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>(Sun is seeing its marketshare destroyed by cheap Linux on Intel, but they're dead anyway)

I certainly don't see that. Sun's mad hatter linux is poised to strike against Windows/MS Office. They have nothing to gain by damaging the reputation of linux and/or hurting the GPL. In fact, Sun has a lot to lose if SCO gets its way.

SunFire 12K/15K Service Manual

SunFire 12K/15K Service Manual

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  Reality: The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given - the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE, and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared to any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" really means.
• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  Reality: Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (indeed, all systems do) - but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet [ximian.com] by Ximian [ximian.com], which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various very tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations - KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.
• Myth: KDE is more popular
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when both GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. Indeed, the systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

  One of the few solid measures of popularity is the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead, with both Hewlett-Packard [hp.com] and Sun Microsystems [sun.com] committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use - Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

• Myth: Konq

Star Office Drawing is as good as Visio for simple tasks. It's free for educational use.

I believe the word you're looking for is mature, and immature on the Linux side. Take Linux's VM implementation, which has been scrapped and rewritten from scratch multiple times within 2.4 alone. Meanwhile the Solaris VM has been fine tuned over the past decade. Solaris's time share scheduler has been O(1) for well over half a decade, whereas Linux is just now getting an O(1) time share scheduler.

"Take a look at Sun's IP stack versus Linux's, for instance."

Care to tell me how Linux is superior? You seem to be only assuming it is, and leaving the burden of proof upon me. Sorry, I put it back on you.

But just for review of some networking features: Solaris has offered stateful I/O multiplexing through the /dev/poll mechanism as well as asynchronous I/O for years. These features are only now being implemented in Linux with things like epoll(), which you'll need a 2.6 kernel and userland support in glibc to use. It will be at least a year before we can begin to expect the average Linux system to support stateful I/O multiplexing through epoll().

Or how about lvm+softraid? When will Solaris stop relying on Veritas? (and don't answer diskuite, please).

Don't answer Solstice Disk Suite? Perhaps you forget that the LVM was modeled after the Sun Volume Manager (which later became SDS) Perhaps you'd have an argument if you were championing FreeBSD's vinum, which was modeled after the Veritas Volume Manager, however you're trying to champion a technology which mimics the Solaris implementation yet saying to discount that very implementation. Pathetic...

"Or how about good integrated netfilter-like code?"

Sorry, people aren't going to be using their $20,000 systems as routers for their cable modems.

"While we're on it, let's talk hardware. The price /performance ratios on UltraSparcs make Xeons look like a super bargain, not to mention Athlons.

Please show me a system with better price/performance than the V440: http://store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePage.jhtml? cid=104994&parentId=48589

Keep in mind that no one in their right mind is going to shell out $26,000 for a system without a warranty. The V440 comes with 3 years of parts and on-site labor.

I'd certainly like to see you configure an equivalent system (the 1.28GHz UltraSPARC IIIi is equivalent to a 1.8GHz Opteron) from a vendor that offers at least a year of parts and on-site labor.

"It's way past late for them to have closed up the Sparc shop and moved everything over to this cheaper commodity platform that can pump more mips or flops per dollar than Sun can. And how freaking long did it take them to adopt PCI?"

The earliest Sparc systems I know of supporting PCI were Ultra 5s, released in 1995, about the same time most PC systems were starting to feature PCI.

"Of course, now most of my Suns have 64/66 PCI busses, while my latest Intels are doing PCI-X..."

Unless you're talking about the Opteron, the scalability and throughput of x86 systems is severely limited by the interconnect used between CPUs. P4 Xeons essentially share the FSB between processors, greatly limiting the amount of bus bandwidth that can be simultaneously utilized by multiple processors. With the P4, keep in mind also that the P4 does not cache operations, only micro-ops in its trace cache, so whenever the trace cache becomes tainted (by, say, mispredicing a branch) the P4 must fall back on retrieving the original opcodes out of main memory, saturating the front side bus (this is why Intel has been aggressively stepping up the bus speed of the P4)

For use as a high performance server, Linux does not rival Solaris in

I was a TA in college was very frustrated at the level of cheating. Your post made me think of an approach I wish I had used -- emulating the essay section of the Sun Certified Java Developer exam. After the students turned in their assignments, you could have a pop quiz with two questions: (1) How did you approach and implement ___ component in the last assignment? (2) Justify your design decision.

Not only would that hose anyone who copied an assignment, that would be a really good exercise for everyone in the class. I'd love to work with people who learned to THINK about their design rather than just slapping something together.

How about using the free AVG Anti-Virus and having it auto-update?

The real question is, are these notebooks given to the students to use (like books are lent for the year) or to keep for good?

If they are lent, then the students could run as users with school administered software and be just fine (most of the vulnerabilities in windows are due to everyone running as an administrator... set them up as regular users and they can do a lot less damage).

I'd say, though, go with the cheapest 12" iBook ($999 retail, $949 small volume educational price, (large volume probably pays even less)). It's ridiculously easy to use, small enough to fit in a backpack (and not take up the whole thing) and light enough to not feel like they're lugging around 5 hardcover textbooks.

On the other hand, I think that the notebooks themselves are more likely to crash (onto the floor) than anything else! Who in their right mind had this idea? Why not a computer at every desk (or, hell, a thin client on every desk ($1,049 each Sun Ray 150)would be a lot easier to administer). What's next, a free car for all high school sophomores?

The LiveCD - do you have the link to where you can download it from? I cant find anywhere on the sunsite.

re Crippled: To quote the guy who wrote the article The functionality of the system is somewhat limited because it is a demo... The only problem I have with the Live CD is that I cannot install the Star Office 7 product to demo it (it takes more space than is allocated for the install in demo mode)

If they wanted some serious market penetration, they should have released it under a similar license to the 'Free Solaris Binary License' which allowed free downloads of the x86 Solaris 8 isos. That would instantly make them a serious desktop OS contender.

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

1. It must work, and continue to work even if you patch the system
2. It has to work with exsisting document/file formats
3. It of course must be secure, cost-effective, etc
4. It must have centralized authentication/authorization
5. It must have an "Enterprise" level of installation. This is a biggy. Some kind of system where an updatable image can be maintained and trivially installed onto a new machine.
6. I'd like to see some kind of centralized preferences/custom settings that can follow you from machine to machine and survive an upgrade, etc.
7. It must be seamlessly upgradable.
8. It must have basic stuff that has been on other OSes like Drag and Drop that makes sense and works. It must have cut-n-paste that works. It must have a centralized and working printing system, etc. (The stuff that the Xerox star had in the late 70s and early 80s.)

First of all, please preview and format.

Secondly, while it is based on Suse, there are a lot of "Third-Party" applications, so to speak, in the OS. Many Java utilities (in the article it leasts at least 4 standalone, IIRC), and Staroffice.

As for it being enterprise system, well.... all I can say is that the OS is clearly aimed at the Desktop level, as Sun are selling two different products, funnily enough named Desktop System, which is the one based on Linux and Enterprise System , which is the Solaris Version.

Im trying to work out where you are getting the enterprise angle from. The linux version is being marketed as the desktop system, so sprouting out nonsense like it being for Enterprise customers, when you yourself state its the desktop system, doesn't make sense.

Overall, you stated facts that are either wrong or obvious, so im wondering where your "insightful tag" came from.

First of all, please preview and format.

Secondly, while it is based on Suse, there are a lot of "Third-Party" applications, so to speak, in the OS. Many Java utilities (in the article it leasts at least 4 standalone, IIRC), and Staroffice.

As for it being enterprise system, well.... all I can say is that the OS is clearly aimed at the Desktop level, as Sun are selling two different products, funnily enough named Desktop System, which is the one based on Linux and Enterprise System , which is the Solaris Version.

Im trying to work out where you are getting the enterprise angle from. The linux version is being marketed as the desktop system, so sprouting out nonsense like it being for Enterprise customers, when you yourself state its the desktop system, doesn't make sense.

Overall, you stated facts that are either wrong or obvious, so im wondering where your "insightful tag" came from.

Actually, I always suspect an idea is bad when Sun Microsystems has an entire Java-One conference based on it.

> Nor does it reflect the Unix based OS that you get with the Mac.

UNIX UNIX UNIX

It might be the fastest and it might be UNIX, but it still has the gayest, most unintuitive, most non-keyboard-centric user interface ever designed. Oh, that and the fact that there is no longer a start/apple menu so all you applications are crammed onto a long bar at the bottom with no text description.

Exceptions in java are not "invisible" In fact, you have to check for declared thrown exceptions (but not 'runtime' exceptions). In the API declared thrown exceptions are caused by external problems (like a missing file, closed socket, etc) while Runtime exceptions are usually caused by programmer error (like null pointers), and can be avoided by poor programming.

Ok, first of all a "file not being found" is not an exceptional condition. Secondly, yes java is required to tell you about exceptions you need to deal with (and this is a big gain over python/C++ that don't), however that doesn't solve the problem. Consider the Unix code...

Now, sure that's about as bad as it gets in C ... and normally you'd group a lot more data and do a single write operation. But anyway now compare that with the "wonderful Java exception code" taken from Sun's site on how to use exceptions...

Now pretty much the first thing you see when comparing it to the C version is that an error from println is only checked once, when it's actually used twice. And close isn't checked at all. This "compiles" and seems to work fine ... and as I said, this is directly from Sun's own documentation on how to use exceptions.

And I've not even mentioned how amazingly ugly it is compared to the C version, has the error checking in a non-obvious place compared to what generates the errors, could easily let someone believe that the IOException is just for the open call and it's twice as long.

If your python app is choaking on invalid input, it's because you can't program for shit, not because exceptions suck. If it was a C app, you'd simply segfault or something equally ridiculous.

Or, more likely, the error would have been checked. I assume the people who write the python code don't deliberately not check for "errors", it's just not obvious what is going to cause an error compared to the C code ... and often the error checking is so far from the code that generates the errors you can miss it anyway.

That means that we're going to have a bigger, badder SiteFinder pretty soon, right?


We could find: "www.gnu.org"
There is a Web site at this address.

Are you sure? (*) No ( ) Yes [SUMBIT]

Did You Mean ?
We did find these similar Web addresses.

www.sun.com
www.microsoft.com
www.sco.com

Except that's wrong. Running Hello World involves booting up what is, in effect, an entire operating system (the Java VM, with virtual memory, threading, everything, the works).

Not true when you use VM sharing.

For more info, see Sun's project Barcelona

Everyone, sing along:

Open Firmware Song

Why go from an x86 with propriety BIOS to PPC with propriety BIOS?

what makes you think it's proprietary? it's not. it's called Open Firmware and it's an IEEE standard.

Open, as in, not proprietary, and you can hack it yourself easily, if you feel like learning Forth.

Oh, the irony.

Macs havent had a BIOS for years--not in the traditional sense anyway. They use Open Firmware, an architecturally-neutral BIOS replacement (originally?) developed by Sun. It's pretty nifty...

More info here.

Best post for tonight. May I add that Sun's documentation is excellent. Both the man pages and the online docs are very precise and complete. Don't get me wrong, I am a big gnu/linux advovate, but very often I get lost with outdated howto's, incomplete man pages and the like.

I was reviewing Sun's financials, and found that on their consolidated fiscal year-end income statement they had a $2.1 billion addition called "impairment of goodwill".

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/financials/20 03-q4.html

Without this addition they would have lost $4.4 billion dollars for the fiscal year instead of the $2.3 billion.

What does this mean? Based on this Forbes article on the subject, it has something to do with the difference in the market value and book value of an asset. If the market value is less than the book value then you can take the difference and apply it back as an asset?

http://www.forbes.com/2002/05/22/0522sf.html

It appears the amount is based on the revaluation of some assets or acquisition they had, but it's not explained in the notes.

From the previous the year the value was only $6 million.

I'm just curious if this financial adjustment makes the story at Sun worse than it appears.

2. Sun owns Cobalt that make great Linux boxes.

As a former Cobalt/Sun employee, this is gratifying to hear. But you should know that Sun has completely killed off the Cobalt product line except for the RaQ 550. And that's slated for EOL by the end of this year.

The good news is that the Cobalt-specific code that made up the Qube (UI, etc.) has been released under a BSD license. More info and downloads at http://open.cobaltqube.org/. Hopefully the RaQ stuff will be opened at some point as well...

Sun's Linux products are "general purpose" Linux servers now, not appliances. Oh yeah, and some new desktop thingie... :)

2. Sun owns Cobalt that make great Linux boxes.

As a former Cobalt/Sun employee, this is gratifying to hear. But you should know that Sun has completely killed off the Cobalt product line except for the RaQ 550. And that's slated for EOL by the end of this year.

The good news is that the Cobalt-specific code that made up the Qube (UI, etc.) has been released under a BSD license. More info and downloads at http://open.cobaltqube.org/. Hopefully the RaQ stuff will be opened at some point as well...

Sun's Linux products are "general purpose" Linux servers now, not appliances. Oh yeah, and some new desktop thingie... :)

2. Sun owns Cobalt that make great Linux boxes.

As a former Cobalt/Sun employee, this is gratifying to hear. But you should know that Sun has completely killed off the Cobalt product line except for the RaQ 550. And that's slated for EOL by the end of this year.

The good news is that the Cobalt-specific code that made up the Qube (UI, etc.) has been released under a BSD license. More info and downloads at http://open.cobaltqube.org/. Hopefully the RaQ stuff will be opened at some point as well...

Sun's Linux products are "general purpose" Linux servers now, not appliances. Oh yeah, and some new desktop thingie... :)

2. Sun owns Cobalt that make great Linux boxes.

As a former Cobalt/Sun employee, this is gratifying to hear. But you should know that Sun has completely killed off the Cobalt product line except for the RaQ 550. And that's slated for EOL by the end of this year.

The good news is that the Cobalt-specific code that made up the Qube (UI, etc.) has been released under a BSD license. More info and downloads at http://open.cobaltqube.org/. Hopefully the RaQ stuff will be opened at some point as well...

Sun's Linux products are "general purpose" Linux servers now, not appliances. Oh yeah, and some new desktop thingie... :)

Sun *will* be fine... Besides their servers and Solaris and all those rock solid things, they are the Javameisters after all -- and what with the growing pervasiveness of Java, their sway will only increase... Also, I think they still have some exciting technologies on deck like Jini, for example, and probably something up their sleeves...

And anyway, Sun has piles of cash still (5.7 billion according to McNealy in this interview ), despite its low stock price. Much the same as Apple did when the world and his dog were jumping on the "Apple is Dead!" bandwagon... They can turn things around, and I really think they will.

If all else fails, they could get Windows to run on their servers, can't they?

Who are these moderators? This one is WAY too obvious...

Sun was founded in 1982... see Sun's website

Bruce Perens worked for HP... see article here

The Checkpoint firewall is not a Sun product... see Checkpoint Software Technologies

83? You're wrong as well: it was 1982. Please get your facts straight before you post.

Thank you.

I've worked for Sun in the late 70s and again in the mid-80s as a contractor


Good trick, that, to work for a company in the 70's that was founded in 1982. (with only 4 employees too) Sun Getting Started

Wheeeee.........Ah, I see that was an AC.

Sun will be fine. After the exit of the two companies mentioned in the story, they are the 64 bit and high end market provider now.

Seriously. If you want to spend $5000, $8000, or even $75,000 on a computer, you can go to Dell. But, if you're looking to drop $1.3 million on a computer, you go to Sun.

For anyone that has used sun hardware, we know. It really can't be beat. The stuff is fast, scalable, and bulletproof. Sun OS is about as stable as they come.

~Will //Netmar uses sun machines. www.netmar.com

The company I work for writes bespoke code to control industrial X-Ray systems (we also build the industrial X-Ray systems). I know that a vast amount of the software we produce is not written securely usually due to time constraints and a certain level of ignorance among our developers about how to write secure code (Book clicky Sun atricle clicky).

I applaud the exposure that this case will bring to the need for secure code in all applications, but wonder what reprocussions it will have if a precident is set that companies can sue for failures in code security. Will the computing industry become bound by legislated saftey (or security) tests that software must pass before it is issued (i.e. as in the automotive industry as everyone is so prone to compare us)?

Not a tyraid just a wondering

Sure, grids are cool, but when can we download a safe piece of software which to use for distributed calculations? When I'm not it need of doing stuff myself it would use my idle time for other people's calculations, and vice versa.

You can get it here along with some case studies of how it's used in production.

Distributed backups is another thing I'd like to have now, rather than tomorrow...

Uuencode, split, and post to Usenet...

In addition to the other recommendations here, you might want to consider a proxy server and firewalls between the edge of the network and the server providing access to your application.

It might also be useful to host the application on a trusted operating system, like Trusted Solaris, which can help limit the damage from the system being cracked.

You will also want to use various web and system auditing tools to check it before you deploy it.

You can't make stuff like this up.

- No, Gosling doesn't use JDBC. He says it all the time. He doesn't interact with databases, I guess. Not everyone has to.
- Gosling isn't as important to Borcon goers. Most of them are Delphi coders.
- I was wrong. The other keynote speaker didn't invent Pascal, he invented Turbo Pascal, then Delphi, then C#, for which he would want to use Visual Studio for, but couldn't.

Right, big tech companies obviously avoid Linux -- say big tech companies like:

• IBM
• SAP
• HP
• Oracle
• Dell
• Intel
• AMD
• Sun

Or which big technology companies were you referrring to exactly? Sure, it was a troll, but hey -- who isn't supporting Linux that doesn't make a competing OS? I mean, heck Sun, HP and IBM do make competing OSes and they've all jumped on the Linux bandwaggon.

Ultimately you get better performance and scalability with Fibre Channel, but cost is a factor.

Here is a small document describing the practice:

http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/816-2027/6m8dg246h?a=vi ew

Hmmm. It would seem so...
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/detai ls/291.html

However it's taken 4 generations of windows operating systems (depending on how you count) to make things buisness-friendly as they are in NT/XP

Okay, I've been a system administrator, network engineer, ISP webmaster, security administrator, C programmer and, most recently, a security officer. The height of Microsoft's "business friendliness" was the Win95/NT 4 combination, and that was really on "friendly" to the small/medium business market. Today, with the advent of weekly patch cycles, proprietary document format lockin, Software Assurance, continuous virus/worm threats, lack of appropriate security in the software, and more I would hardly characterize Microsoft as "business friendly". They are universally used because they are a monopoly with a stranglehold on the PC and desktop software market. As for ease of use, Mac has always been easier to use, as was OS/2. Windows didn't win on the desktop because it was better, it won because Microsoft used the VHS vs. Beta approach. DOS and Windows cost less and had more software available for it, and it was ubiquitious as more and more hardware vendors took advantage of OEM pricing.

Unfortunately, most Microsoft based organizations that try to migrate to F/OSS will implement things in the way you are discussing, where the user can "get under the hood". If you deployed Unix (Linux is just another incarnation of Unix) appropriately, with the OS and apps residing on a server and the users connecting via smart terminals this becomes a non-problem. The terminal session is set up to deliver the GUI and apps the user needs to do their job. For office automation workers this makes perfect sense and is extremely efficient from a resource, dollars and cents and people perspective. For more information, read the portion of this article that deals with how Unix in a distributed environment is set up see this story.

There was also recent /. coverage of this approach. Of course most Microsoft shops will try to migrate to Unix in a way that will allow "tinkering under the hood" and all sorts of issues. However, one of my colleagues implemented a Unix/thin client solution in a large data center. Not only did it cost about 60% of a PC solution, but the desktop support dropped to nearly zero. The sys admins, network admins and engineers don't have the lost productivity involved in updating, maintaining and patching desktop PC's. Their "workstation" has the resiliency of a server and they can connect to their desktop from anywhere and have the exact settings they want every time.

But, unfortunately, your scenario is probably more likely after all. Guys who have grown up with the concept of stand alone Windows PC's will try to clone that with Unix/Linux.

• Terminals are cheap (less than $400 a piece).
• Easy to administrate.
• Homogenous all over campus.
• Flashy smartcard so you can bring your session anywhere.

• Crappy, crappy CDE windowmanager. Yes, you can have Gnome, but apperently our admins haven't discovered that yet.
• SLOW under load. We're talking a full half second response time in matlab here, folks.
• Nowhere to stick CD's/floppys (but who needs those anyway?).
• People don't like them after a while, and thinks that everything UNIX is equally bad.

- It integrates with ARTSD and ESD to allow media playback

Now that's quite cool - a step towards being able to implement (in open source) equivalent functionality to Sun's Hot Desking .

Current updates of Solaris 9 come with Sun-supported GNOME out of the box.

The Solaris Freeware (sic) Companion CD which comes in the media kit has been shipping with KDE for serveral years now.

Updates are produced on a 3-month cycle to coincide with the latest update of Solaris.

Don't forget, Solaris runs on x86 (intel and AMD) hardware too.

Current updates of Solaris 9 come with Sun-supported GNOME out of the box.

The Solaris Freeware (sic) Companion CD which comes in the media kit has been shipping with KDE for serveral years now.

Updates are produced on a 3-month cycle to coincide with the latest update of Solaris.

Don't forget, Solaris runs on x86 (intel and AMD) hardware too.

We are talking R&D in computer technology, not a supply-chain, where, to paraphrase Scott McNealy, the only focus is to ship more bananas at a cheaper price (with a bruise on it.)

And here's what your fav R&D company has innovated.

Bull indeed.

cheers- raga

Oh joy, be an Apple fanboy, get modded up.

Anyway, without a 64 bit OS (heh heh) it doesn't mean much.

What's that fanboy? You think 8 GB of RAM will impress me?

Besides, this is AMD versus Intel in the x86 market where the real question is (IMHO), will this be a huge cash cow for AMD or will it be marginalized by Intel?

Oh joy, be an Apple fanboy, get modded up.

Anyway, without a 64 bit OS (heh heh) it doesn't mean much.

What's that fanboy? You think 8 GB of RAM will impress me?

Besides, this is AMD versus Intel in the x86 market where the real question is (IMHO), will this be a huge cash cow for AMD or will it be marginalized by Intel?