[TUHS] Has this been discussed on-list? How Unix changed Software.

[Dan Cross]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2022 at 1:16 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
> There’s an estimated 200M-250M “Personal Computers” in active use - 10% of all active devices. Even if all run Microsoft and not Chromebooks, MS-Windows is now a minor player.

This is true, but in some sense has always been true, in that the
number of embedded devices using microcontrollers and so forth has
always dwarfed the number of desktop PC-class computers in the world
(or, rather, has always done so for since the late 70s or so, I'd
imagine).

However, to call Windows a minor player is to ignore the importance of
the applications that run on those desktop machines (and laptops,
etc). The PC might be on the decline in absolute market terms, but it
seems obvious that for specialist applications we're going to need
something resembling it for the foreseeable future.

> I’ve no idea how big the fleet of servers powering “The Cloud” in Datacentres is, but inferring from power consumption, it’s measured in millions.

Aggregated across all the major players, I'd put the number at tens of
millions, possibly in excess of 100 million at the high end of the
estimate range.

> Only MS-Azure provide Windows instances and then it runs on top of a hypervisor, not bare metal. Is MS Hyper-V derived from a Unix variant? If not, is certainly influenced by VMware & Xen which were.

First, a factual correction: at least Google's cloud and I'm fairly
certain AWS can run Windows, not just Azure.

Second, I have it directly from folks who worked on Hyper-V that it is
neither based on Unix/Linux, nor strongly influenced by either VMWare
or Xen. It was an entirely in-house project at MSFT that probably
includes more DNA strands from Windows than Unix et al. Some of the
stories about clashes with Cutler to change the Windows startup
sequence to accommodate Hyper-V are interesting (short version:
Cutler, in typical fashion, didn't want to and early versions of
Hyper-V basically booted under windows, then "took over" the running
machine so that Windows resumed, but suddenly in a VM where it had not
been before).

> To a first approximation, 90%+ of ‘computers' now run a Unix variant. [ disregarding the larger fleet of embedded devices, especially in cars ]
> As you say, UNIX & its variants broke the monopoly / lock-in of software by hardware vendors.

The above notwithstanding, I absolutely believe these numbers. Unix
and its derivatives (most notably Linux) have become the de-facto
platform for modern computation, as you conclude.

        - Dan C.