Subject: Re: CCL:[[email-masked]: Linux vs WindowsNT vs Windows95]

From: [email-masked] (Peter Shenkin)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 22:11:28 -0500 (EST)

> From [email-masked]  Wed Dec 30 16:52:50 1998
> >Worrying too is the move being made by SGI (who have hitherto been
> >the providers of high-end hardware for computational chemistry) to adopt
> >WindowsNT  as an OS (I think that I am reminded of the Blackwidow spider
> >which eats its mate after mating).

Bear in mind that SGI will be supporting NT at the low end but 
only UNIX at the high end.  They have also just joined LINUX International.
This might give some hint as to what their future intentions are.

> It's not just SGI. HP have also done and are doing the same thing. 

Of course; IA64 is a joint HP/Intel project and has been from the start.

> I would assume that DEC will go the same way, if they haven't already. 

Well, DEC's Alpha chip already supports UNIX, Linux, NT and OpenVMS.
Their buyout by Compaq makes them manufacturers of both Intel and
Alpha-based machines, but they show no signs of abandoning Alpha.

> This leaves, and correct me if I am wrong, SUN as the only company 
> manufacturing workstations with their own processors and OS
> Will we be all using Windows based OSs in the future?

You are wrong on several counts.  First, Sun has announced Solaris
support for IA64, though they've not announced any plans to build
machines around this chip.

Second, IBM has announced neither plans to port AIX to IA64, nor any plans
to build machines based on this chip architecture;  they seem committed
to the PPC architecture.  (The recently announced Power3 architecture
is a PPC architecture.)

Third, none of the UNIX-based companies has announced plans to abandon
UNIX.

AFAIK, the situation several years from now will be as follows,
based on what companies have announced so far.  This could change,
and in addition all this is from memory and some could be wrong
even now:

			Hardware	OS

SGI			Intel		Windows (low end), IRIX (high end)
HP			Intel		Windows / HPUX
Sun			SPARC		Solaris
IBM			PPC		AIX
DEC			Alpha		Windows / Linux / OSF-UNIX / OpenVMS

If I'm not mistaken, MicroSoft has announced that several years from
now there will be a merged product called Windows 2000 -- NT-5 will never
be released.  Thus I'm using Windows as a generic term.

Also, we may see the same sort of consolidation in the UNIX OS world that
we're seeing in hardware.  For instance, Sun is making a push for Solaris
to be the standard by supporting Intel now and planning support into
the future for IA64, even though they evidently don't plan to build
Intel-based machines.  Can Solaris, IRIX, HPUX, AIX, OSF-UNIX all survive
separately, any more than SPARC, MIPS, PA/RISC, rs/6000, ppc and Alpha could 
survive separately?  For all I know, maybe we'll see IRIX, HPUX, etc.,
disappearing in favor of Linux and one or two others, like AIX --
who knows?  (Hint -- I don't.)

Based on announcements so far, there is more consolidation on the
hardware than on the software front.  As Mark Twain cabled from
London upon reading his obituary in a New York newspaper, "The
reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."  UNIX could say the same
of various recent announcements on CCL.

In fact, we live in interesting times.  Several years ago the pundits
were predicting that we'd all be living in a Windows world today.
It didn't happen, and though some think it will still happen, what
in fact is happening is that hardware, not software, is driving
the changes that are taking place.  All of a sudden Linux is gaining
acceptance in places which previously saw Windows as their most likely 
alternative.  This is only because of fast, cheap Intel-based platforms.
It has nothing to do with Windows, and is in fact a threat to Windows.

The report here that SGI is "adopting" NT, while correct as far
as it goes, is not comprehensive.  They are *adding* NT, not deserting
UNIX.  And, in fact, though computational chemists have been slow to
adopt Windows, there has been a mass defection from UNIX to NT in
some critical scientific/engineering disciplines -- especially CAD/CAM.
SGI hopes that by bringing hardware and software excellence to an
NT platform with their VPC, they can recapture some of that
market.

In the meantime, I don't think computational chemists will have anything
to cry about, particularly if Linux should become available on that 
machine.

There are some who think UNIX is doomed and that Windows is the world
of the future.  I respect those people, and I have no problem with
chemists who want to use Windows (in its various incarnations), or with 
developers who want to write computational-chemistry software for
Windows, or with manufacturers who want to build fast machines that 
run Windows.  Though some people see whatever trend there is toward
Windows as the elimination of choice and diversity, what has really
happened so far is the opposite, at least in computational chemistry.  
For the first time, one can run "real" computation-chemistry software 
on something other than UNIX, as well as on UNIX.  To me, that sounds 
like *more* choice, not less.

On the other hand (and I'll admit to being a contrarian), I doubt the
premise that UNIX is doomed.  I think UNIX (Linux, especially) presents 
at least as great a threat to Windows as Windows does to UNIX.  However,
it is Windows that made Intel-based machines mass-market commodities,
and it is this, in turn, that drives the move away from other 
hardware architectures and that motivates the great support that
Linux (for example) provides for Intel.

	-P.

*** "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." (B. Yeltsin)***
*Peter Shenkin; Chemistry, Columbia U.; [email-masked] (212)854-5143*
* MacroModel URL: http://www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/chemistry/mmod/mmod.html  *