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Sun to Build Alternative Desktop ?
murthydn writes " At "Sun Tech Days 2003" Developer Conference in India ,Sun Microsystems Inc Chairman, President and CEO Scott McNealy exhorted Indian software programmers to build Sun's "desktop computer" as an alternative system to Microsoft software architecture .The complete article is here" 'Cuz if there is one thing that will save Sun, its a new desktop platform. *cough*
The article talks of a new desktop computer.
Looks like sun are trying to get into the low cost desktop platform providing Office-a-like features on a cheap and cheerful device.
It mentions Linux, Evolution, Gnome and Star Office - sounds like it's more of a re-packaging that anything.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
I'm honestly trying to think of what advantages Sun could bring to a desktop, and I can't think of any.
The "incompatible with the standard, but based on Unix and fun to use" dimension is covered by Apple. The "cheap and runs on your hardware, but is almost enterprise-ready" page has Linux written all over it.
It seems Sun would be better off writing software to kick MS's butt. A high quality office suite, or a set of network tools that make IE look like etch-a-sketch. It's not much, but it's something, and they need anything.
i thought Sun was pushing madhatter for the desktop env.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Sun trying to build a new desktop platform is like hammering the last nail in the coffin. Why don't they try working with Apple to build out the Apple OS on the workstations and use Sun on the servers. It seems Sun is just wasting time and money on reinventing the wheel when supporting Apple would give them a boost.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Basically, they want to build a linux desktop pc. Now here is where it might get interesting. Lets assume that they do the following:a ybe even future proof it by including PCI Express
-remove all legacy hardware:floppy,ps/2,...,IDE
-build in available techs: SATA,firewire,usb2,wi-fi,ethernet,sound(5.1+)
-M
They may have a very nice little desktop here. Make it a small form factor, and you might have a gold mine.
just my 2cents
later,
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
Looks like the "network is the computer" line is getting a revamp here. From the article the focus would appear to be a thin client rather than a full on desktop. Mc Nealy really needs to let go of this idea if Sun is to progress. It failed miserably in the past and I cant see a compelling reason why it will work now.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I've been waiting for one large Software vendor to bring out a Desktop OS that can compete with Windows. The most obvious choice would be to use Linux and Wine for out-of-the-box compatibility with Windows for apps and games. I know this has been done before (Lindows blah blah) but what if someone LARGE with MONEY like Sun or IBM does what Apple allready have; a Unix based Desktop OS for the masses. I know lot's of people would buy this when it runs on cheap hardware, is windows compatible and is backed by a large and respected company.
Ciryon
OK, they won't do it. There's a learning curve (though they'll have to retrain everybody when they eventually move to XP/Office 11, won't they?)But Indian companies might, they might get some real economic benefits from it, and McNealy is surely right in the general thrust of his argument.
Incidentally, and taking a less anglocentric view of the universe, how well do K/gnome/CDE support Indian languages compared to XP?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
The clue is in the article:
He appears to be talking about some sort of thin client, which is certainly potentially different to what MS is doing. Whether it is actually any thinner than a PC running terminal-type software, and whether Sun can do any better than Oracle in making thin clients take off beyond a few specific niches remains to be seen.
Virtually serving coffee
What Sun could do, which would help everyone, is put some work into the GNUStep project. This project includes a Java API - a very nice one; Sun would encourage the creation of OpenStep Java applications in doing so, and could take the opportunity to create a rather good cross-Unix-platform desktop while they do it. I've used OpenStep Java under OS X, and it actually felt like a smoother development arena than the Objective C system you're "supposed" to use.
Of course, it does mean Sun would be promoting a second API for Java, and that might not be quite what they want to do. OTOH, the worst part of Java, in my experience, is the standard set of APIs, so perhaps that'd be a good thing for the language and concept as a whole.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Its a server side application in C actually that manages the session and you get the power of the backend server for your desktop! If you have a 64 way E10K, then the user sees a 64way E10K. The session is delivered as graphics packets over ethernet, so the only computer inside the sunray is a graphics card!
Its one damn thing before another. (Dick Bird 1999)
Unfortunately a lot of people here in the US pick careers based on how much money they can make, rather than having any aptitude for the given task.
When hiring for technology positions, managers need to hire people that are smarter than they are. Managing talented people is difficult, as is taking credit for there efforts.
Indian programmer are often very smart and well educated. Their education system isn't totally bolloxed up by the focus on sport. Instead they focus on science and math, playing cricket later. That's not to say everyone there is educated, but those that are should not be ignored because they need less money to do the job.
The general blaming H1B visas or offshore labour for the economy or job market is misplaced. It's a failure in the education system (at many levels), and consumers not being willing to pay the frieght on products built at home.
Throwing money at the US education system is not the solution either, it requires a whole change in mindset.
"There's no scarcity of spectrum any more than there's a scarcity of the color green.", David Reed
The article mentions sunrays. These are great little machines that truely are thin client.
They are small units that have 4 usb ports, a graphics card, sound (in and out), video out and a network card. All they do is relay input back to the server and display the results on the graphics card. They also have a smart card slot where you put in you smart car (obviously...) and it displays your desktop. Then at the end of the day you take out your card and you desktop disappears and reappears when you put the card back in. It doesnt' matter what sunray you put the card in, you desktop will be the same.
Think of a call center. Get VoIP working and this is the business. You can now move people around the office without any problems, and in the middle of a call. Just take out the card and go somewhere else.
Now with a nice desktop environment and sun could be on to something here. They can sell the big iron at the backend.
Sorted.
The Netra is about $1500 as equipped, and the sunrays are only about $200 each with academic discount. More expensive than a single PC, but less than four PCs! The Netra X1 (the current V100) is a really lowball sun, and it really shouldn't be used for more than five or six sunrays. The T1 (V120) can handle about ten, but for any more you have to shell out the big bucks and get a 280R (~$5000 starting). As long as you keep the number of sunrays low, it's pretty cheap. The most expensive part is the sunray software (I think about $500 if you have to pay full price).
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
I KNOW I'll get modded down for this, but here goes.
I currently work with Sun products pretty intimately at work. I have to say that while the Solaris OS and it's related contract support from Sun is better than Microsoft's Windows OS and it's related support, I will warn EVERYONE away from SunONE products.
I've been working with iPlanet Messaging Server for about two years and have had some of the most outrageously poor technical support I've ever gotten from a vendor. After the Sun/Netscape alliance ended, Sun got the iPlanet products for themselves. So, the new iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 suite should now be known as SunONE Messaging Server... any day now.
The problems that I've had with this system are so incredibly stupid as to be unbelievable:
-multiple administration interfaces that are half broken. (They actually told me to use one interface to do user deletions and another interface to modify users, and yet another one to add users!)
-dense and very pooly laid out documentation
(Read thousands of pages that barely help you get anywhere.)
-user forums that up until last year almost never worked or archived messages (WHY did they take away the NNTP groups they used to have!!!??)
-inconsistencies throughout the entire system with regard to how one would make changes to mail users or implement new mail domains when hosting multiple mail domains.
-No decent admin interface to the LDAP db. (Their "Java Console" is the slowest piece of shit I've ever worked with. Screen updates take about 5-10 minutes just to get a menu to pop up!!)
-No decent GUI based tools to deal with high volume data in LDAP (I'm sorry, but walking through a text file that describes your users, groups, domains and configuration that is megabytes in size, is NOT realistic! They need a hierarchical representation of data in a GUI based app. And NO... the Java Console is NOT it!)
-Major naming inconsistencies. (Some parts of SunONE iMS are called "Netscape", other parts are "iPlanet" and others are "Sun". None are currently "SunONE" yet. The only excuse I hear is that they are slowly "getting there". !!!??? It's been TWO FUCKING YEARS!!!! You'd think they would have, at least, gotten the mnaming straight and provided on Admin tool rather than the four or five that they currently have, half of which shouldn't be used for certain operations!!)
When I bitch about these things to support, I get the same old tired answer "...iMS is a product that is in development, so it should be expected that some things will be a little inconsistent. Just wait a little longer" I've been waiting two years.
After a recent migration from iMS 5.1 to iMS 5.2, I found that their recommendation was to install the new mail system on a "test box" and run with it for a few months before going live with the real thing. They didn't recommend that I do an "upgrade in place" on our original box if we didn't want to have any downtime. WTF???!! Of course we don't want ANY downtime on a mail system. The techs I talked to said to expect anywhere from a 24-36 hour total working time (read a few work days) of downtime while migrating to the new version of iMS. !!!??? We wound up buying a new box to start clean with iMS 5.2 and then migrated users, groups, domains and mail over. The other box will become our redundant backup system. However, I told my boss that we should NEVER buy anything from Sun again. And you know what? They listened. We are doing a multimillion dollar transistion to a new data base system. The database vendor was pushing Sun, but said that the product would also run on HP-UX. We already have a very close relationship with HP (and history with Compaq and DEC). So... we told them no thanks and went with HP-UX instead of Sun.
Once we've gotten some years of use out of our Sun boxes, they will be retired and replaced with HP-UX boxes.
I hope Sun straightens out the SunONE products. The amount of time I've spent trying to learn that crap could probably h
Un-news
And it seems to me that Sun's biggest problem is that their hardware is really expensive and not that much faster or more robust than linux running on Intel machines. From my own very unscientific and emprical tests, it seems that a gigahertz Sun Blade 2000 handles high loads better than my PIV machine running linux, but that the runtimes of most single-threaded programs I write finish as fast if not faster on the PIV. And you can get a well equipped PIV with linux for $2000 and a Sun Blade 2000 will cost you 10 times as much.
With 64 bit architecture from AMD and Intel etc... the reasons you need Sun are just getting fewer and fewer.
Mongolian Hordes technique n. [poss. from the Sixties counterculture expression `Mongolian clusterfuck' for a public orgy] Development by gang bang. Implies that large numbers of inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better performed by a few skilled ones (but see bazaar). Also called `Chinese Army technique'; see also Brooks's Law.
gang bang n. The use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an attempt to wedge a great many features into a product in a short time. Though there have been memorable gang bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in Steven Levy's "Hackers"), most are perpetrated by large companies trying to meet deadlines; the inevitable result is enormous buggy masses of code entirely lacking in orthogonality. When market-driven managers make a list of all the features the competition has and assign one programmer to implement each, the probability of maintaining a coherent (or even functional) design goes infinitesimal. See also firefighting, Mongolian Hordes technique, Conway's Law.
Damn, those are cheap components. The desktop PC with Maxed RAM (the server I assume) for only $600? Did you remember to add the HDDs, case, power supply and processor? What is "maxed ram" anyway? I'd say you'd want to invest a bit more hardware into your server.
That's not as bad as your clients though.
$160 for a PC and 17" monitor. Well, the cheapest 17" monitor I could find on Pricewatch is a Daewoo for $97 + $10 shipping. That leaves you with $53 for case, power supply, keyboard, processor, memory, NIC, motherboard, mouse, graphics card, and cables. The cheapest processor I could find was a Duron 950 for $25. That leaves you with $28 for everything else. 128MB of memory comes to $20, leaving you with $8. I don't think you're going to be able to afford much of a case, keyboard, mouse, power supply, motherboard, graphics card, NIC, or even cables, and you've already used all of the bottom of the barrel parts. Those Suns are actually surprisingly hard to match, although if you really wanted to you could do it. Just be preprared to replace lots of broken hardware since you'll be using a low end equipment.
I read the internet for the articles.