[KLUG Advocacy] AIX's Funeral March

[Adam Williams]

>The article mentioned "Most analysts agree that Linux is growing fast but
>still hasn't matched the abilities of AIX or of other versions of Unix,
>including Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX and Sun Microsystems' Solaris."   Where is
>Linux falls short?  

Features -  
  AIX offers full ACL support - Linux does too, but only recently, and
almost nothing supports them beyond Samba.
  AIX has an audited and certified security subsystem - Linux... Hmmm.
  AIX provides *VERY* robust LVM technology - Linux does too, again,
only recently.  It is stable, but do I trust it as much as the
implementation on AIX?  No way.
  AIX supports LOTS of SCSI devices - Linux support of lots of devices
is a pain, devices are numbered based upon discovery, rather than
"learned" and remembered.  That is a kludge,  and one can screw oneself
pretty easily.
  AIX supports thousands, even hundreds of thousands of threads,  and
the schedular doesn't go "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!" - Linux....
  AIX supports SNA - Linux..... someone tried once.
  ulimits on AIX actually do something - Not so much on Linux
  AIX can motor through huge amounts of IP traffic, all zero copy -
Linux does pretty well, but gets stuttery in extreme conditions.

As for apps. I think it is pretty tough to think of apps that haven't
been ported: AcuCOBOL, visiFAX, SAP, etc...

>The area that falls short for me to switch is the some
>of the high end applications that we use just is not written for Linux but
>that is not a short coming of the os just a short coming of the developers
>realizing how to utilize Linux to there advantage.

Right, but if they port forward to current version of AIX, porting to
Linux from there is like falling of a log.

>>Well, it is official.  What we've known for a long time.  Someday in the
>>not terribly distant future yet another ugly child of true UNIX lineage will
>>be lowered into its grave.
>>http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2129537,00.html