIX is as dead as flares since demostrating that it is now the end of the road for MIPS. As for HP; their sycophantic policies towards Microsoft is their own deal keal; they decided it is far too much work doing real R&D, so they’re now trying to turn themselves into a ‘hipper’ and ‘trendy’ version of Dell – sooner or later, businesses will smell the bullcrap and start purchasing Dell, its only just a matter of time.
Which basically leaves us with SUN and IBM; IBM will keep pushing AIX buy cutting prices when negotiating, in regards to AIX machines running IBM middleware – sell the hardware on the cheap, extract the cash out of the victim, sorry, ‘customer’ via global services by preaching that one can sow together 30 different types of operating systems ‘easily’.
SUN, will use a combination of opensource software, services and hardware; rumours are spreading around the idea of a possible move to adopt Ingres Database; the former product from CA, under a more palatable CDDL licence; along with the closer ties with Sybase, don’t be surprised to be seeing Oracle being kicked off to the side.
Want slow, over priced, buggy databases, then by all means, just into eternal hell with Oracle; or wake up like millions of other customers and start the move to an alternative product, be it SAP, DB2 or Sybase; all which outperform Oracle – especially Sybase on SPARC hardware!
Can’t deny there are a lot OS’s today who have more or less UNIX under the bonnet.Linux has a lot UNIX inside,i agree with the author Linux is gaining terrain.So it’s MS versus UNIX+derivates (Linux,*BSD,OSX,Solaris,HP/Ux,…).
havent you heard! Unix has been dead for a long time now! … It just don’t disapear!
OSes for data warehouse in five years time from now ? .. only Windows and Linux ? com’on ..
some used to said, some years ago, that VMS will dead. it still around.
Yeah, I can still buy a C64, too.
The Amiga is the web services platform of the future.
The guy is right on with about everything he says except for his time frame. I think we’ll see those developments happening much sooner and some are already taking place.
I can´t help to say it, but linux is nothing compared to Solaris when it comes to stability.
Specially when using X (xorg/xfree86) based programs.
Using Solaris as an workstation is so much more stable than running Linux with X based software.
Ok, i know, solaris has not the same hardware support and so on, but, think about it, isn´t it better to buy an machine that you know works for sure with the OS, rather than buing an machine that is sooooo cool and then have to spend a lot of time to install wrappers and so on.
Hell, if it wasn´t for the price/performance, then i would buy an SGI machine runnig Irix, which is the far most stable platform i have ever played wih, and yes i know this because i work with Irix and Solaris every day.
Exactly. If you polish a turd [linux] it’s still a turd. The community in general is better off adding some polish to a much better platform [Open/Solaris].
how wrong you are fella
if you polish a turd it becomes a smear
trust me
I tried it a few times
the community will not get behind solaris in any numbers for one simple reason;
Solaris is NOT open
Solaris is open only as much as Sun want it to be… and this is just not good enough
You speak of “the community” as though there is only one. It’s true that the LINUX community will not get behind Solaris. They won’t get behind anything that’s not Linux. Then there’s the OSS community. A lot of them will never support Solaris or OpenSolaris because they hate Sun’s politics and feel that OpenSolaris is not “open enough”. However, a lot of OSS people are not that political and there is a large group of Solaris fans out there that are coming together as well. There is a growing Solaris/OpenSolaris community out there.
It’s a bit arrogant to assume that “your” community is the only community out there. Would it blow your mind to hear that there is even a Windows community?
reread my post again please… if you do, you will see I was replying to someone else who said…
” The community in general is better off adding some polish to a much better platform [Open/Solaris].”
It was that poster who said “the community”… I was simply replying using a rule of common use English.
Oops, sorry raver31. I wasn’t reading carefully enough. I should have been replying to that previous post.
Since the poster seems to be referring to the OSS community, your comment is completely valid. It does seem that the majority of the OSS community doesn’t like and won’t support OpenSolaris. While I may not agree with that mentality, that doesn’t make the statement invalid.
I apologize for the rant. It seems that I was the one being arrogant (or at least overzealous).
Not a problem at all. There is too much stuff taken the wrong way on sites like this.
It is purely because we can see the words…. but have no idea of the tone .
“outperform Oracle – especially Sybase on SPARC hardware”
i ve not seen that 😉
an Informix fan
It will disappear at some time in the future, like everything else that’s hot and l337 now.
The thing is that UNIX has proven its metal for literally decades and it is deployed just about everywhere in the world.
Look at AmigaOS. Here’s a system that was a fringe player at the best of times. Some people lovingly craft some code for it from time to time and it’s still around [obviously not in any statistically meaningful way].
UNIX disappearing in as little as 10 years, after decades of having a commanding presence isn’t realistic. Some people get a real kick out of their servers just running and running, months on end.
Apple OS X, while not pure UNIX is a dialect of the venerable language. The assclown claiming there’s only going to be Linux and Windows in 5 years time clearly hasn’t heard the latest news of Apple’s demise. Even when they were doing VERY bad they had a strong user base. Now they’re doing very well indeed and they even build clusters, which would have been real fun to an administrator something less than 5 years ago.
Sounds like a bean counter’s wet dream to me. I don’t expect to hear about the demise of UNIX in a very long while. And if you don’t agree, please tell me which other, widely available/used OS has the same staying power as UNIX has. That would be real news to me.
I think it’s very unlikely that Linux and Windows will be the only OSs. Personally I expect to see the release of Windows Vista trigger strong growth in Apple’s OSX as well as more migration to Linux. Perhaps not so much in the sluggish corporate world but when many normal users see that they’re going to need a major upgrade or a new computer to run Vista they may just run out and buy an Apple instead. Then they get a sexier machine with OSX that will also run Windows if they want.
Even though my work ties me to Windows both my next office computer and my next laptop are still going to be Intel Macs. Then I can run Windows natively for all the drudge stuff I need to do to earn money and use OSX for everything else.
This effect will get even stronger if OSX ever gets released as a shrink-wrapped product for beige boxen. I know that Apple currently says they’re never going to do this but they don’t seem to be trying all that hard — OSX Intel was cracked onto normal systems within two weeks, even though it was allegedly locked down with a Palladium (or similar) chip. That doesn’t sound like excessive commitment to me…
)
I would have chosen two other systems to rule the world. Brute force, mindshare and momentum doesn’t make an OS superior.
Something that really needs to be taken out back and shot is the PC architecture, 64-bit or not.
“Unix is Dead, Linux is the Future”
Well… DUH! I wonder where he’s been the last decade or so… not on earth, that’s for sure.
Every Free Software and Open Source project is the Future !!!
Linux is UNIX period.
Gnu’s Not UNIX
… 20 years ago. Unix just keeps getting better.
>I can´t help to say it, but linux is nothing compared to
>Solaris when it comes to stability.
Hogwash. I have both. Linux, if anything, is more stable, more useful and better patched in my experience.
>Specially when using X (xorg/xfree86) based programs.
Now you’re trolling. Solaris X is the worst.
>Using Solaris as an workstation is so much more stable
>than running Linux with X based software.
So not true. Unless if by stable, you mean “10 years out of date.”
I haveto agree with the anonymous poster.
Solaris 10 (i386) is not so stable as many try us to believe, i have it running on a intel pentuim 4 machine and, alldough i am very pleased with it for certain things, it did completely lock up several times since install, i have emailed Sun about my problems and did recieve some answers wich not solve the locking up.
I suspect its an memory thing or something like that BUT the machine also runs Ubuntu and i tested to see if Ubuntu has the same stability problems. Conclusion: Nope!
I know this field report does not say anything, i could be a harware driver, a memory problem, motherboard chipset etc. but the only thing i now can conclude is that Linux is in no way less stable than Solaris is on a i386 platform. Its actually a lot more stable.
@Bascule:
its even better, what if your swap partitin was faulted…you can not rely on a harddrive all the time.
http://oss.missioncriticallinux.com/projects/mcore/
I can’t understand how UNIX could become “dead”, I guess it would be from Linux developing faster, but in a worse case scenario the commercial unixes can become free aswell, so what is the problem here? And also most open-source programs can be run on any anyway so how could they “die”?
Just sounds like someone wanted to get some attention, BSD and Solaris aren’t dead.
nope
closed source can die… the parent company goes bust, therefore no further development
open source cannot die… the source code can be taken by anyone for further development if the original company/author goes bust/ gets bored.
Therefore…. OSS is one of the only things in the world that can be truly classed as immortal.
Let’s ignore this article. If it was posted on Slashdot, everyone would call it a troll. It’s insipid anyway:
” Small faults in a car could be recorded in a chip and when it goes for service, the dealer can take the chip out and take care of all those problems, which you may not notice otherwise but could cause a major breakdown at a later stage, he said. ”
This guy obviously doesn’t know what is already being done with cars and computer-automated checkups.
I smell the shitty stink of some solaris astroturfers. There’s no way anyone competent in both could think Solaris has only advantages over Linux and no disadvantages.
dtrace, zones and ABI compatibility (not always a good thing) are the only things I can think of that Linux doesn’t have or do better. As for dtrace and zones, Linux does both differently, though we have to give dtrace the edge… of course you have to remember dtrace is brand-new… not like it has existed for anywhere near as long as Solaris has.
So please, astroturfers, feel free to exercise your right to astroturf over on slashdot or something. It’s really getting tired reading “SOLARIS ROCKS, LUNIX SUX!!!!!111!!!”
I mean really, it’s getting shrill.
“It’s really getting tired reading “SOLARIS ROCKS, LUNIX SUX!!!!!111!!!” ”
Uh, you must be new to OSNews. The conversations have been like this for years, no matter the topic. Same with Slashdot. Same with Usenet.
I think the topic is wrong, here the correction:
EconomicTimes: Unix is Dead, Linux is the Present!
🙂
…Unix lives on!
IBM pSeries is the biggest selling and fastest growing enterprise server platform in the UNIX space, and while IBM is pushing Linux on POWER (OpenPOWER), there is no roadmap that calls for offering Linux on pSeries.
Huh? OpenPOWER boxes are just rebranded pseries boxes, and IBM stirring up a little bit of publicity. IBM has been working toward a common, non-Intel hardware platform ala Eclipz. Suggesting that one cannot run linux on pseries boxes is just plain wrong. I know for a fact that IBM offered suse and redhat back on the Regatta Power4 boxes. This certainly hasn’t changed with Squadrons.
The complete Unix phase-out may take 10-15 years, but companies are going to start building/developing applications around Linux as early as ’10, Mr Feinberg said.
Linux and Windows will be the only two operating systems left in five years,” he told a super session audience at “The 2005 Annual Teradata PARTNERS User Group Conference and Expo here.
These guys are trying to predict the market 15 years in advance? Maybe they should remember where Linux and Windows were 15 years ago. Windows was a shell that ran on top of DOS, Linux hadn’t even been written yet. Neither one of them were on anyone’s radar as an enterprise server OS.
In the end, did VHS vs. Betamax really matter? No. DVD’s came along and made them both superfluous. In 15 years, more than likely something else will have come along that will make both Windows and Linux superfluous as well.
Any time some “analyst” proposes to predict the future that many years in advance, it’s a good bet that he’s talking out of his ass. You might just as well consult an astrologer.
Bruno the Arrogant, too lazy to create an account.
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist
http://www.vitanuova.com
Not only is [l]UNIX dead, it’s starting to smell really bad.”
— Rob Pike (circa 1991)
tha author of the article is a moron, linux is dead as well.