I have talked before about what I call 'Linuxification', that other Unix-like systems become more GNU/Linux-like all the time - i.e. with more and more open source components, and that in the twenty-first century innovation is increasingly coming from Linux to Unix, rather than the other way around as it was throughout the 1990s.

There are many reasons for this, the Linux tools are open-source so quick and easy to include, they often have more developers, they often have more efficient code because they have adopted Unix-like functionality without the problems of a 30-year old codebase and so on. These are all 'quality' reasons, but there are other reasons beyond quality.

User comfort in Linuxification

Looking at the Unix-like world as a whole, there is now at least one order of magnitude between the percentage of users that are on Linux and those that use a classic Unix variant like AIX, HP-UX, Unixware, IRIX, or whatever, some would argue for two orders of magnitude. Therefore, people now are far more likely to encounter Linux before they encounter any classic Unix variant.

I talk to many other Linux users on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. One thing that regularly comes up in conversation is when a longtime Linux user first finds that they have to use a Unix system. Whether it be differences in shell behaviour, tools, applications, or whatever, any differences are often interpreted as a problem rather than a different way of doing it. They are seen as bugs not features.

This is part of human nature, thinking that what you know must be best, i.e. being conservative until proven wrong, is a primitive survival strategy. While perhaps useful as a fallback strategy for a paleolithic Hunter- gatherer, it is often a disadvantage when it comes to interacting with technology.

However, for Unix vendors, they need as many customers as possible, so the commercial landscape requires their systems to be easily usable by people who have used desktop Linux at home and Redhat at work. So it is a market advantage to be as Linux-like as possible.

Virtual Terminals

One superficial example I came across is that most Linux distributions will have six virtual terminals loaded by default as well as the X server. The virtual terminals are accessible by pressing Alt and the F1 to F6 keys, while the X Server is accessible by Alt+F7.

Note that often these days, while in the X server, you will normally have to use Control+Alt+Function key as the Alt+Function key is often assigned to other things.

A thread on the OpenSolaris forum says that Solaris does not have the ability to have virtual terminals and the GUI at the same time, I have used Solaris before without noticing that. I do know that Mac OS X also does not have this ability. I do not know much about other Unicies or BSDs handle this because I have mostly encountered these other Unix-like operating systems in the context of servers, rather than being physically in front of them.

Anyhow, the thread points out that there is a team working on bringing the Linux approach to Solaris. Here is how it will work:

> # Users have one system (hard) console (/dev/console) and six virtual consoles now, switching between them by pressing "Alt + F#" (# is 1 to 6). > > # On x86, you can switch between consoles and Xorg: > > From consoles to Xorg: press "Alt + F7" > > From Xorg to virtual consoles: press "Ctrl + Alt + F#" (# is 1 to 6)

Sound familiar? It should do, it is the exactly the same as the Linux way that I described above. An instance of the another Unix-like system becoming more Linux-like all the time.

Anyone for Motif

A more significant example of Linuxification is on the graphical Desktop. Motif was designed as the next generation graphical toolkit for Unix-like systems, it forms the basis of Unix graphical desktops such as the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and 4Dwm. CDE is the Unix flashship desktop environment.

Suppose that your closest friend's girlfriend has a single best friend. Your buddy has set you up with this single girl. So you go to the blind date, but within a few seconds, you find that she is completely shallow and her personality is obnoxious. Because you do not want to offend your buddy, you have to try to politely sit there through dinner while secretly plotting to escape as fast as you can.

Almost any long term Linux user that is only used to GTK or QT, when presented with a CDE desktop or program based on Motif, has a similar reaction, somewhere in the range from politely putting on a brave face to disbelief, shell shock or violent seizures.

Is anyone still using CDE?

KDE and GNOME both came up through the Linux and Open Source world. KDE was started by Linux users who wanted a better graphical interface for their desktops while GNOME was started as a GNU Project. Looking back at decade-old screenshots of early versions of KDE and GNOME, they can look pretty bad, but they have moved with the times. Development of CDE has been neglected to the point of death. It also seems that the only systems using CDE as the default are Unix systems that have an unsure future or have retreated into one or two specialised uses.

IBM has become a major Linux vendor, so how strong is IBM's commitment to maintaining its own Unix in the long run, is an open question. A bet for AIX is a bet against the continuing dominance of x86, even if big-Endian makes more sense academically, in the past, everyone who has bet against x86 has lost. AIX is a server operating system, you buy an IBM PowerPC server and ask for AIX. If anyone runs it as a graphical workstation I have no idea, but CDE is still the default but with GNOME and KDE both available.

HP-UX still ships with CDE as default. HP is now a major Linux vendor as well, so same the same question as with IBM, how long will HP-UX go on for?

HP do not even seem to be using HP-UX themselves, the HTTP headers of the HP- UX webpage report that the HP-UX website is hosted on a Microsoft-IIS/6.0 server. HP were supposed to move to GNOME in 2001, but have not managed it yet, presumably they have long given up as a Desktop/Workstation system or as a web server.

Interestingly HP cite the fact you can use open source software on HP-UX as one of the main selling points. So it seems that even the proprietary Unix vendors can notice where the wind is blowing. I am not sure the other proprietary Unix vendors are worth mentioning since their market share is so small as to be non-measurable and they have not created any new innovations for a long time.

By the way, HP-UX is also a bet against x86. Manufacturing of PA-RISC, the traditional HP chip, has ceased. Itanium, HP's high end server chip manufactured by Intel, has so far been a bit of a damp squib. For all their flaws, commodity x86 and AMD64 are the success story of the 21st Century.

So moving on to the free world. BSDs come without default desktops but you can stick KDE or GNOME on it. Solaris' default desktop is now based on GTK and GNOME. Linuxification of the Unix-like desktop is more-or-less total.

ISO Downloads

The traditional way of getting Linux is to download or swap CD Images ('ISO's), free at the point of use, and install it on to commodity hardware. The traditional way to get Unix is to buy the specialised hardware from IBM, HP, SUN or whoever with everything pre-installed.

Of course, Linux has been available pre-installed on servers and workstations for several years and more recently, Linux is increasingly available on Desktops and Laptops too. Everyone knows that. However, another less cited trend is that the surviving Unix vendors are increasingly becoming more like Linux in this respect too, with ISO downloads to the general public.

Solaris has been rejuvenated in its new Open Source incarnation, so offering free ISO downloads fits in naturally with that image. However, AIX is also now offering the latest version, AIX 6 beta, as a free download, those who get it "will not receive traditional support from IBM. Instead, you access a Web forum to discuss questions and issues" (source). Sounds like the Linux distro model to me, a community supported free version and a 'for money' company version where you get official support in return for your money.

The end of Unix?

There are lots of other examples we could have looked at such as databases, web servers, file servers, compilers, command-line tools and so on. However, the general trend is the same.

In the 1980s there was a dozen or so proprietary Unix vendors, but many of them died off as Windows exploded in the early 1990s. As Linux took off in the later 1990s and in the 2000s, it has effectively split Unix into two camps. Solaris, BSDs and Linux are becoming increasingly similar, while everyone else cannot seem to keep up the pace of innovation and development of the free/open source operating systems on one hand and proprietary Microsoft Windows on the other.

For these proprietary Unix vendors, most seem to have entered a state of graceful decline, (or ungraceful decline in the case of SCO Unixware).

Is the Open Group too closed?

I was looking at the open group webpage, while Unix is not mentioned at all on their front page (at least today), they have a separate Unix website. Here they specify what they consider to be Unix or not Unix.

This seems to be a classic case of the process (bureaucracy?) detracting from the overall objectives. The overall objective is that you can write a program, and the source code will compile and run on all Unix-like systems without problems, this allows a dynamic market in programs for Unix systems and helps everyone in the Unix-like world. A system that meets that is worth being branded 'UNIX'. They have a page which talks about `BSD and Linux`_ and the fact that they are not registered as 'UNIX'.

The process for registration is that the owner submits the operating system and a wad of cash to the Open Group and they test it and say whether it meets the standard of 'UNIX' (i.e. do the programs compile and run on it without problems). The problem in that no one can really talk for Linux or BSD, no one organisation really 'owns' them in the traditional sense.

The joke of course is that the vast majority of Unix-like systems deployed in the last few years are based on Linux or BSD. So 90% of the Unix-like world is not branded as UNIX. This gets even more farcical because commercial realities that follow from this dominance dictate that no one in their right mind is going to create Unix software that cannot run on Linux or BSD, it is commercial suicide.

If I was running the Open Group, I would be seriously worried about becoming irrelevant, and I would consider testing a major Linux distribution's and FreeBSD's compliance pro bono (for the good of it - i.e. for free). Obscurity is worse than taking some short term costs on the nose, because obscurity is devaluing the UNIX trademark. If most of the certified UNIX distributions effectively disappear from any significant place in the market (i.e. less than 1% each), and the dominant players are not certified, then the UNIX trademark is worthless.

Maybe the Open Group just does not care about UNIX any more, they have a finger in the 'Linux Standard Base' (LSB) pie which seems to be taking the place of the 'Single UNIX Specification'. Write an application for the LSB and it will work on any Linux distribution, but not necessarily anything else, helping to further marginalise the traditional Unix distributions.

Conclusion

Open source operating systems, that do almost everything in software on cheaper commodity (=x86) hardware has won out, the future of specialised proprietary architectures with specialised proprietary UNIX systems looks pretty dicey. The Open Group's concept of a single UNIX, and UNIX in general, is now faced with the realities of their slogan, namely "Live free or die".