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Sun Opens First Linux Competency Center
McGarnacle writes "Looks like our friends at Sun have opened the first Linux training centers at the headquarters of a Belleville, Ontario firm: beONix Technology. Now there's a worthwhile summer activity for the kids :)"
I realize that they do make use of linux, but haven't they got their own OS?
I could think of many more companies that have a more vested interest in seeing linux succeed.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Keates dismisses the notion hosting the centre in Belleville is a draw back. He says most people will have to travel no matter where it is, geographically speaking its in the sweet spot -- between Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. Heaven says Sun Canada gets 50 per cent of its revenue in the triangle.
;).
it's exactly where i want to be spending time in january! how about some nice caribean trainning centers i can get my manager to send me off to. i'd go to class honest
They've managed to introduce remote exploits via their alleged Security Hardening Package, and recent posts on the Cobalt developers lists show that their latest kernel update caused some machines to crash unrecoverably. They've promised an updated PHP on the Raq4 for an age now, but no sign.
That, coupled with the inordinate delay in patching OpenSSL when slapper appeared makes me a tad more unhappy than I used to be. Used to be a good service, but now seems to be in shambles.
Cheers,
Ian
Red Hat have a couple of hundred, and I'd be willing to bet that they are more Linux centric that Sun would be... this reminds me of their toe-in-the-water efforts over Star Office licensing. They know they can't compete, so they find a niche they can offer, and training/support is the weakest area IMHO...
I was chatting to a Sun employee the other day. He was telling me that a lot of developers at Sun are unhappy with the proliferation of Linux through their organisation.
The way I understand it, they aren't happy with the level of maturity in the Linux kernel *compared with the Solaris kernel*. He seemed to imply that the scalability in Linux wasn't as good, and felt Sun should be pushing Solaris more than Linux.
Don't take this as Linux bashing - I use it a lot at home and work, I just wondered if other developers felt similarly.
Would you let your kids hang around with a bunch of Linux admins for an entire summer? I think not!
What they did with StarOffice left a bad taste in my mouth. First they acted as heros buying the software and then offering it for free for Linux users - then when people started to like StarOffice, they took it away (the free version) and started selling it for a high price.
Eh? OpenOffice.org is one of the better things that have happened to linux.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Bellville is two hours east of Toronto.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
I realize that they do make use of linux, but haven't they got their own OS?
Looks to me that this logic works with other companies as well. HP comes to mind as well. The only type of company I would be suprised to find listed in a statement like this is a pure software company that sells an OS. (Microsoft and Novell come to mind first...)
If the hardware manufacturers support Linux then that can only be a good thing.
Kent
This move by Sun means that one of the largest HW vendors is looking at Linux as an OS.
Linux as the OS, Java as the environment, J2EE as the application platform.
IBM have gone this way, now Sun, HP already have too..... interesting times ahead.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The AC below was a bit crass in his criticism of your post, but he does have a point - you obviously do not have any clue about what you're talking about here.
Sun did not "take away" the free version - they renamed it OpenOffice, and I'm sure that with a little effort, even you can manage to find that online.
Secondly, they were very open about the entire Star Office saga - there are numerous articles in news archives about how it was not being adopted by businesses *precisely because it was free*. Once they branched off the free version, they were able to start charging (and even then, they charge minuscule amounts compared to other office suites). Where did you get this "high price" from?
The AC below is wrong about one thing - you are not a typical Linux "hippie" - they at least are generally more well informed than you obviously are.
I think Sun is starting to realize that Solaris is a dead end market share wise. This is no reflection on the quality of Solaris, just that the only major OS's to experience growth are Windows and Linux (and maybe OSX to a very small degree). Besides, companies like the idea of standardizing on a platform. For many that choice is Microsoft. If they don't like Micro$oft, then maybe they'll go with something else. But they probably wont go with three different things... for example Linux, Solaris, and AIX. So a smart company will give the customer what it wants- the ability to use standardize on a platform of choice.
Blender And Linux Fan
It's obvious that the open source development model and Linux is going to be the dominating force in computing. The only way that either can even be slowed down is through crooked litigation, which will not fly in the rest of the world.
Linux is the Micheal Jordan of operating systems. You can't stop him, only hope to contain him. Linux is Micheal Jackson, Microsoft is Tito. A mega-rich and powerful Tito, but still Tito nontheless.
I educate people in Linux and open source for free. I also perform the task for a fee on occasion, but mostly for free. This is because I'm not a lazy ass like you, and choose give back to the community that gives me a free operating system with a slew of applications and tools. Suzy.
So Sun is calling this venture "Beonix"?
Isn't that name taken by a vendor of a Mozilla browser distribution?
I guess now the shoe's on the other foot...
Will I retire or break 10K?
Someone needs to do it. The "RedHat" certification program is VERY expensive and VERY far from home which makes it very inaccessible to me.
:)
I'd like to see courseware and a test that I can take at my local testing center like the MCSE tests.
But what would be the agreed upon criteria? What would be the certification title?
I have an idea though! How about the "Linux Competency Test." Makes perfect sense. And we can get cool acronyms out of it like "LiCT" or something like that.
Ummm.... no tech companies? Let's see... Nortel Networks has their largest Enterprise Voice design center in Belleville. That's where all that nice CallPilot, Meridian and CallServer code comes out of. By the way, DSL and Cable have been availble for over 2 years.
One of the problems that I see with the MCSE exam is that anyone can go to a bookstore, pick up a book, and then pass the exam(s). If testing for Linux becomes popular, I would hope that they give the test some integrity. One should have necessary "keyboard" time before becoming certified. Sort of like trade work, they have journeymen programs.
Before it was a good assumption that is someone was a Linux admin, they knew their stuff. Let's keep it that way.
The only good thing I can think of about locating it in Belleville is that it's about equidistant from the Ottawa tech cluster (Ottawa, Kanata, Hull, etc.), Toronto and its exurbs (Toronto, Markham, Scarberia), and Montreal. Also, the overhead's probably way cheaper in Belleville than in the GTA, Ottawa, Montreal, or a similar-sized urban centre. Hmm... Sneaky ulterior motive question: Did anyone happen to notice whether the City of Belleville is providing infrastructure monies or similar other "incentives"?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Bottom line is that they practically invented the idea of "Open Systems", and were a pioneer with the SunOSs (essentially a BSD fork). In the late 80s, I was working at AT&Ts Summit, NJ facility (later to be spun off and sold as USO, Unix Software Operation). Bill Joy came to speak at a nearby AT&T location, and I heard him give his rant on "the vendor motel" (you know, you check in, but you don't check out). At that time, this was more directed at IBM, DEC, HP, and anyone who was still maintaining their own non-Unix OS. MicroSoft wasn't even on anyone's radar screen then, but then, you can't blame them, Windows 3.0 hadn't come out yet, so it was hard to consider it more than a toy.
In the end, Sun continues to deliver a lot of value to their customers. It's going to cost a bit more than buying commodity PC hardware and using Linux, but in my experience it is a lot more foolproof. You can probably get most of this with the best PC vendors, and Linux, but the service and support will be better from Sun. You have the commitment of a single vendor to deliver a complete hardware/software system. All of the Linux distribution houses are in the mode of packaging what they get from the community, not putting together a complete system (well, that's my impression anyway, it would be nice to see a vendor prove me wrong).
It is fair to say Sun has been reluctant to fully support Linux on their hardware, but I see that position as well justified. Until recently, Solaris was significantly more stable than Linux, so not many customers wanted it. Now, with so many huge server farms with many x86 boxes running Linux, and say a few larger Suns running databases and such, I can see wanting to run Linux on the Sun servers too. Your going to have less support cost for an all Linux environment than a Sun/Linux environment. For Sun, it doesn't matter if you run the box on Solaris or Linux, they aren't making much money on the software anyway. In fact, it probably costs less to support the user on Linux, so it is conceivable that they eventually drop Solaris altogether.
It's really the same dynamic is IBM has with AIX and Linux. As long as there is a strong demand from the customer base for Solaris, or AIX, they will keep them going. At some point, it will be attractive to port a couple of distictive tools to Linux and be done with it. These tools would be the ones that keep the holdouts for AIX/Solaris hanging around. It also means that Linux is just at stable as AIX/Solaris (I would say it is pulling close or even by now, but this is a difficult thing to measure).
Dear Scott:
There's nothing I'd rather have for Christmas than Debian GNU/Solaris. By this, I mean Debian's look&feel with a Solaris kernel under the hood. Yes, I know Debian GNU/Linux supports the SPARC architecture, but I want the world-renowned performance of Sun's very own kernel plus the integration I expect from an OS + hardware vendor. Oh, and I want an enterprise-quality support contract.
Solaris, as an operating system, leaves something to be desired, both in the bundled applications and the ease of administration. Rather than cozy up to RPMs and port Gnome, I think you should just toss the baby out with the bathwater. Everyone knows that Debian is the best Linux distribution, and since they're already working on ports to Hurd and NetBSD your developers have some examples to study.
It would make me so happy, Scott. Please, pretty please?