Posted on 12/19/2017 10:51:15 AM PST by nickcarraway
All 500 machines on the TOP500 supercomputer list run Linux. Here’s how the little OS that could, did.
After years of pushing toward total domination, Linux finally did it. It is running on all 500 of the TOP500 supercomputers in the world, and who knows how many more after that. That’s even more impressive than Intel’s domination of the list, with 92 percent of the processors in the top 500.
So, how did Linux get here? How did this upstart operating system created by a college student from Finland 26 years ago steamroll Unix, a creation of Bell Labs and supported by giants like IBM and Sun Microsystems and HP, Microsoft’s Windows, and other Unix derivatives?
Also on Network World: 5 top Linux server distros for enterprises; 10 of the world's fastest supercomputers It was a confluence of things, all of which aligned perfectly for Linux. For starters, the Unixes were fragmented and tied to vendor processors. You had AT&T, through its Bell Labs arm, licensing Unix System V to vendors who then made their own specific flavor. Sun Microsystems made Solaris, IBM made AIX, HP had HP-UX and SGI had IRIX. None of them was compatible, and at best, porting required a recompile if you were lucky. “There wouldn’t be Linux if it weren’t for Unix,” said Steve Conway, research vice president for Hyperion Research, the high-performance computing (HPC) unit of IDC. “The Unix era gave way to the Linux era because Linux is more open and not vendor-specific. So, here was a chance with Linux for the whole community to have one main flavor of an operating system.”
None of the major Unix flavors supported the x86 architecture, either. Sun did with SunOS, which was a text-based OS, and it had Solaris on x86 but never made a big push for it. All the other Unixes were on custom RISC processors. Of course, no one saw the massive rise of x86 on the server, either.
Prior to Linux, the only heavily supported x86 Unixes out there was The Santa Cruz Operation with Xenix and FreeBSD out of the University of California at Berkeley. But Xenix was a desktop OS, never a server OS. By the time it sold out to Caldera Systems in 2001, its opportunity had long since passed and Linux was already gaining momentum.
Then there was Microsoft. It came out with clustering software as early as Windows NT 4.0 but made its first real effort in 2006 with Window Compute Cluster Server 2003. However, it never made much of an effort in that area, and by this decade it had folded some of the clustering technology into standard Server edition.
“For their part, Microsoft took aim at HPC for a couple of years but didn’t put a lot of wood behind that arrow, as it were,” said Conway. “They weren’t alone. It didn’t seem at the time that the HPC market was going to be as big as it became. This was the pre-cluster time, for the most part. Up to the 90s, the HPC market was worth $2 billion, with everything thrown in. Last year it was $22 billion.”
NASA helps HPC take off What made HPC take off? NASA, whose job is to explore space, made an amazing Earth-bound advancement. In the mid-1990s a team of programmers came up with a way to cluster x86-based servers for collective processing power for a cheap alternative to expensive, proprietary HPC systems at the time. Dubbed Beowulf, it was not tied to one particular operating system, any free and open source OS would do. But the inventors used Linux, and that started the momentum.
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“What really carried Linux more than anything was the arrival of the cluster in around the year 2000,” said Conway. “That’s when clusters really entered the HPC market and the appeal was commodity technology, including Linux. Through the decade, the HPC market grew at a compound rate of 20 percent.”
Beowulf supported FreeBSD, so why didn’t FreeBSD take off? Conway attributes it to being one of those technologies that was a very good idea but just didn’t catch hold in large part because they weren’t promoted very well.
Linux has something FreeBSD doesn’t have: Linus Torvalds. Torvalds is a tough, demanding leader. Many say too tough. He has a nasty streak that can put Steve Jobs to shame. But he has been the leader Linux needed.
Vendor support for Linux The final piece of the pie was vendor support, something FreeBSD never had. Linux had organized companies behind it. I remember attending a computer fair in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1993 (where all the local screwdriver shops would set up tables and sell components for system builders) and seeing Bob Young hawking CD-ROMs of the very early versions of Red Hat Linux. Boy, if I had known then what I know now…
Anyway, Red Hat took off and helped drive Linux in a way UC Berkeley never did for FreeBSD. Eventually came Caldera, SuSe and Canonical. Then came the big dog: In 1999, IBM announced support for Linux. At that point, Unix was a dead OS walking. It just didn’t know it.
Linux, and Linus, didn’t get here alone. It stands on the shoulders of AT&T/Bell Labs, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Keith Bostic, Richard Stallman (yes, I must give credit where it is due, however annoying he can be), Sun, HP, IBM, SGI, and many more characters and vendors. But it really does stand tall.
Charlie Brown was too stupid.
LOL! FTW.
simple: It’s not Windows.
It’s JUST an operating system, not the all-encompassing bloatware that comes from Microsoft.
Free. No other explanation needed. Colleges and universities dropped all commercial operating systems when Unix came along so they could get the source code and then switched to Linux when they could get everything for free. That created a closed bubble where a lot of new ideas were forced to grow. but the operating system itself is still Paleolithic compared to what we should have by now, if OS companies like DEC, and others could have made money innovating their proprietary systems.
And it is free, unless you pay for support.
Factually wrong. Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) Unix was the defacto Unix for x86 long before anyone even heard the word Linux in Unix circles. But IBM stole their code, by way of a so-called partnership, and then "open sourced" (gave away) that code to Linux because IBM wanted to sell more hardware.
What made HPC take off? NASA, whose job is to explore space, made an amazing Earth-bound advancement. In the mid-1990s a team of programmers came up with a way to cluster x86-based servers for collective processing power for a cheap alternative to expensive, proprietary HPC systems at the time. Dubbed Beowulf, it was not tied to one particular operating system, any free and open source OS would do. But the inventors used Linux, and that started the momentum.
NASA then gave away this supercomputer building code to China, Russia, and others, for free as well. Those countries did not even have a supercompuer at the time. Now China is at the top. Thank IBM and their embargo-busting weapon Linux.
Linux is Unix.
It took off because it was not proprietary, open and free.
I liked it. An not just because there were very few other people that wanted accounts on it...
Cause you can operate approximately twice the number of CPUs for the same amount of money if you don't have to pay Microsoft for their server-grade Windows operating system?
I’ve built and installed servers for home, my firm, and small organizations. I like FreeBSD for file servers. I seem to be able to get them up and working on Macs and PCs faster than Linux. With that said, I’m having problems with Time Machine on my home FBSD server right now.
For a web server, however, Linux’s directory structure seems to be less confusing than FreeBSD’s. Maybe that’s just due to my inexperience as the setup I’ve done for Web has been strictly intranet (remember that term??). I do think Linux would probably be the better choice for the Javascript web technologies from the past decade or so.
beowulf cluster software
I agree with you. FreeBSD and OpenBSD are the way to go.
Would your prefer to rely on the coding prowess and benevolence of one firm (Microsoft) ...
OR
rely on crowd-sourced coding prowess and the attendant frontier justice-like retribution if people put bugs or viruses in open source codes?
I'm still pondering that one.
Intel needed memory beyond the 2G limit plus a real multi-site Enterprise solution.
MS said use Windows Enterprise and pay us big bucks.
Intel said FU and moved to Linux.
Windows at Intel is used for mail, Powerpoint and Excel.
That is about it.
What part of the Linux code base was founded on code "stolen" from SCO? I recall SCO hired a consultant to compare the open code base of linux with the proprietary code base of SCO, and the consultant found no copying. However SCO concealed this material fact. Also SCO sued Novell and discovered the interesting fact that SCO didn't own UNIX; subsequently Novell issued a waiver to IBM declaring there was no UNIX code in LINUX and the remains of SCO were forced to honor this by court order.
AHA! I see that SCO came back in 2016 but failed again and the most recent lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice! Bummer!
Exactly. Linux can have minimal overhead.
Microsoft=security flaws=temporary fixes= richest man in the world.
Most engineering networks I know about run CentOS.
Clean, capable, fast fast fast.
Never give money to Gates. Never.
There were several trials, but the end result was basically 2 conclusions - the contract that SCO had with IBM was “interpreted” to allow this, and the value of the code was listed as zero dollars, even though the entire Linux header system was identical to SCO Unix.
Bottom line, China now legally has the largest supercomputers in the world, based on US technology that was given to them for free. IBM's public defense was they have more employees outside the US than in the US, so no one should have expected them to act in any other manner.
Too late now, but this bunk of an article doesn't mention any of this, because it's sordid history they don't want anyone to know.
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