Is Unix on Borrowed Time?

I am a subsriber to their newsletter and found this piece of information worth sharing.

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A panel of Linux luminaries here predicted the demise of Unix over time, saying it would inevitably be replaced by Linux.

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Torvalds also told the audience that he released on Sunday the first beta for the upcoming Linux 2.6 kernel, which will be followed by a few months of beta testing, and that customers need to test the beta.

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In a Microsoft world, the default approach is to build things into the kernel, Augustin said, while Linux development takes a layered approach where things are built above the core system, leading to a very different approach as to how these matters should be dealt with.

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You can read the full article here

Ok, first of all, you have to take care to differenciate between the commercial proprietary (SCO owned) Unix and onther Unices derivatives (*BSD, Solaris...). This really changes the sense of the question...

On another point, the comments are made by Linux developpers and linux distros corporate people, about the death of competitors... Sounds like there might be a *slight* bias here...


Ammo

I think nothing will kill unix i think it will be around for a few more years

ROTFLMAO

/nebulus

I don't see Unix going away any time soon. While Linux is defintely positioning itself to take a good portion of the commercial market, and is building support for the consumer market, proprietary Unix versions (Solaris, HP-UX, and SCO) are solid, proven solutions to enterprise level applications. Linux is making some headway in this area, but the proprietary Unix flavors still corner the market because of large-scale support contracts that Linux distributions are only beginning to address.

Novel owns Unix :D

There are many many flavors of unix... all based on System V or BSD. And they will never die. People said mainframes woudl be gone by 1995.. but they are still in use. People said cobol was out of date...but its still in use. not only is unix not dying, but even mac OS X is now built on darwin, which is a form of BSD.

Nah unix will never die. It will continue to live on for years and years to come. well unless all of a sudden no one uses computers anymore. thats a ways away too lol.

PeacE
-BoB

Unix isn't going anywhere, it's by and large not competing with Linux. Not as much as microsoft anyway. I predict and hope that m$ and windoze will be gone by 2010. Unix is really very different than Linux. Just look at Mac's incorporation of BSD, which i think is quite a work of art.

I do not hope Microsoft will be gone, because history is rewinded then -> no more user friendly computers, although it's better *nix is way to hard for a beginner. The average person doesn't care much about security and stuff, their computer has to be easy to use.
On the other hand if some userfriendly *nix distro is created that problem is solved and it's bye bye M$. Heck, Microsoft doesn't have to disapear, the just need to loose their monopoly.

I don't think UNIX is going to die, at least so soon. In the company where I work we only have 1 UNIX server and its just for the old apps that are about to be terminated.
We now have windows 2000 with very buggy apps.

I agree with el-half, a more userfriendly nix distro would improve the use of nix systems to ordinary users and take a few of the MS users.

*off-topic* What's your opinion on lindows? I still have to try it, but isn't it a mix of Linux and Windows? or thats all publicity about it? I heard a lot about it when it came out, but then, nothing....

<offtopic>
nyx : I think they (lindows) stopped supporting windows apps.. http://lindows.com/mswindows
</offtopic>

These kind of FUD articles have been around for ages !!
I think the rumours of unix's death will never die, allong with unix!

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Originally posted here by SmokeyDragon
I think nothing will kill unix i think it will be around for a few more years

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well by saying it will be around for a few more years thats giving it a death sentence right there, if itll be around for only a few more years, then it must have died somehow?

Unix will definately be around for atleast another 5+ years.

My dad works on hospital software consulting (used to work for a company that sold the apps) and all of their software is Unix based. The reason no one is upgrading is because it costs multi-millions of dollars to purchase a new system and software which the hospitals don't have at this time and in this state of the economy.

Thats only one instance of dependence on Unix...

If by some chance someone can walk to all Unix users and convince them to change over then maybe then Unix will die but that's not how the world works.

There are too many corporations out there that use Unix for it to just die. In fact, IMO I believe Unix will never die. Their will always be a use for it and some people will never let it go and besides it's stable so why do away with it. "If something is not broken don't fix it."

Windows on the other hand have a big surprise coming to them in the near future. I can't say I would hate to see them go if they do go but they are putting up a good fight.

Just my thoughts on things...

*sigh* Well, I think Cutty's about the closest, here, IMO... ever since the day that full-time, dedicated TCP/IP connections became more common-place (read: long before things like cable modems and DSL and similar -- and the world wide web didn't exist yet), it seems like people have been predicting the "imminent death of the Internet." Well, I think we all know how close that is to reality...

In much the same vain, the death of UN*X is like saying that "swamp coolers" are going to be the wave of the future and no one's going to be buying central air conditioning anymore because it's "too expensive." (or even that the American car market is going to fall to the Japanese -- though I think that has a better chance of becoming reality that any of these other pipe dreams). Usually these rumors seem to be propagated by a bunch of n00bs who've "just discovered the k00lest thang" and it's going to take over the world... (any Pinky and the Brain fans? hehe)

First of all, I think Linux is only a step closer to "production quality" than your average MS box... and only a step more secure, on average. That, alone, will keep serious corporations from making major investments in (insert random flavor of Linux here) -- you simply can't run a business on something that you'll spend countless hours of maintenance on, just trying to keep it secure and/or even up and running. Yeah, I know, it's possible... and I know that a few have tried, but nothing's seemingly taken off in the commerical linux realm... then again, Sun, HP and IBM (for example) are having their own sets of issues, too.

I guess, in the short term, I think the only thing Linux is going to bite in to is the MS World (go Linus!) -- and even then, the only UN*X in danger there, it seems... is Linux (thanks to MS' new subsidiary in Santa Cruz... *smirk*)