"George Weiss, Gartner's open-source analyst, recently said that Microsoft Windows will not suffer irreparable damage on the server side at the hands of Linux over the next five years. He's right. Microsoft will fall flat on its face all by itself, and Linux will pick up afterwards. It's very simple."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-02
Member since:2005-07-09
> However, it isn't the end all and be all of operating
> systems. It isn't going to crush all competition until
> it is the only thing.
Agreed. In a healthy ecosystem (i.e. one promoted by open source)
there is a rich diversity. Linux is a lot like the human race.
It's one of the most adaptable and a very good general purpose
species (operating system) out there. However, just because
humans are successful, doesn't mean that other species have
inevitably go extinct. There are many special purpose animals
(e.g. insects, mice which greatly outnumber us) or general
purpose animals that don't compete with us (e.g. deep water
fish) or even benefit from our existence (pigeons, squirrels).
> drift further and further apart until it is as
> fragmented as UNIX used to be.
Unlikely. One of the key reasons Unix fragmented is because
Unixes *wanted* to fragment so as they could use vendor lock-in,
planned obsolescence, and ruthless nickle and diming unbundling
to squeeze as much money as they could from customers. Another
key reason is that licensing and trade secrets prevented
code from shared. Open source is a lot less liable to these sorts
of flaws. Forks can happen, but inevitably, one of two things
tend to happen. Either one project dies off and the useful features
get absorbed into the surviving one, or both projects tend to
agree upon some sort of standardization (e.g. Freedesktop, LSB, etc).
Member since:2006-06-26
Yes, indeed - Solaris is so great that I simply won't use it.
I have tried it over a period of time and have come to the conclusion that SUN has a very good marketing team (certainly not as good as Apple's, but they're doing their job well). No matter how strong you insist that I use zfs, dtrace, zones etc. It's all very nice, and some aspects are indeed worth looking at it. In the end it is not enough - and I am sure most people will react that way. Why? Quite simple, there may be some interestingf aspects but these are certainly not enough to make me change a bunch of servers - in fact not even my box at home.
Believe me: People will try it, notice that it hasn't really much to offer and return to their Linux distribution.
Edited 2006-10-04 21:15
Member since:2006-08-09
Member since:
2005-07-06
There is huge interest in OpenSolaris. This weekend at the Ohio LinuxFest, I gave out all 55 OpenSolaris starter kits that I had (Sun was just nearing the end of a batch when I requested) within the first 2.5 hours simply by having them on the corner of my booth and people asking about them. Since I was there from 8AM-5PM (9h), if I can assume straightline extrapolation, I could have given out 200 if I'd had them on hand.
Which ISO would you like? Would that be the Commercial Version (Solaris), that you can download from Sun for free at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp ? Or the advanced release (Solaris Express) that you can download from Sun for free http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get.jsp ? Or the developer version (Solaris Express Community Edition/Nevada) that you can download through the OpenSolaris.org website http://javashoplm.sun.com/ECom/docs/Welcome.jsp?StoreId=7&PartDetai... ? Or perhaps one of the four community distributions (Belenix, Shillix, Nexenta, MarTux; see http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/distributions/) that you can download from various sites?
Solaris does have a lot more to offer in the server space than linux does. Solaris has Dtrace, Zones/Containers, ZFS, a useful threading model, scalability, SMF, FMA/PSH, more available applications, a better support model, lower support costs than RedHat or SuSE.
Linux is a good operating system, and it is great that it is helping people to get better computing than they could get previously. However, it isn't the end all and be all of operating systems. It isn't going to crush all competition until it is the only thing. And, even if it does, then by necessity the various distributions/sellers will continue to drift further and further apart until it is as fragmented as UNIX used to be.