UNIX and Linux operating systems have emerged as a platform capable of supporting and being used in a variety of hardware architectures. Open source and commercial subscriptions of UNIX and Linux provide cost control and flexibility in long term planning. In the 1980's the early generations of UNIX were used primarily as servers in business enterprise and as workstations in academic and engineering environments. It took years for UNIX to gain acceptance in commercial use and this breakthrough resulted from high reliability and price/performance advantages, not the availability of applications. Ultimately this lead to broad adoption of RISC/UNIX systems. Both Hewlet-Packard and IBM made the decision to extend and develop UNIX-variant operating systems for utilization on their own proprietary hardware. Sun Microsystems developed Solaris-UNIX to run on both its SPARC hardware and other types of hardware, including x86 servers and PCs. POSIX was developed to provide standardization across the UNIX-variants. Over the past decade Linux has to a large degree superseded UNIX and the Linux kernel is being used in the Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, and Google Android operating systems.

IBM’s strategy to extend its mainframe computing strengths in security and always-on availability makes extensive use of both Linux and UNIX. Improvements in performance and energy efficiency aside, the most significant change with the new IBM mainframe hardware is data center integration. This new design provides for blending tasks and parceling out parts of a complex application to Linux and UNIX computer systems. The data and transaction is managed on the mainframe with the real-time processing performed by the Linux or UNIX computer.

All versions of UNIX combined - IBM AIX, HP-UX, and Oracle Solaris have approximately 10% of the market share. Marketing studies indicate that IBM's AIX UNIX is currently the most reliable and highest rated server operating system. Linux' market share now represents about 30% of the installed base. Linux overall reliability has improved substantially. The three major distributions Novell SUSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu Linux scored high in reliability and have achieved near parity with UNIX distributions. Microsoft Windows Servers account for about 60% of the worldwide server operating system market. There is far less disparity now in the number and severity of unplanned outages and actual downtime that organizations experience on standard UNIX, Linux, and MS Windows platforms.¹ CETi Technology Partners report that most organizations utilize a combination of commercial distribution and free non-commercial distributions of Linux.

The growth of the Linux operating system has been driven by its low cost, the increased sales of the x86 server and workstation markets and most recently mobile devices: tablet PC’s and cell phones. The initial Linux operating system replaced the basic infrastructure workloads that previously had been performed by UNIX or MS Windows servers. Given the installed base of Linux servers currently providing web application services, serving as a database platform, and managing middleware, the Linux-variants will continue to have expanded use in commercial workloads and business applications. Although there is no single version of the Linux system with commanding market share; the operational requirements have resulted in specialized adaptations of Linux-variants by leading hardware and software companies. Linux now is a mainstream solution for supporting deployments of business-oriented applications and business-critical workloads on a broad variety of hardware architectures. Market studies indicate a continued steady growth for Linux-variants. Application software providers and ISV: Independent Software Vendor’s support the Linux platform and promote deployment. Linux is being used as a platform for new deployments and enterprise application software workloads. Database workloads are increasing on the Linux platform. The shift in workloads on the Linux operating system will continue to favor business-oriented applications.

Google Corporation has developed and brought to market two client-based operating systems developed from a Linux-variant code base: Android and Google Chrome. The Google strategy is based upon the assumption that the two operating systems address different markets: Android for mobile computing and Google Chrome for personal computing. The Android operating system was created by the developers at Android Inc. and was acquired by Google. It is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel.

The Chrome OS has been developed upon a version of Ubuntu-Linux from which features have been added and removed. Chrome is an operating system based on the Linux kernel and designed by Google. Since Chrome targets computer users who spend most of their time on the Internet, it is technically only a web browser with no other applications and relies on Internet applications or web apps used in the web browser to accomplish tasks such as word processing and media viewing. Executives at Google have suggested that the two systems will likely converge over time. However, the two operating systems have been built from entirely code bases. Despite the growing convergence of the devices, this will issue will become more problematic as new hardware is brought to market.

Microsoft has been in a longstanding competition for migrating UNIX to its MS Windows Server and Windows family operating systems. The Microsoft UNIX migration readily can be applied to migrating Linux-variant operating systems also. Microsoft has extended the featureset of the Windows family operating system, Windows Server 2008, SharePoint Server, and PowerShell for integration with the popular Linux-variants - Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Microsoft has designated SUSE as its preferred Linux-variant. Linux administrators have started to use MS Windows Server Group Policy to expedite deployments and patch installations on SUSE and other Linux-variant operating systems.

SYS-ED knows UNIX. And more importantly we know how to teach UNIX. Our consultants were among the original cadre of UNIX proponents and practitioners.² We developed and taught C programs to a generation of programmers, were involved with the superset of functions which became C++, and wrote hand-outs and instructor guides for X Windows and Motif interfaces. Over the years we conducted a variety of UNIX and then Linux programming and utilities courses for application developers. As the UNIX and Linux-variants have become increasingly integrated into IBM mainframe operating systems, SYS-ED developed and taught the popular UNIX-variant courses. Few software or consulting companies can provide the multi-variant UNIX and Linux training and expertise that we do. With the Internet and web servers serving as the framework for mission critical components of business operations, a new generation of UNIX information technology personnel needs to be trained. SYS-ED offers comprehensive Linux and Solaris curriculum and tailored training on the Linux- and UNIX- variants. Our UNIX programming curricula include C, Bourne Shell, Korn Shell and the complete range of UNIX utilities AWK, SED, grep, etc. If your operational objective is to update or migrate from a Microsoft operating system or from UNIX to Linux, SYS-ED system consultants and CETi Technology Partners provide guidelines and insights for an efficient transition.

In SYS-ED UNIX and Linux courses, students learn by doing; up to fifty percent of class time will be spent hands-on working with the UNIX or Linux -variant operating systems - server, desktop, and mobile device. Each student receives a comprehensive hand-out which is augmented with integrated exercises, sample programs, skeleton programs, and training aids from the SYS-ED courseware library. After a course is over, students are welcome to ask questions which come up back on the job. Courses can be taken a la carte or as a part of an integrated program. Tailored course offerings can be conducted on-site at your location.

Application Development on UNIX and Linux Platforms

SYS-ED has extended its UNIX and Linux training programs to include subject matter, examples, sample programs, exercises, and validation assessment to teach and provide guidance in FOSS: free open source and hybrid commercial software environments.

SYS-ED staff and CETi Technology Partners have first generation and ongoing consultancy experience with open source Linux, Java, XML and hybrid development platforms: design, coding, debugging, and performance optimization. This provides us with a privileged perspective from which to explain, demonstrate, and teach employees from Fortune 1000 companies, government municipalities, and healthcare providers to both administer and perform application and platform migration to the UNIX and Linux operating systems. Where SYS-ED excels is providing educational consultancy: objected oriented analysis and design, structured techniques and code reengineering. In conjunction with our courses, we provide best practices and guidelines for SOA: Service Oriented Architecture in the IBM mainframe, Oracle Roadmap, and hybrid software environments.

The courseware and training aids used in SYS-ED UNIX and Linux instructor-led and distance-learning courses is highly respected. There is wide agreement among industry experts agree that the documentation provided with open source software does not offer a comparable degree of completeness than that of commercial proprietary software. We review information in the public domain distributed by software companies, international standards committees, and purveyors of open source software. And perform our own independent analysis of white papers and benchmarks for software updates and new products. It is then selectively incorporated into our student hand-outs. The subject matter included in our lesson plans and courseware incorporates sample programs and code which has been validated on consultancy projects.³  Given the intermixing and hybrid implementation of commercial and open source software, reference material which demonstrates and explains will be fundamental to an effective training experience. As part of presenting an instructor-led course at the client location, courseware is organized for subsequent use in a web-based infrastructure and delivery medium.

Qualifying a Training Assignment

SYS-ED will not accept a Linux or UNIX training assignment without a consultation with the prospective client organization. We review the background of the employees to be trained, operating environment, documented standards, and project specifications, use that information to select the code snippets, examples, skeleton programs, and hands-on exercises. We then prepare a training strategy: lesson plan, modular courseware, training aids, and validation assessment. And when are not confident that we can provide a superior training outcome, will politely turn down an assignment.