OT: Unix can't win

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005, Bill Vermillion wrote:
>As Bill Campbell was scratching "For a good prime call 
>391581 * 2^216193 -1" on the wall, he suddenly said:
>
>> On Tue, Jan 04, 2005, Ted B Dodd wrote:
>> >http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1746236,00.asp
>
>> That's news? Why do you think all the proprietary Unix vendors
>> other than SCO have been moving into the Linux space (or at
>> least trying to :-)?
>
>And of course that information came from a Microsoft spokesman too.
>
>> I did find the comment about the company switching from AS400s
>> to Windows 2003 server interesting, particularly since I've
>> been told by local people who Should Know(tm) that Microsoft's
>> main accounting applications still run on AS400s, and that
>> their attempts to run them under Windows have failed miserably.
>
>> ...
>
>The article also mentioned that Enterprise systems were moving from
>proprietary Unix to MS and/or Linux.   But what you would call
>an enteprise system 10 years ago is not the same as you see to day
>- when more companies are computerized.
>
>The proprietary systems are getting larger and more powerful - but
>the commodity/pc/Intel architecture systems are far more powerful
>today so some of the old systems may not be needed.

Don't underestimate the Apple X-Servers and their X-Raid boxen as well.
The X-Raid systems are more than competitive with NetApp and other network
storage, and the X-Servers have excellent Apache, java, and support for all
the standard *nix server software.  I'm not ready to stop using Linux and
FreeBSD servers in favor of Apple yet, but they are making inroads on the
Microsoft web server space.

>Now - here is a question.  On the meltdown of the airline computer
>system during the Christmas holiday does anyone know the operating
>system and/or hardware environment.
>
>The old systems such as Sabre just never failed.   My hunch [not
>proven] is that someone was trying to do something cheaper, and
>those AS-400s as you mention were awfully rugged, and the Z-series
>from IBM running the IBM OS or mutliple instance of Linux just
>don't fall over.

As a Burroughs MCP user in my main frame days, I looked on the IBM systems
as horribly inefficient and expensive (much as I view Microsoft today).
One has to remember that IBM never wrote a line of code that wasn't
designed to sell more hardware.

I have heard that the economics of running a bunch of apache servers on
virtual Linux systems on the IBM main frames is significantly less than
doing the same thing on Sun hardware running Solaris.  While clusters of
Linux boxes running under Beowulf are great for parallel computational
jobs, they aren't generally applicable for Enterprise level database and
transaction processing.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
UUCP:               camco!bill  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676
URL: http://www.celestial.com/

Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, ``I predict,
Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease''.
Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
principles or your mistress".