2002 and Beyond

Today, many hardware vendors have buried the hatchet and, for the sake of users, are moving their implementations of UNIX to be SRV4 compliant. SVR4 will clearly be the dominant flavor of UNIX across most major platforms. As all vendors begin to implement SVR4 along with the CDE or GNOME interface, users will begin to see a more consistent implementation of UNIX. In addition, software providers can be assured that applications written to be SVR4 compliant will be portable across many hardware platforms.

The GNOME desktop will eventually be the preferred desktop. This new desktop is much better than CDE in terms of usability, visual design, and core features. Most major UNIX vendors will be moving toward GNOME.

Linux will still be a major player. Now that most of the major UNIX vendors—including Sun, HP, and IBM—have embraced it, Linux will not go away.

Solaris

No other flavor of UNIX is more popular or has enjoyed a wider user base and cultural following than Sun Microsystems’ Solaris. Since it was founded in 1982, Sun Microsystems’ focus has been on UNIX, and it appears to have no intention of moving away from the UNIX operating system. Sun’s user base has strong loyalty to the company and to the operating system. Sun’s most recent version is Solaris 9, based on System V, release 4, and it is available for the SPARC and UltraSPARC architecture. In the past, Sun has provided a port of Solaris for the Intel platform, but for now, Sun has “deferred” its efforts in this area. No one is sure if we’ll see a Solaris 9 port on Intel in the near future.