Re: is Unix dead?

spunkanado (tomwhore@interport.net)
Mon, 2 Feb 1998 14:23:14 -0500 (EST)


Since entering in to the wonderfull world of systems and computers I have
heard the death knells for many things. CPM is dead VMS is dead OS2 is
dead James Brown is dead .....

Sometimes folks are right, in the case of os2 it was less like death and
more like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.( a great name for a Norwegian
Death Metal band if ever I heard one, and I have.)

But UNix?

If there has been one steady pillar of sameness in all my dealing with
computers and systems, in all the universities I pretended to attend so
that I can gloum up net time, of all the claims made and claims let
drop...the Death of Unix has got to be the one that gets raised the most
and droped in due course.

Mostly, from the past patterns of this deabtes life, it seems to be some
one who is touting a New OS, something radical and neat and keen and can
clean your oven with little or no fumes straighten your collar whiten and
brighten two for a dollar two for a dllor step right up..step right up.

The main harkers of such news are the modern day barkers of the
commerical OS wars who wear the pretty brooks brother clown suit and hold
CONFERENCES on such things like

"Os System compatability and the interoperability of the emerging growth
industries as tehy impact on your buttucks numbing job"

and

"Wow, are we ever gooona make you look good in front of your boos with our
flash whiz bang that niether you nor your boss will know how it works but
will feel great prode and other amounts of woodydom so much so that you
will give yourselfs big fat raises as your mis staff turns over faster
than a 14 year old boy in a turkish prison."

Yea, follow the money trail on this one. who says its dead? The folks that
are looking to fill in its massive yet some how unapproachable
market share. These folks look at Unix with disdain, with fear even. You
see to thes folks unix is not something they can simply Look Like THey
Know what they are douing. With unix you realy cant fake it.

Nt and the like, you can fake as easy as a presidential intern. Look at
who these folks are seeling to, look at the level of tech they realy need
to know...and then loook at what it takes to get something unix sold into
a company. For the most part your gonna have to deal with techs, and this
means not just spitting outthe precanned speil or repeating wha you heard
on Computer Chronicles.

Sales folks and ad men will stick to and rally for the things they can
seel tot he non tech managers, and this turns out to be a lot of who buys
into the pre made nirvana sales pitch of 95, nt etc.

The real boom for unix is going to happen when one of two things clicks
into place. Its wither gonna be that the Tech Crowd will be able to deal
with the salespitch, or that the knownothing managers will flood into the
unix held bastions and bring to them thier untech skills at buying
anything that makes em look like the next best thing to sliced hash
browinies.

I bet yall know which is comming into being.