Very Computer

   http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2100182,00.html
   ZDNet |UK| - News - Story - HP brings Unixes together

   HP brings Unixes together

   15:29 Friday 30th November 2001
   Martin Veitch, IT Week

  "The HP-UX system will form the bulk of the post-merger company's Unix
   server offering

   Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX is to continue to form the bulk of the firm's
   Unix offering after the acquisition of Compaq is completed next year.
   This will mean upheaval for firms using Compaq's Tru64 Unix as
   elements of Tru64 are added to HP-UX and, as previously announced, the
   AlphaServer family is slowly phased out.

   HP and Compaq said at the announcement of their merger agreement that
   they would combine their Unix operating systems, but declined to
   detail how that would be achieved. However, in an exclusive interview,
   a senior Compaq executive said that HP-UX will form the new HP's core
   offering, bolstered by Tru64 clustering and other high-end features
   taken from Compaq's software.

   The target platform will be Intel's Itanium processor rather than the
   proprietary HP PA-Risc and Compaq Alpha processors, both of which are
   being phased out.

   "Integrating HP-UX with Tru64 gives us a strong market share," said
   Rich Marcello, vice president and general manager of Compaq's High
   Performance Systems unit. "Tru64 clustering technology will be merged
   on top of HP-UX. You will be running on industry-standard platforms
   and every ISV (independent software vendor) will want to come to
   that," he added.

   Marcello said that as well as the TruClusters technology, Tru64's
   support for Internet Protocol version 6.0 (IPv6) and advanced file
   system capabilities will be grafted onto HP-UX.

   Third-party software support is critical, argued Marcello. "The thing
   we want to guarantee is a large ISV portfolio so we're (combining) the
   second most popular Unix (HP-UX) and the fourth most popular Unix
   (Tru64)," he commented.

   The combination of Unixes will compete against IBM's AIX 5L and the
   established market leader, Sun's Solaris. Although Linux is based on
   Unix code, it lacks the workload management and 128-processor
   scalability of Unix versions that have been developed over a far
   longer period of time.

   Marcello would not say whether HP or Compaq server architectures will
   be selected as the flagship of the new company, citing regulatory
   restrictions pending the merger's completion. However, he said that
   the new company's industry-standard system architecture and Unix focus
   will have a particular attraction for Oracle and its customers given
   Oracle's competition with IBM and Microsoft on database and line-of
   business application fronts.

   "IBM (and Microsoft are not) going to do well with Oracle because they
   fundamentally have aggravated it, and the same with BEA (with which
   IBM competes on middleware)," Marcello said."

--Jerry Leslie

Does anyone think that things like Tru64 clustering can be integrated
on top of HP-UX? Politically, it will I'm sure be treated as HP-UX, but
they would have to be certifiably insane not to keep the Tru64 kernel.

Quote:>    Marcello said that as well as the TruClusters technology, Tru64's
>    support for Internet Protocol version 6.0 (IPv6) and advanced file
>    system capabilities will be grafted onto HP-UX.

More kernel-level stuff.

Quote:>    Third-party software support is critical, argued Marcello. "The thing
>    we want to guarantee is a large ISV portfolio so we're (combining) the
>    second most popular Unix (HP-UX) and the fourth most popular Unix
>    (Tru64)," he commented.

Third-party software depends on an HP-UX API, not an HP-UX kernel.

Quote:>    The combination of Unixes will compete against IBM's AIX 5L and the
>    established market leader, Sun's Solaris. Although Linux is based on
>    Unix code, it lacks the workload management and 128-processor
>    scalability of Unix versions that have been developed over a far
>    longer period of time.

"Linux is based on UNIX code"?

--
 `-_-'   In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva.
  'U`    "A well-rounded geek should be able to geek about anything."

         Disclaimer: WWFD?

<*>

any day now, at&t, caldera, USL and various holders of UNIX licencing
will be showing up to collect their royalty payments from the installed
linux base.

</*>

-jason

I tend to agree.. HP=UX has a much larger following than does Tru64, but
Tru64 achieves higher analyst ratings and has a more modern, modular
kernel. Failure to capitalize on this will make life very good for IBM and
Sun.

On 1 Dec 2001 06:07:25 GMT

Neat. Proprietary to Intel == non-proprietary. What a bunch of schmucks.

--
Stefaan (GPG Fingerprint 25D8 551B 4C0F BF73 3283 21F1 5978 D158 7539 76E4)
--
"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which
 could only have originated in California." --Edsger Dijkstra

Umm, note who said "proprietary" here. It wasn't Intel or Compaq. ;-}

On Mon, 3 Dec 2001 09:10:03 GMT

That's why I left the zdnet link in there. The trade press (or what's left
of it) is truly horrible these days, by treating all that's Intel/Microsoft
as non-proprietary, good and desirable.

For instance, the December issue of Personal Computer World has a review of
an AMD based system that comes with StarOffice. In the text, the reviewer
(a Mark Walsh) says:

"Aside from the disappointing inclusion of the free, if perfectly
 competent, Star Office..."

and the overview box states:

" CONS: {price}... lack of decent office software"

How something can be judged "perfectly competent" and "not decent
office software" in the same review beats me.

Later in the issue, a system that includes Lotus Smartsuite Millenium
gets the following rap (from the same Mr Walsh):

"Lotus Smartsuite Millenium is included. Again, this is a shame, as we
 would rather have seen Microsoft Works Suite or even Microsoft Office
 bundled."

The same issue also reviews XP, and even though in the Reviews section
intorduction a Mr Jenkins (Reviews Editor) notes that ZoneAlarm and McAfee
AntiVirus don't run on XP, he lets Mr Gann get away with the following
beauty:

"So the big question is `should you upgrade?' If you're running Windows 9x
 or Me, the answer is an unequivocal yes, because you gain a heck of a lot."

And lose your protection against virusses and Internet crackers...

The real shame is that IT decision makers seem to drink from the
same fountain of stupidity.

--
Stefaan (GPG Fingerprint 25D8 551B 4C0F BF73 3283 21F1 5978 D158 7539 76E4)
--
"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which
 could only have originated in California." --Edsger Dijkstra

Quote:> "So the big question is `should you upgrade?' If you're running Windows 9x
>  or Me, the answer is an unequivocal yes, because you gain a heck of a lot."
> And lose your protection against virusses and Internet crackers...

XP is NT based. NT has "firewalling" built in.

As for viruses, the best protection against them is not running Outlook
or Internet Explorer. :->

--
 `-_-'   In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva.
  'U`    "A well-rounded geek should be able to geek about anything."

         Disclaimer: WWFD?

The basic port filtering has been around since the "Advanced
Routing Pack" for NT 4, although I know very few people who use
it, and I've never put it through serious abuse.

The Windows 2000 stuff compares poorly with the commercial end
user firewall products like the one mentioned, so if it hasn't
been revamped it may be a step backwards in that area. Whilst
not being 100% backwardly compatible with Win 9X may create
transition problems, it is probably a good thing in terms of
removing fundamental problems which were in those earlier OSes.

Quote:> As for viruses, the best protection against them is not running Outlook
> or Internet Explorer. :->

I think antivirus software is the best protection in the WINTEL
world, but avoiding the Outlook mail client families problems is
up there. Running a properly locked down Linux Desktop, and
prior to that a Unix desktop has been very effective as well, so
far zero worms/viruses or trojans on the boxes I have used -
although the Windows stuff only lost out because other people
got them infected. Much as the architecture is flawed - you can
still be fairly effective in practising safe hex.

Back to main topic......

The original article was flawed in places - Linux being a type
of UNIX<sic> - we all know the GNU utilities are far better than
AT&T's, so why HP haven't swiched HP-UX across leaves one
wondering. On at least two occaisions using the GNU utilities
has been suggested as a work around to HP-UX bugs to me by, urm,
HP support.

The real question is when will HP admit people don't want yet
another flavour of UNIX with substandard tools, and go with GNU
for most of the tools.

The new features to go into HP-UX will not be technically easy
to implement, otherwise why is their IPv6 so weird to program,
and it may be as well to abandon HP-UX and Tru64 and just go
with Linux.

Linux still needs some work to provide the enterprise features
that HP customers expect (Although more and more that is mainly
hardware support, and management tools), but HP has already
committed itself (And presumably must be near completion by
now?) of porting their key enterprise tools to Linux.

On 3 Dec 2001 11:49:08 GMT

But is it configured correctly on XP Home Edition, out of the box?

Quote:> As for viruses, the best protection against them is not running Outlook
> or Internet Explorer. :->

... and MS-Office ;-)

Then why use Windows?

--
Stefaan (GPG Fingerprint 25D8 551B 4C0F BF73 3283 21F1 5978 D158 7539 76E4)
--
"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which
 could only have originated in California." --Edsger Dijkstra

Quote:> The basic port filtering has been around since the "Advanced
> Routing Pack" for NT 4, although I know very few people who use
> it, and I've never put it through serious abuse.

Neither have I. But then I don't run any NT boxes with any TCP/IP services
even enabled without at least one UNIX-based application-level firewall
between them and any untrusted network.

--
 `-_-'   In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva.
  'U`    "A well-rounded geek should be able to geek about anything."

         Disclaimer: WWFD?

For Myst III - Exile.

--
 `-_-'   In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva.
  'U`    "A well-rounded geek should be able to geek about anything."

         Disclaimer: WWFD?