Slashdot Mirror
Sun To Sell Linux PCs
Rubbersoul writes "Reuters.com is reporting that in "a bid to undermine arch-rival Microsoft Corp" Sun is going to jump into selling low cost Linux PCs. The article is a bit low on technical details, but is interesting none the less. Also if you take this new news with a story from yesterday about Sun pushing StarOffice for schools around the world, you really start to get an idea that sun wants to beat MS like a red headed step child ..." An editorial in the WorldTechTribute argues that Sun's education-market giveaway is exactly the sort of behavior that Microsoft has been attacked for in the past.
What compelling reason is there to buy a Sun box over a the umpteen beige box vendors, IBM, Compaq, Dell, etc? Linux is only part of a low-priced solution. Does Sun think they can make a box cheaper than Dell?
"argues that Sun's education-market giveaway is exactly the sort of behavior that Microsoft has been attacked for in the past.:
A few differences:- Sun has not been ruled a monopoly
- Sun is not trying to give away free things to schools as a sanction to being ruled a monopoly
Moreover, what is Sun talking about giving away here? Linux machines? Java tools? StarOffice? Sun isn't exactly the only provider of such technology, so even if the giveaways propel adoption of these technologies, their open nature means that this won't necessarily translate back to their bottom line. On the other hand, for every PC Microsoft gives away it'll be running Windows [money back to themselves], it'll probably be running Office [money back to themselves], and maybe it'll have Visual Studio [money back to themselves]. None of these are open, none of these have significant competition. If they get people using such technology, there's only one vendor supplying it.
Please compare Apples to Apples or, in this case, Suns to Suns.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
for contracts where they supply a server and then N cheap boxes, i.e. glorified terminals, running something or other.
Basically it's the Sun Network Computer except now it runs linux and it has email and word processor, and so the people with them don't feel like they were given the gimpiest computers.
Sun's obsession with Microsoft doesn't hurt Microsoft, but it is going to kill Sun. While they are busy wasting all their resources "fighting" Microsoft (a company not even in the same market as they are for the most part), IBM is going to squash them on the high end, while Intel finishes taking the low and medium end hardware from them.
While I wish SUN all the best luck in selling these low-cost Linux PCs, I don't have great faith in their ability to succeed in this low-margin market. These companies don't have a true understanding for how little money is involved with selling PC hardware.
I worked for SGI a few years ago (as an intern), just as they were introducing their PC strategy. They were coming out with (relatively) low-cost NT workstations with a proprietary graphics system (kicked ass at the time..), but were immediately stuck in a catch-22. They had high prices because they couldn't sell enough, and couldn't sell enough because of their high prices. SGI also tried selling server-ish PC boxes (with redundant power supplies, and multiple processors and stuff), but that lasted about a year as well, before it went away (at least I can't find it on their web page anymore)
When people buy PC hardware, they expect to pay PC hardware prices. And they want support. And warranties.. There's just no money there...especially not the kind of money these companies are used to seeing.
If they're getting in to this to make money, then they're in trouble. If SUN is getting in to this to fight against MS, then great, but I don't think SUN has enough money to fight MS.
This move may or may not do anything for Sun's fortunes, but it's sure to keep IBM/Redhat awake at nights.This is a race to see which company is the "offical" supplier of linux desktop/workstation pc's, and that means more choice for you, and more opportunities for Linux growth.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
You are no doubt quite capable of buying the parts for, and assembling, a custom PC. You can install and maintain a linux distribution.
The people who should buy from Sun are (and i quote) markets such as corporate call centers, government and schools. These are the sort of folks who don't have a clue how to run their PC's. More importantly, they don't want to have a clue how to run them either. They expect their computers to Just Work, and for someone to come fix it damn quick if it breaks.
This is exactly the sort of thing Sun excels at.
Best of luck to them.
It seems to me that Sun could move ahead by focusing on hardware and integration. Solaris has some advantages over Linux but Linux has been gaining ground. The future of Sun is not in a closed Solaris. It seems that Sun has the resources to deliver real solutions for large customers - large servers, Linux desktops, diskless Linux terminals, etc. If they focus on making great hardware and making everything play really well together then they stand a better chance of making this work. Frankly the beige box war is over. I hope they see that the next phase is about integration and interoperability. Deliver more function, more security, less headaches, more integration for fewer dollars and you survive the next round. Dell could be a victim of their own success if they don't get this.
I think it would be better translated as freedom from Microsoft Licensing.
I know the company I work for has balked about the new scheme, and we are upgrading our existing machines (maintaing the old licenses) instead of buying new hardware.
The new MS Licensing finally got it through to the people controlling the company finances that we are entirely too dependent on proprietary software. We are looking into Linux to replace our basic Office computers at this point. We still need MS for CAD, though... :-(
Murphy was an optimist.
Firstly I think you are underestimating how many people roll their own support. I mean, when is the last time in an office of any kind that someone phoned the manufacturer when a desktop box had a problem? Most people just try to hash it out themselves, which they have been doing with PCs for years.
If it's like OpenOffice, it'll never fly in the US. I was going to use OO in the office, but there's no way to set it up for U.S inches. The "US letter" thing works, and the page rulers will change to inches, but all the margin settings are in millimeters. And there's no way to change the default print command to anything other than "lpr" and make it permanent. (If there is a way to do these things, I couldn't find it from a menu.)
FWIW, I tried OO after I gave up on KOffice. KDE in general doesn't care how many times you tell it to print US Letter-size, it insists on printing A4-size pages. (The KDE mailing lists are *not* the place to point out things that are broken - replies range from "you got the source, fix it yourself" to "go back to Windoze." There doesn't seem to be much interest in userland usability reports.)
So I tried AbiWord, it did US inches, great! But it has the same problem OO has, default printer is "lpr" and there's no way to change it to "lpr -P whateverdriver" and make it permanent. Which works OK for a semi-geek-literate like me, but requiring an average button-pusher to remember to add the -P stuff just doesn't cut it. It's amazing how many pages of garbage get printed if you forget it, too. Maybe some day Linux will be ready for prime-time in the US, but not today. Damn.
Well, maybe not quite that bad, but close. Here are some samples from their articles:
"What makes open source the secure, stable and elegant software panacea open source cultists claim it is? ... say you are the IT director at a bank and you buy into the Linux is stable, secure and bulletproof hype. ... Welcome to the lazy, cut-and-paste world of open source 'innovation' where people who should be smart enough to know better still think you can get something for nothing. It would be humorous if it wasn't so pathetic..." ("Thanks to open source methods, only 2 out of 500 job-hunting programmers pass skills test")
"The outcry against Palladium doesn't really stem from a concern about your privacy, but more from a vocal minority who wish to impose their anarchistic schemes onto us under the guise of 'freedom' and 'liberty.'" ("Microsoft's Palladium transforms Internet from Wild West to suburban neighborhood")
"many customers who purchased those inherently more stable, secure and virus-proof Linux servers are probably wishing there was a multi-million dollar virus protection industry to help them out." ("New Linux virus creates peer-to-peer terror network")
"The SE Linux project was developed during the Clinton administration ... NSA officials say their cyber security enhancements made for SE Linux have not only benefited the NSA, but because of the terms of the GPL have also strengthened the security architecture of computers used by malicious cyber terrorists around the world."
("NSA deputy director says 'never again' to Open Source")
That last article is just hysterical. The NSA administrators, under pressure from Microsoft, stopped development on SELinux -- because Microsoft didn't like the fact that government-developed code was released freely under the GPL. Microsoft objected to the competition. WorldTechTribune is using all its quotes out of context, and pretending that the objection was concerning national security and terrorism. Amazing.
I think that there's more to it than that; Sun thinks (and I agree) that it is natural migration for someone that uses Linux as a desktop to purchase Sun kit when they have a computing task that requires an industrial strength solution.
Add to that that I expect that Sun will be looking to "blur the lines" somewhat between Sun-Linux and Solaris - I wouldn't be at all surprised to see migration tools and cross-over applications as part of the Sun distribution - don't forget that Solaris has had "lxrun" for as long as I can remember.
I don't see how this is much of a suprise. Sun's got a vested interest in anything Unix or Unix-like. They also have a vested interest in promoting their supplimental products. If they can sell someone a bunch of Linux client systems that work with their server products that customer is going to be likely to pick up their server products as well. Microsoft is less interested in selling you a site license for Windows XP Pro than they are interested in selling you a support contract for XP Server and all associated programs. The same goes for Office, if Microsoft gets Office XP there's a good chance BackOffice will end up there as well.
Right now Sun has the 20% software to fill 80% of people's needs. When users don't have to administer it themselves, just run it, Linux is not a bad system at all to deal with. GNOME is a very good desktop environment and there are plenty of apps to substitute the collection you're going to find on the typical computer lab PC. StarOffice is not a competitor to Office XP in many respects but it does serve the needs of most general users. StarOffice in a school would work just fine in most cases.
I'm suprised they didn't try this any earlier really. They've had their Blade systems out for a while now without much fanfare. Ray systems are the same way, they've been available for a while and aside from the initial rumbling when they were introduced nothing particularly impressive has been announced regarding them. Sun has managed in the past to get their foot in the door of many college CS departments because of Java development packages. Maybe now they are trying to get their head in the door by showing off some of their other products.
I think the only way this will really succeed is if the systems are priced very attractively and no one else comes out with a better Linux offering. All Sun needs in this situation to fail miserably is to have IBM or HP spit out some cheapo box with Linux on it. If they're not interested Apple could drop the price of the eMac down to $799 or less. There's a bunch of schools jumping all over eMacs at $1000, lowering the price would only increase the demand. I think Sun's bad timing could make them the losers in the not-Microsoft PC market.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The editorial mentioned at the end of the slashdot article is painfully bad. The person writing it obviously has very little idea what he is writing about.. Let me give some examples..
First, Sun will forego the PC OEM deals for StarOffice 6 because Sun Microsystems' main revenue stream comes from their own PC sales.
This is in reference to SUN not getting together with companies like Dell and Gateway to put StarOffice on their machines. The first thing that got me, though, was that it says that SUN's main income is from their PC sales. Last time I checked, SUN doesn't make PCs. And, while they may start in the near future, they certainly don't have any revenue from it now.
After years of protestation and lawsuits against Microsoft giving away IE for free, is Sun hypocritically hoping to create an illegal monopoly of their own by giving StarOffice 6 to students for free?
Again, just because you do something that mirrors what Microsoft does, does not make you Microsoft. Giving away software does not make you a monopoly. Immoral business practices do. Besides, as the author tries to mention, SUN makes its money on hardware (not PC sales), similar to Apple. All they're trying to do is show people there's an alternative to the Wintel platform. They're trying to show people that you don't have to have a box running windows to be productive. That you can have a Linux box (that they'd love to sell you in a few quarters) and run StarOffice on it and be doing just fine. As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with that. Another thing people need to remember is that there's a big difference between a non-monopoly business practices. If a non-monopoly says "If you don't put our software on all your machines, you can't put it on any, it doesn't matter, because the OEM has choices. When a monopoly does it, it is illegal, because the OEM has no real choice (go out of business?).
If the schools had actually purchased the software rather than acquired it for free, the deal adds up to a $5.7 billion (yes, billion with a "b") missed opportunity. That's $5.7 billion USD in sales that Sun will never see because they gave it away at a time when they don't need to be giving away $5.7 billion.
Oh come on, buddy. This is complete nonsense. While the numbers work out, it's meaningless. Software doesn't have intrinsic value. That's not like saying "I'm going to give away 100 cars." It's the same thing about trying to figure out the value of "pirated" software. You can't say you lost 40 millions dollars, because one million people "pirated" your $40 software. It just doesn't work like that. These schools wouldn't have paid $5.7 billion for this software, so SUN didn't give away $5.7 billion.
Anyways, the editorial just goes on and on like this.. it's truly painful to read.
Even though I build my own PC's and download Linux, I support what Sun has done. If I was looking to buy a 2nd system to run Linux on I would buy one of these for a number of reasons :
a) Sun cases look cool.. and trying to find decent looking and inexpensive cases in the UK seems to be fruitless.
b) The quality of the kit should be pretty good.. I have a Sun Blade 100 and that system is very well built and reliable.
c) Even though Sun are a big company I still appreciate what they do for individual users - so I'd feel like I was helping a bit to keep them afloat.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
First, Sun can't make low-end PCs themselves. If Sun makes it, it will cost too much. They have to outsource, in which case, they're a reseller adding cost without value. WalMart can deal with offshore manufacturers directly; they don't need Sun. Sun doesn't have a distribution channel for moving low-end boxes in volume; it probably costs their sales operation a few hundred dollars to sell and deliver anything. Sun isn't known as a consumer brand; they have no retail presence.
So what does Sun bring to the party? StarOffice?
I hope this move hurts Sun as much as it hurt SGI.
Perhaps the difference, however, is that Microsoft is a judicially declared Monopoly, whereas Sun is not. So, the anti-competitive..nay...competitive behaviour of Sun is NOT on par with the same behaviour of Microsoft. This fact is one of the big reasons Microsoft fought such a declaration so hard--they kept saying, to the effect, "we're just competing in the marketplace."
From a certain perspective this actually may seem unfair to Microsoft, but remember that the determination that MS was a monopoly was based, in no small part, due to the illegal activities that they were engaged in to obtain/maintain an unfair market advantave. So, punitive actions are certainly justified to try to bring it back into line and even the competitive landscape--to give other companies such as Sun the opportunity to succeed that they were previously denied by Microsoft's behaviour.
Just my $0.02.