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Sun Considers Switching Cobalt to Solaris

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-thats-screwed-up dept.

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?"

4 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is it a surprise? by bolthole · · Score: 5
    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.

    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.

  2. Actually, Cobalt is i86... by smoondog · · Score: 5

    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....

  3. Andy, how does your competition manage to do it? by brokeninside · · Score: 5

    One of Sun's senior VPs (Andy Ingram) said:

    We don't have the energy to drive two operating systems.
    • Microsoft manages to drive W2K, WinCe, W9.x
    • IBM manages to drive OS/390, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400
    • SGI manages to drive Irix, Windows, Linux
    • HP manages to drive HP/UX, Windows, Linux
    • Compaq manages to drive Tru64, Linux, Windows, VMS (or is VMS dead yet?)

    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

  4. did anyone not think this was coming? by ledbetter · · Score: 5

    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.

    --


    /. my blog, I dare ya