Organizations adopting Linux might not abandon Unix entirely. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for example, has migrated its e-mail system from Sun hardware and Solaris to HP servers and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. But even though the use of Linux on production servers is growing, the practice isn’t yet the norm at the laboratory, said Douglas Hughes, a service engineer at JPL Information Services.
Unix: An 800 Pound Gorilla No More?
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Eugenia Loli
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Only a day later (well, 23 hours and some change) than digg, with the same exact intro
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Unix_An_800_Pound_Gorilla_No_More_2
I’m mixed on this. I don’t really like Linux, it’s too “wishy-washy” for me. At the same time, a lot of the commercial UNIX vendors have been screwing people for a long time. Sun seems to be figuring out their mistakes slowly but surely, but it sure has taken them a while to sort things out (hence companies have been leaving them as much as joining them..)
Oh well, all better for the consumer in the end! I wonder how this battle-royale will turn out.
“wishy-washy”
huh?!?!
– No direction
– Most of the community seems to be comprised of 14-year-old fanboys
– No stable kernel API
– Too many distros all duplicating their efforts trying to accomplish the same thing
You know, that kind of thing …
Its unfair to claim that the companies who have left Sun now have done so even with OpenSolaris within view; many times these companies were already towards the end of analysing alternatives; I doubt the respective company would have been pleased with the idea of sending the group alway again to do another study with OpenSolaris in the picture.
What Sun need to do is maintain the customer base they have, expand the use of OpenSolaris/Solaris and their hardware in their customers organisations, team up with software vendors as to allow bulk hardware and software discounts to undercut Microsoft, and bring in some new clients through well targeted marketing stratergies that address clients problems rather than bad attempts at humour (case in point being the mock-advertisements taking the piss on their product; mind you, here is a good one: When Uptime is important; use Niagara servers; viagra for your organisation).
“Organizations adopting Linux might not abandon Unix entirely. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for example, has migrated its e-mail system from Sun hardware and Solaris to HP servers and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
Huh? “Organizations might not switch from UNIX to Linux. For example, here is an example of an organization switching from UNIX to Linux.”
“But even though the use of Linux on production servers is growing, the practice isn’t yet the norm at the laboratory”
You forgot that part. Thus they are not abandoning it entirely.
if it works, dont replace it
most likely they are running some fairly specialized software on those old unix machines that they for some reason or other cant port over to linux.
Even hardware might be a consideration – analog samping devices for scientific measurements etc.
And we all know that GNU/Linux is not POSIX compatible. Linux is becoming more and more compatible only with itself- just like Microsoft Windows does. Porting programs to Linux and vise versa is PITA IMHO.
And we all know that GNU/Linux is not POSIX compatible.
Eh, normally I’d be the first to point this out. However, you missed an important qualification. The Linux kernel and the GNU Operating System are not *fully* POSIX compatible / compliant / certified. However, they do provide a majority of POSIX functionality. Operating systems such as Solaris, are one of very few left that are actually *fully* POSIX certified and compatible.
I think more organizations are staying with Unix knowing that Linux is there for them. Or organizations are slowly migrating to Linux because it’s easier and thus aren’t as quickly dumping their Unix machines as fast as they would if they were moving to Windows. So I think that even while Linux steals market share from traditional Unices it’s helping that share not fall as fast as it otherwise would.