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Sun Considers Switching Cobalt to Solaris
cyber-vandal writes "According to this story on ZD in the UK, Sun is considering switching from Linux to Solaris, even though Solaris doesn't actually run on the MIPS architecture." "Ok guys, we bought this company that seems to be doing ok and we want to drive it into the ground as fast as possible. Suggestions?"
2 things: 1. If Solaris has to be ported, I would think that it would be awhile before they can use it for the Cobalt stuff. By the time they could ship Cubes with Solaris, everyone would already have & be used to the old kind with Linux on it. 2. Given this, I suspect that Sun will eventually rethink their strategy. Probably what we'll see is users being given a choice of which OS they want installed.
Solaris on the Cobalt RaQ and Qubes might not be a bad idea in many ways, from both Sun's and Cobalts point of view. Also, it could benefit the end user as well. Consider the following, just for a moment.
1) Sun needs a foothold the low-end market. A conspiracy theorist could see that Sun is just trying to expand their empire, and with some just cause. Though Sun's competition has been makers of other higher-end systems (DEC, IBM, etc), all these companies have been feeling a loss to x86-based servers running Windows or Linux. In some ways, this has put a very strong line between who rules the high-end and who rules the low-end. However, when it comes to the bottom line, Sun could be making mroe because it is easier to sell more cheaper boxes with a cheaper OS. So, Sun does a couple of things: Make Solaris 8 free (sans media cost) for under eight processors and increased support for the x86 platform as well as addming many popular GNU tools found in Linux, FreeBSD, etc (an ironic fact if you looks at the history of Solaris or SunOS). Now, you say Solaris has x86 support. Yes, but it leaves something to be desired. However, something Sun knows how to do well is write to a very specific set of hardware. Sun writes Solaris for UltraSPARC based servers. There is only very variance in hardware, unlike the x86 world, where it is a hardware goulash. So, Sun takes Cobalt, which is very inexpensive (if you have ever looked inside a RaQ, you'll hate yourself for not coming up with so simple five years ago) *and* only uses a certain hardware. It would be easier for Sun to optimize for the RaQ than to try to make every x86 user happy. They end up with a more stable x86 offering and don't have to change a thing to the already cheap hardware. They are again competitive with the real leaders in the Server market. Face it, Sun can only sell so many mammoth Sun boxes nowdays. Talk to any Sun sales rep. They feel the pinch badly. So in the end, Sun gets with the times in a buisness sense. Produce a inexpensive, stable server with the Sun name, and not have to re-invent the wheel. Though it is too early to see, Sun could be making a step in the right direction an it could also solve a problem the Cobalt is having, stability. As for OS supremacy, Sun makes no real profit in that Microsoft since on their OS. Sun makes hardware. That is their bread and butter, not this stagnantly evolving mish-mash of BSD and System V. Sun changes Solaris to work better on their hardware. They are not big "feature" mongers.
2) Cobalt needs Sun. Now, before you begin to flame me for possibly hinting that Linux uis unstable, that is not what I will be talking about here. Cobalt made a mistake early on, and it wasn't choosing Linux, it was not making a strong push into a hardware platform. Cobalt started on MIPS and went through great pains to make their special version of RedHat 5.2 and assorted packages run on the MIPS processor as well as their highly-flaunted web-based administration software. By RaQ2, they got it somewhat stable and really started selling. However, their were issues with their administration interface and theiur lack of 3rd party support. One was do to a software development platform, the other, hardware.
Yes, the Cobalt "special sauce" is very perl based, however, their is a nice helpinf of servlets about. Though IBM has made great strides with Java on Linux, they weren't around at the time. The Perl/CGI and Java combo on Linux, from by point of view as a developer, is a match made in hell. I wouldn't do it on any other OS. Also, the JVM support wasn't that great on MIPS either. Overall, scalibility suffered on these boxes. Also, if you ever dared to go beyond their static administration environment, you broke that special sauce. It is not a picnic to fix. Combine this with the fact that many applications (RealServer, Oracle 8i, iPlanet/Netscape servers, Sybase, etc) that run fine on x86 Linux, could not run at all on the RaQs due to MIPS. Cobalt made the change to x86. The migration was an absolut nightmare. They drop all MIPS support on the RaQ3 so they can get better Java support and support more 3rd party apps. Well, they never coudl get a migration package to work between the older RaQs and the newer ones. Cobalt didn't write Linux, of course, they knew how to make cheaop hardware and a very *large* and convoluted web app. Cobalt planned an easier migration to x86, however, never considered all they needed to do to revert the "altered RedHat" back to x86 and make the according changeds to their app. This seems like it would be easy, however, it seems that Cobalt made things harder. I don't believe that they stuck with 5.2 as their base for trhe RaQ3, and it the structure changes broke all their platform-indepedant code they chose not to rewrite very well. Cobalt sales go down since they don't support this mess very well, as they made very little changes to fix this. Cobalt made bad desicions in changing to much of their original formula. Their product suffered. Along come Sun, with an OS that rarely changes general format. Cobalt can do what they do best: make cheap hardware and write a very user-friendly interface to a OS that supports all those lovely 3rd party apps the customers want. Cobalt's formula doesn't take well to massive hardware or software changes. They made that boat. Sun could possible save it from sinking. Was it the best boat? Maybe not, however, Cobalt really wanted the whole thing to be cheap and have the customer touch little of the OS as possible. Cobalt *could* have made their product work just fine on x86 and Linux and made it very stable. They chose not to make that effort. Now, the Java support will be top of the line. Sheesh.
3) Lastly, the customers. These are they people that actually matter in this whole thing. The people who by this to do what they want without having to be geeks. People who want their little mom and pop internet shops or web hosters. They pay for these Cobalt boxes and don't want to worry about their nice user interface not working with the OS or worrying that more hardware changes means they can't upgrade as needed due to bad implementation. They change could benefit the customers. The majority of Cobalt customers don't mess with the OS, since it breaks their pretty interface. This important, since these people don't want to be geeks, they just want get a server online cheaply with the smallest learning curve and have it work right. This could solve that. This is not meant to be a geek's server. This is your mom or dad's server. When Cobalt can't make these servers upgrade smootly, mom and dad cease buying more servers. This *could* be remedied now.
Closing: Sun keeps the RaQ on the x86 path with a static OS. Sun gets their foot in the low-end door. The customers hopefully get what was advertised in the beginning: a low-maintainence, cheap, stable web server that is easy to run and that doesn't require hundreds of hours of pouring over FAQs and arcane tomes to administrate. The catch: Sun. Sun will be new to this market. They could take Cobalt's implementation and make it worse by doing the same thing that Cobalt did: change without forethought. This would include price increase. That would be the worse thing Sun could do, as it would show that they just don't get it. Sun has the ability to make Cobalt's implementation work, as long as the customers get what they pay for in the end. Unfortunatly for Linux fans, it will be without Tux. Could of this been avoided? Yes, easily. Sun may of never came into the picture if that were the case.
My recommendations are still to run mission-critical apps on Solaris, even Linux is getting better and better all the time. It's not all the fault of Linux, many of the apps just aren't as stable as their Sun counterparts (Java and Oracle come to mind).
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
PMDF and the associated LDAP services aren't expected to be available for Linux anytime soon.
Sun, trying to keep it's budding cash cow healthy has to create new markets for it to penetrate: Net Application Boxes.
Mail Transfer Agent in a box!
They should give it European management.
Then they could give ISP 24 hour a day 7 days a week support, except they wouldn't have a manned hotline after 4 pm Friday until 9 am Monday, they don't want to pay ruinous overtime.
When I was on the hotline (in the US), I got a call Friday afternoon from Germany, their hotline was closed for the weekend. I guess $250,000 in computer equipment doesn't get you much in Germany.
No they'll get one of their staff to fix the problem, just like Sun do, or are all the Sun developers on 24/7/365 callout just in case something they did went wrong. Jeez, who invited the ZDNet journalist. That is clueless FUD of the worst kind, and you, sir, are the one that is mistaken.
No, actually, I don't see an inconsistency here. Microsoft claims that it's server OS can play with the Big Boys; turns out it's harder than Microsoft likes to admit. Sun, on the other hand, backs up most of the claims they make about Solaris.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Last week, senior Sun executives said that although the firm's strategy with Cobalt has not been decided, they were leaning toward replacing Linux with a version of Solaris that is optimised for appliances.
Although it is tempting to believe that Sun wants to go around and purchase every Linux company and force them to use Solaris, this simply isn't what is happening here.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
rotfl:D
Awesome!
Linux isn't faster than Solaris; it's just better optimized for low end hardware. Here's an example. I had an E250 for a tinkertoy server. Two ultrasparc II processors at 300 mhz, 512 megs RAM. When it's doing nothing, log into CDE, and plunk around. It's slow as shit, but responsive. Next, spool up the webserver, Oracle, your appserver of choice, and put some load on it. Next, start grepping through two meg log files. In general, load the crap out of it. Then, log into CDE. It's slow as shit: but no slower than it was running nothing! Solaris soaks load like a sponge. Linux can't scale SMP the way Solaris (and, for that matter, AIX and HP-UX) can. It's improving, and it'll get there eventually, but not at the moment. Also, Solaris has better 'enterprise' class functionality. Want my favourite example? Go onto your production linux box, and fsck the drive. Oops, you have to unmount it or watch it die, right? Now go onto your production Solaris box, and do the same thing. Wow, you can fsck it while it's running! Stuff like that.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I think Sun is going "make or break"
They want to put ALL of their energy in one direction and it just isn't worth much to push Solaris when they run linux.
two things i think Sun looked at:
1 - Drop Solaris in favor of Linux standards
2 - Drop Linux and put all effort into Solaris
3 - Keep both Linux and Solaris divisions and spend out the yang to support both.
Solaris is a GOOD OS, just as stable as linux and very supported. Sun has people who know Solaris inside and out, Solaris is like a standard inside Sun.
There is the possibility to make more revenue if they don't have to spend money to keep people working on the "spare" OS.
I would have liked to see them keep linux around but good luck to them.
I like Windows, it has the best minesweeper clone
We have net problens, wanted to run ntop on it (we're heavily swicthed, so that's the only place it can go). ntop is not on there, nor can it be built. Linux wasn't designed to be an appliance OS. Not that it's a bad OS (I like it) just the Qube seems very cobbled together if you look just below the HTML UI.
In my experience with solaris, I have seen that it is actually a pretty damned good operating system. It might not be Linux, but there are a LOT of things that it does well... SOME THINGS IT EVEN DOES BETTER! While I have not written code for distrubuted systems on the solaris platform, I understand that this is a bit easier than under linux (and I have PLENTY of experience with this under linux, thank you). Soooo... I see NOTHING wrong with setting up these boxen with solaris. I love linux, but HELLO... as long as they strive for compatibility, who really cares what platform it is... We're not talking about winchips and win2k here.
Eh...
It is amazing the amount of bad vibes towards Sun I see in these postings. Sun is a good company that makes great products. I know that Linux is faster than Solaris and runs on more hardware, but that is not the point. Solaris is still a great OS and for some applications I prefer it over Linux (I would not even try to run Linux on an E10K, even if it was ported). And also lest we forget, we are not dealing with another micro$oft hegemony here. These are the guys who gave us NFS, Sun RPCs and Java. I think that everyone would have to admit that without being a full open source company, they conduct themselves admirably.
And I would not want to have to support 2 OS'es either.
Which OS is more scalable than Solaris, please?
Irix? SGI's Origin 3800 can have up to 512 processors. Not sure how many Irix supports, but I think SGI had sun beat on scalability.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Have you any evidence that Solaris/x86 is unstable?
I log into a Solaris/x86 box regularly and it seems solid. Sometimes there are performance issues, but they have more to do with the system's lack of administrators than with the OS.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Cobalt, as many people have already stated, now use the x86 platform for their servers. From Cobalts history and reputation of not really being big on supporting older products (or any product really, after they have bee released) I doubt they would retrofit say the Qube 2700s, Qube 2's, Raqs, Raq2s, NasRaq and CacheRaq (all Mips products) with Solaris. I mean why would they make that investment?
The Raq3, and now the Raq4 are the most popular models that Cobalt has. They are both running fairly lame AMD chips. All evidence suggest they will continue to use x86 chips in the future. So I imagine the Raq5, or whatever they end up calling the next ones (Netra Raq perhaps?) would be capable of using Solaris for Intel.
And honestly this would fit in with Cobalt's business model fairly well. Currently they have a really good profit margin--leading the industry apparently. Paying for a license for the OS would be no big deal. And Cobalt hasn't really contributed much to the Open Source community--for example ChiliSoft was recently purchased by Cobalt and their ChiliSoft ASP product is still closed source. While the engineers tend to embrace Open Source stuff, I have a feeling that the upper management may not--the CEO tends, IMHO, to actually go out of his way to have the company adopt propreitary software. So I guess I wouldn't be surprised.
In any case,
-k
True, but if the little Cobalt boxes are running Solaris, than it's easy as hell for people who outgrow their Cobolts to simply copy/paste over to a bit Solaris server and off to the races. Not that it's difficult to port Linux to Solaris, but it's still a powerful lure.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
This might be true. Being Solaris end to end might very well give Sun a strategic advantage, but that is an entirely different line or reasoning than Sun doesn't have the energy to support two operating systems.
have a day,
-l
The Cube although kinda cool, is no killer app. There is no need to create a new Solaris for it. A much easier plan would be to port over any Sun tools that were needed. And Sun porting Solaris to MIPS sounds pretty unlikely. The indended end users of the Cube would never see the OS anyway all the admin is done from web pages.
I think the reason the Cube uses MIPS is because there are fewer linux projects/software for Cobalt to have to deal with the service issues that would be created when people hack it. btw. the Cube does not even include a restore CD this must be purchased for $100.
Sun is actively working on supporting Linux binaries and porting Linux drivers to Solaris, so the Cobalt x86 boxes could run the Solaris kernel and yet still natively execute your Linux x86 binaries.
Just because it isn't Linux, doesn't mean it isn't any good.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Here are some background articles on the purchase:
Upside Today
Red Herring
Morningstar
Reuters.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Remember that when they by the company, they get all the source to anything that is binary. That makes porting easy. Most of the Admin stuff is Perl anyway. It would run just fine with a few tweaks. Besides there are more advanced web based admin tools out there than the Cobalt ones (webmin).
But only if it is an option. and to think I was just looking at these...
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
It has _always_ been Sun's strategy to concentrate their effort on as few platforms (hardware and OS) as feasible. Sun is quicker than the competition to drop support for old platforms. Sun has been pretty succesful in their strategy, why change it now?
Cobalt was dropping MIPS support long before this, going to pure Intel. Solaris already has Intel support, and is actively supporting the Intel versions.
Solaris on Intel is 99.9% the same source code as Solaris on Sparc. Only the kernel and 64-bit support differs.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The why? of this is what's bugging me. The only thing I can figure out is that Sun is basically splitting it's hardware market into two tiers: expensive (Sun hardware) vs. cheaper (Cobalt). May that's what they're doing. Aiming Solaris at shops that can't afford top-quality Sun equipment.
To sum up: I think they're aiming at getting Solaris into the lower-end hardware market to compete against Linux.
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I'm not sure why you only got a "1" for your post, because you raise an excellent point. The value-add of the Cobalt is that is *IS* an appliance. You should NOT add software to it - period! All administration *should* be done through the web interface; anything else not only voids the warranty, but defeats the purpose of spending the extra money you did to buy a slow 1U machine (my RaQ3 is only 300MHz K6/2). If you want something to run other software on, you should just go buy a standard 1U server and install Linux. You'll save money and get a better performing box. Sun had this problem with their NetraNFS servers that they tried to sell as "appliances" a few years ago and flopped. They were based on Ultra2 workstations with some packages added to Solaris. The whole thing could be administered through a web interface. The problem was that everyone wanted it to do this and that just a little differently... and this would break the Netra NFS, or the package you add wouldn't work, or... The result was that Sun dropped the NetraNFS line. Now, they are buying what amounts to a new product line (though positioned downmarket) which does the same thing, though is admittedly much more flexible and has more add-on packages that support integration with it's web interface. But I digress.. the moral of the story is leave appliances alone!
And what are you referring to ??
They probably want to control the licensing of OS in the Server, so customers buying Cobolt Servers will be forced to pay SUN for upgrades. So I guess this is good news if you own SUN stock, but bad news if you plan on buying a Cobolt server.
Solaris doesn't run much better on x86 than it does on MIPS. :)
No man pages!
Non standard processor!(this means that if you want to install something on it you have to compile it yourself or hope that Cobalt has an rpm for it)
These things are really meant as appliances that run Linux in the background, but have a pretty browser config interface. Malda's probably never seen one of these things, just saw Linux somewhere on the Cobalt page. Solaris on these boxes could only help things.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
As far as seeing it coming, I can't believe anyone didn't see it coming...with the possible exception of all the "first post" trolls and the idiot who keeps posting the goatsex links.
Man, if you think kadb (sun's kernel debugger) is good thing, you are seriously shot between the head. I mean, give me printf() any day!
For those of you not in the know, it's based on the 7th Edition debugger and is basically little more than an interactive hex editor that knows about symbol tables...
iRaq uhhh iMac and Raq meshed together.... iRaq? Its a country, America's been bombing it whenever we get bored? See, Apple started this whole i thing. Yeah, the letter i is everwhere because of Apple. They like ithings..... Oh the hell with it, I can just SEE the glazed over look on your face.
last I heard, it was free for personal use, which means if you want to use it at work, you have to pay for it. So, it's not 'free' as Linux or FreeBSD, or other real free OS's are.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
It won't help. A shop that already has a Solaris base won't be interested in one of these. The smaller systems are so dumb they're designed as drop-in server for a 1-5 person office. Not something you'd even find useful in an office that already has Solaris systems.
Just out of curiousity, why couldn't Linux be as efficient as Solaris on UltraSparc? Frankly, having used both systems extensively, I find that Solaris is not especially efficient. You don't notice that so much nowadays because you're buying a ton of horsepower when you buy one of today's SPARC systems, but it's true. Just compare BSD to Solaris on one of their workstation systems -- BSD screams in comparison.
You mention Solaris' as being relatively poor on the x86. How different do you think Solaris/Intel really is from Solaris/SPARC? They're almost entirely the same code, and Sun actually did a pretty good job with their Intel port. But it's nowhere near as efficient as BSD or Linux so it feels like a dog.
I have no doubt that Sun can pare down Solaris to be a good match for the Cobalt hardware, but I question whether this is a good use of resources and whether it's going to be good for customers. The Cobalt systems are beautiful -- incredibly easy to set up, efficient, and extensible using readily available, and easily installed, Linux software. Switch that to Solaris and you have an instant porting job for additional software, and that assumes that Sun does an about-face and starts bundling compilers back in with the OS (fat chance). As both a Cobalt and Sun customer I'm dead set against this kind of change.
Anyway, having said all of that, the Cobalt purchase makes a hell of a lot of sense. It is, in fact, the first major move I've seen them make in years that looks to be ahead of the market rather than behind. They've been making good money selling bigger and bigger servers, but they've been losing an increasing chunk of the lower end of the market. The problem with that is that Moore's Law guarantees that the jobs that you need a monster machine for today will be doable on commodity stuff tomorrow. The big machine user base will eventually peter out (just as it did for Cray and the other supercomputer manufacturers).
Turnkey server systems are going to be a big thing, I think, in a market that Sun has otherwise lost.
jim frost
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Answer: Sun is a hardware company.
They make the vast majority of their money off hardware (> 90%). Their software divisions (Solaris, Java) are essentially loss-leaders to sell more hardware. Adding an extra loss-leader (Linux) doesn't make sense from a dollars and cents perspective.
Jeebus
it's the dog food principle. if you can't eat your own dog food, you'll get beaten up in the press. and rightly so. if your OS is one of your core businesses, they you should use it. if your processors are your core business, you should be using them. if they don't replace them, they'll be tacitly supporting linux and x86, which probably isn't in their best interests. it shouldn't matter to the end user -- it's an appliance, for god's sake. it shouldn't be a money issue, because they make the OS & the processesors - if their production costs can't beat the wholesale costs from other suppliers, they shouldn't be in the business. it's not like they have to buy them from themselves -- oh wait, this is sun we're talking about - they do have to buy them from themselves. i haven't seen that much beaurocracy since talking to the IT people down at the our local county government offices...
Monolithic Cumbersome technology prevailing over Smart Concise solutions...
Rapid Nirvana
Since before I can remember, any purchase of a computer from Sun comes with a 'Right to use' license for Solaris, and installation media. This would extend to new purchases of Cobalt hardware- in which case their 'paid' OS is a 'free' OS.
Perhaps your complaint is actually that Linux is an 'open' OS, while Sun has yet to make good on their promise to 'open' the source to Solaris.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Less is only included with Linux. You'll have to use More as a pager with NetBSD. Besides, I can't see what effect a pager would have on security anyway.
It is also important to look forward, not just back, from whence comes thoughts of both IA-64 and SPARC.
One of the significant things Cobalt had was designs for compact-and-hopefully-usable cases and support software; that sort of thing ought to work perfectly well if Sun contributed SPARC motherboards and CPUs to the mix, with compatible form factors. At which point running Solaris-for-SPARC makes perfect sense.
And in looking ahead, the present MIPS chips aren't likely to be viable to the business purpose five years from now, at which point IA-64 might be more likely to be of importance.
The importance of MIPS in all of this is incredibly low, and steadily falling...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
This move is obviously part of the Sun overall strategy. For 3 main reasons:
4. They make a packet from Solaris licensing fees.
With an x86-based system, there is no sensible reason to switch to Solaris x86, unless you really need something that Solaris has that Linux doesn't (yet) e.g. DiskSuite/Veritas Volume Manager.
Sparc-based systems are another matter; there is an annoying lack of applications for Sparc Linux. Netscape is many versions behind (4.51 vs. 4.76 last time I checked), no Acrobat Reader, no Applix, etc. I'd love to ditch Solaris in favour of Sparc Linux (as a stepping stone to ditching Sun hardware as well), but the applications are a real sticking point.
When did Sun buy Cobalt? I thought Gateway bought all the Qubes, and they were using it to bring the linux platform into Gateway. Wow... I really missed something.
Running solaris on one of these would be the death of it. I've played with a 4i with 256MB of RAM and Cobalt's Perl stuff can eat up 70-80% of the processor!
Solaris would make these machines puke and die.
I enjoy reading slashdot but posters like you make me go, "Ugh! I'm reading the same site as this idiot?"
Sun's not a leader in the OS dept? What the hell are you talking about? Solaris and the SPARC architecture are the two biggest assets Sun has and serving Sun really well. Just take a look at Sun's stock.
Sun's not afraid of Linux. Why should it? Linux is good for Solaris! It creates more Unix-savy users and developers. And the open source projects are creating tons of apps that also runs on Solaris. Suddenly, Solaris is not only good for servers, there're also good on the desk.
Linux can't touch Sun when it comes to high-end servers. What Linux takes away is the low-end stuff. So it's more of a competitor for MS than Sun. And when a Linux shop grows, it's easy to move to Solaris.
it's bad!?!?!?!
Hail Linux!
Hail CmdrTaco's trolling!
Down with Solaris!
Down with Sun!
It might be easier to get every to agree that you are a goat fucker
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, System 26 GUI Component Stockpile
All due respect for Linux but I feel it has been evolving more towards a desktop market and left the server end hanging a bit.
The main impetus that has been driving Linux development has seemed to shift the focus to add layer upon layer of complexity to the kernel,which I do admit has resulted in a better kernel, but also had the side effect that due to the massive array of hardware supported the source has been quite convoluted.
An OS such as Solaris, which has inherently less hardware support than Linux, might be the answer here, provided Sun can keep the hardware spec fairly standardised.
And BTW Cobalt is/was moving away from MIPS towards the IA platform.
--
Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Nothing is real but the pain
A 'new version' of Solaris on the Intel (Cobalt offers Intel now) platform would be easy to support in the long run, they would just compile with slightly different defines than the standard release.
Much easier than supporting an entirely distinct, rapidly changing, Linux kernel.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
There is a strong mindshare among Solaris admins that Solaris is a real UNIX, and that Linux is not a "real" UNIX. Sun makes a good deal of money with this perception. Sun is not foolish--they know that if management types realize that low-cost Linux servers can do as good as a job as Solaris for a large number of intranet and internet tasks[1], they will go for a low-cost Linux investment instead of a high-cost Solaris investment.
As it stands right now, Linux is a far greater threat to Sun than it is to Microsoft, since Linux works well as a UNIX server, but yet is not as functional as Windows on the desktop[2].
- Sam
[1] There are things, such as NFS and support, where Sun/Solaris is better, of course.
[2] We're getting there. I think Kde and Gnome 2.0 coupld very well put us there.
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Um.. Crap, I thought this was real! It sounds sooo true to life.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It looks like my fears weren't unfounded. I mentioned this fear when the news was first mentioned. Sun is very much like Microsoft in this way, in the sense that they can't take a working technology and leave it as it is. Then again Sun has their own OS, Solaris, and by installing it on the Cube would show how great the OS, in their point of view.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Just think, if Sun didn't consider putting replacing Linux with their own OS, it would be tantamount to saying "Yeah, Solaris x86 is the collasal piece of shit that even we don't use."
Seems to me that switching to Solaris will save Sun money in support costs, since it means they won't have to train their support staff in Linux administration, but can stick with their Solaris knowledge. Sure, it's new hardware, but they would have that expense if they'd developed the box themselves anyway.
Oh really? Can you name any big installations running Solaris/x86? Solaris/SPARC is definately 'proven', but how is Solaris/x86 more than a virtually unsupported, bastard son?
While this is some fact and some opinion the truth remains Solaris/SunOS were running stable and secure servers when 99.995% of the world had yet to hear of Linus Torvalds.
Um, I doubt many people has heard of Scott McNealy (sp?) either. And 'secure' - when was the last time you took a look at BUGTRAQ? Sun's security record sucks as much as any of the major UNIX vendors.
Solaris is a great operating system and for some things its better, yes I said better, than Linux.
I agree. The last place I worked, the main E450 and other Sun hardware was the lifeblood of the department. I think everyone would agree that Solaris has its uses (when you're willing to dish out the $$$). But I don't think this is one of them.
But I've yet to read a post in the comments that has any insightful revelations as to why Linux is better than Solaris on the Cobalt machines.
And I've yet to see a post revealing the huge advantage Solaris/x86 has over Linux for this application. If something works, why try to 'fix' it? Cobalt were using Linux across their entire line of products (both MIPS- and x86-based). Solaris runs on x86 (poorly), but it has yet to be ported to MIPS. I don't know if Cobalt plan to continue making MIPS based boxed, but if they do, they'll need to port Solaris too it. Not to mention legacy support.
while (1) {
slashdot->post();
if (i_didnt_read_article_im_posting_about) {
new device d("mouth");
d.insert("foot");
}
}
-30-
and you are stupid. Oh, do I need to justify that statement? You didn't justify yours either.
It can send redirection responses instead of forwarding the request, and this is exactly what I see on all IP addresses that www.hotmail.com corredponds to -- it sends redirects to other Local Directors, with "IIS 5" in the header, but without touching any IIS box. That kind of response is hard to miss -- it violates HTTP standard by not waiting for the empty line at the end of the header. Initial redirects cause users to be scattered over a number of hosts where their sessions continue, and those hosts are actually other Local Directors, distributing requests among boxes that appear to be W2K.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
So why didn't you post the story when I gave you the scoop!
Oh well.
I've used the Cobalt RaQ microservers and Qube microservers since shortly after they were first announced (my company was one of their first beta sites). After dealing with their highly-customized version of Red Hat, their horribly broken user-management system, and their insane limits on user-count and domain-count per server, I'd upgrade to a Sun-customized Solaris in a heartbeat. It's not that Linux is a horrible operating system upon which to run specialized servers such as the RaQ and Qube. In fact, Linux is a very good operating system for such a niche. The problem lies in Cobalt's customizations and in their restrictive warranty agreement. As it is, my company has a quarter-rack full of RaQ 2 microservers right now. They're all running a version of Sendmail with horrible relay-problems (MAPS and ORBS both hate that bank of servers). I can't upgrade, because I'd void the warranty, and I certainly don't want to hand-tweak the Sendmail configuration, since so much of the Cobalt's list-management and mail-routing stuff is automagically managed. Cobalt refuses to issue an upgrade patch, as they are concentrating their maintenance efforts on the RaQ 3. Then, there are the reliability issues. More than once, I've had a RaQ microserver, for lack of a better term, "self-destruct". Basically, the RaQ saves its web-access logs on the same partition as the temp directory. If it fills up, when you add a user, /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and the Sendmail configuration gets trashed. This, also, cannot be fixed without hacking the distribution apart and moving things around (the log-configuration isn't accessible via the web-interface).
This being said, they're great boxes, especially for the amount of money they cost. I just wish they didn't run such a bastardized Linux distribution with such a foreboding warranty-violation policy.
As far as Solaris not running MIPS... where've you guys been? The RaQ 3 and RaQ 4 microservers are x86-based architecture. I'd rather like to see what Sun could put together with Solaris x86, the iPlanet server suite, and Cobalt's UI-design team. I think that (assuming Sun could get past the performance issues of Solaris on the x86) it'd be a sysadmin's dream machine, as far as virtual hosting goes.
However, I really don't see Sun porting Solaris over to MIPS (especially little-endian MIPS, which the Cobalts are) to support hardware that's two-generations old. Most-likely, they'll take Cobalt's stance: "Screw 'em. They can buy a RaQ 3!"
I really don't mean to sound like a whiny sysadmin here. We run a fleet of SPARC-based Solaris servers, with several machines in the mix running Slackware 7. It's not that I'm incompetent at editing config files. The fact of the matter is that Cobalt's whiz-bang UI is so tightly integrated with the OS, and depends on assumptions (rather than actually parsing config files) that it's just so easy to break things in such a way that the web-interface breaks more things (Why does my company own so many, then? Management loves the fact that they can "understand" administration now). Eventually, the "solution" becomes to either not use the web UI at all, or wait for Cobalt to issue a patch. Since most people buy the Cobalts because of the easy-to-administer web-interface, it's rather dishearthening to toss it away, especially since cheaper solutions do exist (but without the UI).
Whatever Sun does with the RaQ series of microservers, I'm sure it'll be an improvement over the way things are now. I'd kinda like to see Sun roll out a Linux distribution as well thought-out as Solaris is, and place that under the UI. Or, perhaps make modifications to the UI so that it isn't so ignorant of the actual state of the server.
At any rate, I think it's a bit early to be hurling mud at Sun, simply because they're contemplating changes to the platform. It shows that they recognize that things don't run a smoothly as they could. It's not like they'd go through all the work of fitting Solaris under the Cobalt UI just because they have some R&D funds to burn.
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
I do use Linux at home and encourage Solaris usage for the servers at work.
But have you used Solaris/x86? I found it to be extremely slow compared to Linux, though this was just my perception. Both graphically (no CDE for me!) and in any swapping/task switching. I have heard that the great scalability of solaris means lots of kernel locks which just slow down a uniprocessor machine.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Microsoft manages to drive W2K, WinCe, W9.x
Yeah, but they're trying to unify them. That's what Windows Milennium is about, migrating users to a single OS that will come in editions that range from Professional (desktop workstation) to Data Center (high-end OLTP and DS).
Hardly - Windows Millenium is a revamped Windows 98, and intended and home users. Win 2k was originally intended to be the unifying platform, but Microsoft found it was too resource hungry, had too many problems with weirdo hardware used by home users. So they're now intending to do this with the next release in the Windows NT line - Windows Millenium is just the last version in the Win95 line
Also, I doubt they would unify this with WinCE - common API, yes, but the OSes would be different.
Well that's just silly. The desktop file manager is part of "the Solaris environment", all you should be running on your servers is SunOS, which is the OS portion of "the Solaris environment". They're not even the same product, certainly not authored by the same teams.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
you need to get a clue. let me guess how many OS you've ported to different archs: none. anyone who thinks porting an OS to a different arch is "trivial" has no idea what they're talking about. also, i'd love to have you explain why linux on mips and sparc64 are "hacks" and let me know what reverse engineering took place.
Until recently, Sun sold rather expensive licenses for Solaris X86, now it is 'free', for $75 media cost- http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/.
The last time I paid for an upgrade from Sun was to move a network of SunOS 4.1.3 boxes to Solaris 2.5.1, I contacted our Sun Sales rep, who told me that:
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
With them owning the hardware and design its easy to port solaris over.
Why re-invent linux in a Solaris shop. Its like microsoft buying them up, you think they would learn linux?
Cornbread
Aint nothing wrong with that.
What Sun seems to not be realizing here is that the cobalt machines aren't just true appliances. Why would they support Telnet access if they did?
What kind of logic is this? Does this mean that the managed switch down the hall that I can telnet to is more than just a switched hub?
Personally, I liked that cobalt machines ran linux cause it meant I could expand the machines
capabilities simply by installing new software.
Yeah, that's one of the outstanding problems with Solaris. You can't install things. Damned Solaris! Burn in HELL!
And now, thanks to this decision, finding new software to add to these pretty machines will be alot more difficult.
First off, "considering" != "decision". Secondly,
these machines are NETWORK APPLIANCES. Are you going to be upset because you can't install gnapster? I can't think of anything that would be used on a NETWORK APPLIANCE that would be lost from a transition from Linux to Solaris.
I apologize. I read this article and thread looking for facts, thought, and rationality. I forgot I was on Slashdot.
--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
Sun is the only "Big Iron" UNIX company that is really threatened by Linux. Solaris is one of the big reasons that people keep buying Sun systems. If Linux takes over the "larger iron" world, Sun will have to compete mainly on hardware grounds. If I had the choice of an RS/6000, or a Sun Server, I would choose the Sun, because Solaris (in my opinion) is better than AIX, even though I think the RS/6000 has better hardware and support. If both IBM and Sun "officially" supportd Linux on their boxen, Sun would be forced to compete on hardware, and price grounds. This goes for Sun vs SGI as well, although I know very little about SGI hardware/support.
Sun has a lot to lose by the legitimizing of Linux. IBM, SGI, HP etc. all have a more even playing field again the guys who "put the dot in dot com", if the OS is not longer an issue. I suspect this has a lot more to do with it than the "not having energy to support more than one OS."
Sun has a lot to lose by having products that officially support Linux.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
>Microsoft manages to drive W2K, WinCe, W9.z
>IBM manages to drive OS/390, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400
IBM manages a lot more than that. They still support several other mainframe OS'es as well as IBM's PC-DOS. IBM also writes software that runs on more platforms than that.
>SGI manages to drive Irix, Windows, Linux
>HP manages to drive HP/UX, Windows, Linux
HP also has MPE. While I don't really expect the Slashdot crowd to even know it exists, it does and is supported (with plans to move to IA-64 eventually). Let's not forget that HP also writes software for more platforms than just those 4.
>Compaq manages to drive Tru64, Linux, Windows, VMS (or is VMS dead yet?)
OpenVMS is far from dead. Again, not something the mainstay of the Slashdot crowd seems interested in. Compaq also has Tandem which has NonStop OS which a former employer ran. Heard nothing but good things about this OS from those I talked to about it that had used it.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
cheaper, yes, but then they couldn't take a Linux player out of the market, could they?
to paraphrase Luke Skywalker, "If you think Sun coming here (into Linux space) was a bad idea, i'm beginning to agree with you."
Actually, no.. our preference would be not to interrupt service at all, but we needed to get those boxes out of production. It happens from time to time. But, if less than a year after the initial switchover, we are forced to do it again at the whim of the vendor, thats just plain insane and problematic.
Shameless Plug! If you like trance, tell me what you think!!
And about a port from Cobalt/Mips to a Cobalt/Sparc?
Spock, beam me up.
- more stable
- as fast or faster than
- as supported as
Linux.
This is a case of corporate pride leading to poor decisions.
Sounds more like a case of "The previous article is a case of fanaticism clouding judgement".
As others have pointed out, cobalt was moving to x86 anyway. Doing a comparison on that basis,
1. Solaris is certainly not going to be LESS stable than linux.
2. There's probably not going to be more than a 10% performance difference either way.
3. How could solaris be "[less] supported [than]" linux? By SUN? That's just silly.
This isn't Sparc, it's MIPS.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Just a few months ago, I worked for an ISP that transitioned over 1000 commercial web hosting customers from a DEC box and a sun E450 to 3 Cobalt RAQ's.
Within DAYS of making the transition (painful to be sure), we were already hacking apart the way the RAQ's handles some of the CGI, and apache aspects of site hosting. We were also making custom scripts for system admin tasks that we needed to change some from the way the RAQ's web admin interface did things.
While this could be done in solaris as well, it would have taken a little more work, and of course someone more knowledgable with solaris. We had that manpower, but not all people do. Plus, if you are forced to switch your hardware to Solaris for continued support, you then have to fix any and all custom work you did, with most likely LIVE customers, and in a hurry.
As they are, the Cobalt boxes I have worked on are a BREEZE to configure and maintain, I would like to ask this VP, WTF is the point in changing it?
Shameless Plug! If you like trance, tell me what you think!!
So, if the Cobalt box is running just fine on Linux, or if the customers don't even care whether it's Linux or anything else, why bother spending money and efforts porting Solaris to MIPS just to be able to run on the Cobalt box? Since Sun can't market it better just because the OS in there is Solaris (as they said, customers don't care), so I'm wondering with this idea of replacing the OS.
Sun should send this person to relearn "Marketing 101".
Simple. Put that piece of shit Embedded NT on it.
You want me? You've got one shot. After that, I snuff your friends, your family, and lastly, you.
....something that you are missing out on. Sun bought Cobalt to make its stake in the server appliance industry. Server Appliances are low cost, light hardware boxen that any PBH can come in and set up. I seriously doubt that Sun would take that product and add expensive hardware to it. This would take them right back out of the Server Appliance industry.
Ever see the movie princess bride?...Well pretend I'm that old lady near the castle yelling 'booooo', 'boooo', 'booo'...
I doubt Sun is going to raise the price of the Cobalt RaQ4 (Currently at $3K, list) if/when they start using Solaris instead of Linux.
Now there's a lukewarm endorsement of Linux if I've ever seen one.I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
1. Most of the people who are blabbing about how lame/stupid/bloated solaris is compared have never used solaris 2. Linux sucks on real computers. Yes, real computers, SGIs, Suns, etc. PCs are "commodity hardware" - cheaper, slower, less reliable, and have more bottlenecks than anheiser busch. 3. Most of the people posting "information" about cobalt have probably never touched one their products. 4. Sun will probably do a pretty good job porting solaris by virtue of them having more experience with non-commodity hardware. So.. You can flame this, troll it, whatever. I just have seeing people talking about something they know nothing about, and being forced into this stupid "linux scene". Look back once in a while, the mob mentality is wrong more often than you may think. eof
-f
If you want to play with Sparcs, pick up a used Sparc 20 with the SM71 CPU, they go for $500 with 128M, 2+ Gb drive, video card, and CDROM.
Yes, it's slow compared to your 550Mhz AMD monster, but the Sparc 20 will run Solaris 7 and 8, OpenBSD, and I even hear it runs Linux, though I've never tried.
Nearly every free and commercial software package for Solaris will run on a Sparc 20... it might be slow, but it will run.
If you think that a 75Mhz Sparc CPU isn't fast enough, move to the SM81, and/or add a second CPU- Solaris has some of the best SMP code anywhere.
If $500 is too much for you, you can pick up an old LX or even an IPX for $20-$50. These are very slow, obsolete, and not very upgradeable, but they were built by Sun...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
That's very true, names are valuable. But who has more name recognition? Sun Microsystems or Cobalt Networks? Assuming roughly equivalent capability, who would you rather buy from?
// TODO: fix sig
I'll bet that no one has ever been busted by Sun for running Solaris multi-user on SPARC hardware while having only the two-user desktop license that comes with every new system -- especially if they're a dot-com (or dot-org - hint hint :). Maybe someone has been busted for using Solaris x86 this way, but not on a SPARC. No way will they piss off a hardware customer with that kind of stunt.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I am a Cobalt employee (thus the AC posting).
Everything we are being told by the people at Sun is that they bought us because we know what we're doing in the server appliance marketplace. They didn't want to have to try and get in on the ground floor like all of our competitors. There are no, repeat NO plans to discontinue Linux as the OS on our servers. (Which are now AMD-based, BTW -- MIPS CPUs were only in the RaQ1/RaQ2 and Qube1/Qube2).
IMHO, I would think that you would see an addition to our product line at some point down the road which had a Sparc chip, or possible Solaris. But not at the expense of the x86-compatible market.
Don't believe any^H^H^Heverything you read on ZD news stories. And remember, this deal was just announced a week ago. There are an awful lot of unknowns to be worked out, but everyone at Sun seems to be genuinely excited about the acquisition, and plan to use it to extend their marketshare in the datacenters, not to try and squash Linux in favor of Solaris.
If you think Solaris on x86 is going to be anywhere near as stable as Linux, you're dreaming. Solaris on x86 is hardly used by anybody, it is a mear shadow of Solaris on Sparc. As for the 10% performance difference, you are also dreaming, and I can tell you never took Sun up on their free x86 Solaris offer.
as a user of various cobalt products, i think that the move to solaris is great. why? the ability to transition up the server food chain as necessary. additionally, while linux is stable, cobalt's user interface generally messes things up! similar to deploying linux, stability and security rely upon an individual or in this case an interface. i generallly like their products, but the interface sometimes screws things up and you pay a premium. this is a great move business wise, it gives sun a use for their older sparc II's, while potentially gaining new markets and facilitating upward mobility. i hope they support or allow customization, which cobalt currently does not.
They may be left with a box, but I suppose that the obvious choice for sun, regardless of os, but specifically because of their choice of solaris, will be making future Cobalts with Sparcs.
Partially I think sun also bought cobalt because the asthetics fit with theirs, as the product's intent and niche fits with what they could do. You see, sun likes purplely blue colors. They have machines that are built to look nice; on some sun boards the sun made chips have a translucent purple plastic encasing around them. In their MA engineering place (bedford?) they have a few walls that are made of purple material in a huge sine-wave (making the hallway narower and wider at times) with halogen spot lighting on surfaces.
Now, cobalt's not purple, but its close, and maybe sun folks want to spruce up the spectrum a little. Which reminds me, why, once apple finally released macs in the colors of its logo, did the spectrum colored apple logo fade away?
-Daniel
Hey, you can't knock Solaris just because Sun hardware costs 3 times what it should. Lets face it: If we could afford it, we'd all be running solaris.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Ok guys, we bought this company that seems to be doing ok and we want to drive it into the ground as fast as possible. Suggestions?
Let's put NT on the cobalt cubes!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Ok, ok...so the title might be a bit trollish/flamebait...
<disclaimer>I used to work for a Cobalt Authorized Reseller, and I didn't like their gear </disclaimer>
If you've ever tried to use a cobalt machine to anything besides what it is designed for, you're in for a treat. PERL is usually broken (have to manually fix files that are standard in most other PERL implementations). There are a number of bugs in their web interface, and their implementations of most services are non-standard or just funky enough to make it pretty annoying.
The cobalt mentality is also pretty closed in general and support is lacking in response time.
These boxes aren't built for hackers, their built to be canned solutions for Linux neophytes and web-farm admins that don't want to get into the nitty-gritty. Switching to solaris would be a net change of 0 in my book, as most people using cobalt equipment don't care anyway. If you don't want a toaster-like solution, don't buy Cobalt Networks gear...it's underpowered and overpriced.
This comment is wild and rambling. I hope someone else says something similar, but more coherantly. I apologize.
-fp
Given the choice of solaris vs linux for a server I would take solaris any day. Whats with these stupid editorial comments? Just fucking show the details and not your hate for solaris (which incidently runs andover.net). Whats andovers motto? Leading the linux revolution....
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
one would think that if they're going to replace Linux with Solaris, then they basically have to replace all the firewall, NAT, and system administration tools that go with it. So they're left with a box, processor, memory, and hard-drive. So why did they buy this company in the first place? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just come-out with their own mini-firewall, server, cube-like thing?
// TODO: fix sig
What Sun seems to not be realizing here is that the cobalt machines aren't just true appliances. Why would they support Telnet access if they did? Personally, I liked that cobalt machines ran linux cause it meant I could expand the machines capabilities simply by installing new software. And now, thanks to this decision, finding new software to add to these pretty machines will be alot more difficult.
just tell the cobalt people what needs to be done so there's a streamless intergration with the rest of sun.
i know they probably bought cobalt for there "branding" since they probably would have a hard time concentrating on selling a similiar product to market. i mean why try to woo buyers with hype when someone else has done it. just buy them!
wait... what makes sun think they can concentrate on net appliances now?
bah. start over
I wouldn't be too surprised if they switched them to use the UltraSparc III, as well. I think Sun is trying to sell lots of small, cheap boxes with the Sparc III so that they can ramp up production on them to get the benefits of volume that Intel has. Sure, they won't get anywhere near the same numbers as Intel, but hopefully they can bring their costs down so that Sun hardware isn't so much more expensive than Intel that they just can't compete on the low end--at all--as has been true in the past.
The thing that strikes me about this 'notion' is that all the pre-existing packages generated for Cobalt products would not work on future models (most would need a version check update anyway, but that would be it). Unless Solaris kan install RPM's flawlessly and run Linux binaries I think most of the 3rd party stuff will die out. Is that really preferable? I think not.
As for Sun not wanting to deal with two Operating Systems: Why would they need to? The Cobalt Guys already have this knowledge. Those of us who are currently distributing Cobalt Servers do, too. If they let the current arrangements be, they really wouldn't incur much, if any extra cost.
Do they also intend to be the only ones that may log in through telnet/ssh? This is just plain odd, the way I see it. Why not keep on good terms with those, who helped Cobalt get to where it is today?
Regards,
Bzzzzt! Wrong. 1) New raq's are x86. 2) Solaris is faster than Linux for these applications. (See a few NFS performance comparisons).
-30-
The Andover boys (bendover?) have their collective heads too far up the Linux ass to see the rest of the world.
What do you think most corporations do? You buy a competitor to implement their products into your own... or to elimate them. There is no middle ground.
Obviously Sun wants to support their [paid] OS more than a [free] OS. One drives profits to the company, the other doesn't.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Ok I guess we've all decided to give up the 'right tool for the right job' idea and ram linux down the throat of every system and every problem:
Ok guys, we bought this company that seems to be doing ok and we want to drive it into the ground as fast as possible. Suggestions?
So if they don't use Linux, its bound to fail is that what you're trying to say? Solaris is a great operating system and for some things its better, yes I said better, than Linux. Is Linux better than Solaris at other things, yes it is. But I've yet to read a post in the comments that has any insightful revelations as to why Linux is better than Solaris on the Cobalt machines. Just a lot of Linux hype. I'll back up the fact that maybe they should go to Solaris with some facts:
1. Sun will stand behind and support their OS with one of the worlds largest software engineering force. If a customer had a problem with the Linux OS what would their options have been? Post to a newsgroup? 'Ask Slashdot'?
2. Solaris has tools that make developing operating system level software for a new platform that Linux can only dream of right now...ie the Solaris Kernel level debugger.
3. Solaris is proven. While this is some fact and some opinion the truth remains Solaris/SunOS were running stable and secure servers when 99.995% of the world had yet to hear of Linus Torvalds.
It just really disheartens me when I hear everyone screaming how monopolistic Microsoft is and how blindly people follow them and then I read comments as I did here. For those of you who made comments like the one I quoted above without fact to back it up, you're no better than the M$ fools you make fun of on these very pages. Blind advocacy does nothing to support the OS you're so fond of. For those of you who did use reason and facts to back up your comment/opinion on the subject, I apologize for the rant.
And for the record, I do use Linux at home and encourage Solaris usage for the servers at work.
Besides, Solaris on Alpha would be more atractive than Solaris on MIPS -- who even cares about MIPS anymore? The only thing I see MIPS doing nowadays is powering those awesome mice.
--
"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire
Actually they run two layers of Cisco Local Directors. www.hotmail.com box _is_ Local Director (configured with "Server:" line in its header saying "IIS"), doing redirections to all other Local Directors, who in their turn do load-balancing over unknown (however probably ridiculously large if they needed two layers of Local Directors) number of Windows 2000 boxes. That configuration probably would work at existing load even if they had PC/XT running DOS 2.20 as servers.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Specifically, it states:
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Exactly how is NetBSD any more secure than Linux, except for the fact that it includes less?
If they were concerned about security, they'd run OpenBSD, which runs just as well on the MIPS architecture.
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
How about you take the cobalt out of that silly cube and put it in some stylish short, flat, elongated biege rectangle with grey highlights. Then you could get rid of that silly mips chip and throw in a nice hefty sun chip. Replace Linux with Solaris and there you go!
Oh yeah, that's called an UltraSparc.
This sig is worse than my last.
We don't have the energy to drive two operating systems.
Microsoft doesn't develop hardware (of any significance). They are a software company. There is little to compare with Sun.
There are many people who would argue that IBM is not nearly as focused as Sun, to IBM's detriment.
That is debatable. SGI is a hardware company desperately looking for something to throw on its boxes to expand its marketshare beyond high-end graphics professionals.
Same comment as for IBM.
- Compaq manages to drive Tru64, Linux, Windows, VMS (or is VMS dead yet?)
VMS is not dead, it's just restin'. Compaq is following in the path of IBM and HP. They want to be everything to everyone.Why does Sun not have the energy to drive more than one operating system when its competition does?
One of Sun's strengths is their focus on their hardware - everything the company does is part of a strategy to sell more SPARCs. If supporting Linux would detract from their efforts to sell more SPARCs, they will balk at doing it.
Edith Keeler Must Die
For Sun, it makes a lot of sense to stick with Solaris as their standard UNIX platform. Some reasons why:
Certainly, Linux excels at a whole host of areas where Solaris may fall a little short. Mostly in user space; as far as the kernel goes VFS (providing IPX/SPX, SMB, DevFS...) is probably one of the few things that stands out. In user space, especially in nice/solid/automated distributions like Debian, there is a tremendous ease of keeping your system the slickest it can be, and at the same time, most secure - something you have to work a bit harder to achieve under Solaris.
That said, the market that caters to those demands is mostly saturated, and for Sun to do what they do best - rock solid backends and network-oriented systems - they are better off sticking with Solaris.
Clearly you have never used SolarisX86.
"2. There's probably not going to be more than a 10% performance difference either way."
See answer above.
"3. How could solaris be "[less] supported [than]" linux? By SUN? That's just silly"
Spoken like someone who has never had to wait on hold for Sun technical support (who they were paying through the nose), or eat dirt over a bug Sun has labeled "SORRYWEDONTFEELLIKEIT" in their bugbase...
Dont just naysay Linux. Especially if you've never even tried the competition or made a serious comparison. On MIPS, Solaris doesn't exist, and believe me, is very unlikely TO ever exist. That's probably a good thing. On X86, Solaris is a JOKE - with terrible app support and a really flakey, bloated kernel. Let's not even talk about security out of the box, let alone the awful way they've configured it or how INCREDIBLY expensive eveything is... let alone your precious "corporate support"... and, last but not least, Linux smokes Solaris on sparc hardware.
Solaris is the Windows of the Unix world. I have nothing against Sun, I love their hardware and I am a huge Java fan. But their Unix... blows.
Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it.
We're on the road to Tycho.
Exactly. I don't sit around wondering what OS my microwave oven runs on.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Man, your post is long on wind and short on facts. Now, I'm no Solaris bigot, but in reading Uresh Vahalia's _UNIX Internals_, I couldn't help but be impressed by the ingenuity of Sun's engineers when it comes to building for scalability. Read up on things like the scheduling algorithm, interrupt threads, priority inheritance, and threading in Solaris, and you'll be impressed too -- at least, if you read as well as you talk.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Also, how can you blame Sun for wanting to use their own operating system? Do you think that they spent all their money porting Solaris to leave it sitting on the shelf?
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
It will be a trivial task to port solaris to MIPS. Sun has all the solaris docs and specs (duh) and since they can actually spend money on a projet get the MIPS specs. Linux on MIPS and ultrasparc is just reverse engineered drivers and hacks. The first build of MIPS solaris will probably rival linux.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Sun need to take heed and stay with Linux for the Cobalt "appliances". These boxes are the lifeblood and daily bread and butter for thousands of small hosting companies and IT groups. They are a tried and tested solution. If they change ANYTHING on these boxes then they WILL loose customers and not gain a single dollar in increased revenue. They are well supported both through the OS and the HUGE range of software available for it and through the people that both professionaly support it with their reputation (the customers)and the hard working people at Cobalt who have busted their asses to get the company in it's current position. Bottom Line: Keep Linux, It's the corner stone of Cobalt's sucess.
sic transit biscuitus
...and now we have to hear Taco's stupid-assed comment, "Ok guys, we bought this company that seems to be doing ok and we want to drive it into the ground as fast as possible. Suggestions?"
Hey Taco/Slashdot - get with it, huh? There's more to life than Linux, gadgets and Star Wars.
That is only true for the machines you mentioned. Other current cobalt products running on MIPS include:
All Qube Models
All Nasraq Models
All CacheRaq Models
I imagine, however, they'll be moving future versions of these products to IA32 architecture soon enough.
-fp
With a larger installed base, Solaris becomes a more appealing platform to develop for, and even the traditionally linux-targeted efforts such as Apache would probably pay more attention to it. So with the increased market share, sun can consievably hope to increase application support.
That's not mentioning the ready market for whatever upgrades they'd be willing to provide. They get more control over what software is run on their hardware. Sounds like a pretty good business decision.
Ñ'
Here's a few (mostly unatributed - couldn't be bothered to tidy up) thoughts from developers on the list:
"What has, and will continue to make us successful is not just "selling boxes". we sell both a solution and a platform on which to base solutions. The developer community is a very important piece of our puzzle, and I don't see that shrinking at all with this whole Sun deal.
As for black-box - several "appliance" vendors entered the market before or close to the same time Cobalt did. Where are those black-box vendors now?
Lastly, I wanted to say that just because of the Sun deal, I'd hardly count on Cobalt going away. We now have more muscle at our disposal than we ever did before, which means better prices, better products, and better service. We have had many assurances that things will remain up to us, so long as we continue to be successful (losing money doesn't mean not being successful - building hardware isn't cheap, folks!)."
"It's not true, it's a *proposed* merger, which means it still has to be approved by the voting share holders and the board. You guys may be all for it, but it's not a done deal yet. If the acquisition goes through, it is not planned to be completed until Dec. 31. A lot can happen between now and then."
"It's gonna happen, get used to it . The stock-premium was 40% at announcement time; though I look for it to go down, 40% is hefty enough so it'll stay attractive enough to enough of the stockholders. Many of whom are employees, even top employees who were in on the deal, I'm sure (entirely my speculation; I have NO inside information). "
"Cobalt cashed in on the Linux hype. To deny otherwise would beggar reality. They may not be completely profitable yet, but they've certainly benefited from the early hype surrounding the OS."
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
If they are planning on supporting the pre-Solaris machines they will have to write all of the software to be Linux compatible since they don't have a MIPS version of Solaris to run on the older MIPS boxes, and people with existing appliances are not going to replace their machine or upgrade at the first sign of trouble...
Maybe you haven't checked their stock prices lately or noticed that in 1998 they shipped over 1 million ultrasparc cpus. Sun doesn't care about linux, they know that solaris is much more stable and scales better. I don't see anyone running linux on massive 128 cpu systems. Someone got linux booting on a 16 cpu box. Thats a far far cry from something ready for production.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I hardly see Sun as "running scared." As popular and powerful as Linux can be it does not threaten Sun or Solaris. Linux certainly gives people another good option for an OS and availability of open source, for that I commend it. Many OS's are and will be following Linux's example. Sun has the resources and market expirience to continue to evolve Solaris into an OS that meets market needs. While Solaris might not be right for every platform or job Linux isn't the universal answer either. Sun's market position and actions just don't resemble that of a scared company. For proof take a small bit of time and look at their numbers and customers. Ok, that's it.
We went with Cobalt because they offered incredible integration and preloading services crafted to our specifications. If the OS switches to Solaris, lots of our existing software won't run without convincing our suppliers to compile it for SolPliance OS or whatever they want to call it. If they even _let_ anyone do that.
Good thing we're investigating other suppliers of point-and-drool rackmount servers.
Our tests showed that on almost any parameter you could name (memory consumption, context switch time, IO performance, reboot performance), Solaris was generally a factor of TWO slower.
About the only thing solaris was quick at was shutting down :)
Sun makes overpriced, feature-less products, and Scott McNealy is a whiny twerp.
Yeah, but they're trying to unify them. That's what Windows Milennium is about, migrating users to a single OS that will come in editions that range from Professional (desktop workstation) to Data Center (high-end OLTP and DS). That's the plan, anyway.
IBM manages to drive OS/390, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400
The reality is that AIX and OS/400 divisions of IBM actually compete with each other, and that IBM are huge enough to have the resources (and the locked-in legacy customers/revenue) to hedge all their bets. Besides, if you need an S/390, then you really need it, and nothing else will do.
SGI manages to drive Irix, Windows, Linux
Must be some definition of "manages" that I'm not familiar with :0)
HP manages to drive HP/UX, Windows, Linux
OK, that's a fair point, but see IBM. HP are huge and have their fingers in many pies.
Compaq manages to drive Tru64, Linux, Windows, VMS (or is VMS dead yet?)
VMS is far from dead, and Compaq is still a roll-up of Compaq and DEC.
Why does Sun not have the energy to drive more than one operating system when its competition does
If they can unify on a single OS, then they potentially have a strategic edge that their competitors can't match. For example, SGI are busily trying to port Irix features to Linux, Compaq want to move VMS features into Tru64. If Sun can add features to all it's platforms simultaneously, that's reduced time to market, and higher quality right there.
Might help the boxes gain acceptance in shops that are mostly Solaris.
Remember the AOL-Netscape deal? All AOL really wanted was Netscape's customer list. they were hardly quick to support Navigator on the the AOL connection disk. Look at all the eyeballs they got with Netcenter though.
Similarly, Sun will want this deal so they have customers using their kit in low-end web serving again. They want the customers, they're quite keen on the "for dummies" web interface, and the boxes are pretty. (They'd still look nice with an embedded SPARC chip though.) It will be interesting to see how much they end up keeping. My bets are on Solaris relacing Linux, Java replacing Perl for admin, with Apache being the only constant. Netscape is too expensive for this kit.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I'd heard that the only switch was going to be a hardware switch: to UltraSparc chips. Linux already runs on UltraSparc, so there wouldn't be any substantial change to the (mostly HTML-driven) software anyway.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
This will stop their eroding market share in the name brand server market. That is importaint to their stock holders.
They may simply kill the RAQ now that they have it. They could have the same goals that IBM had when they introduced the PC, it wasn't to have a product to make lots of money but as a tool to move a larger customer base to the big iron.
Now would be a very good time for someone to start selling a product that competes in the RAQ area.
Here's how it is on a Raq. Each virtual site directory is owned by httpd, and owned by a group created for that site. httpd, admin (the webmaster basically, you don't use root to maintain web content), and any site users belong to that group. Works well in theory, but once you have more than 30 virtual sites on one raq (there's one here that has 56) then the admin account stops working, and you need an admin2 to belong to the higher numbered groups, then an admin3, and so on. This is because you can only belong to 32 groups in Linux -- and only 16 in BSD, and the same problem probably exists in Solaris. Any more groups after that are ignored. This is the pie in the face of those who believe groups are adequate to replace ACL's.
... none of those are here now, and til then I am kludging around the situation in various ways, none of them particularly elegant. I'm not even fond of POSIX ACL's, since you can't centrally edit their definition like you could on even PRIMOS. Imagine a user-defined group and you're close.
Solaris has ACL's which just don't have that problem. You can put an ACL on a dir, and create the same effect as the setgid bit with it as well, having all files and directories created under that dir also inherit it.
Yes, yes, ext3, xfs, jfs
Normally I'd jump at the possibility of solaris on a raq, but I really don't care much for the interface. Webmin is already far more functional, faster, and less cumbersome. And though cobalt is a little closer at having its interface integrate the tasks of managing virtual hosts and their DNS records, its interface is simply too slow to bother with. Raqs are nice for office workgroups, but they may as well just be another form factor for a qube, and just as bad a fit for a ISP.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
C'mon . . . no one saw this coming? A big company buys out a smaller company and then trys to incorporate it's products into the new domain. It's the way of the business world. Maybe it'll suck (read: Hotmail) or maybe it will actually work out. Solaris isn't really that bad if it's administered right.
--
>>Yeah, but they're trying to unify them. That's what Windows Milennium is about, migrating users to a single OS
I believe you're thinking of Whistler. Windows ME is another Windows 9x with some minor upgrades like system restore. system file protection, and the seriously low-end Windows movie maker, plus various free downloads from MS.
Why does Sun not have the energy to drive more than one operating system when its competition does?
Take a look at the changes in marketshare, income, and stock price over the last few years of Sun and the 5 competitors you mentioned. Perhaps all the energy the other companies are putting into their OS collections would be better spent somewhere else, eh?
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
Sun doesn't care about Linux. They never did. Nor open source software. They GPL'd Star Office because it wasn't worth paying developers to work on a product that can't compete in the Windows space. Or maybe to be a thorn in Gates' side..
Sun probably has a marketing dept. that insists on being able to say their server appliances are powered by the same 'high-powered' OS that the big iron is.
I have nothing against Solaris, there are a few features I actually like, but I don't see how a new Solaris port to MIPS could possibly be:
- more stable
- as fast or faster than
- as supported as
Linux.
This is a case of corporate pride leading to poor decisions.
Marc
Rather, consider web page serving and e-mail statistics, which are prime features for the Cobalt systems. Solaris/Intel gets pretty well creamed by Linux doing those things -- and Linux does it with a lot less hardware.
But generally I don't think that the observed performance will be that different with either system. I think the big question is whether or not most Cobalt users use the systems out-of-the-box. If they do, then swapping Solaris for Linux isn't going to make much of a difference. But if they're like me and they took their Cobalt box and added a bunch of stuff to it, well, Solaris is a lot more painful for that kind of thing (particularly if Sun continues its practice of not shipping a compiler).
But hey, it's not really about what's good for the user anyway. It's about branding. Linux ain't Sun's brand.
jim frost
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Although everything before the raq3 is MIPS and had many problems with software compatability, my raq3, and the raq3i and raq4's are all x86's running linux. Fairly straight forward compatability. Don't think that solaris is such a hot idea, though....
Sun isn't interested in the hobbyist market.
They don't make money dealing in individual little-fish customers. When they talk about being "the dot in dot-com", they're not talking about pers ona l home page dot-com's. They're talking about businesses that make (want to make) money hands-over-fist on-line.
Aside from the fact that Solaris x86 still has woeful software support (no major RDBMS support, last I checked), there's a lot of good that would come from making the cobalt run on Solaris:- Excellent support from Sun (as long as you pay the $upport Contract)
Of course, Sun has it's own interest at the core:When your $5,000-per-hour revenue stream stops because of a subtle server problem at 3am, do you think a linux support organization is going to call the author of the broken code and make him fix the problem? You are mistaken.
Cobalt RaQ 3 & 4 servers have AMD K6-2 processors
(According to many of the ISP's I've considered for dedicated hosting.)
That would depend on the price. From Cobalt I could expect to pay X for an appliance. From Sun, it'll probably be 3X.
Since Cobalt is transitioning to x86 CPUs, running Solaris shouldn't be much of a problem at all.
They are not interested in the home pc market as is Bill. jus my $.02
flinging poop since 1969
Microsoft runs Hotmail on BSD, and takes shit for not using their own OS.
Sun decides to use Solaris in Cobalt boxes, and takes shit for using their own OS instead of Linux.
Does anyone else see an inconsistency here?
irb(main):001:0>
What about MS DOS???
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
My sentiments exactly. When did Linux become so much better than it's brother unix, Solaris, that we simply assume everything has to be Linux?
Oh, and a good suggestion to drive Cobalt into the ground? Forsake actual developement of new technology in order to support GPL'd versions of all often done old technologies. Like Unix.
-Ben
Its just FUD coming from linux zealots who can't stand to hear that commercial unix might actually be better for a certain job. *cough*andover.netrunssolarischecknetcraft*cough*
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Who cares if it runs on MIPS, Sparc, PPC, Z-80, or x86? If you're in that 1% of the market that needs XYZ functionality from their Web server and it isn't offered in a Cobalt, DON'T USE A COBALT. The minute you start hacking on one, it ceases to be an appliance.
--
"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire
And what's the deal with them not liking Linux? They make all their money from selling hardware anyway, so it doesn't matter what OS runs on it as long as they get a sale. Sure you need Solaris on one of those E10000 but it makes sence to put Linux on their low-end boxes and Cobalt appliances. Besides, there are many things I like about Linux. I'd pick Linux over Solaris for a workstation any day.
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
One of Sun's senior VPs (Andy Ingram) said:
Why does Sun not have the energy to drive more than one operating system when its competition does?
I'm a big Sun fan. From what I've seen only IBM (with AIX) can compete with Sun in the enterprise class open systems niche (though HP might have something with Superdome). And I don't know that the move to put Solaris on the Cobalt line is necessarily a bad thing. However, I don't understand the suggested reasoning put forth by Sun at all.
have a day,
-l
But you're right, Sun is one of the "big boys" and the other big boys are comfortable across several operating systems, why not Sun?
Bleh!
You have just explained the management meetings at the last three companies I worked for. Seriously, I was actually 'invited' (told to be there or else) to a couple of these meetings, and I'm not kidding that this is almost exactly the way they went. And those companies wondered why they couldn't make any money.
Bite my yammer.
From the comments I've read, it seems that people are generally not happy with this move.
... after all, they're the creators of Solaris, so it's far easier and cheaper for them to support boxes running Solaris than it is for them to support Linux. It's like the MS/Hotmail thing. It was an embarasment that Hotmail ran on BSD, not Windows, and hence MS changed that. Likewise in this case; Sun have spent much mulah buying Cobalt, who's products use, what must be classed as, a competitor to Solaris.
.... first of all, if they do start shipping them with Solaris, is there anything stopping people replacing it with Linux themselves ?
Several people have already pointed out that the later RAQs are x86 (K6-2 if I remember correctly) based, and I agree with one of the above posts with regard to seeing Sun's point of view
Anyway, on to my point
And secondly, why so much anti-Solaris feeling ? I use both Solaris (at work) and Linux (at home). Yes, I see differences, but I don't see what's so bad about Solaris. So, instead of just slaggins Sun off, could people offer some constructive critisism about why this move would be a bad thing ?
Of course. That strategy being the desperate effort to convince people that solaris is a viable OS. A strategy that stands about as much chance as Microsoft's to do the same for windows 2000. Namely, the only people who are going to believe it are people whose jobs are on the line - people who've already bought into the hype and will get canned when they finally admit that they made a mistake.
It makes sense for them to try and run everything of theirs from this platform.
It does and it doesn't. While it's cheaper and easier to support only one OS, that's most likely not what their customers want, and it almost certainly isn't what new customers would want.
Announcing this OS move is also obviously a publicity stunt designed to try and put forth their own Solaris as a superior OS to Linux. Remember, like Oracle and Microsoft, Sun has a major superiority complex.
Yep. No surprises there. We know that Sun's top management thinks solaris is good. That's mainly because they're suits and know nothing about technology. Solaris sells, so it must be good. QED.
In porting Solaris to another platform they are improving the overall portability of the OS, making it a more attractive OS.
This argument is wrong for one of two reasons; pick one: (1) Cobalt has lately been using x86 cpus, not MIPS. Yes, that's dumb. But solaris already runs on x86, has for years. Yes, a few minor changes might be in order to support quirks, but the bulk of the work is done. (2) If portability is an important attraction, then you'd think they'd stay with Linux, which runs on more platforms than any other OS except NetBSD.
Look...Sun used to be a great company. Their hardware was IMO the best in the world until about 1998. SunOS was a fine BSD-based OS. But starting right about the time they started marketing solaris as a cure for world hunger, their entire product line went into the shitter. Java. Defective machines. An OS slower than glacial flow. The US-3 released 2 whole years behind the original schedule. The Star Division acquisition, millions paid for a company with no worthwhile product. The list goes on. Fact: Sun's management has gotten way too full of itself. McNealy wants to paint himself as a flamboyant, hip, rebellious CEO and join the highest ranks with Gates and Ellison. Well, he has. He joins them as an elite CEO whose company makes inferior, overpriced products and prefers acquisitions and strong-arm tactics to competition and customer satisfaction. Solaris is complete shit, Sun's hardware is years behind the competition's, QA is suffering, and Cobalt is headed for the same future that Star Division has come to.
You heard it here first: Sun is fucked.
Sun manufactures some decent-looking low-end ultrasparc stuff targeted at the embedded market. Probably if they move to Solaris on Cobalt it will be on new Cobalt servers running the Ultrasparc IIe or some such.
If consumers really don't care what OS it runs then why the switch to Solaris? He says it is because they don't have the resources to support two operating systems... Okay I'll buy that... oh but he also says they have been working on a specialized version of solaris for devices such as these.
F /...
Oh! So what really happened was Sun has this new stripped down embedded form of Solaris and purchased cobalt to use as the hardware for this new product.
Thats weird... since Sun usually rolls their own hardware as well as software. Changing times, these be.
---
Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
They don't have the energy to drive 2 quite similar operating systems, but they do have the energy to continue working on a whole new version of their OS. They have no problem supporting Linux out in the open (Star Office), but if the world ain't gonna see it, then let's toot our own horn.
Those who don't know me, probably shouldn't trust me. Those that do know me, DEFINITELY shouldn't trust me.
So why did they buy this company in the first place? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just come-out with their own mini-firewall, server, cube-like thing?
Consider if they had competed and failed against cobalt in this market? Now they own the competition...
they are VERY afraid of Linux in general, especially embedded systems. I never thought of Sun as a leader in the OS dept, they have always been under someone else's shadow, but now they are real upset about the future of Solaris in the shadow of Linux. This is a sad day for Cobalt IMHO. I don't see how this is going to stop the spread of Linux, but it defintly hurts :(
- Bill
Just a couple weeks ago I listened to a speech by a Cobalt rep (one of their engineers actually) and he showed me a raQ with a K6-2 board in it. He said he made the boot rom himself. This would make it quite easy to put Solaris on their stuff.
Sun: Please, oh please, leave the Cobalt stuff alone. They are doing great just the way they are.
If they went and opened up a Linux product line, people would be asking questions.. either "If Linux is better enough than Solaris to run it on the cubes, why not run it on the SPARCStations?", or "If Solaris is better enough than Linux to run it on the SPARC lines, why are you using Linux on the cubes?"
Also, don't forget that Solaris is their little baby. To all the coders out there: everything else considered equal, given the choice between your source and someone else's, whose would you trust more? Whose would you be more willing to stake your reputation on?
I see advantages on both sides of the fence here. With the "monolithic corporation" Sun Microsystems bring depth to the suuport answers and they have been embracing opensource technologies lately. A possible reason here could be to use some of the web based interface stuff with their own raq like devices named netras. Remember it could be a lot worse imagine "Microsoft Win-Raqs".
Find the manager for eToys and hire him.
--
From the article:
"Cobalt's [devices] are true appliances," Ingram said. "You do not care about the operating system. If we were to convert these over to Solaris, the end-user wouldn't care. We don't have the energy to drive two operating systems."
Right. One of the reasons that I bought into Cobalt's products is was that I COULD buy them and set them up without a fuss, but the option was there to modify the OS and software even though it wasn't supported.
I fear that if they port Solaris to the product, I won't have that kind of access anymore.
As for porting it to MIPS, that's only for the Qube series. The RAQ line of servers runs AMD processors. Solaris x/86 will fit, I think (though I've never run it on anything other than Intel chips).
"All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"
"All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"
'nuff said.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
How is this driving Cobalt into the ground? Last time I checked, they weren't doing all that well... Their stuff is of limited use. Good for what it's designed for - but very niche.
WHY?
.sig
I lost my
LINUS
great comedy company.
Assets or not, stock price is not a reliable indicator of strength. One bad quarter can demolish the value of a company; look at how AAPL did.
As for whether or not SPARC and Solaris are assets, you're looking at it in hindsight. They certainly have been assets, but consider:
- SPARC systems and Solaris used to dominate workstation and small server sales. Today they are almost nonexistant in those roles, having been replaced by Intel systems running a variety of operating systems (primarily NT, but increasingly Linux).
- SPARC systems and Solaris have been making more and more money lately, but they've been doing it selling larger and larger systems. They're selling because, at the moment, it's cheaper to buy a bigger system than to figure out how to distribute smaller ones. This is particularly the case for databases.
Sun cannot survive indefinitely by selling larger and larger machines, and they will come under increasing price pressure on lower-end machines as they get faster and larger. Either Sun gets a lot more efficient or they're going to take a fall like DEC.At some point, however, these systems will no longer scale. When that happens it is no longer to the advantage of the buyer to buy a couple of big systems at a premium when a bunch of smaller ones can be had at commodity prices. When that happens the bottom will fall out of Sun's market.
This is exactly what befell IBM with the onslaught of minicomputers in the 1970s, although IBM was diverse enough that it took a long time before it affected their stock. Things went much worse for DEC; they collapsed practically overnight as small, cheap systems from the workstation vendors (particularly Sun) demolished their sales.
jim frost
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Sun see's linux as a threat -- and this is why -- sun can't beat linux's price / performance ratio. Sure, Suns make better large end servers -- but the market is MOSTLY low to medium. And by that I mean, businessess who won't be ruined if their systems crash for a few hours. And theres always BSD
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
what you're saying is partly true...
but what they really bought is the name!
"Our strategy is to enter the low-end server market by purchasing Cobalt Networks. Of course, we'll have to replace the Linux operating system they're currently using with Solaris... and the current AMD processor with a Sparc processor... and the case has got to go... but we'll keep the color. Yes, we'll definitely keep the color."
LOL!
// TODO: fix sig
Excuse me? Which OS is more scalable than Solaris, please? Sure as hell not Linux, with Linus refusing big iron patches. Sure as hell not NT, they can't manage more then 4 processors properly. What in particular is not viable about Solaris? Oh wait "slower than glacial flow". I guess if you want to run it on your old 486 it might be.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
If you want to change kernels and drivers and core libraries, why do you have a Cobalt in the first place? A Cobalt has below-average hardware in a turnkey package for hosting or core workgroup services. Sure, you might add a database, some Apache modules, ssh and so forth. But why buy a Cobalt if you're going to forego their support and OS updates?
Crikeys, you'd still be able to install a compiler and so on. 95% of Cobalts are run vanilla. Now that they've been adding PHP, MySQL and ChiliASP to some models, that number will go to 99%.
I can think of a few dozen vendors you'd get a better hardware from at this price if you're looking to customize your software mix. The point of a Cobalt is that it's ready-to-run and can be patched and upgraded automatically to be identical with all other Cobalts.
Uhh, they don't need to have the energy because they just purchased it!
Its a good thing Apple didn't buy them. I would imagine that the iRaq wouldn't sell all that well.
That would make Solaris look comparatively sane...
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This move is obviously part of the Sun overall strategy. For 3 main reasons:
1. They make Solaris. It makes sense for them to try and run everything of theirs from this platform. Their programmers know the OS inside out. This move is about as surprising as hearing that Microsoft is trying to move Hotmail over to Windows 2000 from BSD. So we'll see if Sun has any better luck than Microsoft.
2. Announcing this OS move is also obviously a publicity stunt designed to try and put forth their own Solaris as a superior OS to Linux. Remember, like Oracle and Microsoft, Sun has a major superiority complex.
3. In porting Solaris to another platform they are improving the overall portability of the OS, making it a more attractive OS.
"I would like to welcome everyone to the board meet and let everyone look at this hat, nice hat, a? What if I told all board memebers this hat could make millions. don't beilive me. Ok watch.
Here is 2 piles of small papers, if you look closly at the papers they have ideas written on them at random by the monkey is the type writter lab. roughly there is about 1000 peice in each pile.
We take these papers, put them in the hat, you watching this, did you see this Bob, I put the papers in the hat Sir. Ok, now if I could get some help from say uhh here Lisa, put your hand in here and randomly draw a peice of paper.
Ah good, let me see the paper, the paper says "Solaris", fine product we produce here at Sun. Ok on to step 2, here uhh mm Tim, please draw a paper from the hat. Ok, it says Coblat, another fine product that we just bought.
Now comes the making money part, what happens we you put these 2 peice of paper to gehter, 'Solaris on Coblat' that is right. Everyone ready to make some cash"
"Excuse me Sir, do you REALLY work here"
..blink....
"Yea, sorta, yea I work here, umm my name is Jim, I live in my car"
..blink.....
"So as head chairmen, I recommened everyone cast there vote, I think Jim knows what he is talking about, good face you can trust it."
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG