How many Linux/BSD users in here? (CD, desktops, RAM)

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by plwhit

I guess Solaris doesn't count....

I used to play a little with Solaris/x86 7 and 8 here at home. That was back when Sun first purchased StarOffice from StarDivision and released the multiOS 5.1a disk for Solaris/Linux/Windows and OS/2.

[scifiwestern]

Mach50,

I agree there are some instances where Unix is here to stay, but Solaris is pretty much overlooked these days except by companies that already use it. It's expensive to license and use, and now that Oracle owns Sun, some people are not sure what to make of that.

Linux is not good for everything, and as you say, how many Linux servers would it take to replace a monster Unix server?

I have often wondered why Google went the Linux route instead of with FreeBSD. They both do very well on commodity hardware. I've long said that if I ran servers, they would run FreeBSD. What's funny is that if you Google why Google didn't go with FreeBSD, or why they went with Linux, there is actually very little information on these topics. You can find quite a bit about the commodity hardware angle and the Linux cluster angle, but nothing on why not FreeBSD. They had to be looking at Yahoo when they were ramping up, since at that time, Yahoo was king.

[Mach50]

Note: Most of our Solaris UNIX servers are running heavy lifting middleware integration like Informatica, JCAPS, Oracle SOA Suite, TIBCO, Apache Camel..Not Databases..although they are run on Solaris as well.

Heavy CPU and Memory loading with ability to scale without adding network wires (aka bottlenecks) = Unix.

[Mach50]

Originally Posted by scifiwestern

Mach50,

I agree there are some instances where Unix is here to stay, but Solaris is pretty much overlooked these days except by companies that already use it. It's expensive to license and use, and now that Oracle owns Sun, some people are not sure what to make of that.

Linux is not good for everything, and as you say, how many Linux servers would it take to replace a monster Unix server?

I have often wondered why Google went the Linux route instead of with FreeBSD. They both do very well on commodity hardware. I've long said that if I ran servers, they would run FreeBSD. What's funny is that if you Google why Google didn't go with FreeBSD, or why they went with Linux, there is actually very little information on these topics. You can find quite a bit about the commodity hardware angle and the Linux cluster angle, but nothing on why not FreeBSD. They had to be looking at Yahoo when they were ramping up, since at that time, Yahoo was king.

I think you would be surprised how many companies still use UNIX. I would say amongst the large enterprise companies e.g. banks, defense, telecomm, auto, aerospace.. UNIX is the rule and Linux/BSD are the exception that you see once in a while.

[scifiwestern]

Mach50,

You constantly see these stories of Unix dying and Linux being the cause, or of companies migrating from some proprietary Unix to Linux, and how they saved millions in license fees. You wouldn't say that Linux will continue to edge out the larger, older Unices when those organizations are looking for change?

Every company I have ever worked for has made very heavy use of Linux and/or BSD in the data center. I guess I have worked for those exceptions you mentioned.

[Mach50]

The one thing I can see changing the landscape from Unix to Linux would be Cloud Technology.

[poptones]

When Google was "ramping up" Linux was a shooting star. Redhat was actually making headlines, kernel development was fast paced and diverse, lots of headlines were being made and there was lots of mainstream support to indicate it would remain a stellar contender. Remember the linux for IBM mainframes? I remember reading stories then about how some service providers had taken to buying antiquated IBM mainframe systems and running dozens of virtualized linux machines on them. BSD has always been something of an also-ran in popularity. Or not. But I can remember these very same discussions all through the 80's.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by poptones

When Google was "ramping up" Linux was a shooting star. Redhat was actually making headlines, kernel development was fast paced and diverse, lots of headlines were being made and there was lots of mainstream support to indicate it would remain a stellar contender. Remember the linux for IBM mainframes? I remember reading stories then about how some service providers had taken to buying antiquated IBM mainframe systems and running dozens of virtualized linux machines on them. BSD has always been something of an also-ran in popularity. Or not. But I can remember these very same discussions all through the 80's.

Antiquated mainframes? Mainframe hardware hasn't stopped advancing for 40+ years. It's nice to run a few hundred or thousand VMs running Linux, I'm sure...

[scifiwestern]

Mach50,

I agree completely RE the cloud computing thing. I keep seeing that some BSD-based companies are also getting into the cloud computing arena, and I really hope to see some successes there. I would really like to see FreeBSD do better in the commercial sector than it already has. I prefer the BSD license over the GPL for most things, or even the Apache license.

poptones,

People tend to say that what stopped BSD from being where Linux is now is the lawsuit from AT&T. Linux was never encumbered with any proprietary code and therefore moved ahead, as you said, in a very fast-paced and diverse manner.

I remember working with BSD Web servers running Apache. They were bulletproof. I never had a BSD server go down on me, and we had some very large, very busy websites.

I'm curious as to how much future stuff will be virtualized vs not. I think there are cases when virtualization is not ever good: firewalls, some databases, terminal servers, domain controllers, etc.

[43north87west]

Debian.