![]() ![]() Right? It’s not like there is a desktop Unix, is there? Of course there is: The Mac OS is now based on FreeBSD Unix, as was Solaris, which makes Apple a natural target. Sun has been undergoing dramatic changes, but while the threat to the Unix servers is now clear, there is no threat to the desktop other than Microsoft. ![]() And, lastly, Linux is trendy, where Unix has been seen as a dull legacy system for some time. It also uses the same tools, which makes it attractive to Unix administrators and technicians. Sun enjoys one huge disadvantage that Microsoft does not enjoy: Linux is a Unix derivative and, as such, it is an easy migration from Unix for administrators. Linux has the advantage that Microsoft enjoys in that it uses low-cost commodity hardware. The reason Linux took Sun out so easily is that it attacked Sun where it was the most vulnerable: in the hardware. ![]() The company even went so far as to fund OpenOffice, which further supported the belief that Linux is the future and that proprietary companies like Sun are the extinct past. Think back that, with all of the rhetoric surrounding the death of Microsoft, even Sun was focusing on Microsoft and actually helping create a future in which Sun would not exist. But while we were watching for that impact, Sun was all but gutted. The Linux threat to Microsoft has, despite all of the hype, failed to make much of a dent in Microsoft’s financial performance. Clearly, Microsoft permeates much of what we do in tech, so it’s no wonder that every time there is a change, we focus on the impact on Microsoft and attempt to forecast a demise that has been overhyped and simply not forthcoming. I’m currently reading a science fiction book that refers to Bill Gates, and I was watching a movie recently in which one of the streets is named Microsoft Way, which happened to be on the moon.
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