I’ve had an uncanny ability (through no virtue of my own) to fairly accurately predict events in technology. In 1991 I looked at my wife and told her that very soon the Internet was going to explode, and people were essentially going to be making money for breathing. (bubble) Next, i predicted set-top boxes, and then commodity priced PC’s.
Allow me to make another here for what it’s worth. (ok, so it’s 3 AM and I need something to ponder while waiting for calls to come in.)
Linux is going to end the UNIX market for just about everyone but IBM. I believe that the UNIX market will be separated into data-center or enterprise-class machines (by virtue of hardware platform alone) and small server/desktop class machines.
Ok, so maybe we’re finding that obvious. But since corporate America seems to have their eyes closed to the penguin sneaking up on their camp, I thought I’d look into the “why”.
I find that the ease of administration factor will be a big one. I’ve got quite a bit of UNIX behind me, and find Solaris, HP/UX, DG, and others to be unnecessarily obtuse. Now, the grizzled multi-year Solaris, HP, what-have-you admin will punk me for that statement, but I think I’m on to something here.
For instance, I just did a default installation of Solaris 10. The XWindows System installed at 640×480, mal-adjusted to the screen, and required significant delving into the configuration files just to get a usable desktop. However, on the same machine (in another partition) I installed a Linux distro that correctly identified all the hardware in my system, correctly configured the XWindows System, my video card, networking, and several key compnonents to the system. On installation reboot, voila! It was ready to run. I had to work on the Sun install for nearly 3 hours just to reach a place of stasis from which to begin configuration. That in and of itself is unfathomable in this day and age.
The more our job becomes one of customer service, and less of arcane hexadecimal mathematics, the less time we will have to deal with foolish configuration issues. As commercial UNIX vendors find it necessary to make the configuration of regularly used operating system features so terribly hard to manage, the penguin sneaks up with zero-configuraiton models and frighteningly accurate PnP detection routines.
IBM is one of the few that has incorporated many of these features into it’s core operating system. So easy was it for Big Blue to take that step, that the little guys (SCO) couldn’t keep up, and found it necessary to sue IBM. too little too late.
So, look in the near future for a lot more penguin feathers left on your doorstep. In fact, grab a nice cheap barebones box at your local PC retailer, and try one of the modern distributions such as Fedora Core 3, Mandrake 10, or SuSE Desktop. They’ve come so far in just the last 12 months, that I’d venture a guess that if you haven’t looked at them recently, the landscape is markedly different than what you may have experienced last time you looked.
{ 4 comments }
Aaron 01.26.05 at 8:16 am
Of course, if SCO has anything to do with it, these players will still exist but with licensing. I see what you mean, however. The dangerous slope that the xNix world must avoid is taking the same route that Microsoft did. By taking the “need for configuration” away, they have invented a product that has stupidified the computing world. It’s nice for X to configure itself properly, but what happoens when BIND autoconfigures itself… or IPtables autoconfigures itself…
Then sysadmins will slowly become stupider about configuration.
Good entry.
Aaron 01.26.05 at 9:16 am
Of course, if SCO has anything to do with it, these players will still exist but with licensing. I see what you mean, however. The dangerous slope that the xNix world must avoid is taking the same route that Microsoft did. By taking the “need for configuration” away, they have invented a product that has stupidified the computing world. It’s nice for X to configure itself properly, but what happoens when BIND autoconfigures itself… or IPtables autoconfigures itself…
Then sysadmins will slowly become stupider about configuration.
Good entry.
Jerald Sheets 01.26.05 at 4:33 pm
>Then sysadmins will slowly become stupider about configuration.
It’s already begun.
I’ve been in on interviews where UNIX guys couldn’t do the configurations “by-hand” without the aid of an interface.
Jerald Sheets 01.26.05 at 5:33 pm
>Then sysadmins will slowly become stupider about configuration.
It’s already begun.
I’ve been in on interviews where UNIX guys couldn’t do the configurations “by-hand” without the aid of an interface.
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