Jerry,

>>Jerry,
>>
>>>>>That question used to be asked a lot, four or five years ago. But, as things have progress, Linux has swept the Unix world by storm and now the question is: "Does that version of Unix run Linux apps?" IMO, it is only a matter of time before Linux replaces all versions of Unix.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>IBM certainly seems to be more interested in selling Linux than AIX though I don't completely understand why. There is a funny TV ad for IBM Linux servers where a manager thinks that an entire roomfull of servers has been stolen. Actually, they have all been replaced by a single IBM mainframe running Linux.
>>>>
>>>>Is Linux Unix? Seems like a moot question. Richard Stallman believed it was important to claim that GNU which predated Linux is not Unix. GNU = Gnu's Not Unix.
>>>>
>>>>http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
>>>>
>>>>I'm sure this was just to avoid royalty issues.
>>>>
>>>>I don't think there is any major technical reason to claim that Linux is not Unix.
>>>>
>>>>Peter Robinson
>>>
>>>I don't think so either. Apparently, neither do many of Sun's customers. Sun is the one feeling the heat from all the migrations to Linux. Even giving away Solaris isn't helping. Sun has no desktop monoply to leverage, and StarOffice isn't pulling folks away from MS Office to SO on Solaris as fast as Sun would like, but it is giving folks a reason to move to Linux. What do you think, five more years and Sun is history?
>>>Jerry
>>
>>It's awfully hard to be a hardware-only company and survive that's for sure. I figure they'll need to embrace Linux and add value that is Sun-specific in the hope that that will keep folks buying their hardware. However, the minute anyone else can provide their functionality for a lower price...
>
>It seems to me that MainFrames are making somewhat of a comeback. When a single Z90 can host 4,000+ virtual Linux images, each behaving as if it were a PC by itself at decent speed, then network support, backup and maintenance almost become non-issues. The number required to maintain it are far less than Novell or WinXX servers feeding the same number of users.

Indeed.. Interesting approach, and given the strict downtime rules for mainframes I'd think that maintenance would be more a matter of keeping track of what's installed than anything else. <g>

>
>Also, I still see Microsoft creating a PassPort PC - one which doesn't contain HDs or floppies, or hardware to connect them. Just a CHIP that is coded to connect to PassPort and download a BIOS and OS. An LCD, mouse, Printer, Keyboard, all through a USP. That kind of hardware will seriously upset hardware vendors and software vendors.

Really? They've been good at building hardware in a few selected areas like mice, CP/M cards <g>, keyboeards and so forth so I guess I wouldn't be surprised to see them developing a virtual machine... I think you're at least partially correct about upsetting hardware vendors but folks like Intel will most likely like it as it moves the support expenses to Microsoft and away from them..