Unix 98 OS Arrives With Much Fanfare
By Ellis Booker
Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc.A specification aimed at rationalizing the different flavors of Unix is set to make its grand entrance.
The Open Group, a trademark of the Open Software Foundation Inc. and X/Open Co. Ltd., and the standards body that holds the Unix name, will release its Unix 98 specification at UniForum Spring '98 this week in Ocean City, Md.According to The Open Group, major Unix vendors like Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems have endorsed the program. Unix 98 is a follow-on to the Single Unix Specification, or Unix 95.
"Unix 95 was the big step forward. Unix 98 is an incremental improvement," said Greg Weiss, a research analyst at D.H. Brown & Associates Inc.
Like the earlier spec, Unix 98 seeks greater "functionality, compatibility, ease of use and business value for Unix." That includes the Common Desktop Environment common user interface.
One of the biggest changes in the Unix 98 operating system specification is standardized support for 64-bit hardware; for example, the handling of large files.
Although nearly all Unix vendors offer 64-bit support for RISC architectures, attention has turned to Unix on Intel-specifically Intel's forthcoming IA-64 chip.
A long list of system vendors-including Compaq, Fujitsu, NCR Corp., NEC Corp. and Tandem Computers Inc.-have announced plans in recent months for systems based on Intel's IA-64 chip. Sun Microsystems, meanwhile, does not plan to market IA-64 boxes; rather it will port its 64-bit Solaris operating system, due this fall, to IA-64 and license it to other system vendors.
Increasing uniformity among Unix implementations will be important if Unix on IA-64 is to gain wide-scale adoption as its proponents hope.
"Clearly, The Open Group sees that IA-64 will be the volume platform for Unix servers, so you need to support that," said Tom Henkel, a senior analyst at Gartner Group.
But Henkel added that while Unix 98 is a good thing for developers committed to cross-platform code creation, enterprise customers are increasingly concerned about whether packaged software (either for Unix or Windows) runs on their particular platform.
"End users are looking to packaged software for applications, and so what they are looking for is not conformity but whether there is a version of 'X' package for their OS," he said.
Moreover, it is worth underscoring that the Unix 98 spec is not a single Unix implementation. Applications will have to be recompiled for each version, and vendors can add features to their Unix variants that are not portable.
Yet if vendors stick to the API set in Unix 98, "you'll write a 64-bit application for Digital Unix the same way you write it for IBM AIX," said D.H. Brown's Weiss, which will make it easier for vendors to port their applications to multiple Unix variants. That could make it more likely that enterprise customers will find the applications they need on the Unix platform they use.
Another change in Unix 98 is the inclusion of the Common Desktop Environment, a user interface specification that, until now, has been a separate Open Group standard.
Many observers believe Unix will consolidate over the next few years around a handful of variants: Digital Unix from Digital Equipment, HP-UX from Hewlett-Packard, Solaris from Sun Microsystems and either AIX from IBM or UnixWare from SCO.
