Unixfication
Why can’t Unix and Linux code just get along?
Nothing in life or the computer industry is a sure thing, but based on the sheer number of installs and the overwhelming industry traction, I think I can say with near certainty that Linux has become the clear successor to Unix and the future looks tremendous for Open Source software. Put the nails in the coffin of proprietary Unix systems. The big “U” is done. The Penguin shall rule the earth.
Well, maybe not.
Unless we have a major disruptive shift in the thinking of the major industry Unix vendors (IBM, Sun, Hewlett Packard, and Apple), it’s going to be a long time before we see big, monolithic, proprietary Unix boxes go away completely. Because even with Linux’s promise and capabilities, there are still things that proprietary Unix does better, especially in the scalability and reliability department, even when deployed on equivalent x86 hardware.
Sure, if you follow high-performance computing’s approach, where you can cluster the hell out of a few hundred Linux boxes, you can make some pretty nice supercomputers. But when compared to all the workhorse HP 9000, SPARC, and POWER computers stuffed into umpteen corporate data centers in the wild, running mission critical databases and legacy apps, those big crazy supercomputing clusters we all love to hear about are rare successes.
