Slashdot Mirror
Sun Drops Linux Distro
The Wireless Guy writes "eWeek is reporting that Sun has decided to stop offering a Linux distribution. From the story: "Yes, this is a change in strategy. Our Sun Linux distribution is essentially Red Hat Linux with a few minor tweaks," John Loiacono, vice president of Sun's operating platforms group"... so, is this good news for Red Hat?" They were rethinking it, and I guess they've had a good long thunk.
I didn't even know!
This is only further proof that Sun plans on dropping out of the entry level server market and sticking with their old method of selling enterprise level systems with a more robust and proven operating system, Solaris. Too much competition exists on the Linux side of things to make enough money, with Dell, IBM, HP, and others fighting it out.
Watch for Sun phasing out the blade-style systems next.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
Is Red Hat now considered a bigger player than Sun?
First this and now this! When will they ever stop?
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Oh my! This is one for the war
f :)
http://www.coldfury.co.uk/gantic/softwarewar.gi
i'm glad. i don't like rpm based distributions. i've had so many headaches due to rpm.... grrr.... what we need is more source based distros like gentoo. then we'll be talking.
I write code.
It didn't make any sense to produce a product (for free) that would directly compete (in some circumstances) with a product that they produce for sale (Solaris/SunOS).
It would be nice if Sun (and IBM et al) started contributing to an OS with real promise, like one of the BSDs. Not that Linux isn't promising, I just think that BSD's long-term future is brighter...
Imagine if one of the BSD's had Linux's hype behind it, but with *BSD's existing code-review and QA systems - if they could manage the influx of interest, I think we would end up with a much nicer product.
Why do they want to get their own font handler in xfree86? They have their own commercial implementation for solaris right? They want linux/bsd users to wait for their favorite toolkits to bundle in support of this new standard? I know Sun has interest in GNOME, but still GNOME is based on gtk which is based on pango, and pango+xft+fontconfig does the same thing as their own (not-yet working) design (can't remember the name).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I know for a fact that businesses told Sun they could not envisage using their offerings - it just didn't get you anything you couldn't get elsewhere better and cheaper...
and if they won't die they will announce to fire half of their employees within a year. they just don't get it. the ceo keeps complaining about microsoft, yet sun's is in a completely different ball park. their ultimate enemy is linux and their own processor architecture. they need to make a transition towards a service oriented company - with less dependency on their own technology. like hp does. like ibm does. they don't care what they sell, but they do. goodby sun ! (i liked them A LOT back then when they did workstations).
Sun seemed rather committed to Linux.
With a growth-rate like this there'll be four distros per human being in 25 years. (roughly 24'000'000'000)
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
This can only be good news. Instead of supporting one branded distribution, they'll be supporting multiple existing ones.
A company decided to stop offering for free software that competes with one of its most expensive products. Nothing to see here. Move along.
They are planning on making money on support so this really doesn't change things much in the big picture.
All the best,
--Bob
what about the Sun's Linux Desktop "madhatter". what happened to that?
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
They done wrote their own Unix(tm)! I mean that "GUI" thing they have blows goats but Solaris is pretty good. We still have our cvs repository here running on a 150 mhz (or something) sun box.
Sun's philosophy has been for a while that Linux is the future. Many of the high-end server manufacturers are still offering Linux. Sun is limiting the amount of customer choice once again. As much as I would like to see Sun stay afloat, this is one more sign of their eventual demise.
Has anyone ever used Sun's distro? What 'was' it like?
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
As I pointed out earlier, Sun has very little commitment to Linux/Open Source.
The folks at Gnome need to watch their backs. Sun only looks out for itself.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
what is a possible future for sun ? demise ? big servers only ? consulting ? apparently, it isn't workstations nor low-end. maybe they'll get really into services - like doing everything for banks and so on - even selling microsoft based machines. what do you think ?
Do Sun provide hardware support for systems that have been installed without {their Linux/Redhat}, these days?
I remember this was a problem with their Cobalt range - you had to use the distribution that came with it, or you couldn't get hardware support.
Our site uses Debian, and we basically want a homogenous site. It's a pain to have to administer more than one distribution, and for our purposes, Debian easily outshines Redhat.
Being able to buy Cobalts from Sun would have made the switch to Linux far more palatable for upper level manglement, but the lack of hardware support from Sun for machines without their distribution was a deal-breaker for us.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
See, that's the thing though, they're not,as it states in the beginning of the article...
"our customers told us they didn't want a standard distribution that had some tweaks, so I decided to fix the problem by simply supporting between two and four standard Linux distributions, though I have not as yet decided which these will be."
So basically, they're going to stop doing the only thing that IBM wasn't doing: namely, releasing their own distro...such as it was anyway. If anything, this brings them more into competition with IBM. That should be fun for them.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I have a friend who was taking a Red Hat Certification class this week and he said one of the people in the class was a Sun engineer who was also working to become Red Hat certified.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
The last Sun LX-50 I saw said it was running "White Rabbit" Linux. So, I guess this means the rabbit died.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
They seem to have a multipersonality disorder. First they claim solarisx86 is the answer, then they come out with AMD powered blades and claim solarisx86 is dead and cancels it, then they bundle sun linux for their amd blades, then they decide to resurect solarisx86 after all the vendors left and use it in conjection with linux, now they are deciding to cancel linux again?, or maybe do an all linux with redhat.
Redhat has stated publically they do not like Sun marketing Solarisx86 and they consider it a competitor. My guess is redhat is willing to do a port if Sun cancels solarisx86 and eventually moved to redhat linux for their sparc machines.
Why can't sun just keep a direction or any direction for that matter? It makes them look bad not to mention if I was an IT manager I would feel real uncomfortable purchasing a sun solution. How do I know what I pick today will be supported by sun tommorow?
Since they are outsourcing all their programmers for minimal wage in India, perhaps the marketing and sales team should be outsourced as well. There expensive American counterparts are not real effective.
http://saveie6.com/
Basically this is the scenario they must have tired of:
Employee: Yay! We've got our low-end-Sun-box-with-Sun-Linux! Time to put it to use!
Manager: But all our software was for Red Hat!!! What good is that...
Employee: *calls Sun* We need Red Hat Linux supported on our box so we can run our software.
Sun: We only support Sun Linux.
Employee: But we don't have any good apps for Sun Linux!
Sun: Well... just run your Red Hat apps on Sun Linux. It'll work.
Employee: That's can't possibly work! Our software says "Operates with Red Hat Linux" on the box!
Sun: Trust me, it'll work....
Employee: You're insane! My MSCE certificate taught me one thing (and only one thing), and that's every minor revision of every OS is inherently incompatible! I'm buying Dell...
So instead of confusing people needlessly, they just give people Red Hat. People know what Red Hat is. Who the hell ever heard of Sun Linux?
At least they are leaving something for our imaginations, but, really, what kind of thunking editors does /. have these days?
They say RTFA, what about the posters of the summaries of the articles reading the articles or even reading their own summaries. Or even better the editors reading the posted summaries or even, shock horror, the editors reading their redundant additions to the summaries of the f'ing articles (TERTRATTSOTFA has a nice ring).
P.S. I like my thunks especially long. Good long thunks are the best kind.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Whats wrong with Debian?
The only great value they provide to the market now is big Unix boxen for running large databases. Sun servers are non existant in the low-end, and Linux and Windows will continue to eat up the mid-range server markets for years to come. The high-end backend database servers for running big databases where you need 64 bit computing are the only areas where Linux and Windows have still to hit. Eventually however Intel 64 bit computing will catch up. Then the only thing left will be the super high-end, where mainframes still rule. And that market is much too small to support a company as big as Sun currently is.
Geez.. Sun changes its mind more often than my last 3 girlfriends combined. WTF??
Ok, along with the first poster, I must agree, SUN HAD A LINUX DISTRO? I thought that they just ripped it to shreds and called it Solaris... (hm.. maybe that was Unix..)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I left me zipper undone.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
(Please excuse my AC post.)
I attended a 2-day NDA meeting with Sun in California some months ago ... several of the "top brass" were there to give us warm fuzzies about Sun's direction. We're a huge Solaris shop, and Sun hosts these meetings with their large clients from time to time. (Scott also shows up at some of them, but not at ours.) I asked about Linux and if they were going to embrace the Linux platform for "edge of network" applications, or for web servers (we have a lot of Linux web servers here.) The next day, they arranged a long meeting with me and their Linux guy.
The Linux meeting was to tell me about the new Linux offering they were weeks away from announcing. That's the idea they just killed. The idea was that Sun would start out by basing their Linux distro on RedHat, then would immediately fork the distro to create a specific Linux for their "PC blade" hardware platform. Really, they said the goal was to use Linux to push the PC blades. And they thought people would jump on this bandwagon.
Personally, I thought that a Linux distro that used the Solaris package manager, and had a layout that was close to how Solaris is set up, and was managed the same way you managed a Solaris box, might be a cool thing for shops that ran a lot of Solaris but not a lot of Linux. Your Solaris admins could pick up this new Linux thing in a hurry, since it looked just like their other Solaris boxes. And you could run it very cheaply on the new "blades". But that wasn't where Sun wanted to go, and they said that to me very plainly.
So what I learned in that long meeting with Sun is that Sun has no plan for Linux. They honestly don't know what to do with it. I'm frankly a little surprised that StarOffice still supports Linux, but I guess since all the SO work is done in Germany by the StarDivision/Sun group, maybe that's why StarOffice still supports Linux.
On the PC platform, it's amazing that Sun actually recommends WINDOWS rather than a UNIX OS (like Linux.) They've given up on the PC platform - they let Microsoft own the entry-level systems.
Ah well.
It is very interesting the attitude sun has towards FreeBSD, which seems very hostile, even more than towards Linux.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Apparently Sun has huge cash reserves but they can't seem to make up their minds on what to do about Open Source grabbing a chunk of their pie. The way I could see it they could:
1. keep on selling high end Unix for the datacenter and pray Windows Server 2003 doesn't make huge inroads and that Linux doesn't catch up too fast.
2. sell their own Linux distro for use on low end machines to emphasize that Solaris is the best for huge servers.
3. (my own suggestion) Either release the source code for Solaris or help the Linux kernel developers out w/ Sun's own coders and focus more on selling Linux and Unix services like IBM.
Before I get flamed for mentioning Windows Server 2003, remember eBay seems to make Windows 2000 work for them. Prbably no the best ROI however. Anyway, Sun's leadership seems confused right now.
This guy is way out there
First Post biznatchez!!
It could me Sun had decided to give up and purchase RedHat. I always suspected that IBM would go that way. Although I'm sure the folks at RedHat would like the $ and market of Sun, I'm willing to bet the culture clash would kill any chance of success
They've built Solaris over many years into a stable, high-quality OS. And SCO can never take it away from them, like they might someday be able to take away Linux.
Way to promote the value.
The first issue is time. It takes time to put out a custom distribution and/or packages. Unless one is adding an appropriate amount of added value, the effort is questionable. A while back, I was on an internal security team for a major corporation. We had a security software product that we had licensed with access to its source code. We did not review this code, but we did compile it ourselves for a couple of platforms and create official corporate packages for internal use. It then became apparent that the default binary packages direct from the vendor were created using the same options. Without regular code review - what justified the additional time and effort? There was no acceptable answer - we began deploying vendor binary packages.
It makes sense for Sun to drop the customized distribution approach. After all, are they really bringing anything new to the environment that's not already being covered by existing Linux vendors? Working with those vendors to ensure that your product will work with theirs seems to be a much more sensible, and lest time-costly, approach. Especially when vendors like Red Hat are pushing towards Enterprise solutions.
Which leads in to the next point. From the article:
Money. The price of Linux is an interesting point. The no-cost aspects of a Linux distribution is nothing to toss aside too lightly. A lack of licensing fees and tracking headaches makes building a development box based on Linux that much easier. Price is very important to small and mid-sized businesses.
But even though licensing fees have come under increased scrutiny by corporate interests who wish to limit their spending in the current economy, its a relatively minor point. These environments are more than capable of handling licensing fees (although license tracking is still an issue). So in this regard, free in the sense of no-cost has never been an issue.
It might be worth noting that even with Red Hat's Advanced Server offering is still about service. Most of what makes up this new product is still available for free in source code form. One could compile one's own binaries and build one's own Advanced Server-like environment. Buying a license from Red Hat gets you access to their binaries - it is essentially buying a service. Which is a real time-saver whether you're in charge of a corporate IT infrastructure or need a friendly platform to help sell hardware.
This is a devastating blow to the Linux community and marketplace.
Wait, you said Sun Linux?
Never heard of it.
-Peter
WTF did Sun ever want to mess with Linux for? Leave it for the slashdot weenies to play with in their bedrooms and concentrate on shifting some more of those F15Ks on platinum service contracts.
How long is it now since Sun showed they had the first fucking idea which direction they were trying to go in? Every change of direction and half-baked new idea makes them look more and more stupid.
I dearly hope they get a grip before it's too late.
you must remember that Sun is a hardware company, period. Producing a linux distro that pushed Sun hardware (i.e. blades) out the door would be just fine by them. It's a stupid idea that wouldn't have worked, but it is not as stupid as you and the other simpletons that keep repeating this commend seem to think.
Guys,
The only company that does more waffling than you do is IHOP! (Intl House Of Pancakes)
If it weren't for the cool stuff you've done for the community, (Open Office, anybody?) I'd think you were a bunch of clueless morons.
Well, I still think you're a bunch of clueless morons that from time to time do something really, really cool.
Come on, guys! I'm trying to root for you, here!
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I work for one of the groups specifically involved in this ...
/. article are a bit misleading (IMO):
:)
...
... in other words, the installer whatever distributions Sun chooses to ship will be the same installer that you get when downloading that distro from it's main website, and the graphics you see during install, etc will be the same as well. We are continuing to layer above and beyond that with things like Sun ONE, etc. ...
...
To be clear, since the title of the original article and this
Sun will:
* Continue to offer Linux as an offering on x86-based servers. These offerings will come in the form of standard distributions that everyone today knows and loves.
* Continue to develop x86 Linux hardware offerings. Currently stocked by the LX50 (released last year) and the Cobalt appliances (where I originally came from). Coming up there are a number of things due out by the end of the year. I'm not going to cover them now so that I can keep my job
* Continue to add software value on top of the Linux distribution by making various Sun softwares (like Star Office, Sun ONE, Java, etc) run ever better on the Linux platforms.
The only thing that Sun is not continuing is the customized Sun Linux 5.0 line. Anyone who took a close look at SL5 knows that it is virtually identical to Red Hat Linux 7.2 (in fact, you can even use Red Hat Network or Ximian Red Carpet to update with RH72 patches, though at that point it's not considered SL5 by Sun).
The only differences from RH72 were a modified installer (and some might say broken, since it had problems with Kickstarting), some custom Sun labelling, and value-added software (like the Sun Streaming server).
What is being "killed" is the modification of the base distribution
In other words, not much has changed except now Sun does not have to go and recertify drivers (that already worked perfectly well) or try to explain why Sun Linux is NOT a proprietary closed Linux (which many people seemed to think even though it was not so). Now we can concentrate on providing software value add above the base distros, which are already maturing quite well on their own.
This doesn't mean Sun has abandoned Linux or Open Source. The worst it means is that when a Sun engineer creates a patch (for example, on the kernel) that it has to be submitted either to the distro parent and/or the maintainer of that software before it will make it into the core of a Sun Linux product offering. That should be considered a good thing by most people in the community, as it further confirms that Sun is contributing and not closing off any open code.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I am a big fan of their Cobalt RAQ servers. I hate to see them go as I haven't found an equally affordable alternative for the same features. They will fail if people have to buy a Solaris license to run them.
I knew Sun buying Cobalt was a BAD idea. I'm surprised this took so long, though. Sun is not a Linux company. They still haven't figured out how to profit from Linux like IBM has.
So people who order Sun (or is it Sun Cobalt?) boxes with Red Hat preinstalled will probably get exactly the same software that the would have had with Sun Linux -- tweaks and all. The only difference will be the brand.
Just imagine, gentle moderator, if the converse were said in a BSD-oriented story...
Good news at last! Open source = open wallets! Linux users don't pay! They are cheap by nature! IRIX IS FOREVER!
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
I believe eBay's running 2000 at the datacenter but here's what their webserver is running
This guy is way out there
Sun announces:: yes we're going to offer Solaris for Intel for free to anyone who wants it.... , wait a minute, no we're not. We are going to stop supporting Solaris for intel..., no, wait!!! we are after all, for free too...., well maybe not free.... Oh, just forget it.
Sun announces.... we are going to make Java so goooood that millions of M$ developers will run to Sun, or maybe they won't. We may not do that at all.
And:: we're going to give full Linux support for our products..... Heck no!!! ha ha we fooled you again.....
HA HA HA HA!!!!
Actually Sun thought about cancelling its x86 version and the *users* demanded it back, and Sun has released 9 for intel not that long ago. DVD and downloadable versions.
l
h tm l
Solaris x86 is very much alive and kicking and some shops use it to develop on then port it to the sun boxes later. The price is right.
Even sell a server with it on it. A rackmount no less.
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/lx50/index.htm
Check this link out. Cancelled?
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/x86/index.
I have it on a personal box and while it was a bitch get running, I have had no problems with it for six months.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
While there are certain business models that suggest it is wise to use commidity computers (read: Intel x86 based), there are others that suggest using high end high performance machines. Where things can be adequately load balanced over many small servers (think: RAIS: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Servers), such as most web services; other things such as a mission critical central database, really need a highly reliable "five 9s" or even "six 9s" platform. High end SUN machines are supposedly that (my experience with them is not recent, although my past experience with the model 2000 didn't get any better than about "four 9s").
With the exception of my desktop locking up a couple times due to a problem with X, I have not had a single software crash in over 3 years using Linux. I have had various hardware problems, power outages (cheap UPSes), and of course the occaisional big upgrade (Slackware 9.0 is in progress now). I certainly would like to have a more robust and reliable hardware platform for my servers. But switching to Solaris simply isn't an option in the cases I am currently running right now. Linux on SUN Sparc would get me where I want to be. But SUN's support for Linux is too focused on Intel x86 (for obvious market reasons), and is ignoring it's own Sparc platform on the low end. I'm not saying I would want to run Linux on the Starfires. But I would on the Netras. And in fact many people do that anyway, given a few distributions do have Sparc versions available. SUN doesn't need to support it so far as creating a distribution, but I do think they need to do a better job in general support such as making binaries for programs they do offer in binary only form available not only for Solaris Sparc and Linux x86, but also for Solaris x86 (some things are available, but not all) and Linux Sparc.
If SUN were to do a better job helping to make Linux work on Sparc machines, I'm sure they could sell more of them. That won't be a big market, but it will be a way to smooth out the transition between Linux x86 and enterprise class Solaris Sparc for many.
I don't see the need for SUN to offer a Linux distribution. But it would certainly be nice if Linux was supported for Sparc, even if that support is through other vendors like Redhat (which has dropped Sparc) or others (there is Debian if you want to self-support or hire independent support, and I think SuSE still has Sparc available for download but not on CD).
BTW, another reason to go with Sparc is to get 64 bit. Of course there are other 64 bit platforms out there. But those who go there are essentially lost from being SUN customers once that happens. Just because I might need 64 bit doesn't mean I need Solaris.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'd be annoyed if I got such a thing with a Sun x86 system too. I would be left wondering what customization I might lose if I moved to Mandrake or RedHat 8.0 or Gentoo for that matter. It makes much more sense to ship the Sun specific changes as rpm's I can apply on top of whatever my favorite distribution for the job is. I would expect at least some recent version of RedHat and SuSe to be officially supported of course, but if Sun ships RPM's or better yet SRPM's I'd be confident that I could apply it to Mandrake or Gentoo as long as the dependencies were satisfied.
(I would probably stick to RedHat, though maybe a different version, since a Sun x86 is most likely a server. But for desktop ease of use Mandrake is great, and for getting that extra 30% performance boost Gentoo just rocks.)
Blech, are you kidding me? Those are the most crash-prone, underpowered, bastardized pieces of crap I've ever had the misfortune of trying to use. From the nearly INFINITE security holes, of which very little was done to fix (the "security hardening" that was supposed to be occurring was a crock of shit), the fact that you simply CAN'T upgrade ANYTHING without breaking it -- wanna get a new version of Perl? TOUGH! IT BREAKS THE FRONTEND! Wanna update that buggy version of PHP? TOO BAD! YOU NEED THESE 500,000,000 DEPENDENCIES THAT WE DIDN'T BOTHER TO PUT ON THE MACHINE! Ugh. Ugh ugh. Not to mention the fact that it's built on Red Hat 6.2, which is how old now..? I mean sure, it's good if you can upgrade things, but with a RaQ, you can't unless Sun releases a special PKG file.
[insert witty comment here]
Um, why do you think that? because of history? that seems like a dumb approach to take.
My company was in the market to buy Sun Hardware and they wanted to charge us 240K per-server and that was with a 40% discount! We got the same hardware from a Sun Authorized dealer for 90K. You're companies management team must one of the most incompetent. They don't seem to have any plans and always seem to be rethinking it.
Their actions can't be good for employee moral either.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Sun has revealed the latest weapon in their fight for market share.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This is why people need to switch over to Gentoo Linux, it's so much easier than RedHat, Debian, and OpenDarwin.
You're right, it is so much easier to go through the process of
configuring and compiling the entire system from the command-line than it is to point and click through an installer that auto-detects everything and gives you a desktop right out of the box. Tell me with a straight face that you would recommend Gentoo to a novice friend before RedHat.
By always compiling locally, the apps on your machine are optimized the platform they run on, rather than the lowest common denominator.
An oft-repeated claim made by people who are never able to produce any evidence that it matters. But they swear up and down that it feels faster. I wonder if you also mark up all your CDs with green pen because it sounds so much better.
The kinds of applications that really benefit from this kind of arch-specific optimization are often available in several forms, one for each major arch.
This helps Sun as very few apps are compiled for Sparc architectures when distributed, so leveraging Gentoo this way will really help them.
Every single package in Debian is compiled for SPARC (provided it will actually compile successfully). There are more Debian packages than Gentoo ebuilds.
Test
What the hell? I don't we're there yet -- the distributions are NOT that different. Sun is very very divided on Linux, I just hope they get it together soon and figure out how to work with Linux because McNealy at least is right: a vote for Linux is a vote for Unix!
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
Red Hat, Sun, Debian, Mandrake...who the fuck cares?
If you want a stable Linux distribution, go to www.linuxiso.org and download yourself a set of Ninnle Linux CD images.
Can't go wrong with Ninnle!
Now if my goal is to run RedHat AS binaries on commodity x86 hardware...why do I need Sun? Because I'm so in love with Solaris x86? Hee...
Advice: on VPS providers
CRN reported that Sun is abandoning its plans to deliver Project Orion on its own version of Linux and will instead support distributions from other Linux vendors. read more at: http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/breakingn ews.asp?ArticleID=40833
I don't use an RPM-based distro, but don't up2date, apt4rpm, and urpmi handle just that for you? The dependency handling issue has long since been solved, and Gentoo is not the only solution. Thankfully, the whole distro landscape has been moving on to new problems as of late.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
As an outsider to the Sun world, IMHO, Sun is doing a really crappy job of positioning itself against Linux, and low-end, Intel-bred Linux system/servers. Every 2 or 3 weeks I see in the papers "Sun has Linux", "Sun has an Intel box", "Sun no longer has Linux", "Sun has Solaris for Intel", "No Wait They Don't Anymore", "No Wait Again They Do"...
Want to hear something funny? I'm the CIO/CTO for my company. I define the technology standards, identify what we will support, and decide on what our forward-going strategy will be. I was looking at Solaris on the Intel platform. We're a 99% Microsoft/Intel shop and I'm honestly looking for alternatives. I don't have Linux technical experts on staff, so I figured a company like Sun who has a solid O/S platform on an architecture that we know (Intel) would perhaps make a good investment. Then Solaris for Intel disappeared. Okay I thought to myself, that's a little strange since they do have StarOffice for Intel platforms. Later Sun announced a Linux strategy, and I figured okay, these guys are clearly identifying the direction that the market is moving in and are in the catch-up phase (just like Microsoft did when Netscape blind-sided them). Yet a bit later, Solaris for Intel made a reappearance. Now Sun has yanked their own SunOS Linux flavour.
As a CIO/CTO for a small company, you know what I've come to realize. Sun has no idea what they're doing or where they are going. At least Microsoft knows where they are going although they sure are pissing off a lot of people trying to go there. Anyways, the long and short of it is this: I've decided that I can't continue to evaluate a company and their product(s) since I don't even know what they're going to do in the future. My advice to Sun? Get off the fence and move in a direction. Any direction. Just get off the fence before you slice your balls.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Our Sun Linux distribution is essentially Red Hat Linux with a few minor tweaks,"
Red Hat, is that a brand of condoms?
--Drunk as in Beer
It doesn't mention the good legal reasons for a software house to *not* have their own Linux distribution, and use a third party distribution instead: patents, and "SCO vs. IBM".
If you have a copy of Sun Linux 5, hold onto it.
For all of the Sun patents embodied in the GPL'ed portions of your copy of their distribution, you effectively have a royalty-free license to use those Sun patents, in perpetuity.
This is, BTW, the reason there is no "IBM Linux".
Sun was probably also at least a little afraid of the sabre-rattling of SCO vs. IBM; by discontinuing distribution, they move out of the area of having the SCO monkey on their backs.
-- Terry
You buy somebody else's technology and sell it under your own name, on the assumption that your name makes the product more sellable.
Do they really think CTOs are that stupid? No wonder Sun is going down the tubes.
Sandra, Gail, and Ingrid?
Really I'm not suprised. Sun seems to be very schizoid about Linux. And that's after they somewhere (obviously) decided to run cobalt into the ground. I was looking for a small, cool-running internet appliance the other day and saw that the cobalt machines are 2-3 times as expensive as their entry level V series, which are in turn more powerful than the cobalts. What's up what that?
Does anyone know where to get a decently-made, small, cool-running server appliance? (I'm not keen on slapping together some power-hungry box).
I don't use an RPM-based distro, but don't up2date, apt4rpm, and urpmi handle just that for you? The dependency handling issue has long since been solved, and Gentoo is not the only solution. Thankfully, the whole distro landscape has been moving on to new problems as of late.
The dependency problem is only solved so long as you *never ever* use packages not created by the distributor. That means that rpms for your system must be made by RedHat if you're using RedHat (although a number of people are getting good at it besides RedHat), made by mandrake if you're using Mandrake, etc. If you use the GNU build tools in Gentoo without using emerge, do you break something the way it does in rpm-based distros? For example, if you use ./configure et al on Mandrake, nothing is technically broken, however urpmi won't acknowledge any library you installed that way. You *must* install libraries from a RPM if you want it to be recognized when another rpm depends on it.
GNU has solved the problem, but the distributions don't use it. Package-config solves the problem, I believe. I could be wrong, but it should. The only thing we need now is a GUI front-end to ./configure && make && make install.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Interesting to see Microsoft running Linux and FreeBSD inhouse.
C RO SOFT,131.107.0.0,131.107.255.255
Microsoft runs Linux and FreeBSD internally.
Also note the windows 2003 servers on the list.
Not much to add, see the link below:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/hosted?netname=MI
The strategy's pretty clear - don't use Slashdot posts as your sole source for Sun related news. The best thing to do would be to follow a sensible route and contact your local Sun reseller, get a technology and Sun vision overview scheduled and make your evaluations on some fact rather than some of the utterly ignorant Sun-bashing drivel that people post onto Slashdot.
my guess is that Sun is about to be bought by some other company - like Dell or some other player. Maybe not IBM or HP I guess - wouldn't really fit their strategy right now. the merged company then will not need all those employees around. We're talking 'bout 2-3 years here - not tomorrow. The outcome will be the same - Sun's own technology is going to die - especially the Sparc processor architecture.
suse 8.1 and redhat 8.0 - found absolutely nothing special except a couple of tweaks for the LX-50 series rackmount that you can easily emulate with a couple of recent kernel patches (and you don't even need those for suse 8.1 since it's on 2.4.19). in fact, running apache, tomcat, and coldfusion on suse 8.1 was a breeze and performed better than a lot of the other combos and platforms we tested.
... what the hell was the software group thinking? be nice if they'd post here and clue us in on both of those aborted initiatives.
it's good that sun should drop this idea and spend more time on the x86 Solaris build which still has it's niche market. especially since the 280Rs are still unreliable
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
but I thought all Sun Microsystems did was moan and bitch at microsoft. Are you actually telling me they do something else!? Woah!
If you would have made that .sig in Gentoo, it would be less annoying and a lot faster because it would've been compiled from the alphabet using -funroll-loops -O3 as its writing flags.
MicroSoft, is that a brand of toilet paper?
LMAO
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
hahaha.. brilliant reply..
--Drunk as in Beer
I'm getting my information from sources like eWeek, CIO Insight, and Baseline (to mention a few). Just read the last 3-6 months of publications. You'll see what I mean. Their strategy is confusing and inconsistent. As for a local Sun reseller, try finding one willing to expend 6 months (+) worth of effort to nail down a deal. Impossible.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
apt-get build-dep package
apt-get source -b package
The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal.
The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may
experience it as such. Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and
thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid. Whoever
could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very
swift. Thinking of oneself gives little happiness. If, however, one feels
much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of
oneself but of one's ideal. This is far, and only the swift shall reach
it and are delighted.
-- Nietzsche
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