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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."
As compared to the "OS/2 Only Six?"
Scott McNealy showed up to the meeting in a penguin outfit.
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
solaris for x86 is good for those who are teaching themselves solaris and dont want to spend god knows how much for an overpriced sun box. Kinda nice to throw it on your test box, teach yourself solaris, and be able to get an admin job that way.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
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
I didn't think x86 solaris had that many users.
The problem with Solaris for the x86 is that it was overpriced.
A sunblade 100 workstation can be had for $1k anyone who can afford a pc and is learning solaris should be able to aford one.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Sun: So..Lets uh.... lets go over our findings so far.
S6: Ok..Here's uh..here's what we've got so far. Between the uh..the six of us...uh, 1 of us has heard of Solaris for x86. That would be uh... 18% of the population."
Sun: Fantastic. 18%. Wow. Management is gonna love that. 18.. wow....18% of the... wow. The new "insanity first" initiative here at the company is going to get off to a...uh..to a really, really impressive start. You know, just uh...acting like Linux doesnt exist just wont cut it anymore. We need to be REALLY insane this quarter... We need to uhh...raise the bar on....you know, management says "we need more insanity" and we need to deliver. We cant be insane enough, if you ask me....So.. Lets not only act like Linux doesnt exist, but lets get really crazy. But lets keep it sane. Crazy, but sane. uhh..Ok. Can I have a graph of your figures? Y'know, uhh..something to show them..?"
S6: Uhh.. Sure, here you go. A graph that shows that 18% of us have heard of Solaris for x86."
Sun: Fantastic. Ok, before I..before I uh...hand in my reccomendation on going forward with Solaris 9 for x86, lets uh..lets recap. Ok. We need to be insane. We need 10% minimum.. So you're uh...you're saying we meet both, uh..exceed both. Right?
S6: Uhh..yeah. Yes, definately. We've got a final figure of 18%, and we're insane. Thats correct.
Sun: Great. Ok, one minor concern.. This line here, this graph is sort of..uh..flat.. Its just a flat line going..uh..across the page. Can we do anything with that to uh...make it..you know, more uh..positive?
S6: Here. Let me show you.. (papers ruffled)
Sun: You guys are incredible. Thanks so much. How about we uh....tenatively, 9 AM tomorrow? We'll go over our results. I..uh...yeah, 9 AM sounds good for me.
S6: Ok. 5PM? Sounds good. 3PM. Gotcha.
Sun: Gotcha. 11:21 AM. See you then, gang.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Solaris scales to 106 processors last time I checked.
As if that was a common requirement, as in:
Gee, honey do you think is time to upgrade junior's 106 processor box?,
or
Mr. Smithers, get the CTO to the office. Its time to order another dozen 106 processor boxes.
Kudo's to Sun on this one.
It's not that I'm all that fond of x86, I just love the example that they are setting here. They make an executive decision, there is a public uproar, and they stop and reconsider.
Even if they don't decide to continue supporting x86, they have given us a clear signal that they are listening to our opinions, and are willing to negotiate/cooperate with the community.
That is what is missing in some Monopolies that have had a lot of media coverage lately. Some companies will do things that no one likes, completely ignore everyones complaints, and then pretend as if everyone was in favor of it the whole time.
More big companies should have an approch like Sun's.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
2.2GHz Uniprocessor x86 chips can smoke 4-way Solaris Sparc chips [...]
Heloooo... the story is about Solaris on x86. I won't go in the "Sparc vs. x86" argument, which is off-topic, but instead reiterate that on SMP x86, Solaris smokes Linux. Maybe sad, but true.
if you use a good enough junk-filter, slashdot.org will display a single, *blank*, page
You might be surprised. Pixar Studios, for example, uses Sun Enterprise 10000 machines for rendering their movies (so I was told this 6 months ago by one of their chief animators). Those max out at 106 processors per box, and Pixar has over 3000 CPU's. Do the math to figure out how many boxes that is. And maybe such a conversation did indeed take place:
Mr. Smithers, get the CTO in here right now. Our animators say that Monster, Inc. is going to take another 3 months to render. Get some more of those 106-processor Sun boxes right now!
Finally, to those who wonder why they don't use clusters instead of SMP machines? Pixar's rendering software algorithms are optimized for fine-grained communication patterns and simply would not work on a message-passing cluster.
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 am pretty sure that a company I used to work for, NCR, is one of the six. They build and sell really big MPP database servers. They need an extremely reliable and _trusted_ OS to run on these servers (which run in a loosely coupled configuration -- remember MTBF is the product of the MTBF of all the parts) and they don't want to support their own flavor of *nix just for their own niche product. In their particular market, telling customers that they run these special, expensive, multi-terabyte databases on linux is not gonna cut it. Solaris for x86 is just the ticket for them. I believe that they have customers running solaris 8 for x86 so SUN's decision to back away from this OS really puts NCR (and potentially their customers) in a bind.
Have a NICE day.
AIX is the best UNIX in my opinion. WHy? Simply because it has SMIT. I was thinking of making a Linux port of smitty. smitty is a GUI (or a CLI) frontend for pratically EVERY command you will ever use.From creating logical volumes to setting up networking.Everything. You honestly never have to touch a command prompt if you use SMIT.
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.
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.
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.
...at least according to all the tests I've seen.