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PCs don't always make a lot of sense, especially if you need 40'000 of them :-)
I would also evaluate thin clients, especially Sun's Sun Ray technology:
http://www.sun.com/sunray/success.html/

That said, I know of a Swiss company (news agency with around 200 employees) who switched from Windows to Debian for the desktop PCs. Mostly Java applications. No serious problems were reported.

Well according to the web site.
Sun has got to get better names for things.. Its still so damm confusing. (java studio creator/java studio enterprise/ sunstudio). As a result I can't tell what the press release is giving away...

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/devtools/free/

Is this what there talking about? I've been playing around with java studio creator, its really really nice actually. Of course I use php not jsp/servlets, but its defenetly making me think about switching.

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/nov30/
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/what_you_get.j sp

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-11/sunf lash.20051130.1.html

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/nov30/
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/what_you_get.j sp

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-11/sunf lash.20051130.1.html

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/nov30/
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/what_you_get.j sp

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-11/sunf lash.20051130.1.html

Sun

HP

IBM

Dell

The first 3 I know are for real. I don't know much about Dell, but much more prominenet like that you can't have it.

And altough other manufacturers (shame on them) are less helpful (Toshiba...) they may be weaking up to the reality of the marketplace that Linux is becoming. You would need to hack far less since many hardware manufacturers are realising Linux is here to stay. You did not have a resource like Toshiba's a few years ago.

The old pitiful excuse not to use Linux argueing there is no hardware officially certified to run it, should be soundly ignored.

They may fall like snowflakes on Buffalo here,

Maybe if you mean Buffalo, NY

I have yet to come across a BSOD joke "in the wild." A quick search of Google returned 81 pages of what passes for Geek humor. But damn few questions from end-users, and nothing from sources like "Consumer Reports."

That's funny, my Google search for BSOD yielded all sorts of links:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1 647
http://www.ntbrad.com/bsod.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_screen_of_death
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsu pport/learnmore/russel_july09.mspx
http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/bsod.pd f
http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/bsod.pd f
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bus iness/columnists/gmsv/10581891.htm
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bus iness/columnists/gmsv/10581891.htm

They may fall like snowflakes on Buffalo here,

Maybe if you mean Buffalo, NY

I have yet to come across a BSOD joke "in the wild." A quick search of Google returned 81 pages of what passes for Geek humor. But damn few questions from end-users, and nothing from sources like "Consumer Reports."

That's funny, my Google search for BSOD yielded all sorts of links:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1 647
http://www.ntbrad.com/bsod.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_screen_of_death
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsu pport/learnmore/russel_july09.mspx
http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/bsod.pd f
http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/bsod.pd f
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bus iness/columnists/gmsv/10581891.htm
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bus iness/columnists/gmsv/10581891.htm

You can download Java Web Start from here.

Startup time should not be an issue any more with properly written programs using JDK 1.5 and up thanks to technologies such as Class Data Sharing. Thanks to Apple for pioneering this technology. There are many, many other examples and documentation on Sun's website explaining how to properly code Java programs to optimize their startup execution, but CDS is a technology aimed directly at assisting startup times of Java programs.

Class Data Sharing

Sun

IBM

Apple

1. Give that high-powered desktop with dual LCD panels to someone who isn't going to waste CPU cycles and gigabytes of RAM running only a web browser, email, and some ssh sessions. Perhaps a developer?!?!

2. Get yourself an old Pentium 400Mhz box, don't bother installing X-Windows, Gnome, nor even KDE. Replace your 2 LCD panels with one VGA 19" or 20" monitor that you've probably got just collecting dust somewhere.

3. Run Pine (novice) or Mutt(pro) for email, ssh, vim or emacs, and Links2 (with Javascript & Graphics) http://links.twibright.com/

4. Use GNU Screen to manage the 3 applications you need to run with unlimited windows including the ability to name and split your screens. Get someone to put screen on those remote boxes if it's not already there so you can keep your session running on the server when you disconnect. This way you can just exit out of screen and logout of your console then return and login again and restore the screen sessions. Heck you could even dial into work and resume all your sessions from home too!

5. Figure out what scripting languages you have available on all those boxes you monitor via ssh and then write scripts in that language.

6. Run your console in high res FrameBuffer mode and use a nicer font, gives you more room to split GNU Screen.

There, productivity problem solved. Also approach your boss and ask for a raise for the amount of money you just saved the company. i.e. they bought an over priced, over powered machine for someone who really doesn't need it.

This is what happens when you ask stupid questions on Slashdot and then brag about how great your workstation is. Well buddy, got news for ya many of us have better workstations!

I've got one of these babies sitting on my desk:

- http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/sunblade250 0/images/I1_hw_ppworksblade2500_mon_img_lg.jpg

Which is about to be replaced by this:

- http://www.apple.com/powermac/dualcore.html (Quad CPU's Baby!)
      - 76.6 Gigaflops / 16 GB's of RAM
      - Dual 23" Displays http://www.apple.com/displays/
- Down the hall will be a few of these http://www.apple.com/xserve/workgroupcluster/

To top it all off, my team will be able to compile XCode 2.2 apps utilizing all the workstations and even a few G5 XServes (non clustered) in the server room. That alone will cut down our compile time considerably!

Yeah, Yeah, I could build a quad Athlon monster that will be cheaper but I am not paid to build boxes, my company buys them for me.

As for the other comments about power, from the handbook:
Maximum Power Consumption 832 Watts

So, fairly hefty power draw...

This system'll get you out of trouble for about a full year, given ten photo sessions a day. You'll get free on-site support and you can store a full session in cache!

http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?process= SunStore&cmdStartWebConfig_CP&familyCode=SE6920&ba seSelected=3

I am lousy at separating the language from its APIs

Perhaps you are the one with the problem here. After all Java, like some other languages, have about 50 keywords, all the rest is API and is clearly noted as so in the documentation (see Java 2 Platform API Specification. Don't see how can be any confusion there.

I am lousy at separating the language from its APIs

Perhaps you are the one with the problem here. After all Java, like some other languages, have about 50 keywords, all the rest is API and is clearly noted as so in the documentation (see Java 2 Platform API Specification. Don't see how can be any confusion there.

b) enums,

Also, the Sun JRE does not provide the source, whereas the GCC does.

Sun provides the source for the JDK (the compiler), same as GCC does, though not under the same licence obviously.

Since the specs are open, there are open source implemenations of the JRE available.

The central idea behind Ajax is pretty good IMHO- moving as much of the presentation-tier processing as possible to the client system.

Which to me sounds like a stab at re-inventing Java applets.

All the problems you describe (name spaces, libraries, etc) are already solved in Java. In addition, you are not at the mercy of browser JavaScript bugs.

The only downside is the initial startup time for the Java applet, as the local JVM must be loaded, THEN the applet.

As for the JVM version, you can check for this in your applet before you start the dependant code, and you can ask the user to d/w the JVM.

The technology Java Web Start provides an easy to use framework.

The article you pointed at was all about
porting applications between platforms. The project refered to in the
original artical was about running an existing Linux binary inside
a zone on top of Solaris, with no recompilation.

OK, maybe I prematurely linked. I've heard of this before for at least a few years, maybe more than 5.

Here is lxrun from Sun that does direct running of linux binaries:

http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/lx run/

Here is another offering, maybe the original, don't know:

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~steven/lxrun/

And for source level compatibility here is:

http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/to ols/

The lxrun looks to have started in 1997.

The article you pointed at was all about
porting applications between platforms. The project refered to in the
original artical was about running an existing Linux binary inside
a zone on top of Solaris, with no recompilation.

OK, maybe I prematurely linked. I've heard of this before for at least a few years, maybe more than 5.

Here is lxrun from Sun that does direct running of linux binaries:

http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/lx run/

Here is another offering, maybe the original, don't know:

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~steven/lxrun/

And for source level compatibility here is:

http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/to ols/

The lxrun looks to have started in 1997.

I've heard about Solaris to Linux ABI for years. I dug this up from 2 years ago: http://developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/support _for_x86.html.

So is this something new or something that now works now that the Linux ABI has stabilized? Or is this easier now that Sun is shipping x86 systems or what?

Inquiring geeks want to know the point of running Linux apps on their Sun boxes.

The classical AJAX app is Google Map. Imagine re-implementing it as a Java applet. Such an applet would take a lot of work to implement and would not leverage the web browser's ability to dynamically download graphic files. You'd spend a lot of time re-inventing stuff that your browser already does, and you'd end up with a large collection of Java classes that you'd have to deploy with a massive set of JAR files. Such a monster would be royal pain to deploy as an applet. It would make more sense to use a non-browser installer, such Java Web Start or with an old-fashioned installer generated in a download packge or on a CD. And indeed, that is how most Java appllications are distributed.

What's this "date" thing I keep hearing about?

Here you go

Sun has some deployment plans and tools. You should look into StarOffice 8 Enterprise Edition. I've read you can get license costs down to $25 a license. It might be worth it for the extra support. Here are some links that might be helpful. http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/enterp rises.jsp http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/StarOf fice8EE_ds.pdf

Sun has some deployment plans and tools. You should look into StarOffice 8 Enterprise Edition. I've read you can get license costs down to $25 a license. It might be worth it for the extra support. Here are some links that might be helpful. http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/enterp rises.jsp http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/StarOf fice8EE_ds.pdf

If only they can get Project Janus integrated and out in the open...

Uh, read the whole press release (the same one announcing ZFS):

Run Linux Applications on the Solaris OS

Solaris Containers for Linux Applications enables Red Hat applications to run seamlessly and unmodified on the Solaris OS.

Sun intends to make Solaris Containers for Linux Applications available to the OpenSolaris community in December.

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-11/sunf lash.20051117.1.html

[...] By allowing Solaris and Linux binaries to co-exist on the same system, cross-platform application testing and deployment is simplified. In addition, it is now possible to use the award-winning dynamic tracing (DTrace) capabilities of Solaris 10 to monitor and help debug Linux applications, [...]

As you can see you can use Solaris's native tools (including DTrace) to debug a Linux application. This is huge!

Isn't Solaris 10 free-as-in-beer as well?

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp

Yes you can use that in production systems, and yes you have to tell them how many installs you're gonna do. But if you don't need support, you don't have to pay them a penny.

It's just not opensource.

I am not saying that I am going to run Solaris 8 forever. I am just saying that I am speeding up the transition to Solaris 10 only because of the features it offers. They make my life as sysadmin much easier.

More info about this on BigAdmin.

- ditch the forte crap and vendor lockin scheme

Done. Sun released Studio 11 (http://www.sun.com/software/products/studio/index .xml) on Tuesday. It's completely free to use unless you want support. They also ship lots of GNU tools included in Solaris (under /usr/sfw) in case you would rather use them.

- ultrasparc performance is terrible. Address it.

Done. The UltraSPARC-IV+ chip (http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-IVplus/) is up to five times faster than UltraSPARC-III and up to twice as fast as the initial UltraSPARC-IV. And the UltraSPARC T1 chip (code-name Niagara http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index. xml) delivers incredible throughput (in my testing, often faster than a V40z with four Opteron 850 CPUs) while consuming much less power and generating much less heat than any other chip delivering anything close to the same performance and throughput.

- get the X11 libraries and headers fixed - completely

Done. Solaris 10 (at least on X86) uses the Xorg implementation. The previous Xsun implementation is also available if you need it, though.

- Get ldap working without so many support applications

I can't say that I understand this one. Sun's Directory Server is the best performing and most scalable server available. It's very in-line with the standards so any LDAPv3-compliant application should work with it just fine. It is the preferred directory for use with most commercial LDAP-enabled applications.

- make your platform work better with OSS software (eg: gcc)

What else needs to be done in this area? Solaris 10 ships with a lot of OSS software, including GCC, and Sun makes a lot of additional OSS software available on the Companion CD (http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/). If that's not enough, you can use the SunFreeware (http://www.sunfreeware.com/) or Blastwave (http://www.blastwave.org/) collections to get what you need.

- ditch the forte crap and vendor lockin scheme

Done. Sun released Studio 11 (http://www.sun.com/software/products/studio/index .xml) on Tuesday. It's completely free to use unless you want support. They also ship lots of GNU tools included in Solaris (under /usr/sfw) in case you would rather use them.

- ultrasparc performance is terrible. Address it.

Done. The UltraSPARC-IV+ chip (http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-IVplus/) is up to five times faster than UltraSPARC-III and up to twice as fast as the initial UltraSPARC-IV. And the UltraSPARC T1 chip (code-name Niagara http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index. xml) delivers incredible throughput (in my testing, often faster than a V40z with four Opteron 850 CPUs) while consuming much less power and generating much less heat than any other chip delivering anything close to the same performance and throughput.

- get the X11 libraries and headers fixed - completely

Done. Solaris 10 (at least on X86) uses the Xorg implementation. The previous Xsun implementation is also available if you need it, though.

- Get ldap working without so many support applications

I can't say that I understand this one. Sun's Directory Server is the best performing and most scalable server available. It's very in-line with the standards so any LDAPv3-compliant application should work with it just fine. It is the preferred directory for use with most commercial LDAP-enabled applications.

- make your platform work better with OSS software (eg: gcc)

What else needs to be done in this area? Solaris 10 ships with a lot of OSS software, including GCC, and Sun makes a lot of additional OSS software available on the Companion CD (http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/). If that's not enough, you can use the SunFreeware (http://www.sunfreeware.com/) or Blastwave (http://www.blastwave.org/) collections to get what you need.

- ditch the forte crap and vendor lockin scheme

Done. Sun released Studio 11 (http://www.sun.com/software/products/studio/index .xml) on Tuesday. It's completely free to use unless you want support. They also ship lots of GNU tools included in Solaris (under /usr/sfw) in case you would rather use them.

- ultrasparc performance is terrible. Address it.

Done. The UltraSPARC-IV+ chip (http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-IVplus/) is up to five times faster than UltraSPARC-III and up to twice as fast as the initial UltraSPARC-IV. And the UltraSPARC T1 chip (code-name Niagara http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index. xml) delivers incredible throughput (in my testing, often faster than a V40z with four Opteron 850 CPUs) while consuming much less power and generating much less heat than any other chip delivering anything close to the same performance and throughput.

- get the X11 libraries and headers fixed - completely

Done. Solaris 10 (at least on X86) uses the Xorg implementation. The previous Xsun implementation is also available if you need it, though.

- Get ldap working without so many support applications

I can't say that I understand this one. Sun's Directory Server is the best performing and most scalable server available. It's very in-line with the standards so any LDAPv3-compliant application should work with it just fine. It is the preferred directory for use with most commercial LDAP-enabled applications.

- make your platform work better with OSS software (eg: gcc)

What else needs to be done in this area? Solaris 10 ships with a lot of OSS software, including GCC, and Sun makes a lot of additional OSS software available on the Companion CD (http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/). If that's not enough, you can use the SunFreeware (http://www.sunfreeware.com/) or Blastwave (http://www.blastwave.org/) collections to get what you need.

- ditch the forte crap and vendor lockin scheme

Done. Sun released Studio 11 (http://www.sun.com/software/products/studio/index .xml) on Tuesday. It's completely free to use unless you want support. They also ship lots of GNU tools included in Solaris (under /usr/sfw) in case you would rather use them.

- ultrasparc performance is terrible. Address it.

Done. The UltraSPARC-IV+ chip (http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-IVplus/) is up to five times faster than UltraSPARC-III and up to twice as fast as the initial UltraSPARC-IV. And the UltraSPARC T1 chip (code-name Niagara http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index. xml) delivers incredible throughput (in my testing, often faster than a V40z with four Opteron 850 CPUs) while consuming much less power and generating much less heat than any other chip delivering anything close to the same performance and throughput.

- get the X11 libraries and headers fixed - completely

Done. Solaris 10 (at least on X86) uses the Xorg implementation. The previous Xsun implementation is also available if you need it, though.

- Get ldap working without so many support applications

I can't say that I understand this one. Sun's Directory Server is the best performing and most scalable server available. It's very in-line with the standards so any LDAPv3-compliant application should work with it just fine. It is the preferred directory for use with most commercial LDAP-enabled applications.

- make your platform work better with OSS software (eg: gcc)

What else needs to be done in this area? Solaris 10 ships with a lot of OSS software, including GCC, and Sun makes a lot of additional OSS software available on the Companion CD (http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/). If that's not enough, you can use the SunFreeware (http://www.sunfreeware.com/) or Blastwave (http://www.blastwave.org/) collections to get what you need.

Because it does not have the latest and greatest in debug tools and Filesystems?

But I would say that it does have the latest and greatest in debug tools and Filesystems. With regard to debug tools, it has capabilities like DTrace, truss, kstat, pstack, plockstat, cpustat, etc. built into the OS. And on Tuesday, they somewhat quietly released Sun Studio 11 (http://www.sun.com/software/products/studio/index .xml) as completely free (as in no cost, unless you want support) software. This includes their latest compilers, debugging utilities, performance anlaysis tools, and NetBeans-based IDE. I'd say that dbx compares pretty favorably with gdb, and they have achieved several performance world records with their compilers.

And with regard to filesystems, on Wednesday Sun released (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/) the complete source code to ZFS and Solaris Express build 27 which contains the first publicly-available version of ZFS in a form that anyone can download and play with. It offers quite a lot of features in areas like ensuring data integrity via strong checksums, and 128-bit addressing capability for virtually unlimited filesystem sizes (http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bonwick?entry=12 8_bit_storage_are_you). Its performance is already generally faster than UFS, and if you enable compression then it generally goes even faster due to the smaller amount of disk I/O. It is certainly a pretty advanced filesystem compared with EXT3/Reiser/XFS/JFS.

Because it does not have the latest and greatest in debug tools and Filesystems?

But I would say that it does have the latest and greatest in debug tools and Filesystems. With regard to debug tools, it has capabilities like DTrace, truss, kstat, pstack, plockstat, cpustat, etc. built into the OS. And on Tuesday, they somewhat quietly released Sun Studio 11 (http://www.sun.com/software/products/studio/index .xml) as completely free (as in no cost, unless you want support) software. This includes their latest compilers, debugging utilities, performance anlaysis tools, and NetBeans-based IDE. I'd say that dbx compares pretty favorably with gdb, and they have achieved several performance world records with their compilers.

And with regard to filesystems, on Wednesday Sun released (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/) the complete source code to ZFS and Solaris Express build 27 which contains the first publicly-available version of ZFS in a form that anyone can download and play with. It offers quite a lot of features in areas like ensuring data integrity via strong checksums, and 128-bit addressing capability for virtually unlimited filesystem sizes (http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bonwick?entry=12 8_bit_storage_are_you). Its performance is already generally faster than UFS, and if you enable compression then it generally goes even faster due to the smaller amount of disk I/O. It is certainly a pretty advanced filesystem compared with EXT3/Reiser/XFS/JFS.

For integer ops, anyway. For FP ops, well, it sucks. But that shouldn't matter for things like web servers and most DB apps.

http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index. xml

32 simultaneous threads of execution, 72W to drive the chip. How much power does a quad Zeon draw?

Dell's gonna shit their pants.

> took 8 hours to restore!

You may want to check out the comments about the "checkpoint_segments" configuration parameter here; tweaking that appears to improve bulk loading performance considerably.

PostgreSQL is doing a fine job for my database, although it's a much smaller installation than yours. Only 4M records, but, hey.

There is a blog from a Sun Engineer about databases, etc.. He talks about PostgreSQL, how to improve its performance, etc... You can find it here

Damn, blew the link - should've (should have, not should of) previewed.

• Sun is working with the PostgreSQL community.
• Postgres for Solaris will be included with every copy of Solaris 10, with full support available from Sun
• Support for Solaris 10 and Postgres will be less expensive than support for Postgres and standard commercial Linux offerings.
• Many of many customers enterprise database needs can now be served with free and open source databases.
• The open source database is only one component of Sun's open source strategy that aims to provide customers with breakthrough new technologies based on open standards.
• Sun will provide feature-specific optimizations, such as DTrace providers, service manifests and Solaris Containers capabilities, enabling Postgres for Solaris to take advantage of key Solaris 10 technologies.
• Enhancements in Postgres for Solaris will be contributed to the PostgreSQL open source community.

• Sun is working with the PostgreSQL community.
• Postgres for Solaris will be included with every copy of Solaris 10, with full support available from Sun
• Support for Solaris 10 and Postgres will be less expensive than support for Postgres and standard commercial Linux offerings.
• Many of many customers enterprise database needs can now be served with free and open source databases.
• The open source database is only one component of Sun's open source strategy that aims to provide customers with breakthrough new technologies based on open standards.
• Sun will provide feature-specific optimizations, such as DTrace providers, service manifests and Solaris Containers capabilities, enabling Postgres for Solaris to take advantage of key Solaris 10 technologies.
• Enhancements in Postgres for Solaris will be contributed to the PostgreSQL open source community.

In my first job, years ago, I learned that developers will not usually keep any external documentation (e.g. some document-only file other than foo.c, whether troff, LaTeX, or MS-Word) current, but those same developers will usually keep internal documentation (e.g. documentation embedded inside foo.c or foo.cc) current. Back in those days, we were using a DEC VAX 11/750 and the embedded documentation used troff markup, but similar and more modern tools are available today for a wide range of platforms.

So folks should consider using open-source tools like HeaderDoc or Doxygen or (in the case of Java) JavaDoc to embed the software documentation inside the actual source files.

Mind, this is not a substitute for good coding or good documentation or good software enginering practices, rather this is a tool to help people write good code, have good documentation, and follow good software engineering practices. :-)

This is very good news for two companies: AMD and Sun. AMD, for the obvious reason that they have a mature 64-bit product line and now have a good argument to make against Intel even in risk-averse markets (that really won't like being forced into Intel's immature 64 bit line when Microsoft is obviously using AMD in development). This might explain why AMD recently launched a major channel push to get its processor to institutional buyers who have a pro-Intel bias. (evidently most corporate buyers are perverts who gain some sexual satisfaction from watching people in moon suits, or the Blue Man Group, gyrating, or watching entertainment industry stars in people's laps - over time one expects such pro-Intel perverts to be rooted out and AMD's more technical pitch to win).

Sun also has a mature 64-bit processor line and is now loudly bragging about the low power draw - 52% less than Intel architecture to do the same work. They are pushing this as "green computing" though there's no mention of how much tantallum (the worst of all possible minerals to extract) or gallium arsenide (the worst of all possible minerals to dispose of) is going into their chips or boxes - chalk that up as simple "greenwash". But the power-draw argument is compelling now as electricity prices are certain to skyrocket for many good reasons that will never go away. So if companies are looking hard at energy efficiency they are going to find a good reason to shift off Intel - and if they have to go 64-bit there's a good argument to shift the servers to UltraSPARC since these days there's no software problems running a mostly-Microsoft desktop environment with Sun-based hosts.

If anyone does know of any such problems, please, do, let us know...

I know, you were joking

:)

Peter Korn on Accessibility in ODF

His general message seems to me to be that it is the third party vendors who have done the work that makes using MS Office + Windows what it is today.

Secondly, the Gnome desktop offers class-leading accessibilty and when used with OpenOffice 2.0 can match or exceed MS Office + Windows on almost every feature.

The two problems are:

1. When using MS Windows, a better experience will be obtained with MS Office rather than OpenOffice etc. This is because of the years of work third party vendors have put in to developing their accessibility products.

2. Currently there is not a good speech recognition system available for Linux.

The feature set for ZFS is certainly way cool. But I'm disturbed by the lack of emphasis on reliability. I've had nasty experiences with older Sun filesystems that didn't that didn't respond robustly to sudden loss of power. (Yes, there was a UPS. It's a long story.) By contrast, I've seen journalling file systems like XFS and NTFS simply laugh off that kind of problem.

OK, maybe ZFS is more bulletproof than the filesystems I relied on the last time I worked with Solaris (1998). Still, I'd like to here them say that this is an important design feature!

Man pages and a PDF slide show convering of the more interesting points:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/
(ZFS itself has just two commands btw)

Some basic UFS vs ZFS benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roch?entry=zfs_to _ufs_performance_comparison
(I guess we'll have to wait and see if ZFS can beat UFS on all benchmarks by the time it ships with Solaris proper)

Party trick - silently recovering forced data corruption:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timc?entry=demons trating_zfs_self_healing

A user example of how ZFS's built-in error detection and correction can find hardware errors:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/elowe?entry=zfs_s aves_the_day_ta

Some background on RAS in file-systems:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/relling?entry=zfs _from_a_ras_point

ZFS vs Veritas for simplicity:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timf?entry=zfs_is _that_it

You can config ZFS from a browser too if you want:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/talley?entry=mana ge_zfs_from_your_browser

How to trash your OSs with benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bill?entry=zfs_vs _the_benchmark

Can't yet be used as the boot file-system, but it's being worked on:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tabriz?entry=zfs_ boot

Man pages and a PDF slide show convering of the more interesting points:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/
(ZFS itself has just two commands btw)

Some basic UFS vs ZFS benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roch?entry=zfs_to _ufs_performance_comparison
(I guess we'll have to wait and see if ZFS can beat UFS on all benchmarks by the time it ships with Solaris proper)

Party trick - silently recovering forced data corruption:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timc?entry=demons trating_zfs_self_healing

A user example of how ZFS's built-in error detection and correction can find hardware errors:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/elowe?entry=zfs_s aves_the_day_ta

Some background on RAS in file-systems:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/relling?entry=zfs _from_a_ras_point

ZFS vs Veritas for simplicity:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timf?entry=zfs_is _that_it

You can config ZFS from a browser too if you want:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/talley?entry=mana ge_zfs_from_your_browser

How to trash your OSs with benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bill?entry=zfs_vs _the_benchmark

Can't yet be used as the boot file-system, but it's being worked on:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tabriz?entry=zfs_ boot

Man pages and a PDF slide show convering of the more interesting points:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/
(ZFS itself has just two commands btw)

Some basic UFS vs ZFS benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roch?entry=zfs_to _ufs_performance_comparison
(I guess we'll have to wait and see if ZFS can beat UFS on all benchmarks by the time it ships with Solaris proper)

Party trick - silently recovering forced data corruption:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timc?entry=demons trating_zfs_self_healing

A user example of how ZFS's built-in error detection and correction can find hardware errors:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/elowe?entry=zfs_s aves_the_day_ta

Some background on RAS in file-systems:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/relling?entry=zfs _from_a_ras_point

ZFS vs Veritas for simplicity:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timf?entry=zfs_is _that_it

You can config ZFS from a browser too if you want:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/talley?entry=mana ge_zfs_from_your_browser

How to trash your OSs with benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bill?entry=zfs_vs _the_benchmark

Can't yet be used as the boot file-system, but it's being worked on:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tabriz?entry=zfs_ boot