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Sun Reconsidering Solaris 9 for x86
jeffphil writes "This article reports that Sun is meeting with a group of Solaris x86 users called the 'Secret Six.' The group was created to convince Sun to re-examine its previous decision to cancel Solaris on the x86 platform."
Not to sound like a troll, but everyone bitches about Microsoft and lack of competition, but look what they did. The whored their software out everywhere (practically giving it away) and are now reaping the benefits. Sun, Apple and company never took this route (and they had better products!) and have suffered in the long run.
Don't bitch about Microsoft when you are unwilling to make the same sacrifices!
So again, I reiterate, who cares?
If you bothered to read the article, you surely would've found this:
One analyst said Solaris on Intel is of particular help for users looking to create large-scale symmetric multiprocessing systems on low-cost hardware.
I can subscribe to that; linux is not (yet) a match for Solaris/i386 on SMP.
The sad part is that a lot of companies stopped producing "third-party" software for Solaris/i386 when Sun annouced it's demise; even if they change their minds now, the chances are slim for popular support for the platform.
if you use a good enough junk-filter, slashdot.org will display a single, *blank*, page
I think it would be very nice if Sun offered both Solaris and Linux on its new lines of low-end servers.
Solaris shops can purchase these servers knowing they will work very well in their workplace, and Linux shops can purchase these servers knowing they will work very well in their workplace.
Solaris can also help Sun differentiate their Intel-based products from those offered by other companies, such as Compaq and IBM. I know the Sun Intel servers will be better (with the familiar RAS features, etc.), but it might be hard to convince the PHBs that this is the case (since they are too used to bending over for M$ and cheap PCs).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Sun has pulled this kind of deal before. They were going to yank the Solaris source code at one point. Then this was canceled because users were outraged.
Each time Sun has tried to do this, they've ended up re-instating the thing. Personally I would hope that they would stick with keeping Intel off this time. They can't charge for Solaris, so they don't make any money on it. In fact, it costs them a shitload to maintain it. Virtually no commercial vendors have software for Intel, but they do for SPARC.
Solaris for Intel ends up in the hands of students and cheapskate companies that don't want to shell out the money for a Sun. They make zero dollars off of it. I sold my Sun stock a long time ago and unless they stop meddling around like this, I would probably refrain from ever buying more.
I run Solaris under vmware when I need to do something in it, and I don't have to spend anything extra on hardware or have a box taking up space dedicated to an OS that's useless to me 99.9% of the time.
--
Free software isn't free, but expensive software is expensive.
I bet that Sun could save a crapload of more money by dedicating a few engineers to improve Linux on SPARC
Obviously they are not so sure. I mean, they don't want linux on sparc, period. Solaris/sparc is a cash-cow right now, you just don't play/fool around with something like this.
if you use a good enough junk-filter, slashdot.org will display a single, *blank*, page
PHB's with an irrational fear of Free Software can use it to deploy Unix on cheap commodity hardware. I worked for such a PHB once. Like any company, they were somewhat stingy. They were a Solaris shop interested in deploying a number of servers on "cheap x86 hardware".
Originally, they were going to reluctantly deploy onto Linux because cost. However, when the gratis version of Solaris x86 was announced they switched so fast you could have gotten whiplash.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem is that Solaris actually represents a fairly sizable investment and a competitive advantage for Sun. Lots (not sure of the percentage) of the code is non-platform specific, and Solaris is really well engineered. Giving their competitors in the space (IBM, HP) access to a working, proven, extremely efficient Unix kernel could hurt them.
Solaris is a very very fast, stable, proven OS that I'd love to see stick around on Intel, even if I don't have that much call to use it at the moment. I can certainly see situations where I would use, sometimes even if I had to license it at $300-500 a copy. An IA64 port would be great as well.
I'm calling bullshit. Solaris was perfectly usable for me. The thing that was slowing it down was swapping to the IDE hard drive. It would probably fly on my new box with SCSI drives.
"Don't worry, it's not loaded." --Terry Kath
Nope, but the techies run either linux or solaris x86 or both. And for what it's worth, just because it's not clear if Sun will release Solaris 9 x86, doesn't mean it doesn't exist....
This is not to say that the memory bandwidth on a Sunfire does not make any x86 box look pathetically anemic.
Linux has it's place in the lowend, Solaris sparc has it's place in the midrange and high-end, and Solaris x86 is a nice pair of training wheels.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Using Netscape 6.1. :1 -query sun)
I run Solaris x86 on a Dell Optiplex GX1. It installed without a hitch. I also have a SUn SparcSation 5 I got off of Ebay for $100. It's a headless system. (Truth be known, I'm accessing my solaris box remotely. (X
I administer all my home servers (I run 10 servers!) and administer them all thru one monitor. The joys of *NIX. So there is a t least ONE person on slashdot who uses Solaris_x86!
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
They only offer their free Solaris license for 2= CPU systems and not for commercial applications, iirc. (I'm honestly much to lazy to reread their license to confirm :)
In my opinion, its more likely they are distributing an x86 version for free to get more people using it on regular PCs to learn it. That way, there will be lots of people able to admin it and recommend their companies to purchase Sun's higher end SPARC server hardware.
Would this make Linux irrelevant instantaneously?
If we could wrap a scalable, sound, SMP-capable GPL kernel around Debian or Red Hat, would we think twice?
Or what if Sun were to release and maintain free Solaris for Itanium as well as x86? Would that be the kiss of death for HP-UX and AIX 5L? Why do they hesitate?
Granted, the Solaris kernel has weaknesses. UFS has to go. I hate /etc/system, I'd much rather tune on the fly with 2.4. patchchk is what up2date was several years ago. Sun's continued reliance on CDE/ksh/zip to get everything done really makes me ill. Solaris needs to be the UNIX of the 21st century.
What is the possibility of Sun convincing Apple to integrate large portions of Solaris into Mac OS X? Would they be willing to give it away to Apple? Why haven't they done so to build up market share?
I am a Sun stockholder. I would like to see Sun publicly considering these actions. I want to see some bombast from Steve and Bill. If Sun, Apple, and possibly AOL collaberate on an x86-os, they will kill Microsoft.
Sun needs to wake up to the potential of its own power. As it stands, they are difficult to distinguish from roadkill.
One of the best little known firewalls to be found, and it is FREE on Solaris. This thing kicks the snot out of PIX and many other firewalls in a standalone configuration (it isn't too great for a large deployment of firewalls because it has no distributed management capability, ohwell). It has a real firewall front-end and frankly is one of the worst cases of mis-marketted technology next to the Alpha CPU. If you have Solaris 8, go download a copy of sunscreen and try it out, it rocks.
So if you wanted a GOOD firewall, cheap; dont think linux, BSD or any other variant. Until recently you could get x86 solaris with sunscreen.
tora