Surely you're joking Mr Maresh!!! NT a better OS than *IX for server/mainframe market - ha! (Note that I'm not addressing the desktop.)
> Fundamentally (as a programmer and decision maker) I think Unix
> in its current state is one heck of a hack job
> since its mutated over many years while NT is is pretty clean.
UNIX has mutated base on years of real world problems solve in the context of free competition and natural selection. State specific "hacks" you know of in UNIX. UNIX is not just some cobbled together spaghetti FORTRAN or assembly the coders are just trying to keep running. It is a vital, current, ongoing development, combining they new best technologies of the research/academic side with the bullet-proof robustness demanded by the comercial clients.
NT has been brought to market under tight deadlines, in the context of monopoly power, and the need to maintain it. Nobody except the UNIX side (and real users) is keeping NT honest for anything but the smallest serving applications. It has legacy issues to choke a moose, and an NIH attitude that wouldn't use a working standard (UNIX) approach (TCP,NFS,...) if it were served on silver.
Even MSNBC had to pull the plug on their NT web servers in less than a week. Loading a UNIX variant onto the self-same Pentium which flailed as NT servers.
> The downside on NT at this point is the hardware
> its available on is limited but that will change.
NT will always be a slave to Intel. If DEC lasts 2 more years selling NT Alpha's I'd be shocked. Their margins are trashed, they've slashed their R&D $'s, and their still loosing money. That's not even treading water, that's sinking.
NT's scalability is unproven, it's clustering technology is pure vapor, and it's transition to 64 bit a nightmare waiting to happen. These are critical issues in the mainframe market and have all been addressed and solved in proven ways in the UNIX world.
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Finally is the business model. In the world of big-iron, the Wintel accelarated obsolesence business model is just to expensive. With each major release of their OS they obsolete (effectively -- tried W95 on a 386 lately) previously work hosts, removing all upgrade, bugfix, and application support from them at a stroke. Can your budget afford this? Mine can't.
Speaking for myself and not my employer. |
