Pinderkent

There have been reports recently suggesting that IBM may soon acquire Sun Microsystems. For those of us in IT, acquisitions of these types are always a big deal. While Sun's server hardware is widely deployed and of great importance to many, my interest is mainly in software, so that's the area I'll focus on in this article.

In the software world, Sun is most well known for Java and Solaris. I suspect that we'll see two very different outcomes for these technologies if an acquisition does occur. It's difficult to say what will happen for some of the smaller or more obscure software products and projects that Sun was involved with, such as OpenOffice.org and NetBeans.

In terms of Java, I don't think we'd see much, if any, negative change. IBM has embraced Java, and understands its use, at least for business users. For some time now they've provided their own JDKs for a number of platforms. Java also plays a significant role in their prominent WebSphere Application Server. They're actively involved with developing new Java-based technologies. And their involvement and contributions to Eclipse have had a huge impact within the development community.

In some respects, such an acquisition may be quite good for Java. Although known for generally being more conservative, IBM does have the resources needed to make the changes to the Java language and platform that are necessary for it to compete better with Microsoft's .NET platform. We need to see half-baked technologies like JavaFX and JavaFX Script discarded. But we also need to see functional or object-functional languages like Clojure and Scala perhaps brought in as core components of the platform.

If IBM put their weight behind such technologies, we very well may see more developers be willing to adopt them. As we move into a world with massively multi-core CPUs, we will need to make use of functional programming techniques to write scalable software that effectively uses such hardware. Given IBM's (and Sun's) emphasis on high-end server hardware, a willingness to adopt and support Scala and Clojure could really put them in the lead in this area.

Things don't look as good in terms of operating systems. As basically everyone in the industry knows, Sun has offered Solaris for years, while IBM has offered AIX. While both high-end UNIX-based operating systems, I'm not certain if they could be successfully integrated. At a technical level, I suspect they are just too different.

If an acquisition were to take place, I imagine that Solaris would be supported for some time, but eventually deprecated in favor of AIX. This would be similar to what happened to Tru64 UNIX when HP and Compaq merged. If I recall correctly, HP originally planned to transition Tru64's more advanced features to HP-UX, but this didn't end up happening, for the most part. Now Tru64 is essentially on its last legs.

Given that Sun has released much of the Solaris source code over the past few years in the form of the OpenSolaris project, it seems likely that it will live on in at least some form. A truly self-sustaining community, akin to the Ubuntu project for Linux never seemed to develop, however. So it's difficult to say how much, if any, innovation we'd see out of the OpenSolaris project were Sun no longer supporting it.

Another interesting area to consider is that of the MySQL-related technologies and business that fell into Sun's fold with their acquisition of MySQL AB at the beginning of 2008. Given IBM's pivotal role in the development of relational databases, and their offering of the very solid and professional DB2 family of database products, MySQL's future in such an organization seems quite limited. Even within the open source community, MySQL is generally considered an inferior RDBMS. I really can't see it having much of a future, especially with Marten Mickos and Monty Widenius out of the picture.

We'll just have to wait and see what comes out of these rumors. But in terms of the software world, such an acquisition could have some significant impacts. They'd mainly be felt by those working with and developing enterprise systems, but may still be noticed by others, including, for example, OpenOffice.org users. So I see such an acquisition as potentially being good for Java, but less so for the Solaris, and potentially disastrous for MySQL.

Kubuntu 7.10 RC was announced as available several days ago. I installed it immediately, and I have to say, I'm very impressed! Although it's still just a release candidate, it has all of the necessary ingredients: stability, responsiveness, innovation and coherency.

While other articles will no doubt focus on the many benefits that Kubuntu 7.10 will bring, I'd like to look forward into the future. Namely, this is because of the upcoming release of KDE 4, which is currently planned for December 11, 2007.

Kubuntu 7.10 RC includes KDE 3.5.7. This is the latest in a long line of KDE 3 releases. The initial KDE 3.0 release was over half a decade ago, on April 3, 2002. Even the KDE 3.5 branch initially dates from November 29, 2005. But during this timeframe we've seen much work done on KDE 4.

It's without doubt that KDE 4 will be a major revolution within the open source desktop environment world. The benefits we will see will be enormous:

• Qt 4: An already-responsive desktop environment gets even faster!
• HIG: Greater UI consistency.
• Oxygen: SVG-based icons and visuals.
• Plasma: Combining the desktop, panel and more.
• Phonon: A modern multimedia framework.
• Solid: Better network and portable devices support.
• Decibel: Communication protocols galore.
• Kross: Easier scripting integration.
• Dolphin: A new file manager.
• Sonnet: Spellchecking with automatic language detection.

What's more, we haven't seen comparable innovation from the GNOME developers. When the final release of KDE 4.0 comes around, I don't think that GNOME will really be able to compete any more. It will likely take years for them to catch up, at which time KDE will likely have gotten even further ahead, in terms of quality, capability and usability.

So we may be at a turning point. If the next release of Kubuntu is based around KDE 4, a shift may start away from GNOME-centric Ubuntu, towards KDE-centric Kubuntu. Were Ubuntu to move away from GNOME towards the more capable KDE 4, that would put the Kubuntu project in an awkward position. In essence, they would make themselves irrelevant due to the very act of basing their offering on the best product available.

However, it would also signify a major accomplishment within the open source community, with regards to maturity. KDE 4 will really become a platform that can compete with the likes of Windows Vista and Mac OS X. While desktop environments like GNOME and XFCE would always have their niche, KDE 4 has the potential to become the first open source desktop environment to see a far more widespread usage. This is a very important milestone for the entire community, and also the industry as a whole.

Regardless of what actually happens, the next six months will be very exciting times within the open source desktop environment arena. The impact of KDE 4 will no doubt also be felt by many of the other Linux distributions, as well as the broader BSD and Solaris communities. These sort of widely-felt changes are rare, usually limited to the likes of X.org and GCC. Interesting times lay ahead, my friends!

Today I was reading about the "Reduced Functionality" capability of Windows Vista. According to that article, Microsoft has now enabled this capability, which renders a "nongenuine" copy of Windows essentially unusable.

Frankly, I just can't see why anybody would want to use Windows Vista. I'm sure the questionable nature of this sort of functionality is quite obvious to most. And it's also pretty obvious how the misidentification of an installation as being "nongenuine" could be quite disasterous. A completely legitimate installation of Vista locking up accidentally because of such functionality could cost an individual or business a great deal of time and money.

Beyond that, we have readily-available, high-quality alternative operating systems that don't bother with such nonsense. These days, Ubuntu provides a very usable desktop or workstation OS. There are other Linux distributions that are more suited for server-oriented tasks. FreeBSD is another alternative for desktop/workstation and server usage. Of course, there are also NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD. And we can't forget OpenSolaris.

Using such systems is just the safest thing to do. First of all, you get access to virtually all of the software used on such a system. Even if you have no interest in modifying or redistributing it, having the code available allows for inspection, should that be necessary.

The redistribution of such software is usually allowed, and often encouraged. With ISO images typically available for (free) download from the distribution or project itself, one has to worry little about accidentally obtaining pirated software.

And in terms of functionality, the essentials are all there. For many people, the transition would be quite easy. Those who use software like Firefox and OpenOffice.org on Windows could immediately use those same products on Linux, BSD or OpenSolaris.

The hardware support Linux offers today is excellent. For the past few years, I've encountered far more hardware supported out-of-the-box by Linux than I have with the Windows installations I have performed. The need for installing a separate driver is often nil.

So when it comes down to it, it really just doesn't make much sense why any person or organization would subject themselves to Windows Vista. The benefits just aren't there, and the dangers appear to be many. And what's more, there are free alternatives out there that can perform the same tasks just as well, if not better. It's really a no-brainer: Linux, OpenSolaris and/or BSD is the way to go!

Those of us who are serious users of UNIX or UNIX-like systems have no doubt looked at ��ric L��v��nez's excellent UNIX Timeline at some point. If you haven't, I suggest that you do! The amount of information it offers is truly spectacular. But looking at it today, I came to a somewhat sad realization: the UNIX world has become quite homogenized.

This history of UNIX starts out in September of 1969. From then until after the release of UNIX TSS Fourth Edition in November of 1973, we see no forking or derivation. Between Fourth Edition and Fifth Edition, we see some forking starting to take place, in the form of PWB/UNIX and MERT. We witness more and more branching, up until 1981.

It is around that point that I think UNIX really starts to enter a 20-year period of significant growth and "individuality". Between 1980 and 1984, we see some pretty significant divergence. First, many of the major UNIX variants begin their lives. XENIX starts on August 25, 1980, while 4.0BSD is released in October of 1980. UNIX System III comes out in November of 1981. QUNIX (the precursor to QNX) hails from 1981, as well. HP-UX starts its life in 1982. Two of the most important UNIX variants begin at this time, too: SunOS 1.0 is released in February of 1982, followed by UNIX System V in January of 1983.

The period between 1984 and 1989 is truly a glorious time in the history of UNIX. SunOS blossomed during this period, with SunOS 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 being released. We have the major 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD releases. Mach arises in 1985. The roots of AIX go back to 1986, which is also when IRIX began. With an impact still felt by Mac OS X users today, we have the release of NeXTSTEP 0.8 on October 12, 1988, and the release of NeXTSTEP 1.0 on September 18, 1989. Although not derived from UNIX itself, the development of Minix started during this time period (and we all know the impact it would later have on Linus and Linux).

Mind you, those are just the variants that ended up having the most significant impact on the UNIX computing world. As is clearly visible on the timeline, there were numerous other variants, with many focusing on a specific platform or domain. Regardless, what we notice is that this was an era of growth and innovation. There was a lot of diversity.

This trend continues into the 1990s. We have major events like the beginning of Linux in 1991, and the release of Solaris 2.0 in July of 1992. UnixWare came out in November of 1992. NeXTSTEP continued to evolve. On the BSD front, we see NetBSD, BSD/OS and FreeBSD arise. But now notice the trend on the timeline; we see far less sharing of code and ideas between the variants. This is especially evident between 1998 and 2001.

At this point, most of the activity is between Darwin, Mac OS X and Mac OS X server. We see some transfers of code and concept, such as XFS from IRIX to Linux. But otherwise, there's little interaction between the different variants.

Things are really starting to look bland between 2004 and today. In terms of actively-developed UNIX or UNIX-like operating systems, we're down to only a handful. The BSD world is perhaps the most diverse, where we have NetBSD, PC-BSD, DragonFly BSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Other than that, the most active variants are Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, Minix and AIX. IRIX has become mostly irrelevant, as have Tru64 UNIX, OpenServer and UnixWare.

We will have to wait and see what the future will bring. But it looks like it will likely be pretty isolated to only a few major UNIX or UNIX-like systems: FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Linux. Although activity will continue on HP-UX and AIX, no doubt, their influence may very well be minimal.

I have mixed feelings over how things have evolved. On one hand, we do have more powerful features concentrated in a smaller number of systems. And these systems are fairly prevalent, and well-constructed. But the diversity of the 1980s and early 1990s brought upon change and innovation at an exciting pace. A balance between the two extremes would likely be best, although it is suspect whether we will ever get there.

Sun's Solaris operating system has numerous useful features that really aren't found in other OSes, including Linux. Every so often I hear a Linux user say, "I'd love to be able to use that feature of Solaris!" One example is in this Slashdot comment, where the poster wishes that there was a ZFS-like filesystem for Linux.

Now, I don't blame him for a second for wanting the features of ZFS on Linux! ZFS is a truly remarkable filesystem, with just the kind of functionality we need these days. The "What is ZFS?" page does an excellent job of describing ZFS, and the many benefits it offers.

But I also think that if you want some feature of Solaris on Linux, maybe you'd be better off just using Solaris in the first place. These days, it's readily available. There's even source code available through the OpenSolaris project. Although the hardware support is lacking in some areas, it is often more than suitable.

There is much in the way of open source software available for Solaris. The Blastwave.org Community Software for Solaris site is one such source. Of course, you can also compile the software yourself in many cases.

Licensing issues aside, porting something like ZFS to Linux is a major undertaking. There is the ZFS on FUSE effort. So in the end, just using Solaris may really be the best option.