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Sun Drops Linux Distro

Posted by michael on from the hot-potato dept.

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.

4 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Why did they bother by Tsugumi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I just don't know why Sun had a Linux distro in he first place. What value did they think they were adding? How could it contribute to their server sales? From the beginning, this stunk of some suit saying "we're getting creamed by Linux on commodity hardware - we should be doing Linux!"

    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...

  2. Well yeah... by Bob+Abooey · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This makes perfect sense for them. They're still going to support "between two and four standard Linux distributions", they just don't have to spend the money to maintain their own version.

    They are planning on making money on support so this really doesn't change things much in the big picture.

    --

    All the best,
    --Bob

  3. What are sun's plans ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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/
  4. Time & Money by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 4, Insightful
    There are a couple of interesting points raised by this article.

    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:

    There is little doubt that the notion of "Linux and free have gone away. Red Hat's pricing model now makes that clear," [Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president of software] said.

    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.