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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?"
Here are some background articles on the purchase:
Upside Today
Red Herring
Morningstar
Reuters.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
- 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.
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.
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.
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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....
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
Find the manager for eToys and hire him.
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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.