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Sun Rays For Linux
Tarantolato writes "According to an eweek story Sun Microsystems will be debuting a Linux port of their Sun Ray Server at Linux World this week. This would allow Sun Ray thin clients to be run off of a SuSE or Red Hat box, where you previously needed a Solaris-SPARC setup to do that."
What the hell's going on with /. ? 503 errors are not surprise here, but it's impossible for me to load of /. while I'm logged in. Anyone else?
Wonder how long until thats available? Thats probable what most of the crowd here would use.
If you've looked into Sun's Sun Ray Technology it's pretty neat. It offers a lot of features that similar windows technology does not.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
This is VERY interesting, considering there are rumours about Sun thinking about buying Novell (which recently bought SuSe). Time to hit trading accounts! :)
Simpy
do they expect integration with NDS???
The links aren't very technical. Is it an X server?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Can it run Slashdot?
Against whomever smacked Sun with the ClueStick(tm)
You didn't look very hard. I managed to download the upgrade for free from Sun's website. Took me about 20 minutes to find
it but it is there and free.
So it is, wonder when they put that there. For what its worth, it only takes about 5 seconds if you type "SunRay Server Software" into Google. Guess I have no reason not to get my CompactPCI Ultrasparc server running then.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I bought two Sun Ray terminals on eBay, thinking they were standard X terminals.
Now I can actually make use of them.
I hope.
Well this is interesting. Sun needs to do something pretty drastic to keep their market share and keep the revenue coming in.
At the moment at the large educational/research facility where I work, all our Solaris Sparc boxes are going the way of the dodo (so long Sun). FreeBSD (and not Linux) is slated to be the replacement.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
It has always been the execution that is lacking.
Kudos Sun!
I for one am extremely happy if this goes through as planned. Hopefully, Sun will not charge for the server software and only cash in on Sunray sales.
In a not so distant past, we fell on the following website of a university student's project to reverse engineer the sunray protocol. Our only hope (out of expensive SPARC gear) was that this guy's project would work out in the end. I guess this won't be needed anymore, at least not with the perspective of simply running the thing of a lintel box.
Our environment at work is composed exclusively of Sunrays, approximately 25 of them to be accurate. When we close in the 20 concurrent user, it gets pretty bogged down, especially with our venerable quad cpu E450.
Shelling out money for a better Sparc-Sunray-driving-server was not desired, mainly because of the price (a 4-way V880 costs 10-20 times the price of a quad opteron, and doesn't perform nearly as well). In other words, were stuck with the current setup. The least we could do was to run Mozilla and related apps of a separate Linux X86 box and X11 forward everything. Still, driving the graphical environment for 20 users tends to bring the machine to a crawl once in a while.
For those who will ask, connecting through XDMCP on a Linux box to drive the environment was even worse: those little XSun processes would eat up to a single CPU under heavy usage of the desktop, and it would feel pretty slugish. Understandable, since the screen refreshes would go LinuxBox -> Sunray server -> Sunray (one hop too many).
Enough said: I am thrilled with this piece of news. Sun has made my day (and I haven't said that in a LONG while). Running Sunray enterprise software on a quad x86 box is a dream come true.
We've been using www.ltsp.org stuff for awhile now. You can use commodity pcs (and parts) or get their 150's, jammin's or what not to get going.
I don't know much about the Sun Rays, but I do know of one feature that the Sun Rays have that I think is pretty cool... the ability to "save" your desktop "as-is" and continue your session on any other thin client, without doing much. (i.e., logging out) I think there was someone messing with Fedora Core 3 (testing 1?) and vnc to do something similar.
There are about 40 workstations in the retail lumber business that have them in place now.
Sunrays are not well received in the market. They are expensive, and the portability of the virtual desktop is nifty but not as nifty as actual portability of a powerbook or windows laptop.
There is another scarcely mentioned, but equally great feature of the Sunray stations: they have no fans!!
If you think that is no big deal, enter your standard computer lab again and pay attention to all the noise... I have worked in a large institution where the whole building was Sunray-based. A completely silent computing environment. You can actually hear the birds chirping outside. You have no idea what it feels like until you've tried it!!
We have read about the possible opening of the Solaris operating system. Opening up some of the technology involved is a nice step but falls short in my eyes. I think that sun should come out with a new open version of Solaris that is fully compatible with the current version but integrates some flavor of BSD. (I am personally favorable to UNIX) Just a thought...
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
I work everyday on a Sun ray. I'm running KDE 3.2.2 on a Solaris Ultra Sparc III. It certainly does not feel like being at a local machine, but it's not far off. We're on a gigabit network here. Sometimes if somebody is bogging down the network, it becomes unusable, but that's pretty rare.
Overall, I think I would rather use a Sun ray simply because of the silence. The constant sound of a high performance PC with 3+ fans in it gets to me after a while.
Will you be able to use SunRays with LINUX as the operating system, rather than Solaris? SunRays are a GREAT technology but no one uses them because no one wants to use Solaris. (At least not on a desktop machine, which is sort of the intent of a SunRay.)
If all this does is make it possible to use Linux boxes as SunRay-like terminals for Solaris, though, that's no help, people would rather just use the Linux box.
to bring Sun back as a Major player,
its best that they opensource their OS
cause BSD is right on top o them.....
Can't we get one of these mod options?
If anything, buying Novell and thus SUSE, would indemnify all the SUSE users against SCO since Sun has a defined relationship with SCO allowing use of any SCO unix works. This might even put a crimp in some of SCO's complaints against IBM since they use SUSE.
Yeah -- I work for Sun but I don't drink the Kool Aide.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
Two years ago, I remember our Sun salesman trying to convince us to deploy Sun Rays for all our staff. They lost the sale when they admitted that the Sun Rays didn't run over the existing LAN - they needed a physically separately cabled LAN.
...
Just wondering if anything has changed in the last two years
You have a CompactPCI sparc server you weren't using? That would make it an enterprise server (3800, 4800, 4810, 6800). I'll give you just about any x86 linux box you want in exchange for it. I'll even throw in a copy of SUSE! :)
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
You can use it over public networks as well now. That functionality has been there for a while now. It initially required a dedicated 100mbs network, but that requirement is no longer there. You may be able to use it over the internet as well over DSL and/or cable.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
"Out of curiosity, what ?"
Absense of a blue screen.
I'm thinking these would be perfect for the educational market. The majority of the software that runs on an educational machine doesn't require lots of power. And yes all the other advantages thin-clients buy you. i.e. maintainability, quiet, low cost, etc.
i like the idea of these a *lot*. have you got a part number for one? if they do a winged variety it'd solve all my rollout headaches in one fell swoop...
Yeah, some more sun rays wouldn't hurt the pale linux crowd.
Free as in mason.
Perhaps it's possible to reconfigure that (any pointers appreciated) or to use another keyboard - but really: why doesn't SUN switch to PC keyboards already and stops punishing their users?
Just curious. :-)
There were a few boards tossed around, but not sold as end-user products by Sun. There's a couple of other companies that made them.
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this is the technology sun should be pushing.
We're currently evaluating Windows XP Embedded thin clients from Wyse, Neoware and HP. They leave a lot to be desired. Not only do you still have a lot of the vulnerabilities and management hassles of Windows, you also have to deal with the weird, difficult to install, generally PITA management software they require. Plus, they're not cheap - about $600 each, without monitor!
Sun Rays have always been very interesting, but up until this, they have only had a Solaris server. Not bad for general browsing and business apps, but we need something that can run MPEG4 stream players, and Solaris isn't the first place to look for that. Linux has solutions, however. This is something we will look into...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Mine is based off the cPCI board found in the 1U netra series. So not an enterprise server, just a 333mhz ultra sparc with two cPCI expansion slots (quad nic and scsi cards installed right now).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
In Soviet Russia, penis thinks you is gay!
Not true. The 6800 allowed for using either a 8 slot PCI I/O assy or a 6 slot cPCI assy. Since there were 4 I/O assemblys, you could mix, but no one does. The Sun System Handbook on sunsolve.sun.com can confirm this. Actually, the WCI I/O boats have cPCI slots as well. The are two slots for paroli cards and two cPCI slots bookending the Parolis.
I am not sure which netra the poster was referring to, but I don't doubt it. There is a lot of netra crap that I don't care to remember.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
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