The decision to stay with UNIX or to migrate to Linux is top of mind for many. So, the question becomes: When does it make sense to stay and when does it make sense to move? CIOupdate put that question to the big three UNIX vendors — IBM, Hewlett Packard (HP) and Sun — to understand how they help their customers decide where, when and if a migration makes sense.
UNIX vs. Linux – what the vendors are saying
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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UNIX is not directly mean to any operating system.
Its a set of rules which ever software obeys it can call itself UNIX, but should not register its name as UNIX. i think this is the correct explanation. Say, if a Linux Kernel obeys all rules of Unix rules, then it can call itself a UNIX. Dont Confuse things and get mess it up.!!!
Most companies that end up with UNIX will not be able to move to Linux because they rely on their UNIX vendors support lines, be it either hardware or software. The company’s staff doesn’t have what it takes to run a Linux system, as they don’t know where to turn in the case of trouble, as most like to have a phone number they can call and get trusted advice.
A large number of companies I’ve seen go outside for their IT solutions because they don’t have the internal knowledge to create their own. That’s where IBM, HP, et al, all make a killing. It’s also somewhere Linux doesn’t quite have the same trust factor, meaning if they do go for Linux it will still be with IBM, HP, et al. Most Linux business solutions, not done by the big names are looked upon as being done by cowboys, well maybe that should be no independent company has gotten a good enough reputation to be able to deliver Hardware + Software supported solutions on Linux. Emphasize the word Independent. Plus Red Hat Enterprise is now something like $3,000 so where’s the software saving if you’re going about it this way???
“Say, if a Linux Kernel obeys all rules of Unix rules, then it can call itself a UNIX. Dont Confuse things and get mess it up.!!!”
I think you miss something:
GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not UNIX”; it is pronounced “guh-noo.”
http://www.gnu.org/home.html
SO linux use GNU tools and program, so linux is not unix too…
And linux is developed under the GNU General Public License,
so definitly not, it is not a unix…
Perhaps you’re thinking of POSIX?
http://search390.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid10_gci214309,00.h…
Firstly, I know for sure that shopping around for a “right” license contract for RedHat will pay off. Also watch the version you’re buying. the $3000,- price is only for AS, and if you don’t need AS why buy it?
Secondly: you have to look how your systems are architected from a price perspective:
If propietary UNIX_vendor_ROI < Linux_distributor_ROI for your environment.
Then by all means stay with Unix, otherwise…
Also at this moment there is no really enterprise Ready system from RedHat but there is from Suse: Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9.
RedHat’s still using a 2.4 kernel and have only their RHEL 4 in beta 1 while Suse is already out there and based on 2.6 kernel. And the pricing looks better too …
.
“Migration from UNIX typically is only going to happen when a company says ‘I just want off of UNIX because I have more choice of vendors and lower hardware price points if I go to a Linux platform’,” said IBM’s Freund.”
It’s only a matter of TCO then and the network+/-sofware environment at hand .If you have good personnel the cost of support contracts can be decreased dramatically.
In some situations it could realy pay of to migrate (parts)
to linux.
This whole article is silly. First, Linux is a Unix variant, just like HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris.
Second, you’re asking three vendors under what circumstances would you recommend Linux instead of your own variant?
There is only one answer: if the customer is moving away from our Unix we’ll recommend Linux. It could be Linux on x86 or Opteron instead of AIX on POWER or Solaris on SPARC. It could be a preemptive move. But really, if a customer is happy running on Solaris or AIX it’s unlikely they’d switch over.
They’d test, they’ll evaluate, and they’ll use that as leverage in their negotiations, but nothing gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling like running on rock-solid hardware.
First, Linux is a Unix variant, just like HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris.
That’s what SCO would have you think
How many times this has to be pointed out: Linux is NOT UNIX. Linux merely a UNIX-like OS, unlike FreeBSD or Mac OS X which are true UNIX operating systems.
Linux is not and was never meant to be a UNIX variant. It was meant to be UNIX like but using GNU tools. How many UNIX’s use their own tools and programs instead of GNU ones? Yea thought that too!
The UNIX compatability aspect is provided by the POSIX compliance that has been added to Linux over the past few years, previous to that there was no real UNIX compatability outside of GNU tools and programs.
If you look at the current scene you will find that the UNIX’s are becoming Linux compatible not the other way around.
>How many times this has to be pointed out: Linux is NOT UNIX.
>Linux merely a UNIX-like OS, unlike FreeBSD or Mac OS X which
>are true UNIX operating systems.
Silly, mistake again. Linux is not UNIX, FreeBSD is NOT
UNIX. MacOSX is not UNIX.
To be UNIX, you have to go trough a big conformance test, and pay some money to the OpenGroup. The ones mentioned here, havn’t done that. There was even some fuzzing from the opengroup about the use of UNIX at the macosx website some time ago, I think they now have removed the claim about macosx _beeing_ unix.
On the other hand, this sums it up;
http://www.netbsd.org/Misc/call-it-a-duck.html
How many UNIX’s use their own tools and programs instead of GNU ones? Yea thought that too!
All of them.
Is *BSD considered UNIX???
Emphasis on may.
As others have tried to mention, “Unix” doesn’t refer to a single operating system. Unix is a trademark; any system that (1) implements the Unix standards (UNIX 98, UNIX 03, The Single UNIX Specification, etc.), (2) passes the appropriate tests, and (3) pays the appropriate licensing fees can call itself Unix.
See:
http://www.unix.org/
http://www.unix.org/questions_answers/faq.html
In particular:
http://www.unix.org/questions_answers/faq.html#15
http://www.unix.org/questions_answers/faq.html#19
So why may Linux be Unix? Linux implements the appropriate standards (or most of them, anyway), so all a Linux distribution would need to do to be Unix would be to pass the relevant tests and pay the appropriate trademark fees. That’s it.
Of course, it’s highly unlikely that any Linux distro would do that — the trademark fees are expensive ($110,000 for more than 30,000 units/year), which doesn’t quite suit a Free Software distro which can be downloaded for free (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.). It also helps that Linux users, by and large, don’t care if it’s actually called Unix; we’ll use it anyway.
Quote:
“Is *BSD considered UNIX?”
Yes it is. Berkeley university licensed Sys IV 32 Unix from USL (Unix Systems Labs, part of At&t). Berkeley made improvements to the code, hence the creation of BSD. BSD is a true unix as most of the code is Unix with improvements. Technically, freebsd, openbsd, netbsd are all *true* Unixes. Even Mac OS X is, as it’s built on top of a freebsd kernel.
Where does Linux come in? Well Linux is the kernel itself, nothing more. In conjunction with this, we use GNU tools, which are generally well improved versions of old Unix commands. The Linux kernel itself is POSIX compliant, a standard for Unixes made by The OpenGroup (which owns the trademark on the term Unix and also maintains the POSIX standards and makes decisions which operating systems are classed as Unixes). In fact, the linux kernel has been Unix98 compliant for some time now. But technically speaking, the Linux kernel is “unix-like” and not a derivative of Unix.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of BSD code within the Linux kernel, so technically, we could argue that Linux, or at least a part of the Linux kernel, is “Unix”. In all reality, the majority of BSD code is being re-worked and vastly improved by the Linux kernel developers. BSD guys hate to hear that
Microsoft also has BSD code within Windows, although it’d hate to openly admit it if it can avoid it. Microsoft even tried a Unix variant named “Xenix” in the early to mid 90s…
Have a look here:
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html
Dave
ehhh, MacOS X does not use the FreeBSD kernel, but the FreeBSD userspace. It uses a Mach kernel.
Well, you can’t ignore that *BSD is a direct descendant of Unix, Linux is a kernel made to behave like a Unix operating systems kernel (it picked up some Unix code along the way from minix and BSD I believe…)
Linux is just a kernel, then some people take the kernel and add a bit of this, bit of that, put this in with a bit of tape, change this a little, add a touch of salt and…voila! you have Gnu/Linux distribution “X”. Not a bad thing, this sort of composing and almost organic growth of Gnu/Linux distributions has it’s advantages.
FreeBSD is really designed/made as a whole, as a single operating system, I think that is also a big difference between Unix variants and Linux distros.
I guess it all depends on how you look at it
Maybe this will come in handy
, I’m sure whoever ventures in these woods will be lost forever…
http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html
From what I can see around me, _everyone_ either has a plan to migrate to Linux, or wants to as soon as certain aspects of Linux get better (e.g. HA servering). The issue is just a matter of timelines: the timeline for certain Linux technologies to come along and be mature, and the timeline for the business to do the migration.
Just remember, for many business, they don’t give a s**t about whether they run Linux, Windows, C64 or whatever: they’re concerned about solving a business requirement, and they’ll use the most appropriate (notice I did not say best) solution for the requirement. Typically, it’s irrelevant whether Solaris, HP or Linux is under the hood, so migration is not a critical issue, and thus comes secondary to other concerns (e.g. risk).
Stop aruging about what the precise definition of “UNIX” is: business don’t give a s**t either: all they care about is the question of
“my apps run on XYZ, now they need to go to Linux — what will it cost, how long will it take, and what the risks”
The only concern about “UNIX” that comes into this is the impact on porting code or applications, say, between different sh(1) or system level API — in most other vendors than Linux, IEEE POSIX SUS is the relevant spec, and in Linux, it’s also POSIX, but also LSB. Even if you move between POSIX compliant vendors, there are always risks and side-effects (try migrating from HP-UX to Solaris), so moving from once of these to Linux is really no different. Only a technical fool would take “POSIX compliance” at face value and assume that there would be no impact: in reality, it means reduced impact, but not none. And anyway, as anyone who has been around the traps in software long enough can tell you, all it takes is few “slightly differently behaving” system calls (despite both being “POSIX compliant”) to throw up product defects.
I’m guessing that most of you arguing about “UNIX” actually haven’t been involved in much corporate IT decision making.
Just for the record, I speak as someone who worked on the POSIX standard.
>Yes it is. Berkeley university licensed Sys IV 32 Unix from
>USL (Unix Systems Labs, part of At&t). Berkeley made
>improvements to the code, hence the creation of BSD. BSD is a
>true unix as most of the code is Unix with improvements.
>Technically, freebsd, openbsd, netbsd are all *true* Unixes.
>Even Mac OS X is, as it’s built on top of a freebsd kernel.
Well, the *BSD’s were once UNIX. Now, you DO realize that
UNIX has changed ? That there are conformance tests these days, and that these conformace tests cover far more than what
unix was back in the days of AT&T unix ?(and in some areas cover more than various posix interfaces as well).
You do also realize it is trademarked ?
You can’t call them UNIX(tm). http://www.netbsd.org/Misc/call-it-a-duck.html applies to all the 3 BSDs today, and many more OS’s;)
Oh;
>The Linux kernel itself is POSIX compliant, a standard for
It tries to be. No formal compiance testing has been done.
(But it would probably pass most of them..)
And posix is really divided into many sub specifications
>Unixes made by The OpenGroup
posix is “controlled” by IEEE, not OpenGroup. The OpenGroup
requires compliance for many of the posix specs to conform to
their Single Unix Specification though.
As a side note, MacOSX is built on top of a Mach kernel done monolithic, with some subsystems from FreeBSD imported.
Oops, me bad! Yes, you are both right about Mac OS X. sorry, I was in a hurry and making a very quick post due to the fact that my mind was pre-occupied and I was reading a page about an RMS being involved in a car accident…turns out he wasn’t but Hans Bakker was killed and others injured.
No formal compliance testing for POSIX has been done by the Linux kernel group, but they have made it conform to Unix 98. I trust the kernel developers know what they’re doing to make it so.
As to containing minix code, this is a NO. There is no minix code in Linux, even Andrew Tannenbaum has made this very clear. Minix inspired Linus, but that doesn’t mean he copied it.
As to BSD being a Unix, whether or not Unix is a copyright or not, it’s still a Unix system. It contains Unix code. The copyright just revolves around calling it a “Unix”. You can have a Unix system and call it xyz because of this, but simply put, it does not change the fact that it’s a Unix.
Dave
I was prepared to read several pages of requirement analysis and talk of ROI. I was surprised that the article was a 1-pager, and not a very good page at that.
Here’s a much better read:
http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&sid=55480
City of Calgary migrates from Sun/Oracle to Linux/Oracle.
Cheers
Didn’t BSD have to remove and rewrite all UNIX code in their legal battle against AT&T? I vaguely remember the history of the case, but I know BSD had a major rewrite at some point in time which slowed its process down and gave Linux a boost.
I don’t care, they are all Unix to me.
City of Calgary migrates from Sun/Oracle to Linux/Oracle
Where is Sun or Solaris ever mentioned? City of Calgary migrates from Unix/Oracle to Linux/Oracle. Could be Sun, could be IBM, could be HP, could be Bull/Siemens for all we know.
Also, does it really surprise anyone that moving from at least five year old technology to modern technology is going to show significant performance improvement? And, if you don’t change the workload at all, that you can do it with less resources. Wow, what a revelation.
Although this article is much better than the original article, it still isn’t good.
Edge of network type applications, those are workloads that have proven themselves quite well on Linux,” said Freund. “That’s where the migrations tend to occur.”
Translation: Webservers, DNS servers, firewalls, proxies etc.. What that means is Linux is a good choice for the menial task type duties. Save the expensive big iron boxes for real work like databases and applications. Which is something i agree with 100% where linux is today as an SA i would never recommend using linux for any business critical applications.
Okay Unix guys try this one.
The Open Group no longer owns the trademark Unix. check the USPTO.
BSD’s didn’t have to rewrite any code just add copyright notices. This isn’t to say they didn’t do a rewrite for other purposes.
Accordin to the Open Group Tru64, Solaris 8/9,AIX 5L are Unix98 certified. Unixware, Irix 6.5, HP-UX are Unix95 certified. SCO’s Open server is only Unix93 certified.
The BSD’s are offically Unix, neither is Linux. Both implent the Standard though, neither has put up the money to become Unix.
Didn’t BSD have to remove and rewrite all UNIX code in their legal battle against AT&T? I vaguely remember the history of the case
You’ve pretty much got it spot on. BSD Net2 had less than 200 lines of code in common with V32.
From the 3/3/1993 rulling:
The end result of Berkeley’s efforts was a product that, by all accounts, contains a very small proportion of 32V code. But this is not to say that Net2 fails to display its 32V roots. Plaintiff hired Professor John Carson to unearth these roots and, after over 400 hours of digging, Professor Carson has now identified a number of instances where 32V code is embedded in the Net2 system. (Carson Aff. at P 13.) The legal significance of this code is, of course, a matter of dispute.
To begin with, it is important to compare Net2 side-by-side with 32V. Net2 has far outgrown 32V and now weighs in at nearly ten times the size of its parent. The alleged overlaps between parent and child [*9] probably amount to less than a percent of the total. (Joint Decl. at PP 12, 13.) Indeed, ignoring header files and comments (see below), the overlap in the critical “kernel” region is but 56 lines out of 230,9995, and the overlap elsewhere is 130 lines out of 1.3 million. However, as both sides argue (but to different effect), the nature of the overlap is more significant than its size.
The full text of the rulling is at:
http://sco.tuxrocks.com/Docs/USL/Doc-92.html
(For added fun, scroll down to part E. It’s where the judge explains in great detail how and why the copyright to V32 has been lost.)
—
So, to say that BSD is a Unix, when there were only about 185 lines of common code out of 1.3 million is really stretching it.
200 lines Yeah, of course they don’t mention there the lines of code which were merged from the BSD version back into the AT&T Unix (they could because of the free nature of BSD code).
Code written by legends like Bill Joy.
http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/reads/misc/bsd.html
Unfortunately for AT&T, the version of Unix that the company was then pushing, System 5, turned out to incorporate large chunks of code originally written by BSD hackers — including the TCP/IP stack. Berkeley released all its code under an extraordinarily liberal license — basically, users could do anything they wanted with BSD code as long as they retained the University of California copyright. But AT&T had stripped the UC copyrights and begun marketing the software as its own. Hackers like McKusick were peeved.
If you don’t need high-end hardware, then you don’t need a proprietary Unix. If commodity hardware can do the job, then save money by using it. Most jobs can be done with commodity hardware; that’s why it became a commodity. Commodity hardware running commodity software solves most problems. The savings come from replacing proprietary hardware with commodity hardware.
If you need high-end hardware, then whether it runs Unix or Linux probably won’t make much difference in cost. If your current vendor has fallen behind, then it may make sense to switch, but it’s driven by hardware costs. The OS switch could be in either direction, and plays little role in the cost.
The one exception is when you need a third-party application that isn’t supported on Linux, but would run fine on commodity hardware otherwise. That’s a sign that the application vendor is asleep, and in danger of being left behind by the market. Consider switching applications. An ISV who forces you to use expensive hardware when you don’t need it won’t be around forever.
The choice between Unix and Linux rarely determines the decision. It’s almost always a side-effect of the hardware choice. That fact alone is why hardware vendors are moving to Linux, as it allows them to lower costs by collaborating on OS development without violating antitrust law. Operating systems aren’t profit centers any more, they are part of the sales expense of the hardware.
Yes i see that commodity hardware is based on the pc
architecture.
Linux or *BSD runs very well on this architecutre.
Other enterprise Unixes do not – even in this days.
Solaris on the pc architecture is not very well suported
right now.
So for high-end hardware its hard to compete with
commodity low price hardware.
I think the traditional unixes are dying slow.
200 lines Yeah, of course they don’t mention there the lines of code which were merged from the BSD version back into the AT&T Unix (they could because of the free nature of BSD code).
Code written by legends like Bill Joy.
Well, that was beyond the scope of this ruling — the regents were the defendants, not the plaintifs.
But thanks for the link, that was some interesting reading.
And yes, the times I’ve had to boot my macs into single user mode, or looked at my system logs, yup, there’s the UCB copyright and the 1993 date.
…but in some cases like tar files format or some option commands, looks like Gnu isn’t Posix neither…
Unix is practically on life support. It’s days are numbered. Long and numbered. Linux outperforms it in neary every single category. Linux is generally cheaper. src is open and free to modify for internal purposes. It supports more architectures than either Windows or Unixes could ever dream of. It supports more hardware out of the box than any other o/s.
The key area where Linux is lagging within this type of area is administrative tools. Traditional Unixes have some very nice tools that make life very easy. And there are some things that you can do on a Unix (say AIX) that you can’t do on Linux, or it’s not particularly easy or graceful. This is what’s holding Linux back.
From a desktop perspective it’s two things (well three actually):
1. poor 3rd party hardware driver support from vendors (they’re usually lazier and slower than a dead person)
2. few 3rd party applications available
3. most users are lazy and stupid and wouldn’t know what to do with administrating a Linux box – hell look at how many stuff Windows up!.
Dave W Pastern
Linux seems to kwak like any ol’ Unix to me …
~$ man intro |col -b|grep -m1 Unix |cut -d, -f1
Linux is a flavour of Unix
“I don’t particularly distinguish Unix from Linux in today’s world”
— Dennis Ritchie [0]
“Linux is the hot new thing… but it’s just another Unix.”
— Rob Pike [1]
And who knows, maybe it will become a “real” Unix some day [2].
[0] http://groups.google.nl/groups?selm=3A810A8C.FBBAD449%40bell-la…
[1] http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/175
[2] http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/2057223
development + pc hardware + new features = Linux
mission critical applications + non-pc-hardware + standards = Unix
If you need high-end hardware, then whether it runs Unix or Linux probably won’t make much difference in cost.
If you spend a ton of money on proprietary hardware why would you not run the OS designed for it rather than linux. Largely the OS cost difference is negligible. The real choice comes when you purchase PC based servers and decide to either run Linux,BSD or Solaris X86 based on the needs of the applications that will live on the server.
Unix is practically on life support. It’s days are numbered. Long and numbered. Linux outperforms it in neary every single category. Linux is generally cheaper.
ROFLMAO to equate Unix to Linux in its current state is an ignorant thing to do. You obviously haven’t worked in the Unix realm of IT.
Didn’t BSD have to remove and rewrite all UNIX code in their legal battle against AT&T?
As some other have posted since you posted this, yes, that’s essentially correct. However, not all of the old UNIX code was removed; a handful of files with the olf USL copyrights remain to this day.
I don’t care, they are all Unix to me.
I don’t care either, but from what I’ve seen, there is more BSD code floating around in the world than AT&T code. BSD is everywhere.