Sun Opens Cobalt Code

Bush Kanaka writes "It looks like Sun has released the user interface and back-end custom code for the Cobalt Raq550 under a BSD-like licence. The BIOS code is also, apparently, now open source and is being maintained by Sun engineer Duncan Laurie in his own time. This has to be good news for all those Cobalt devotees who were annoyed when Sun killed off Cobalt last month, but is anybody going to actually pick up the software and start making their own Cobalt clones?"

Comments

wonderful interface, poor hardware

[craqboy]

I really wish the cobalt stuff would have lasted. The interface is great and I was able to learn a lot of linux from using the interface and wondering how it worked out.

The hardware on the other hand was really shitty and ended failing no matter what version cobalt raq/qube you had. I have a cobalt raq that doesn't work and also a cobalt qube 3 that has some misc. hardware issue. I hope someone can work the source and make a good UI for a generic platform.

Re:wonderful interface, poor hardware

[aonaran]

It has nothing to do with Qpopper, popping mail worked fine, The GUI interface craps out with large numbers of users in one domain. (at least on the RAQ2, perhaps they modified it and didn't give RAQ2 users the new version) I saw it with other companies as well and the cobalt guys verified that the problem exists and even put it in the Knowledge Base, but never did anything about it.

Meanwhile, we installed webmin on the server that was having the problem and never had another problem with it. ... that was about 3 years ago. I recently talked to the guy who took over from me and he has since moved the RAQ servers to Debian because they weren't giving updates often for the RAQ2.

Already?

[peterdaly]

Sun has not owned Cobalt for a very long time IIRC. Do they still have anything substantial they got out of the purchase, or was the whole this money down the drain at this point?

Did they need to purchase Cobalt to "get their heads around" Linux? Did they need Cobalt to figure out how to make a low end Intel server? Maybe Sun has less between their ears than I gave them credit for, but I don't believe either is the case.

Seems like a bad business decision to purchase them to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Cobalt Replacement

[iStitz]

Has anyone made an "Internet Appliance" to replace the Cobalt RAQ line? Although the RAQ line was not perfect, it's ease of use was unmatched.

Re:Cobalt Replacement

[axjms]

I posted a similar request the other day when we were discussing how Sun EOL'd the last of the Cobalt products. No one responded but I did find this alternative on my own. It looks promising but I have no direct experience with them yet.

Network Integration

Qube is guide for net friendly home appliances

[malsdavis]

I use to work at a small company (about 6 full staff) which used an old Qube 2 box for distributing email around the office. Although restrictve and sometimes basic customisation required diving into the horrible world of 70's style telnet-based command line editing. Despite this, I thought the web-based administration system used was amazing.

No mucking about, simply point web-browser at the Qube, type in user-name and password and then a few simple web-pages allowed common adiministration tasks to be performed by the most unskilled of 16 year old work experience kids.

I always thought this provided the ideal interface for computer/network-controlled home appliances. Personally I'd find it really useful to log into my house from work and make sure lights are switched off (or switched on before I arrive home), pre-heat oven, turn hot water on etc.

Surely such control is already technoloically viable using simply a qube style interface, an always-on home internet connection and a computer linked into lighting/kitchen systems (for examples above).

Does anyone know of any projects/progress for this sort of thing?

Re:Pulling out the control panel code

[suwain_2]

Webmin is good for server administration (it's what I use when I don't feel like ssh), and it has an offshoot, Usermin, for users to manage their accounts and such. There's also Virtualmin, another offshoot (that's ransomware, though), that gives more of what you might be looking for, such as the ability for users to manage their VirtualHost site in Apache, a MySQL table, etc. I never really used any of the RaQ/Cobalt code, though, so I couldn't begin to guess how it compares.

The seeminly-ubiquitous web panel for servers is CPanel, but that's not free. (They do give it out free to academic institutions; I'm not sure about non-profits, though. Worth a look, though; I love CPanel.)

Re:Pulling out the control panel code

[bloxnet]

I am not sure if you have checked out Webmin before, but it is a great control panel and can be made to have more granular and domain specific controls for users. With a tiny bit of effort in setting up each user as opposed to the RAQ interface, Webmin is a great solution. Personally there were so many little things that irritated me with the RAQ interface that the nice features could not make up for...but this is only opinion.

It's doesn't matter

[Fjord]

is anyody going to actually pick up the software and start making their own Cobalt clones

It doesn't matter. If nobody does, then Sun was justified in killing it off. If people do, then Sun should be congradulated on doing the right thing.

This makes me feel a lot better about using Sun technologies. I know they have a tight control on Java now in order to make sure it does fly out of control as some people beleive happened to C++. This makes me feel that if Java does become legacy and unsupported, that the systems I'm building now with have another avenue of support.

BlueQuartz Mirror

[Fiznarp]

Ooh I finally got through. Here's a mirror of the BlueQuartz installer for RedHat 9.

My Linux hosting box of choice

[ducomputergeek]

For hosting small or static sites, the Cobalts were my first choice because of their ease of use. There was no investment in Cpanel, it was built in. When you needed to update, a couple quick clicks in the admin panel and it downloaded the latest patches and installed them.

I know a number of small local ISP's that used them for the same reason and many are dumping them dirt cheap and we are purchasing what we can afford, keeping some for parts, and coloing others, and using some for in house application development.

At least when Sun's products at EOL they release the code, unlike some other companies who's idea it is, sorry WIn..I mean Product X is now no longer supported: please spend more money to upgrade now!