Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: scriptingNews outline for 5/6/99

Author:Eric Kidd
Posted:5/6/1999; 9:03:44 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 5/6/99
Msg #:5734 (In response to 5730)
Prev/Next:5733 / 5735

Unless they've changed and gotten more subtle, they don't see that they've lost the high ground in Internet servers to Linux. It'll be really hard for them to recapture it.

Linux is having a really weird effect in the Unix market. Lots of scientists and engineers run custom Unix software on workstations from Sun and HP. Microsoft wanted to replace all those workstations with NT.

Microsoft was winning for a while. The Unix guys were getting depressed, and feeling maginalized. Microsoft sales reps would waltz on in and tell the Big Cheese, "Windows NT runs on cheap Intel hardware. Sure, you'll have to rewrite all your custom software (and your scripts), but Windows is the way of the future. Don't back no losers, sir."

Then the Linux community appeared. All of sudden, half the interns and recent graduates were talking about Linux. In fact, they wouldn't shut up. (You've probably noticed this.) Even Microsoft is getting infected with hundreds and hundreds of Linux lovers.

All this enthusiasm (and third-party support) means that Linux has a future. But if Linux has a future, then so does Unix. According to the numbers I've seen, the migration from Unix to NT has more-or-less stopped. Meanwhile, Linux is hoovering up the low-end Unix workstation market and holding strong as an Internet server.

We live in interesting times. I never expected all this Linux hype, for example.

Cheers, Eric

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