15 Mar
2017
15 Mar
'17
4:45 a.m.
On 2017 Mar 14, 10:43, Clem Cole wrote:
On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 7:35 AM, Tim Bradshaw
<tfb(a)tfeb.org> wrote:
Well, an HP Proliant (or Dell or Lenovo, etc.) machine, with its
hardware-RAID battery-backed hard disk controller, redundant power supplies,
lights-out remote access to firmware/BIOS, and 512 GB or more of RAM, is not
exactly a "white box" PC - although it is undoubtely PC-based. Those things
are mass-produced for the Windows market, but run Linux just the same.
If that system can be had, with Linux and full or source code, for 20% of
the cost of a similar "highly touted" AIX or HP/UX or SPARC machine...
well, that's pretty much a game over situation for several formerly
incumbent UNIX-branded vendors.
Linux is not Unix, and runs on cheap tin.
I believe that
the point you are making is that "white box" PC's running a UNIX-like
system - aka Linux could comes pretty close to doing what the highly touted
AIX, NCR et al were doing and were "good enough" to get the job done. And that's not a statement about UNIX as much as
a statement about, the
WINTEL ecosystem, that Linux sat on top of and did an extremely impressive
job of utilizing.
Totally agree. But it's also a statement about how when UNIX (the by hackers,
for the hackers, operating system) closed its source code, it signed its
future, unappealable, certain demise.
In "internet lingo": UNIX closed its source, that was felt as breakage, and
it was "routed around". Therefore, Linux.
Fellow list member Larry McVoy shaw it comming from the very beginning, he
has a paper about it: http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/unix/srcos.html
--
Josh Good