| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399415 is a reply to message #399411] |
Sun, 06 September 2020 05:26   |
Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
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On 6 Sep 2020 08:21:37 GMT
Bob Eager <news0073@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Sep 2020 22:06:52 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
>> On 5 Sep 2020 20:01:05 GMT Bob Eager <news0073@eager.cx> wrote:
>>
>>> Never used roaming profiles on Windows? Hell, we have those at home!
>>
>> I don't.
>>
>>> Not to mention UNIX with a central NFS server.
>>
>> I do have that at home.
>
> Well, of course. The UNIX server also serves via SMB, of course.
Of course.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399444 is a reply to message #399386] |
Sun, 06 September 2020 16:05 |
scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
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Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Niklas Karlsson <anksil@yahoo.se> writes:
>>
>> As for consistency, I notice all the mainstream desktop managers
>> change with every release. My WM, Fvwm only changes when I change
>> my configuration file. Fvwm gets new features, it just doesn't force
>> change with every release. My desktop is pretty much the same as it
>> was 20 years ago. That's consistent.
>>
>
> People say the plethora of window managers is a plus, I tend to doubt it.
I don't.
> As far as frequent changes, I thought that Ubuntu moving by default from
> Gnome2 to Gnome3 was a big mistake.
I've been using TWM since 1989. It still works just
fine, even with modern distro's; one simply needs to discover
how each distro fires up the X session (~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc)
scott
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399584 is a reply to message #399312] |
Tue, 08 September 2020 14:22 |
hancock4
Messages: 6746
Registered: December 2011
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[post 9/7/2020 9:02 AM 9/7/2020]
On Saturday, September 5, 2020 at 6:12:15 AM UTC-4, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Clearly, in the 1980s, mainframes ruled the commercial world, at
> least for large companies.
>
> By that time, they had mostly lost the crown of scientific
> calculation to the minis (with the exception of vector computers).
....
> So, when did the mainframes start losing the commercial computing
> centers? Is around 2000-ish the right timeframe?
Not exactly. A bit of history to put things in context
[in this writer's opinion and experiences]
Minis were certainly popular. But just like the Volkwagon
Beetle was popular, they had their limitations. Many
times researchers found their lab PDP was simply too
underpowered to handle their task and had to turn to
the corporate data center's IBM mainframe. Lo and
behold, the mainframe ran through a Fortran job in
no time. Often the mainframe programmers discovered
the researchers' Fortran program was poorly written
(e.g. unnecessary arithmetic statements within a
DO LOOP or unnecessary loops or I/O) and with a few
twists sped it up.
> So, when did they lose their dominant commercial position?
Mainframe computers were and are heavy duty
machines. They can do a lot of work, but they
are very expensive. To be economically justified,
a mainframe needs a lot of volume.
IBM learned this when it found that its System/360
low-end models, even the budget model 20, was still
too expensive for small users. So it developed
the System/3.
Anyway, regarding the transition to smaller machines,
this happened gradually over a long period of time.
There was no magic date that mainframes "lost out".
In many organizations, the big IBM mainframe is alive
and well. IBM continues to upgrade its Z series
as we can see in the continuing new features described
in the latest Principles of Operations.
Certain aspects of the personal computer enabled it
to efficiently offload some of the work that the
mainframe used to do. For instance, accountants
would download raw files from the mainframe onto
their PC and use Lotus to do easily analysis.
This freed them from having a programmer write
and revise COBOL programs to research various
scenarios. As PCs grew in sophistication and
became more networked, their usage grew and
more work could be offloaded to them.
But I would posit there was also a 'herd mentality'
in corporate decision making. This has been
documented in the literature for the 1960s--a
lot of companies got computers because it was
the thing to do, not whether it would truly save
them money or improve efficiency. The CEO of
Avis wrote about this. There were many, many
computer system screwups in those years.
The CEOs demanded too much--the hardware
AND software of the era were stretched too thin.
(Geez, I remember when a bank put in a computer
system. They were so proud of it! But then customer
lines went out the door and around the block due to
delays. Finally they had to bring back
the old Burroughs posting machines less the
bank collapse, and rework the computer. The
same thing happened later to a department store
when it installed computerized registers. I
remember a truck bringing back the old
NCR registers and the salesclerks breathing a
sigh of relief. This sort of thing happened
a lot.)
Now, let's fast forward to more recent years.
Suddenly, the mainframe was referred to as
"legacy" or a "dinosaur", as were mainframe
programmers. "Client/Server" became the rage.
Why was that? Was it based on sound economic/
feasibility studies? Could Client/Server do
the work more effectively and efficiently?
In reality, there were four things going on:
First, IBM had lost its way. It had become
big and bloated and that meant its products
weren't keeping up with price/performance
demands of its customers. IBM had to get
an outside CEO and go through a major
contraction. Lots of people lost their jobs.
At the same time, some corporate data centers
became big and bloated* as well, and not as
responsive to user needs as they should've been.
Software development work became too bureaucratic,
took too long, and was too expensive.
The mainframe was seen as bloated, not an
image that was endearing.
Second, there were some tasks client/server
could do better than the mainframe. In
some cases the personal computer offered
cheaper hardware. In some cases it was
easier to program. Indeed, the mainframe
carried many 'baby' systems because
originally that was the only machine available.
When the PC came out, the baby systems could
be offloaded to it and were.
Third, the client/server world was young
and very aggressive. They were pushing their
product lines very hard. They exploited
IBM's troubles. The trade press touted
them. Having PCs do the work became all
the rage. CEOs and user department heads
didn't want to be left behind or be seen
as old fashioned. The Internet, despite
its many problems (like security) became
something to be worshipped. Having
access was a status symbol.
Fourth, there were corporate politics at
work. In many cases, the new client server system
was under the control of the user department,
not the central data processing department.
Department heads wanted the control--and
power--of owning and running the computer
themselves. That was extremely important
to them, rightly or wrongly. It had
nothing to do with efficiency, rather turf.
Indeed, often it was wasteful and a screwup**.
This power grab certainly help push the
transition away from the mainframe.
* Some of the bureaucracy was unnecessary,
imposed by clueless corporate auditors.
(Read an auditing textbook and you'll be shocked
at the b/s they recommend).
However, some of the bureaucracy was indeed
necessary to protect data files and software
from accidental deletion or deliberate sabotage.
Many of the client server sites had major
screwups that never would've happened in
traditionally run mainframe sites. They
had to learn the wheel all over again.
** Just as mainframers had to bail out the
research labs when their little PDP couldn't
do the job, mainframers later had to bail out
client/server sites that got screwed up.
So often a 'wonderful software product' proved
in practice to be not so wonderful.
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399613 is a reply to message #399386] |
Tue, 08 September 2020 17:10 |
Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-09-06, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Niklas Karlsson <anksil@yahoo.se> writes:
>>
>> As for consistency, I notice all the mainstream desktop managers
>> change with every release. My WM, Fvwm only changes when I change
>> my configuration file. Fvwm gets new features, it just doesn't force
>> change with every release. My desktop is pretty much the same as it
>> was 20 years ago. That's consistent.
>
> People say the plethora of window managers is a plus, I tend to doubt it.
> As far as frequent changes, I thought that Ubuntu moving by default from
> Gnome2 to Gnome3 was a big mistake. I installed a new release and it was
> hate at first sight. I hunted around and found Mate, which is still Gnome2,
> although I guess there are several, like Mint, that are as well. Mate seems
> to stay the dame from release to release.
What made me dump Ubuntu was their move to Unity. Plus I found that
Gnome was a bit too touchy-feely and I preferred something lean and mean.
I went with Blackbox for a while, but that was a bit _too_ lean, and
have since settled on xfce.
> Developers seem to like to change things, maybe not “just because they
> can”, but maybe just because someone thinks they have a better idea without
> considering how users actually work.
And that's why I believe that having a choice of window managers is
a Good Thing. When some developer decides to pull the rug out from
under you, you can tell him to get stuffed.
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399615 is a reply to message #399315] |
Tue, 08 September 2020 17:10 |
Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-09-05, Bob Eager <news0073@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Sep 2020 06:55:08 -0400, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> I'd guess 2000 is about right for the start of significant movement off
>> the mainframe. But of course there are plenty of large companies that
>> are still on mainframes and will remain there for the foreseeable
>> future.
>
> Around 1990 (in a university computer centre) one of the senior tech guys
> gave a presentation. In it, he said that PCs were never going to catch on
> in a big way (i.e. one on every desk) but that the future was X
> terminals. He demonstrated how wonderful they were.
Nowadays, you can replace "X terminal" with "personal computer running
a web browser", or "smart terminal" with "smartphone running an app".
We've come full circle with the computing model, and are once again
using computers as terminals on a centralized server, just like we
did in the '60s and '70s. The operation is the same, only the
terminology has changed.
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
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| Re: X et al, When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399624 is a reply to message #399615] |
Tue, 08 September 2020 18:29 |
John Levine
Messages: 1405
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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In article <rj8s0i62ab8@news2.newsguy.com>,
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> Nowadays, you can replace "X terminal" with "personal computer running
> a web browser", or "smart terminal" with "smartphone running an app".
> We've come full circle with the computing model, and are once again
> using computers as terminals on a centralized server, just like we
> did in the '60s and '70s. The operation is the same, only the
> terminology has changed.
Sometimes not even that. The Mac on which I am typing this message
literally functions as an X terminal (among other things), displaying
application windows from X clients running on other computers. I edit
text files on my server in Epsilon, an emacs clone, talking through an
ssh tunnel to XQuartz on my laptop.
Web browsers started as thin clients but with HTML5 and Javascript
they're getting a lot thicker.
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399675 is a reply to message #399584] |
Wed, 09 September 2020 12:02 |
Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-09-08, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>
> Minis were certainly popular. But just like the Volkwagon
> Beetle was popular, they had their limitations. Many
> times researchers found their lab PDP was simply too
> underpowered to handle their task and had to turn to
> the corporate data center's IBM mainframe. Lo and
> behold, the mainframe ran through a Fortran job in
> no time. Often the mainframe programmers discovered
> the researchers' Fortran program was poorly written
> (e.g. unnecessary arithmetic statements within a
> DO LOOP or unnecessary loops or I/O) and with a few
> twists sped it up.
I'll be in that world soon enough. I'm starting work at a High
Performance Computing Centre. Fortran is still popular with the
researchers.
Niklas
--
I suppose one corollary of what you're onto here is that we can let the
pr0n industry sponsor AI development and not have to worry about finding
more traditional sources of research funding.
-- AdB
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399694 is a reply to message #399615] |
Wed, 09 September 2020 15:20 |
Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-09-08, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
> Nowadays, you can replace "X terminal" with "personal computer running
> a web browser", or "smart terminal" with "smartphone running an app".
> We've come full circle with the computing model, and are once again
> using computers as terminals on a centralized server, just like we
> did in the '60s and '70s. The operation is the same, only the
> terminology has changed.
These days, yes. The outfit I'm about to start at takes this to the next
level - there's actually a huge computing resource (a Cray XC40) that
people are clamoring for time on.
That's going to be interesting.
Niklas
--
I hereby wish to register the band name "rm -rf /".
-- Jim
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #399905 is a reply to message #399312] |
Sat, 12 September 2020 04:39 |
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Originally posted by: massimo79m
> So, when did the mainframes start losing the commercial computing
> centers? Is around 2000-ish the right timeframe?
in banks, insurances, government facilities there is one word: reliability.
nowadays pc-based servers are not reliable (even clusters) as mainframes.
hardware and software. zos is most reliable than linux/bsd.
the cobol compiler is more reliable (partly because it is simpler) than the compilers on the pc.
and there is a main reason: who can take the responsability to go from a rock solid system, that is in the company from decades (banks use to upgrade/replace their mainframes keeping ALL the software from older systems), that perfectly fits the needs of the company, to a another system (hardware and software)?
why, exactly?
saving? i don't think the tco of the mainframe is so higher than a cluster. keep in mind that a single hour of down costs a HUGE and i underline HUGE amount of money to a bank, a trading service, a government facility.
innovation? do you REALLY need it? why the old cobol on a mainframe is not adequate? you can keep all the core facilities in cobol on mainframe, and you can access it via java for webapps or other things.
So: i think the reliability of a mainframe is actually unsurpassed. Do you want to change? ok, but you have to keep in mind that, for a bank, it is more important the reliability (and the mainframe has other advantages) rather innovation.
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #400170 is a reply to message #399905] |
Thu, 17 September 2020 16:28 |
hancock4
Messages: 6746
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Saturday, September 12, 2020 at 4:39:34 AM UTC-4, Massimo M. wrote:
>> So, when did the mainframes start losing the commercial computing
>> centers? Is around 2000-ish the right timeframe?
>
> in banks, insurances, government facilities there is one word: reliability.
> nowadays pc-based servers are not reliable (even clusters) as mainframes.
> hardware and software. zos is most reliable than linux/bsd.
> the cobol compiler is more reliable (partly because it is simpler) than the compilers on the pc.
> and there is a main reason: who can take the responsability to go from a rock solid system, that is in the company from decades (banks use to upgrade/replace their mainframes keeping ALL the software from older systems), that perfectly fits the needs of the company, to a another system (hardware and software)?
> why, exactly?
> saving? i don't think the tco of the mainframe is so higher than a cluster. keep in mind that a single hour of down costs a HUGE and i underline HUGE amount of money to a bank, a trading service, a government facility.
> innovation? do you REALLY need it? why the old cobol on a mainframe is not adequate? you can keep all the core facilities in cobol on mainframe, and you can access it via java for webapps or other things.
>
> So: i think the reliability of a mainframe is actually unsurpassed. Do you want to change? ok, but you have to keep in mind that, for a bank, it is more important the reliability (and the mainframe has other advantages) rather innovation.
Part of the reason for the high mainframe reliability is
the years of accumulated experience with them. Programmers
made the mistakes and resolved the bugs. If something
does go wrong, they know how to fix it fast.
Further, mainframe software is much more stable. It changes
more slowly. We've had server systems that had to be
scrapped due to changes.
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #402069 is a reply to message #399359] |
Sat, 14 November 2020 03:58 |
Jorgen Grahn
Messages: 606
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Sat, 2020-09-05, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Sep 2020 18:59:39 +0000, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 2020-09-05, Bob Eager wrote:
>> ...
>>> Around 1990 (in a university computer centre) one of the senior tech
>>> guys gave a presentation. In it, he said that PCs were never going to
>>> catch on in a big way (i.e. one on every desk) but that the future was
>>> X terminals. He demonstrated how wonderful they were.
>>
>> That worked really well at university for me. We had a mix of X
>> terminals and netbooting Sun workstations. It didn't matter which
>> machine you sat down at, and you didn't have to administer anything,
>> except make sure I didn't exceed my quotas. All kinds of useful
>> software was made available.
>
> Never used roaming profiles on Windows? Hell, we have those at home!
We may have had them, but the only effect I saw was a slowdown of my
work. I never saw them used so that you could sit down at any
computer and not tell a difference.
That may have been the administrators' fault rather than Microsoft's.
> Not to mention UNIX with a central NFS server.
That would be "netbooting Sun workstations", so it's mentioned
already.
/Jorgen
--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
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| Re: When did mainframes lose commercial dominance? [message #402295 is a reply to message #399360] |
Thu, 19 November 2020 02:15 |
Jorgen Grahn
Messages: 606
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Sat, 2020-09-05, J Clarke wrote:
> On 5 Sep 2020 19:17:58 GMT, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se>
> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 2020-09-05, Niklas Karlsson wrote:
....
>>> Windows 10 and macOS have their flaws, to be sure, but their GUIs are
>>> pretty agreeable these days.
>>
>> I started using Windows 10 at work this week, and I dislike it. All
>> windows seem to be decorated differently, and all of them seem to want
>> to go fullscreen all the time -- which makes sense, because the window
>> manager makes it really hard to see where one window begins and
>> another one ends, and which one has focus.
>
> Lower right corner--left click once, you should get a display in the
> lower right with a bunch of little boxes. One of them is "tablet
> mode". Turn it off. There may be other tweaks you need to get to a
> reasonable desktop.
I read this several months late, but thanks! Turns out that I was in
non-tablet mode already. And indeed it /is/ possible to arrange the
windows as I want them on my desktop; it's just that you can tell that
Windows would rather want them arranged differently.
/Jorgen
--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
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