Gentlemen, we are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law - Reich Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg
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Linux Foundation director takes on Solaris
FREE SOFTWARE upstart and Unix clone Linux is on track to see off the proprietary flavours of Unix, opined the Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin in a feature article at Infoworld on Wednesday.
Zemlin leveled his predictions of inexorable decline and doom at Sun Solaris in particular.
"The future is Linux and Microsoft Windows," said Zemlin. "It is not Unix or Solaris."
That statement strikes us as odd, because Linux is an architectural descendant of Unix that runs software easily ported between the two environments, and both are far different from Microsoft's consumer oriented Windows operating systems. But his argument went further.
Zemlin has the attitude that Sun and Solaris should get out of the way of Linux takeup. He derided Solaris as a legacy operating system that's not gaining in customer deployments.
He also claimed that computer hardware manufacturers don't see much future for Solaris and that Sun represents an operating systems software vendor facing financial difficulty.
Zemlin pointed out that Linux leads in new deployments on x86-based systems, where the lower cost of commodity x86 hardware gives it an advantage versus lower volume big tin servers running proprietary Unix.
He said Sun's strength has been in commercial software applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning systems with seven to 20-year life cycles. "What's starting to happen is those life cycles are starting to be completed," he said, adding that those applications are being replaced on systems running Linux.
Zemlin also claimed that the industry trend toward web-based applications is accelerating Linux adoption among system developers, saying, "You can't really talk to any web-based application company these days that's not using Linux."
Linux is also less expensive for users to run than proprietary Unix, he noted, suggesting that Sun should simply move to Linux instead of continuing to develop and support Solaris. He also implicated the two other proprietary Unix brands, IBM's AIX and Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX. "It's certainly true that Unix is on the decline," he said.
He could have added that both IBM and HP have both been strong supporters of Linux for several years now, even though both companies continue to support their slowly-declining base of legacy Unix customers. That Sun hasn't joined them might be what exercises him.
Zemlin warmed to the topic of user migration from Unix to Linux. "Customers are pretty aware that Unix is a more expensive legacy architecture. They continue to support it because they don't want to change their legacy apps over to a new platform because of the [transition] costs."
Well... it's fairly easy to show quick recovery of transition costs from savings due to lower hardware, software, support and operating costs, though admittedly there are always up-front expenses and risks associated with such migrations. But lower ongoing costs rule.
Zemlin went on, "But they know now they eventually need to do it because Unix just doesn't have the combined might of all the different organisations and individuals that are developing Linux."
His implication, we think, is that even if Solaris is still somewhat more sophisticated than Linux in certain areas, Linux is developing so fast that it will surely catch and overtake it.
There's such weight behind Linux system development now, not just in the kernel itself but also at all levels, that it's hard to argue with this proposition. Proprietary Unix is doomed.
There's more discussion of Solaris Dtrace and Zettabyte File System (ZFS) and how those aren't really big advantages for Solaris, according to Zemlin, plus his wish that Sun would open source those technologies and make them available within Linux.
Naturally, Sun Microsystems doesn't view Solaris's future prospects inquite the same way.
The Linux Foundation and Sun will likely continue to disagree about the relative places of both Solaris and Linux, right up until Sun moves further towards open source and joins the Linux Foundation, which we believe is something that is likely to happen eventually. µ
L'Inq
Infoworld
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I keep reading about the lower cost of linux because it runs on intel x86--- no one ever heard of solaris 10 x86?
Runs on the lower cost intel stuff and give you a UNIX, not UNIX light! It will also not require the retraining of workers or a major change in operations.
Oh, and you only need one version -- the 64 bit version does run 32 bit apps
The code is a shambles, literally strings of spaghetti held together with bailing wire. Unix and BSD are stable and well built, they run so called Linux apps just fine.
Right, Linux dominates on desktops? Bollocks, Unix (via Apple) is sending into utter irrelevance. On the server? Zemlin sounds like Net App diss'ing ZFS. Oh, wait, look, Net App's one of his sponsors. Alongside Oracle. Geez, no wonder he's got his knickers in a twist.
As someone who builds / looks after *nix systems I can tell you that Solaris 10 is actually pretty great. 

It's easy to install and manage. Scalable - it runs on a two CPU core system or a 32 core system (or more). It's rock solid - uptime is determined by when you chose to boot the server or a sever hardware failure. You can pour on the workload and it can take a beating. Obviously slow (i,e. poorly designed code) will still be slower than if it was properly designed and written.

You do however need to know what you are doing in to get the most out of it but that holds true for any operating system.
Dr. Robotnik, just wondering, aren't a lot of the bugs fixed in current implementation (or maybe in the next?)
"The future is Linux and Microsoft Windows," said Zemlin

...oh, and that pesky fruit thing.
that GNU is Not Unix ;).
I agree with "Nomen Publicus", there is one Microsoft and one Windows desktop OS at a time. While the different versions of Unix offer something different each faction is too busy trying to differentiate their product to work with the other's to create a common, stable and easy platform from which to diversify.

Imagine if windows was open source and there was an ubuntu windows which was super user friendly, friendly enough that someone that COMPLETELY computer illiterate might stand a chance. I mean like television easy to use. Lets say there was a Gentoo WIndows that provided the same common base but with a higher level of customization.

This is what Unix/Linux should be, but it isn't because rather than embrace whats good about the other flavours each wants to rule the roost. 

re: Fred_EM

Yeah, after 8 they became too point and click focused and didn't put in enough focus on improving stability, compatibility and usability. Same way they used newfs to make mkfs more sensible to use, I'm still waiting on DD to get a more sensible command interface. Better yet, how about tossing sh and making bash the default? Who gives a hoot about the java desktop and management console. Nobody uses the the thing on desktops specially when it has hell picking up sata drives.
Linux is a derivative of Tannenbaum's Minix and almost every other Unix. It can pass a SVID test and is compliant with that standard. Unix has seen various formats and derivatives since its inception, but they are all still Unix. Linux itself has many flavors. Two of which have risen aboue the rest. Mac OS X is a Unix variant. The new OS development by MS is a Unix base. Face it Unix and its derivatives are here to stay. Anyone who thinks Solaris is old and outdated need only to look a DTrace, Zones and the ZFS. All of them award winners in their own right. All of which are being ported to Linux.
Twaddle. MS only dominates the desktop and end user client, Sun has all kinds of contracts and develops it's own CPUs for crying out loud and have been doing so for a long time. Last time I checked, the linux cli commands I know work the same on Solaris; there's not a massive difference between *nix's.
I don't see BSDs (and the rest) user base giving up on that anytime soon either.

Personally I would like to see RiscOS doing better because they actually managed to get the apps installing/running properly. A computing dream come true - software that runs without being 'installed', same way files can be used. Yes, a bit like DOS games.
I want my OS on a video chip with no boot time.

So, someone who doesn't know history is repeating it.

One of the reasons why Windows and not Unix is the dominant operating system was the constant in-fighting between the various Unix companies, years before Linux was developed.

Why do people have to be reminded that Windows is the enemy, not other versions of Unix?
If Microsoft Windows and Linux are the future, then we all have the choice between a Patch Tuesday and a Patch Thursday. Great!

Linux, the UNIX clone, is based on software from the late 60's and countless hot fixes. And don't get me start on Microsoft software. Glad to see that hp is betting on both legacy systems, as if there were no third alternative in their portfolio.
Solaris 10 is horrible, ZFS is riddle with bugs, it's a sad and sorry scene. Solaris really went downhill after 8, later versions have been more cluttered, less reliable, and generally less satisfactory.

It used to be a proper big league industrial grade *NIX, four digit uptimes if you needed them, took a lickin' and kept on tickin'- etc. etc.. Now, however, you have some horrible combination of glommed-on pointyhair-friendly "enterprise features" at the cost of the one must-have feature that made it a good choice, reliability.

I used to run a pretty big serverfarm on Solaris. I loved the fact that it was ugly, standoffish, precise and damn-near bombproof. These days, I wouldn't feel happy using it as a fileserver. Sun have crapped in their own cornflakes, to a very real degree.
I would much rather have a stable Solaris OS environment and run Linux applications on it than the other way round.

There are so many flavours of Linux, which many think is an advantage.

But at the end of the day, it confuses people and turns them off.

Unless Solaris and Linux sort of merge into a rock solid and supported OS platform it will not really become a threat to MS.

Sun has given the world OpenOffice and it has been tremendiously successful with it.

If Sun gave Solaris to the world and Linuxes would cooperate, the world would benefit in a great way.

I won't happen tough.
One day Solaris will be killed by some new Micosoft "killer"-OS. Those guys aren't sitting still either.

And once Solaris is killed, Linux is next.

World and dog will watch it, scratching their head.