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Re: off off topic: Unix lives or dies?



Alexandre Khalil wrote:
>   I am especifically interested in multi-processor boards: our department
> is buying Sun 2 CPUs boxes but they are very pricey ($20k) even though
> they are at the bottom of the Sun scale.
>   Already dual PPro boards are very cheap: $1500 with two 200Mhz/256k.
> The quads are still too expensive: the lowest I could find was about
> $7500 -though the CPUs might be 512Ks-.
>   I am suggesting giving a try at a dual PPro with a large amount of RAM
> -256/512Megs- to experiment building a CPU farm on the cheap using Linux
> of course.

Then would you look at dual-Alpha boards?

> >> And now that NT isn't as portable as it wanted to be (that was one
> >> potential advantage of it over UNIX), UNIX might survive yet.
>                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>   With the explosion of Linux, this is guaranteed.

Nothing is guarenteed - that's both for the good (NT's failure) and
for the bad (Linux' success).

>   Solaris is unlikely to vanish.  NeXT will look very different in a few
> decades.  Irix has a secure niche.

I would hope you are right, but I'm affraid you aren't looking
far enough.  Again - everything is possible.

Especially that SGI used to dominate the graphics world and now
Pentium-MMX is one of the steps (not the first) taken by the
small-computers industry towards munching away SGI's niche.

>   I really see Linux as being the dominant O/S in the coming years: true
> Windozes will continue to be here but Linux like Apple Macintosh produces
> true believers.

I hope you are right.

--Amos

--Amos Shapira                  | "Of course Australia was marked for
                                |  glory, for its people had been chosen
amos@dsi.co.il                  |  by the finest judges in England."
                                |                         -- Anonymous


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