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Sun Unveils More Linux Strategies
A number of people have submitted the press release from Sun Microsystems about their latest announcements in conjunction with Linux. Highlights from this one include the promised release of "New single- and multiprocessor systems, to be announced mid-year, will use the x86 architecture and be capable of running thousands of Linux applications natively." As well, they are expanding the Cobalt line of servers, but even more interestingly they are going to "freely offer" parts of Solaris - but no license specified that I saw. They are also releasing "ABICheck", which should check compatibility between Linux/Solaris. C|Net is carrying coverage now as well. And it looks like Lineo and SuSe are going to get competition in the embedded and telecom support area - I wonder if that's tied to the OSDL announcement. It's good to see that they are getting on the right track - now let's hope they stay the course.
Can now go and retract all the Sun naysaying.
I use Solaris for SPARC, its great, but Solaris X86 was half-baked from the start. The writing was on the wall for a LONG time, but when Sun finally canned it, I for one had to endure both the cries of "abandonware!" as well as generic sun bashing from the local Linux people I have to deal with.
It should be obvious now, Sun is doing the right thing by ceeding the X86 market to Linux, and infact helping the transition, for those that were in the Solaris X86 crowd. Win-win situation, as far as I can see.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
i can not believe that sun has let cobalt stagnate to the extent that they have. i very much like the management capabilities of the machines, but i would really like more resources for experimenting. the party line is that if you mess with the system it is unsupported. quite sad that they are pretty much where they were two years ago--k-6 in the raq 4's!
http://www.sunfreeware.com/
Everything will come with the OS !
--- I'm a 20th century digital boy
--- I don't know what to do by I got a lot of PROGS
It's the kiss of death when a traditional UNIX on RISC vendor jumps on the Linux bandwagon. By offering Linux on x86, Sun is now competing against everyone and their dog.
Ah well, it was only a matter of time before they were pushed out of the lower middle range of the market.
--Kara
Before you ask, I already have a boyfriend and he's more of a man than you'll ever be.
haha sun kicks ass i am glad they are getting away from unix and towards linux
~~~~~~~~~~~ Who Supports Big Brother Now? -Tomj-
1. The x86 architecture with Linux will only be used in their Cobalt and other small file/print server solutions.
2. They are not releasing any new workstations based on x86 processors.
3. They plan on working with others to support Linux on the Sparc architecture.
4. They offer products which allow Linux programs to run under Solaris.
Now for the interesting questions:
1. Is their work in Linux part of a long-range strategy to phase out Solaris? After all, they make money selling hardware. If a free UNIX is available, why waste money developing Solaris.
2. Are they taking a play out of IBM's Linux-everywhere strategy? How soon before we see E10k's and E15k's shipping with virtual machine software able to support 1000's of Linux images?
Just my take on the article.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Well,
Its very clear that some day Sun and other Unix vendors will surrender totally to Linux and other great open source tools!
"Learning, learning, learning - that is the secret of jewish survival" -- Ahad A'Ham
Well, shit, this is surprising!
:-)
Now that the pigs are flying nicely and Hell has reached about -5 degrees Celsius, perhaps Microsoft will overwrite their IIS source code directory with Apache source files, and do the same with their 'Win95_98_ME' and 'Win_NT_2K_XP', only this time replacing it with the Linux source.
(Sorry, not as funny as it could've been. I'm still waking up
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Sun is now realizing that they don't have a snowball's chance in hell in growing for much longer. With a lot of their core businesses moving to the Linux platform they need to keep up with the herd. In the EDA/ASIC field everybody is moving to x86 and Linux. Now that Synopsys has ported tools to Linux there's no reason to buy a $4000 Ultra 10 P.O.S. when you can get an Athlon XP 2000+ for $800 and get 2x-4x the performance. I was asked by a friend-of-a-friend (who happened to be a Sun salesdroid) what I thought of Sun boxes. I told him straight that Linux was going to crush them in the EDA market. He didn't like my answer too much. But the fact is that Sun is becoming more and more of niche player and I find it hard to believe that that is going to change any unless they find ways of building cheaper boxes with better performance.
This post is not ment to troll but...
I keep wondering why big companies like HP and Sun choose linux, instead of freeBSD. Although I'm not an expert on any of them, as far as I understand the BSD structure resembles SunOS and HP/UX more than Linux. Both BSD and linux are open source, and the BSD license even seems to be preferable to companies if, in the end, they decide to go closed source anyway.
Can someone explain this to me?
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Some of the folks involved with jakarta are less than convinced about sun's attitude towards OS.
It might be the right track for your rah-rah Linux agenda, but it's probably the wrong track for Sun. What does Sun think it can do Intel servers running Linux that IBM, HP, et al. can't? With neither hardware nor software to differentiate these boxes, what will sell them? Ed Zander's good looks?
I'll go out on a limb here, and predict that this is the beginning of an SGI-esque downward spiral into total irrelevance. Any bets on when Sun rolls out a new logo?
It's a marketing strategy.
Solaris is known as "slowaris" because it is optimized for SMP systems. Single CPU boxes are cheap. Sun was getting rejected by potential customers because to get the full benefit of Solaris you have to buy a massive box. If they vend Linux then they can target both the cheapskates/small companies and the huge enterprise vendors.
Linux runs well on Sparc chips, BTW.
Disclaimer required: that's my opinion, not my employer's, and I'm biased.
davecb@spamcop.net
07.Feb.02--Sun Microsystems has embraced the Linux operating system, rolling out a multipart program that will significantly broaden the offerings of Linux on low-end Sun servers and commit new resources to the ongoing development of the Open Source operating system.
The program, announced Thursday, comprises three ambitious goals to be met in the coming year.
Sun will ship for the first time a full implementation of Linux on a new line of general-purpose servers aimed at providing "edge" services to environments such as workgroups and remote offices. New single- and multiprocessor systems, to be announced mid-year, will use the x86 architecture and be capable of running thousands of Linux applications natively.
Sun will dramatically expand its line of Sun Cobalt[tm] Linux appliances, the world's leading Linux-based appliance systems. Look for innovations beyond the current eight-inch-square Qube[tm] and the 1.75-inch-high rack-mountable configurations. Sun's Cobalt server appliances start around $1000 and have an installed base of more than 100,000 units.
Sun plans to participate more aggressively in the Linux developer community by freely offering key components of its Solaris[tm] operating environment software, and by releasing tools to help developers ensure compatibility between the two Unix[R] derivatives.
Delivering Value
Sun's commitment to the Linux operating system brings additional value to customers of its Solaris/SPARC[tm] architecture. Already, Sun systems have built-in compatibility with Linux, so that any Solaris-based system can also run Linux applications. New software such as Linux Compatibility Toolkit (LinCAT), announced today, can help simplify the process of assuring that Linux applications will run on the Sun Fire[tm] family of servers. And in the future, Sun's upcoming Solaris 9 Operating Environment will provide additional built-in Linux commands, utilities, and interfaces.
For Linux users, the new program will make key Sun[tm] Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) technologies available to the Linux platform, including the iPlanet[tm] Directory and Web servers, Forte[tm] for Java[tm] development tools, the Java/XML platform, Project JXTA, StarOffice[tm] productivity suite, Sun[tm] Chili!Soft ASP, and the Sun Grid Engine.
"We will now offer our customers an incredible value proposition by delivering our binary-compatible industry-leading SPARC/Solaris system family, which starts at less than one thousand and goes to nearly ten million dollars, along with our new Sun Linux low-end servers and Sun Cobalt appliances for emerging edge services applications," said Ed Zander, Sun's president and chief operating officer. "And with our Sun ONE Java- and XML-based software platform, developers can write to one software platform and run their applications or services across a vast array of systems."
Open for Business
Sun is already one of the largest providers of intellectual property to the Open Source development effort.
Sun today contributes resources and technology to free and open source projects including: OpenOffice.org, GNOME.org, Mozilla.org, Apache.org, NetBeans.org, X.org, WBEMsource Initiative, the University of Michigan NFS version 4 Linux port, the Grid Engine Project, and Project JXTA.
Now, Sun plans to take an even more active role in contributing software and expertise to the Open Source software movement.
"We have some of the industry's most advanced Unix, Java, and XML experts now working to advance Linux with the key mission-critical features of the Java platform and Solaris operating environment," Zander said. "By adding the Linux community to the hundreds of thousands of Solaris developers, and the nearly three million Java/XML developers, Sun's customers have unified access to the broadest array of innovation in the industry on which to provide services. Sun remains the best open business opportunity for developers."
Pushing the Envelope
Sun is working on a number of fronts to support and further the work being done in the Open Source community, and on the Linux code base in particular.
Today, Sun released an application development tool, ABIcheck, to the Open Source community; the tool helps ensure compatibility between Linux releases.
In the future, Sun will offer contributions to the Linux kernel.
Sun will expand its partnerships with the Linux community to provide native support of Linux on SPARC systems for both the telecommunications and embedded markets. Companies such as SuSE and Lineo support Linux native on Sun's SPARC microprocessors today.
Lineo will adapt and support Lineo's Embedix embedded Linux operating system on UltraSPARC[tm] processor-based end user-developed custom hardware.
Sun will support its Linux products with a rich set of support and professional services.
Sun will support Linux on its key StorEdge[tm] line of storage systems and software.
GNOME, the most advanced Linux user environment, will become the preferred desktop for Solaris when GNOME 2.0 begins shipping later this year.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I (together with many others I'm sure) also submitted that Java 1.4 (Merlin) has been released, which I think is pretty big news, but it seems that story was rejected.
/LarsWestergren
User-Mode-Linux ported to Solaris might be feasible. That would be pretty damn cool; a pile of Linux images running on an E15K with Sun's nicely fascist ;) SRM accounting/scheduler forcing everybody to play nice.
Or is UML x86-specific, and I'm smoking crack here?
Scott Scott Scott... You are so close to hitting the mark. You forgot the most valuable part of Linux... it's VM ability.
Now if you were to port Linux to your SunFire platform, you could have a direct competitor with IBM's Mainframe Linux. How is that?
Imagine taking an E15k system... Setting it up as a single domain running Linux. Now, under that, use the Usermode Linux to create VM servers. No longer would this platform limit a system to particular boards... All these VM's could run in that large single domain, sharing it's CPU's, disks and IO. This would compete directly with IBM's implimentation of Linux on the mainframes.
Now let's take it a step further... IBM's mainframe is great for Linux VM's needing I/O intensive tasks. It's CPU isn't meant for many large number crunching VM's. The SunFire are. So while IBM gets big offering services on Linux VM such as Samba & NFS file services, Oracle & DB2, Enterprise email... You could be selling for the CPU intensive side. Graphics apps, XML and PDF parsers, engineering, etc.
Sun, you cannot afford to not do this. Sun's big server market will depend on it. It's only a matter of time before IBM fill's the niche for the CPU intensive VM's... And while I do like IBM and their commitment to Linux, I'd hate to see Sun drop off the radar. Competition is what brings about inovation, it's almost cliche.
*TheDarb
GUI-Lords.org
This sig intentionally left blank.
"enterprise vendors" should be "enterprise customers" in paragraph 2
Silly editor... Use a dictionary! :)
I thought Sun made money selling their proprietary OS on proprietary hardware ( a bit ago, when the support was good, it was worth the extra ) - I don't think they can win anymore as just another high-end hardware vendor, so maybe they'll aim at selling "Sun-approved" Linux distros + closed-source software extras ?
That would be good for Linux, I think.
--
Props to Hemos for correct spelling, at last.
Why get an overpriced Sun PeeCee
for starters, sun does not make pcs. sun machines are meant to be used as servers or serious number-crunchers.
when you could get a cheaper, better-looking Macintosh running OSX, which is much more advanced and more stable than anything
how can you say that osx is more stable than sunos/solaris? have you ever used these oss? how can you say the mac is more advanced than a sun-box? show me a super-high-performance mac server and we'll talk. and about the way it looks...
macs look like a child's toy. they're 'pretty' with rounded corners. tell me - do you prefer coke over pepsi because the red can is prettier than the blue can?
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
bandwagon and mindshare... CIOs have heard of Linux, not all of them have heard of *BSD. That's sad, because the BSDs are far more mature at a system level and I think they probably scale better. Then again, Sun and HP have Solaris and HP-UX for selling scalability.
Something else they're not thinking about is that Linux is not 100% POSIX-compliant. that's going to piss off a lot of senior engineers who have to port legacy apps from HP-UX/Solaris (or, shudder, older Unixes) over to Linux.
All very well but I've been trying to reach sun.com for hours now (even before this story) and not being able to get through...
Borked?
or Slashdotted - or both?
Not exactly a good advert for sun is it?
-- You ain't seen me, right?
Does this mean they are going to be nicer to the Jakarta folks???
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/news.html under "30 January 2002 - That flaming fireball in the sky..."
Sun's always been friendly to OSS as long as it gives them good press to be so. I'm not certain they are so good at heart. Maybe they were just scarred by microsoft changing the meaning of Java that they don't trust an ad-hoc group of unpaid developers to not do the same.
Karma Clown
I just cannot see Sun replacing Solaris on their high-end multi-processor machines... Or at least not until Linux scales equally well :-)
The whole point of the Cobalt's is that they are appliances and are not the general purpose servers that everyone else ships. That's how Sun compete in this low end part of the market.
If you need a general purpose server, go for Solaris and Sparc.
This sounds to me like Sun is just trying to give the impression that they're staying with the times. Which they are, I'll grant, but after being dusted by Oracle last week over Linux, it seems to me that Sun is still licking their wounds and hoping to make things look better for them and worse for Oracle.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
As for linux, Sun can pander to the market in some tacit fashion for now, but ultimately linux can destroy Sun's entire business. IBM knows this. So does HP. So does Intel. Sun's proprietary solution set is on its last legs, and in five years will be gone.
Short this company.
To all the Linux zealots, proclaiming the death of Sun, who have never been inside a large data centre with expensive Sun kit inside it, I'll give you a hint:
Sun's Core Business has nothing to do with Linux on cheap, commodity X86!
Sun sells high-end systems, big-iron that competes with other high-end vendors. They make all the profit off hardware, JUST LIKE IBM, when IBM sells a big-iron server with either AIX, or Linux. So remember, these vendors are competeing with Hardware, not Software. Cheap commodity X86 isnt in the race for the very high-end.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
/. or not, suns website comes up with greates of ease.
Purhaps you forgot your stuck on dialup?
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
This is an old tactic. Sun took the best threat to its low end off of the market by absorbing it and then slowly killing it. Frankly it was a smart thing for Sun to do - they can't beat linux boxes on cost, so they have to try to outstrategize the linux market. Now that IBM and HP are throwing serious resources behind linux though, Sun has probably run out of room.
Yeah, I agree. Sun is toast bigtime. I recently compared a dual Athon MP to an 8 way Sun 4500. The AMD Althon solution was effectively the same speed as the Sun box when fully loaded with dozens of server processes despite being 1/10th the price! I guess Sun better find a way to "Java" their way out of this pickle.
Maybe Sun will make a new x86 system that has improved I/O -- like, using UPA rather than (or in addition to) PCI.
Since Sun will not be worrying about Windows support, they can extend the architecture a bit. Still use x86 processors, but enhance the surrounding systems to make it less PC-like and more big-server-like.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Ugh...have YOU ever seen the Solaris GUI? It's terrible! It's a Windows 3.1 wannabe!
Why would anyone want that (and the bloated, committee-designed Xwindows horse it rode in on),
when they could have the Mac GUI. The Macintosh GUI is perfect in every way. Totally Seamless. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines (the BOOK...which Apple *WROTE*) is the most well thought out way to do GUIs and is unassailably perfect.
Apple did easily what Unix vendors have been trying and failing at for years - make a Unix without all that cryptic command-line crap. To actually put a decent usable GUI on it, instead of the awful Xwindows. Unix may have been around for 30 years, but it took Apple to get it RIGHT.
Wow, if I had known how lucrative extremely high-end, proprietary hardware was, I would have invested in Cray and SGI. I'd be a rich man, right?
Something else they're not thinking about is that Linux is not 100% POSIX-compliant
It's closer than the *BSD family is. (they reject POSIX as a matter of philosophy and that whole "System V is not real Unix" load.)
[Bollocks! I had written a long thoughtful reply to this and it got eaten by the submission system. 2nd attempt...]
bandwagon and mindshare... CIOs have heard of Linux, not all of them have heard of *BSD. That's sad, because the BSDs are far more mature at a system level and I think they probably scale better. Then again, Sun and HP have Solaris and HP-UX for selling scalability.
An interesting question this point raises is: do IBM/HP/Sun consider Linux good enough to support small applications, but not good enough to be any real competition?
For instance: IBM sell special cheap zSeries processor nodes for running Linux VMs, but you can't buy a whole machine full of them. You still have to buy a "proper" node. They want you to run Linux beside zOS not instead of it. Clearly they're more worried about people running bind or Apache on non-IBM hardware than with people using Linux to do serious OLTP or something.
Is all this big guy support of Linux the equivalent of "damning with faint praise"?
I think there's alot of truth to this.
The low end server market is dominated by Windows. The easiest looking upgrade path from a small Windows box is a larger Windows box (whether is makes sense or not). The only bright spot for a third party vendor is Linux. It's unlikely that a IT shop that has tested the Linux waters and found them fine going to to be intimidated at tradign up to an eight way Solaris box.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And I don't remember the last time any of these initiatives were really successful. Sun management just doesn't believe in any of it. They may have brief enthusiasms fo this technology or that, but they never really commit to it. They spend a ton of money on this R&D initiative or that acquisition. Then they lose interest and walk away.
Arguably, Java is an exception. But if Java has a long term future, it's because other players, such as IBM, have more commitment to it than Sun does.
Did we slashdot the dot in dot com? If so, good job boys, you make me proud.
Lots of people who run Oracle run it on SPARC Solaris. Since Oracle just announced it was moving to run everything on Linux, lots of PHB's have been plotting how to get rid of the Sun/Oracle machines to replace them with PC's running linux. You see, they have a PC on their desk, so they fundamentally understand them, so they're much better than having mysterious blue boxes in the machine room.
Sun is preempting the certain loss of hardware sales here. They can explain that linux runs well on the existing SPARC machines (prob. better than x86 for big-memory machines) and that moving to linux doens't mean 'throwing away their existing infrastructure'. The PHB's PHB will like that idea.
Good for them - companies that can adapt to linux will survive. Solaris has been headed this way anyway, what with the filesystem reorganization and GNOME, etc.. Even though Oracle forced their hand, they've been preparing for this for quite a while.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Sun's main purpose in life seems to be as the launching platform for Oracle. Some of Sun's competitors have better performance, some have better prices, some claim to have both, but nobody has the level of Oracle support that Sun/Solaris gets. Without Oracle, there would be no Sun. Considering Larry's announcement about migrating all of Oracle's corporate systems to Linux, the handwriting is on the wall for Solaris. From Oracle's perspective, Linux is a great way to enhance their position vs. M$ SQL server on the low end, and go after IBM DB2 on the high end, all at the same time.
If anyone believes what Larry says, it looks like Oracle will elevate Linux to the top tier of supported OS, probably at the expense of Solaris. This really sucks for me because I committed to the SPARC/Solaris platform about 8 months ago. Oracle support of Linux wasn't quite there yet and I didn't have time on my side. I always thought a transition to Linux was inevitable, but I thought it would take another year or two.
From Sun's point of view, they are probably looking for a smooth way to transition SPARC Solaris to SPARC Linux, so as to drop Solaris entirely as a cost-cutting measure. Sun needs either a huge boost in SPARC CPU performance or lower pricing, preferrably both. Otherwise they will get killed by high-end X86 systems.
I think the ultimate fate of Sun/Solaris will be the same as Digital/VMS: It's another attack from the commodity boxes, armed with a standard operating system, this time without the M$ nonsense.
"Clearly they're more worried about people running bind or Apache on non-IBM hardware than with people using Linux to do serious OLTP or something."
Oh, I'm sure that IBM will sell you a 8 CPU Intel box with Linux and DB2 if that meets your needs, and you insist.
Not many people are asking for that yet however, and are instead using Linux for glue services (HTTP, SMTP, etc), so the mainframe "on the side" approach makes sense. Not to mention that Linux isn't exactly in a position to replace AIX or zOS, and probably never will be. IBM could fork it, but when they've already got AIX, why bother?
If Sun worked with the Linux people to get full hardware support for things like the Sunrays and the SPCi card, and for (cough) Solaris/Linux binary compatability (Heh, the WINE folk have done a harder ask...) this would make a lot of smaller servers switch to Linux, which is more suited to the hardware.
--Azaroth
There is no such thing as a "solaris" gui...
As for the whole gui thing in general, most servers don't have graphics card in them.
I wonder how much longer until Sun throws in the towel and moves entirely
over to Linux... Sun would have to compete solely on their Sparc hardware
against the many, many x86 companies, which would be increasingly
difficult as time goes on, especially since Linux software would have to
be recompiled for Sparc.
However, I don't believe they have much choice. If they take an honest
look down the road, Linux (and Windows) is going to continue to erode
their business. Maybe the plan is to help Linux along so it's to the
"Enterprise" level of Solaris, and then maybe they'll dump Solaris, just
like HP, SGI, and IBM hope to do with their respective *nix. If Sun tries
to fight Linux, as well as Windows, then they're digging their own grave,
but if they can somehow incorporate the enthusiasm and the developer
community of Linux to support Solaris, then they're somewhat better off
for the time being. Hmmm... I would love to be a little fly on the wall
in some of the executive meetings regarding Sun's future and the
competition from Windows and Linux.
Another problem I see is that just like in the desktop market, the server
market is reaching the "commodity hardware" point where there will soon be
no real incentive to buy ever faster servers since the hardware you
currently own already exceeds the demands of your software (the obvious
exception is the high-end database arena that Sun and IBM find most
profitable). So... if every computer company standardizes on x86
hardware, which means there's a fairly level playing field for
competition, and if Linux becomes the "standard" Unix across every
company's server line, which means there's very little way for a company
to differentiate its product from the others, and if buying hardware
from one vendor is pretty much the same as buying hardware from another
vendor, then hmmm... not a pretty picture for the future of corporate
profits. Prices are going to continue to drop for x86 servers, which
makes it even more difficult for Sun to compete. The biggest benefit,
assuming Linux doesn't fragment as companies try to make their offering
stand out against the herd, is that developers can write software for
"Linux" and it will run just about anywhere. Plus, people learning Linux
will be able to use their skills with any company's offering, which is a
good thing.
did you mean stratagies?
with strategies instead of stratagems. revisionists. (probably they meant stratagies)
Sun was one of the companies that said they supported x86-64 when it first can out right? A chip like sledgehammer would come alot close to providing the io performance sun likes (what does it have, three 6.4 GB/s hypertransport links on it?) Now since linux already supports x86-64, and both solaris and linux will have the sun supported gnome interface in the future. It should provide sun with a nice line of high performance and cheep systems, and an easy upgrade path to big solaris systems. Seems like the smart thing to do to me.
The 'could get a better Mac running OSX' comment obviously has to be a flame. People buy various systems to perform various tasks - an Apple system would not be able to perform a number of tasks that a Solaris box might do.. its totally stupid to suggest that it isnt as good because it doesn't 'look' as good.
:)
But I myself have recently got into the Solaris market - picked up a new Sun Blade 100 (about as entry level as it gets). Solaris has been interesting - but I do have to say that on a regular joe workstation, it really is very very slow. But you certainly cannot beat its stability - it even manages to make Netscape 4.7 (which gives me all kinds of trouble on SGI IRIX and Linux) stable ! How about that !
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Doh.. where I said 'flame', I meant to say 'troll' - I guess I should have used the Preview button. Never mind :\
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Has Sun said anything about it's .NET/Mono strategy on Linux yet? This would be interesting to see, given Sun's strong support of Ximian.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
How impressive, a comment from an AC.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Mac's may have better GUI's, no doubt. But that's not why you buy Solaris on a sparc box. PERFORMANCE/SCALABILITY FYI, Solaris 9 will be use GNOME 2.0 instead of CDE.
HOWEVER, until Sun frees Java, they will always be viewed askance by the community. I'd understand keeping Java closed if it were a cash cow. It's not. Not freeing Java doesn't seem to make sense from a business or any other perspective. Sun execs and lawyers: wake up and smell the coffee!
I happen to work on Sun Enterprise Class servers. And for al you thinking Sun will port Linux to run on E15k are fooling yourselves. There is no demand for that from their customers. Most E15k's are used for 1 thing. ORACLE. As the same with the E10k. And even if Linux was to be ported to it. No customer would ever trust Linux on a 6TG Oracle DB. Linux cant scale to 105 CPU's. Until that is fixed. Dream on.
The resources committed to libre software by IBM, Sun and other major corporations since the .com crash now far outstrip the cumulative contributions of failed and/or former libre-only companies like VA and Eazel.
High-End Hardware. Sun makes some pretty nice High-End Hardware too. While you can get some powerful computing done with Beowulf systems, a single Sun multiproc box is more compact and manageable in the majority of instances.
I think Sun aught to put a bit more work into increasing the power and reducing the cost of their equipment. Get more of it out there while still making a decent profit.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Three Million Java/XML developers? Where are they hiding? Or are the vast majority of them still inexperienced rugrats?
I do know a few people do are Java developers, but the C and C++ crowd still outnumbers. Even with the job market as it is today, finding Java developers (well, at least good ones with some experience) is still hard to do. I think that three million figure quite an exaggeration. More like 1/4 of that.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Ugh...have YOU ever seen the Solaris GUI?
actually, i have. i have an ultra10 at work and i create guis to run on it. once again, i'll have to point out that looks aren't everything. it's what's under the hood that matters. my 1991 toyota camry doesn't look as nice as my girlfriend's sisters '86 mustang, but it runs a hell of a lot better than her 'stang ever will (assuming she can ever get it to run in the first place).
Apple did easily what Unix vendors have been trying and failing at for years - make a Unix without all that cryptic command-line crap
i can't believe you'd say something like that. that 'cryptic command line crap' as you call it is what makes unix superior to other oss. unix systems give unlimited power to the users. that 'command line crap' allows us to create shell scripts to do all of our mindless tasks for us. windows batching does not even come close. if you sit down and look at those 'cryptic commands', you'll see that most of them are simple english abbrieviations
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
"GNOME, the most advanced Linux user environment" - ridiculous.
This is not a GNOME bash. I've used it, and it has its strengths. But anyone who claims it is more "advanced" than KDE has either 1) not used a recent KDE build or 2) is toeing the marketing line.
(KDE on Solaris works just fine, by the way.)
It tolls for Sun.
Remember when SGI tried to get into the NT-workstation market? This is exactly the same thing! Sun will be making overpriced x86-boxes with proprietary crap on them, just like SGI. This just won't work.
Mikael
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Software applications that run on Linux require
d sh rt )
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substantial changes in order to run on Solaris, IRIX,
and other variants of UNIX. The financial
ramifications of this incompatibility are severe.
The growth of the Linux market has no secondary
beneficial implication for the Solaris market,
the AIX market, etc. Linux is Linux. Linux is
not Solaris.
Sales of Linux-based computers by one reputable
company (e. g. IBM) does, however, help sales of
Linux-based computers by other reputable companies
(e. g. HP). (Read "IBM to sell Linux-only mainframe" @
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-822771.html
and "HP boosts Linux for telecommunications" @
http://news.com.com/2110-1001-824573.html?tag=c
HP's sale of Linux computers for telecommunications
means bad news for Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW).
Telecommunications is a key market for SUNW servers.
Indeed, the sale of any Linux computer means bad news
for SUNW.
(Read @ "Linux threatens Sun more than Microsoft"
http://www.theinquirer.org/04020202.htm )
SUNW affirms our analysis. SUNW has recently
announced that it will sell Linux-based general-
purpose servers, integrating an x86/x86-64 chip.
SUNW is integrating an Intel-based computer into its
product line in order to save the company from
bankruptcy 5 years hence. This move is entirely
for its own survival. Why else would SUNW integrate
a low-margin server into its family of extremely
high-margin servers? Why would SUNW deliberately
lower its own profit margins?
(Read "Sun details plans for Linux servers" @
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-831618.html?tag=c
This news has 2 dire implications for SUNW.
We expect that SUNW will gradually curtail development
of the UltraSPARC. A Linux-based x86/x86-64/Itanium
server is a far better value than a high-priced but low-
performance Solaris-based UltraSPARC server. The
UltraSPARC will disappear within 10 years.
As these Linux-based Intel servers come to dominate
SUNW's sales (of servers), SUNW's profit margin will
become vanishingly small. This transition will come
at a price: mounting financial losses, decreasing
marketshare, and annual layoffs over the next five
years.
At $10 per share, SUNW has an eye-popping
price-to-earnings ratio of 125. It is extremely
overvalued. The proper value of a single share
of SUNW stock is less than $5.
You're absolutely right about Oracle being the killer app for the E15K. Hell, it's the killer app for almost all SPARC boxes. Considering the price/performance of SPARC, it's not worth buying unless you are going to run Oracle.
There is no demand for an E15K Linux box because Oracle currently supports Solaris as a tier-1 platform, with varying degrees of support for anything else. I am an Oracle customer. To me, it looks like every patch or install kit is written and tested on Solaris, and then ported to the other systems. I once worked at a DEC/VMS shop and saw what it's like to be at the other end of the Oracle support spectrum.
If Oracle is serious about migrating their corporate systems to Linux, then it follows that the best support will someday be for Linux boxes instead of Solaris. If we ever get to that point, someone will bring Linux to the E15K. New customers will choose Linux for the same reason I chose Solaris: it's a matter of choosing the best-supported platform for Oracle. No matter what the merits of any OS, it's not worth the headache of being the stepchild of Oracle support.
My guess is that when Sun releases their first Linux boxes, they will have ld, libc, the kernel, etc., configured to run Solaris binaries. Shortly afterwards, expect to see some Solaris kernel, linker, and misc. library patches to make Solaris run Sparc Linux binaries as well.
Why go to the trouble? They have spent way to much time and money marketing two points:
- Solaris is the big brother of Linux. To a large extent it is: for now Solaris works much better on all but the bottom tier of Sun's servers.
- For binary compatibility across generations of hardware and operating systems, you can count on Sun.
That second point falls down a bit between OS revs for many programs of any sort of complexity, but to a large extent, it is true. That significantly eases the headaches of administering and programming on Sun's platform.I look forward to the day that I can get decent hardware that everyone (in my Sun-centric IT department) is already familiar with that comes with source code that I can do something with.
Really though why would you want to RUN linux on and E15k or and E10k....Solaris just makes so much more sense. That was along the same vein as running Solaris on the x86 arch...why would you want too.
For the most part the same thing that runs on linux runs on Solaris and visa versa. its just the sparc arch is so much more stable and scalable.
Excerpt: "Lou Gerstner didn't have to do this. If I just say we're going to spend a billion dollars on this, can I take this off?" said a sweltering McNealy, referring to IBM's loud move to spend vast sums of money on Linux in 2001.
If Sun were a TV show, they would have just had their 'jumping the shark' moment...
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Sounds like a lot of people posting here haven't seen the inside of a big Fortune 500 datacenter. When you're a multi-billion dollar company that measures downtime in millions$/minute, you're going to look for products with the following: 1) Reliability - This is self explanatory. 2) Scalability - There are two kinds of scalability, vertical and horizontal. Sun does the vertical scalability better than the other Unix vendors. (hint: this is also where the better margins are...) They also do horizontal scalability pretty well, albiet with hardware that might not be quite as deeply discounted as wintel/lintel competitors. However, in the Solaris world (and to some degree other commercial unixes) you can start an application out on a small server and then move it to increasing larger servers as needs dictate. Solaris has demonstrated decent linearity up to 72 processors in a single instance of Solaris. What about Linux? I understand that it doesn't do well past (4) cpus. In any case, with Linux, you're pretty much limited to horizontal scalability. With Solaris you can do both. 3) Manageability - While it's not as newbie friendly as Windoze, sys admins have a lot of features at their disposal here. Managing a single, scalable SMP server is a lot easier than managing a lot of smaller boxes in say a Beowulf cluster. 4) Availability and Serviceability - kinda realated to the last point. The tight integration of Solaris and SPARC provides a lot of really interesting capabilities. Dynamic System Reconfiguration balck flags bad components during POST so the system can come up even if it's got bad hardware. Dynamic Reconfiguration allows a tech to add/remove hardware on the fly without bringing the system down for a reboot - even the cpu and memory boards. Dynamic System Domains allow the sys admin to move resources from one domain to another without a reboot. I think Oracle just came out with additional support to take advantage of this where if you moved cpus and memory to a domain, Oracle could take advatage of the resources without restarting. Sun also provides a mechanism to automate this moving of resources around on the E10k. Sys admins can write scripts to automatically move resources around based on time of day (say at night to support large batch jobs) or based on measureable criteria (like CPUs really busy, so let's take resources from the QA domain and put them into the production domain until the load decreases). There are others I'm sure, but you get the idea. These are the kinds of things that large data centers want in their server platforms. 5) Probably the most important thing of all to the Fortune 500 exec is the ability to pickup the phone and chew out McNealey and Co. If you are have an EBay incident, it becomes a CNN moment. Accountability is a huge part of selecting a vendor. How accountable is the Linux community for fixing a problem with the OS? Now, this is a different question from "how responsive." I know that there are many eager Linux developers out there that are willing to help out, but who's door is the CEO going to bang on if some Linux driver dies. Maybe the answer is, go hire a bunch of Linux people to maintain critical components of the OS. Well then, you're bringing the support in house and not taking advantage of one of the best things about Linux, the community. 6) Linus' scalability - I'm seeing more and more about the issues surrounding Linus' ability to include desired fixes in the kernel. Commercial vendors can be "encouraged" to fix or enhance their OSes. I've even seen specific bug fixes named after companies that requested them. This is no means a shot at Linus' abilities, he's obviously a smart guy. WRT SGI, Sun is in a very different boat from SGI. Yah, Sun's best days may have been during the dotcom buildout, but you know what they also did during that time frame? They got into the core business processing datacenters of large companies. With great success, Sun was able to leverage their dotcom exposure to broaden the scope of their hardware, much to the dismay of IBM, HP, and DEC (rip). I've seen a big financial datacenter get rid of its IBM boxes and DEC Alphas to run the core financials on SPARC/Solaris. SGI painted itself into a corner by staying focused on scientific apps and graphics while Sun broadened its customer base. What's really funny is that SGI needed to increase its marketshare by getting more into commercial apps. Instead, they bought Cray! Then they sold one of Cray's business units over to Sun. This was the technology that basically became the E10k. I bet Sun's laughing all the way to the bank on that deal. Maybe I'm rahashing old, already over done history, but Sun is in a very different position from SGI. I've seen Sun boxes running printing presses at a large newspaper publisher. I've seen Sun boxes processing orders for a large cable TV company, I've seen Sun boxes cut checks and purchase orders for one of the largest telcos in the US. The point is that Sun's gear is all over the place. I think Sun's announcement that it will expand it's Linux efforts is a recognition not that Solaris is dead, but that Linux is mature enough to adopt as a viable platform. I think it fits very well with Sun's strategy. Big systems at the core of the heavy pushing with cheap replaceable Linux boxes at the edge (web/app servers and whatnot). There are two basic business strategies - differentiation and cost reduction. All other strategies fall into one of these two. I've seen some posts commenting on price. Well guess what, you're right, PCs are cheap, but that's not Sun's target strategy. Dell is an MBA model of cost efficiency. Dell doesn't really make anything, they bend sheetmetal and combine technology made elsewhere with better cost containment than their competitors. Sun on the other hand is an inovator. Many of the standards that we take for granted today came from Sun. NFS,XML,Java, and lots of other stuff have strong ties to Sun. A lot of people think Java is all hype and that its heyday has come and gone. But y'know what? I was just watching someone install a Brocade switch today and guess what the management interface was? You got it, a Java applet in a web browser! Looked really good, too. sorry for the tangent... I don't think Sun's expanded interest in Linux is a way to beat the Dells of the world at making cheap PCs. Seems to me it allows Sun to round out their already extensive product portfolio. Time will tell how Sun's strategy holds up, but I'm rooting for them. As one of the few (only)commerical vendors that supports open standards - people insist on calling SPARC proprietary, but it's actually an open standard (http://www.sparc.org/basic.shtml) - I for one hope they stick around... someone's gotta keep jabbing at Microsoft. All the other vendors have wussed out and have joined the Dark Side. At least Sun had the balls to stand up to Bill and Co. kden!
Anyone remember Solaris for PowerPC? It was canned many years ago due to lack of interest. X86 never has garnered support due to lack of availability of 3rd party products (Oracle had one version for it, but dropped support). Sparc is destined to loose the chip war, it's inevitable, there is no way they can compete with Intel, current Sparc III chips are less than 1/2 the speed of Intel, 64 bit, but still slower. Itanium is going to clean their clock, and they need a OS that will support it. Since X86 is dead, and will never have a 64 bit release, Linux will have to fill in. I personally think they would have been better served by enhancing X86 with a 64 bit release, FULL Linux compatability, and encourage vendors such as Veritas and Oracle to support X86, but that only dilutes their Sparc market even more. Sun is between a rock and a hard place, and I see them going the way of SGI. They should have started selling workstations in CompUSA and Best Buy 10 years ago. The only way Sparc could have developed into a superior technology would be if the volume was high enough to continue R&D, and by limiting the market they have doomed themselves. Makes me wonder if they make their money on hardware why they never bothered to port NT to Sparc. It appears to be the ego thing with McNealy. Marc
HURD HURD da next step!