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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.
Low cost hardware doesn't sound like Sun's schtick, now does it?
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
They're losing ground in the server market, have priced themselves out of all competition, and now they're going for the education market?
Hmmm, I think it's a hopeless cause for them.
Getting into the education market is putting them between two highly competitive companies: Apple and Microsoft. Additionally, they're trying to get into the cheap pc market and compete against eMachines, Dell, Gateway, etc.?
Sounds to me like they feel left out and are trying desparately to get their stock price out of the gutter without any original ideas.
If Sun put a mainstream distro, (preferably Redhat), on the machines it'll be successful.
If Sun put CowBoyNeal's version of Wine, running on Foobar Linux, under the Bochs emulator, which is actually running on Plan-9, installed on an ESDI hard disk, with no PCI bus, but EISA instead, and 30-pin SIMMs, and everything installed via a PERTEC interface tape drive, then it won't be very successful.
I just wonder which option they will go for. Unfortunely, the second option seems to be the preferable choice for a lot of system builders who ship Linux!
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.
Will they follow the Cobalt Cube approach since they already have it or will they go another route?
_ _
The Cobalt Cube looked very cool in their little blue cases. I did not see in the article if they were going to be intel or sparc based.
I am not going into the basic Wintel bashing stuff but I hope it does well simply because it gives consumers more choices even if those products are focused primarily at educational and corporate users.
_______________________________________________
ACK
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.
Quote from article:
"The primary motivator for enterprise customers (to buy Sun Linux desktops) will be reduction in costs and freedom from Microsoft," Sun said in a statement on the user conference.
The way this is worded just has an elitest anti-MS sentiment about it. "Freedom from Microsoft". Why should the primary motivator be to give users freedom from MS? One thing that has always bothered me about SUN is that they just can't get away from slamming MS all the time. Sure, it might be appealing to a lot of anti-MS people, but most Joe Blow consumers aren't going to buy a PC just because they want to be "free from Microsoft".
If they would have approached this new product with something like "offering consumers more choices and better prices" I would be much more excited about it. At first I thought that is honestly what they were trying to do, but then I read the statement mentioned above. Now I read it as "we don't care about the consumer, we just want to take marketshare away from MS's customers". Just a perception thing, but I think it has merit. I'm sure I won't be the only one to pick up on this.
And when Sun has their Office Suite monopoly, they'll use their propriety (fully documented) xml file format to force people to use either Windows, Linux, or Solaris forever. HAHAHAHAHA!!!! It's just too dastardly!
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
Market behavior with is legal and ethical by a company in a competitive market is neither legal nor ethical for a monopolist.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
New Linux virus creates peer-to-peer terror network
HP finally fires their anti-business business strategist for Linux
Disbanding the RIAA will turn the music scene into 17th Century Europe
The GPL, open source freedoms and the Cold War
This last article has this classic quote:
The small minority of geeks who adhere to the cultish mindset of the GPL and Linux will definitely take offense to this, but there is no reasoning with someone who blindly follows the precepts of open source and the GPL ...those people will never understand why the NSA would reject the GPL. For rational people, I can sum up exactly why the GPL is not and in its current form will never be useful for the NSA or any similar enterprise: "Open" is the exact opposite of "secure."
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"
of course selling penguins to Antartica is lost cause and even Sun wouldn't try that ....
The comparison between what Sun is doing and the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft is unfair.
Microsoft using its desktop dominance to put IE in front of users before they have a chance to get Netscape is using dominance in one market to gain dominance in another. That's when a company uses a monopoly in a criminal manner.
Sun, on the other hand, is trying to gain share in a market where they have no leverage other than their product and the price they're willing to sell it at. They aren't leveraging their hardware products (AFAICT) to get people to use Star Office. They aren't using Solaris to push Star Office onto these companies. They are doing what any non-monopoly company would do when entering a new market: offering their products at a very low price (here, free) to encourage users to switch. The pay-off comes far, far down the line when Star Office (potentially) becomes a real player in the field of office software.
In short: Microsoft leverages OS dominance to gain browser dominance. Sun uses low price to gain a foothold in office productivity market. Not the same thing.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
The New York Times article,
The New Sun Ready to Push Linux as Alternative to Microsoft, emphasizes the push for Linux and StarOffice, without any mention of hardware. All of these articles are guessing what Sun is going to say tomorrow, when the offical announcement is to be made.
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.
Sun has a history of pulling stunts like this against Microsoft. Their reasoning is that every dollar that doesn't end up in Microsoft's pocket, is a dollar they can't spend in developing software competing with Sun's own. It's as simple as that.
Star Office was an attempt to undermine the very profitable Office suite. By pushing Linux machines, they do the same thing with the OS. They don't gain anything on this themselves - it's not their technology, it's just that they want to take away free money from MS.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Perhaps most /.-ers are too young to remember that Apple gained much of its popularity by donating massive numbers of Apple IIs to schools. It worked, for awhile.
From where I'm sitting, Sun can't be about to push a load of cheap linux boxes out for the average user. That would be commercial suicide - the PC market is already too cut-throat for there to be any margins to work with.
Sun probably isn't that worried about getting a vast income from pushing StarOffice for schools either - the benefit to Sun from this initiative is that students will be familiar with StarOffice rather than MS Office.
Sun's likely push here is to move in and replace all those Windows boxes in places like call centres, POS terminals and sales rooms where a centralized server provides much of the grunt and the terminals actually don't do much. Being able to replace existing Windows installs with PC + Linux makes a lot of cost sense - network installs, locked down to prevent fiddling, with the needed apps either on the Linux machines or on a central (Solaris?) server is likely to be a winner on TCO.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Yeah, except for the two facts you ignored in the post (all of it!) to which you were ostensibly responding.
Troll.
Let's all move Scott McCollum into our collective killfiles and move on, shall we? Furthermore, the key difference between Sun's donation and Microsoft's, besides the fact that Sun is not a monopoly, is that Sun has open sourced Star Office. To gloss over this little fact is typical for a professional troll like McCollum. While Star Office itself is not open, it's an open platform, and the differences between SO and OO are minor. So even if SO/OO were to become the standard, it would always be easy to move somewhere else if necessary (and you can bet someone will fork OO if Sun does something fishy).
Oh, he doesn't even need to build it himself.
Scott had the opportunity to make nice a few years back like Steve Jobs, and just accept the inevitable - Bill controls a huge swath of the computing market. Admitting such helped keep Apple in the game, and it got some good MS software on OSX quickly.
I'm not saying that MS and Sun would exactly be in bed today had Scott made nice, but certainly a less adversarial approach could have kept Sun out of the crosshairs.
you really start to get an idea that sun wants to beat MS like a red headed step child ..."
Who exactally is the redheaded step child here? I just have this image of Sun as the little step brother madder than hell swinging at Microsoft that is holding the kid at arms length by the top of the head.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Oh, nevermind. :P
.
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.
And what does Windows XP have to do with it? I'm talking about the cost for Dell or Sun to produce a linux box, in which case neither pays for XP.
I guess I don't get it. How is Linux going to make the PC cheaper? Or are you just talking about the cost of purchase, not the TCO? In the enterprise, Linux is more expensive to run on the desktop than Windows is, because the most basic tools for Windows (Outlook, for one) don't exist in a usable form on Linux.
I don't think Sun is trying to sell computers to home users, here. I think we need to be thinking about how Linux fits into their enterprise computing strategy.
"Selling out" to Microsoft hasn't exactly hurt Dell, whose market cap is nearly seven times that of Sun's.
From the Reuters article:
...sparking strong debate over which market [servers or desktops] Linux will hurt most.
Ouch... I don't think Linux will or has hurt either market. In fact, I think Linux has been good for the server market definately, and probably for the desktop market.
Someone should tell Reuters to watch their language, news services aren't supposed to be so biased.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
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.
Sun are pitching it at people who own call centers and Uni's
The box's that Sun will sell have Smart Card readers in
this means that JavaCard
basically easy to setup and sign on with BIG SUN server's doing the web portal and sign on crypto
I would put a bet on it containing www so everyone is happy includeing Visa who will send you more junk mail telling you are approved
regards
John Jones
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.
And Apple still has a proportionally larger market share in education than it does in the general market.
The iMac sold quite well in the education market, enough for them to make the eMac.
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.
Scott McCollum is nothing more than another Un-educated troll. In fact the one technology reporter/editorialist I cant stand on this planet (John C devorak... mr-rant and rave without a clue) has much more credibility than this Scott McCollum fellow. Look at his last 5 rants. They are all childish trolls at best. Full of unfounded opinion and uneducated conclusions. I am all for opinion but only for people that have read, researched and made their decision logically and smartly.. not like this "report what we feed you and be a zelaot about it" crap he writes.
Scott McCollum.... this is another person that really needs to be added to everyones ignore list.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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 $5.7 billion.
Anyways, the editorial just goes on and on like this.. it's truly painful to read.
So when does Sun "become" a monopoly? When they have 50% of the market? 90%? Do they have to immediately stop bundling when they reach this (completely arbitrary) number?
Yes, please, will schools PLEASE start purchasing these low cost Windo$e alternatives? Can you imagine the level of computer competence grade schoolers would achieve if there were 10 networked Sun machines in every class? Kids sitting in front of a MS machine, being passively marketed to by MSN, are only going to become even more frustrated by technology. Put a 1.0 ghz Sun/Duron in front of them and watch them learn. "Hey I made a Web Server!" "Look! I built a Firewall!" "Teacher, how do I read a MAN?"
Namaste
Has someone told Sun what Low-cost PC means? I mean it. Are they really ready to sell Sun hardware at the $600 - $1100 dollar price point? The last time I checked the cheapest Sun workstation was $2700.00 from them and that was without decent hardware in it.
I really hope they aren't biting off more than they can shew as nobody is going to buy a $1400-$1900 sun workstation as a "low cost PC"
but that said... I will pay a premium if it is in fact Sun hardware and not a gigabyte board +intel or AMD+other generic in a regular box with a sun logo stuck on it. I already have a "Silicon graphics workstation" that is like that (Yes I pryed a SGI logo and the name sticker off of the @home hardware that was getting chucked... and yes it's on my dual PIII workstation at home.)
If it's SUN then gimmie! if it's intel... you can keep it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
as I said above
its not really all that hard and they get the margins by putting on a smart card reader on it and asking you to buy a BIG SUN server to run your web portal and sign on DB
which makes sense because you where running you NIS+ on a SUN anyway and now you want to upgrade to liberty (-;
regards
John Jones
The question is who can you buy a UNIX operating system from.
There is not only no monopoly but UNIX systems are available for free from multiple vendors.
Solaris is a *brand,* not an operating system per se, just as Ford and Chevy are both *cars.* Ford has a monopoly on the *trademark,* not the car.
KFG
>>Look at where it has gotten Sun shareholders.
No kidding. SUNW went under 3 today and their market cap is under $10B for the first time in over 5 years.
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!!"
Also, by giving away StarOffice, Sun is promoting an open document standard. The KWord team, for instance, has hinted they are moving to adopt the OpenOffice document format. When MS gives away something, it's to advocate a closed format that only their tools can operate on. On the other hand, anyone can write a word processor (or whatever) to open StarOffice files.
And when it comes time to make a resume, they can host the thing, but they can't get the tabs to align in the document :-)
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Sun needs a transition plan to make migration from the low end Linux/x86 based desktops and servers to their Solaris/Sparc based high end workstations and enterprise servers. Otherwise they will not be able to bring as much sales up to the higher tier. There are two ways to do this. One is to run Solaris on x86 hardware as the middle tier. The other is to run Linux on Sparc hardware as the middle tier. One of these approaches leaves Sun subject to the whims of another CPU maker, which has it's own plans for 64-bit domination. The other leaves Sun subject to the whims of a huge open source software community and a few choices in Linux distributions (such as Debian, Mandrake, and SuSE) as well as FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Which way do you think would be better for Sun?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Nope. It's not a 1-to-1 replacement for Outlook. It won't work with Exchange 5.5, it doesn't support forms, public folders, journals, or a heap of other things. If your enterprise depends on Exchange-- and most do-- you're SOL even with Evolution.
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?
It's 4:10pm EST as I write this.. there's not much Wednesday left. When will we get to see these new machines?
It's only early afternoon in SF but late afternoon seems weird for a product demo or press release. Apple, for example, seems to always have the keynote in the morning.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Man, you are such an asshole. Nevertheless, I will respond. Except to the stuff that just annoyed me, which I will simply ignore.
Yes, Outlook is an absolutely necessary tool for many-- possibly even most-- companies. I make no statement about whether this is good or bad, but it's true anyway. If your company has an Exchange/Outlook system in place, and you try to deploy Linux on the desktop, you will end up wasting a fortune and then going back to Windows anyway.
Look at it this way: you have a system that works. Not just well, it works really well. That system depends on Exchange and Outlook. You then try to bring in something like Linux, where the best you can do is Evolution with their connector product. Which isn't very well at all, because the connector uses WebDAV instead of MAPI, meaning you have to do a significant amount of work to your server to even support the connector, and it doesn't support key features like journals or forms. So you end up with a system that sort-of works, except for the things that don't. Not to mention the fact that you have to spend another fortune training up your support staff to deal with two different operating systems and two entirely different sets of troubleshooting procedures. It's a waste of time and money.
It's cheaper to just maintain the status quo.
I assert to you that it will not be possible for anybody to build a desktop system that fits into the modern enterprise as well as a Windows system can. The Exchange-based enterprise is not perfect. It could be improved in lots of ways. The only way to get on the desktop of the typical enterprise is to come up with something significantly better than the combination of Windows desktops, Windows servers, Outlook, and Exchange. It hasn't happened so far. Maybe it will some day, but if that newer, better system comes from the "free" software world, I'll eat my shoe.
Oh, and to address your comment about viruses, in the past three years my company has not been affected by a single virus. Why? Because we run virus scanners where they're appropriate. No problem there. So associating Windows with viruses like they're intrinsically linked is just FUD in the most literal sense: you're trying to spread fear by relying on the uncertainty of your audience to plant the seeds of doubt.
Now if you'd said 'a decent GUI based file manager', that might have been different.
What file manager? Use Outlook's public folders. All the important data gets stored on secure servers, indexed for easy retrieval, and backed up every hour on the hour. File managers are obsolete, my friend. Most people just don't know it yet.
You should post more. I like the cut of your jib. These freaks who honestly believe that Linux is a decent, professional operating system need a wake-up call, and you and I are about the only people around here willing to give it to them.
- Sell Linux PCs at cost price and give away StarOffice
- ???
- Profit.
Sorry, couldn't resist.:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
"At Sun $15.000 would qualify for that..."
Where have you been?
SPARC/Solaris Servers from Sun start at $995.
SPARC/Solaris Workstations from Sun start at $995.
I hope this move hurts Sun as much as it hurt SGI.
Which Distro will they use? The article doesn't say.
Wow, that is a scary site. It's like the wet dream of proprietary software salesmen. Anything you don't pay for is *evil*. If you even look at the CD twice you owe us an extra licence fee. Don't like it? 5 years in jail or be fined 3 months salary.
--
E_NOSIG
I like how you said "dear slashdot reader" rather that you blithering fricking dolt!"
it shows a sort of compassion that most of us lack in.
ok, now for my two cents. The commentary on the article hinted that Sun is no better than microsoft in their actions towards the school. well, I have a few thoughts on that.
1) star office is based off of openoffice IIRC. that means that there will be some underlying compatibility. Obviously sun could try to scew the openoffice people, but they'd get their balls slapped for sure.
2) if sun wants to do this, good! I'd rather have two behemoths duking it out than one just mowing down the competition. if Sun was smart, they can raise their "look, we're Mr. Compatible and open(sorta)" flag. this will put microsoft on the spot.
or course I'm just a blothering fricking dolt, so who knows.
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Why not Solaris? It's not like they'd have to pay royalties to anyone, or anything, or that it would cost them any more. And they could subsidize the Solaris developement by amortizing some of it across the new machines; they're going to have to do that anyway, with the Linux, if they plan on trading on their name that way.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me; maybe it's just some tail-tweaking, rather than something that's really going to happen?
This really feels like a big mistake. Remember when BMD came out with a low end car, and no one bought it because BMW meant "upscale", but the mere existance of the lowscale offering damaged their brand image?
-- Terry
> Or are you just talking about the cost of purchase, not the TCO?
> In the enterprise, Linux is more expensive to run on the desktop
> than Windows is, because the most basic tools for Windows
> (Outlook, for one) don't exist in a usable form on Linux.
Outlook has very high TCO, higher than Windows and Linux combined
and any other office software you want to name into the bargain.
It roughly triples the number of times you have to reinstall Windows.
No sane admin would ever willingly permit Outlook in a multiseat
setting where TCO mattered.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
So Outlook roughly triples the number of times you have to install Windows, huh? Well, considering the number of times I've had to reinstall Windows is zero, I guess you're right. Three times zero is zero.
And as for your comment about "no sane admin," the majority is always sane, my small-minded friend. More of the Global 2000 use Microsoft Exchange and Outlook than don't. Obviously they are not all insane, as you would have us believe.
Anyway, this is not a nice or cute expression, and though you may think yourself clever for using it, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
As I said my info came straight from Sun. If I'm wrong where is the Sun Linux download site? Per the Sun SE you will never see one. Sun hardware customers will recieve a restore disk with their hardware and that's it. Yes, they do return fixes to the OSS community of what they leave in Sun Linux, but if they feel they have no need for a file they strip it versus fixing it. So I'll believe what I hear directly from a Sun employee. If you don't want to believe it that's your choice. Time will time whose info is more valid.
Giving away software does not make you a monopoly. Immoral business practices do.
Wrong. Monopolies are fine and dandy. Perfectly legal. The goal of every public business is to become a monopoly.
However once you are a monopoly, you have to play by a different set of rules, or the government will step in like they are with Microsoft.
"And like that
MS has a tendence to take over a market, and spread to any adjacent markets. That is the only reason why people have IE, MS Office, NT Servers, etc.
By preventing MS from getting more, SUN is staying alive. MS has been for years trying to take over SUN (Server) market. Look what happened to Novel. (well novel had 2 problems, 1 being tcp/ip and the other being MS) But MS has a monopoly (desktop, etc) and is pushing it into the server. SUN is trying to make it so they are needed as servers, not ms as everything. MS brakes openGL, java, html, javascript, everything they touch. They don't touch things they don't plan on taking over and turning it into another monopoly, or to streathen a monopoly.
What SUN should be doing, is working closely with a few linux distros, to get it to work great as a client to its servers. And to get it to run java perfectly, and fast. SUN doesn't need to sell Linux to beat back MS, but they think they can make money using linux, when all they need to do is make it stronger as a client.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
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.
Their low end workstations, Sun Blade 100s and Sun Blade 150s, start at about $1100, and you can get a pretty nifty one for not a lot more. That's quite reasonable, you can't get an expandable/modular Mac for that amount.
(Oh, and I'm being scrupulously fair. Sun will tell you the former is "free" and latter is "$999" omitting the "handling" charge in the former and compulsory non-included keyboard purchase in the latter. I can't say I approve of their telco like "honest" pricing but the prices themselves are perfectly reasonable.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
They're call Cobalt's.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
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Yes and no. Its a valid point, but not as clever a point as some Linux critics might think.
First, assuming you must use a text editor, there are more user-friendly editors out there. Many that are included as a standard install in many default distros. Simple default GUI editors will also work fine.
Secondly, there are some decent GUI configuration managers included on various distros. They'll handle the simple configs most home users will need to deal with - and handle it well. Mom and Dad may never have to know their configurations are stored as simple text files.
Finally, if Mom and Dad have ran in to a serious issue, they are beyond the point of phone tech support no matter what OS they're using. Sure. They'll try. But ultimately they're in for a good deal of frustration. Its much less painful for the end user, and less milage on their local friendly helpdesk, if they simply hire in an expert to handle the problem.
How often Mom and Dad end up in the third situation may or may not be an issue with their OS of choice.
I always thought that the "killer app" for Exchange / Outlook was scheduling. That bit was done right.
Everything else looks like nice little addons - but who actually uses them? I've used public folders (and I know orgs in my center use them). But it seems to be something that was used "because it was there" more than it being a killer feature. I don't know anybody who uses journals or forms. In other words, all these other features seem far from compelling. And, in fact, may be easily replaced by other technologies.
If it weren't for scheduling.
Your comment was too long and boring. Didn't read it. Don't care.
You're both right and wrong, I think. Scheduling is a big part of what makes Exchange cool, but public folders, forms, and journals are pretty damn useful as well. Public folders make NAS systems obsolete. Forms are like little mini-applications that can be used for anything from sending out birthday party announcements to expense reports. Journals are a little known, seldom used, incredibly powerful feature. Not only can I tell you, for example, that I worked on this document, but I can tell you exactly when I worked on it, because it's all recorded in my journal
First off who are they going to sell these to?
Educators and bussinesses already have contracts with Dell or HP. Also they want to lower support costs by standardizing on a single hardware platform that runs on a standard set of software applications. I do not think any IT manager would like some foreign sun's mixed with HP's for support reasons. Another reason is to just look at SGI's attempt to enter the linux/NT market a few years ago. It failed. As a CIO would you risk your job and hundreds of million's of dollars on supporting a platform that could turn into a in today and out tommorow platform? I don't think so. Infact many CIO's who standardized on NT did so because they were afraid Unix would dead by now. Silly as it may sound, this was common in 96 and 97 when NT 4 came out. Just read any IT magazines from the time. They all had articles like why buy a cad workstations from SGI when you have all these fast pentiums running Windows! Or "Unix vs NT" in the cover. Sadly this started the MCSE craze.
My prediction is that it will fail misserable due to all the things I mentioned above. The desktop war is over and already won. Rob Young was right on why redhat should stay away from the desktop. Sun needs to find more ways to milk what they currently have. They need to cut some R&D work in java or stop giving away the sdk's and start charging for them. For bussiness (not ethical) reasons they need to stop funding java and giving it away. They do make money by having platform providers sign deals with them to have java ported to there computers but its not profitable enough. Sun is seriously in danger of going under in 2 or 3 years! $2 a share! These pc's wont save them. I know they tried to get into the thin client and appliance markets but failed at that. Poor sun.
http://saveie6.com/
I know a primary school which has a lab with I think 12 sunrays running off a master server.
From what I've heard it works great and kids just dont have any trouble with new technology.
Surely it's best to give kids the most diverse start possible. I hope that I'll be able to speak a second language fluently to help my children learn that, and I fully intend to have a mix of computers in the house to give them a good grounding.
I grew up with MacOS and Dos and understand both of them pretty damn well.
Sun has always been donating their Sun Sparc workstations to Universities(full labs of them here), why is it a big deal when they decided to donate cheaper things? :)
Their stock price should drop in response to their cheapy decision. j/k
I'm a slashdot reader. I've built by own computer.
And you're damn right I want my computer to just work.
I want someone to come quick when something breaks.
Not software wise, I'll do that myself, but most of the parts you'll buy at Fry's for your homebuilt computer won't put up with the abuse that my 12 year old SPARC 2 will. It's been running almost non-stop since it was made, and not a single part, from the fans to the power supply has failed. And if it ever did break, Sun would send a field engineer out (for a price, of course) to replace whatever went bad.
This is where Sun excels. They build expensive computers that have excellent support, and will run forever.
-twb
Hmmm. I'll have to play with these features a bit more out of curiosity.
;) I'll chat up my local Exchange admins a bit more on the subject.
I find public folders more of a half-hearted stab at groupware. I think I see what you're saying about it replacing a NAS system. But I find it hard to completely swallow.
Still. Public folders are easily replaced. Arguably with better technology.
Forms still sounds like fluff. And although the journal might be a kind of cool feature to play around with, it still sounds like a feature that just isn't usefull to most people. Its something else I'll have to poke around my environment and see if I can't find users of these features.
Or even further back, "A GUI install", "a desktop environment", "a decent GUI mail client", "Hardware OpenGL acceleration", and hell, why not bring it up, "a TCP/IP stack".
Just be patient. If the present trends continue, the functionality you need will appear in time.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Patience my lad. Remember the days when you could put things like "A plausible office suite" and "a fully functional web browser" in those parentheses?
You mean, like, today?
Face it, man. Linux desktop software is of uniformly bad design and low quality. Even in those cases where you could replace a better desktop system-- a Mac or a PC-- with Windows, you'd be a fool to bother.
Especially with software, which is not donated, but licensed. You are not free to do as you wish; the restrictions you agree to have an economic value -- they may in fact put you in the practical position of surrendering cash in the future.
When donating GPL'd software (Linux), or software which is based on well documented and open file formats (StarOffice) that can be read by GPL'd software (OpenOffice), you are making a donation which has no strings attached. It's a very different thing.
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But you'd be a fool not to notice that the linux desktop situation has improved dramatically over the past few years. Just because it's not ready today for you doesn't mean it won't be tomorrow.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
So you're trying to say that Linux may be a useful desktop operating system someday? Can't hardly argue with that. Can't hardly bring myself to care, either. In three years Linux may reach the point where it's comparable to the Windows or Mac OS operating systems of today... by which time those operating systems will be three years further along.