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Solaris Coming to IBM's Power Architecture?
johnm writes "Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's pony-tailed number two, dropped this little snippit in his blog where he talks extensively about what he thinks 'open' means: 'For example, as we continue porting Solaris onto IBM's Power architecture (demo coming soon!)...' Does this mean you'll soon be able to ditch OS X and stick on Solaris 10 onto Macs?" While coming off as an ad for Java, Schwartz also raises some valid points about Unix and migration.
porting an OS is more than adding support for a CPU architecture. hardware drivers, for example...
Why would you want to ditch OS X for Solaris?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think PowerPC is code compatible with IBM POWER RISC. They are similar, but PowerPC was a joint project with Motorola.
To me "open" simply means you can figure out what happens, "customer" has nothing to do with it. When I wrote mod_python I did not think of myself as a vendor and I don't think of mod_python users as "customers". You can't just think of everything in terms of "business", it's not like that at all.
Sun produces both the OS and the hardware for their machines. Apple produce the OS and hardware for their machines. Thats what makes things Just Work (tm). Plonking Solaris on a Mac isn't going to do much for hardware compatibility :|
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Wow. What are they doing over there? Let me preface this by saying i work with solaris daily, i like solaris (love/hate, you know what i mean if you use it), and well, the ultras i have in the house just will not die (not for my lack of trying though).
i ch-jre-j2se-jrs94x-should i get? Solaris open/closed/free/sorta/java-desktop? Heh, okay just poking fun there, but seriously, do they not seem a little like their top guys don't talk all that much and just make random announcements at this con or that? Yesh.
;-)
However, after all these "sorta" announcements from different heads of the crew, i'm getting uneasy about Sun. Java open/closed/free/not-free/for-the-love-of-pete-wh
And i KNOW the roof will raise over the suggestion of dropping osX in favor of Solaris on mac....er, wow, my mind is blown that one might consider doing that for anything other than fun...for a few minutes. Wow, Sun is just makin me uneasy these days - glad i'm not in charge of any huge shops (i assure you that you are glad for that too
I wonder if it would be worthwhile. I know that Sun had a close relationship with the Gnome community to help improve the usability of Gnome but I still feel that OS X is a much better total UI than Gnome.
I could be wrong, but Solaris and Gnome still have some rough edges which need smoothing out. My biggest critisms of of Solaris/Linux/Gnome is they move onto the never version and new features before the round out and polish the last version. That last 5% of effort to make the software shine is really what sets makes the average computer user feel it is 100% better.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
Remember "vendor lock-in"? Used to happen with IBM mainframes, then Windows, and now, regrettably, with Unix variants.
The freedom to be able to chose a vendor is important to businesses and universities, and in principle to anyone who doesn't want to be locked to a particular vendor. Such as Sequent, who sorta doesn't exist any more...
I used to do a ton of porting for the purpose of unlocking stuff from vendor X or Y and making it run on "stock Unix", which is to say, pretty much anywhere. heck, I still do, on request (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Yes, this is one of the important points we (so called zealots, including myself) do not want to believe when we come home and fire up Konqueror/Mozilla etc. and jump in.
At work, I'm sure that many other Slashdotters are in communication with customers about open technologies.
For me, "open" may mean that it's totally hackable, modifiable and should include "fun".
For Joe, "open" may mean that it's possible to code to make it able to talk with his new XML based ERP system.
For Jane, "open" may mean that it's possible to save in an spreadsheet of office package X at home and embed it in the word processor of office package Y at work.
And so on..
We do have "our" preferences for the meaning of "open", but in the real world, we must achieve the fact that what we call "wide" open, may be restrictive for another person. This is what, at first, we should respect. Then we may have a peaceful settlement to all "open" wars around here or there.
Sun just doesn't get it. We already have MacOS X and Yellow Dog for PPC. We have Sun and Linux the SPARC. We have M$ and Linux for the x86. Linux is the common denominator. Why the heck would we care about Solaris on PPC?
Sun is trying every last ditch effort they can to stay afloat. The company that believed the world revolved around Solaris and SPARC is now supporting X86 and AMD64 and talking about PPC. They're offering Linux solutions. Everyone else sees the sinking ship that is Sun, but Sun themselves. Unfortunately, I can't help but think the old adage of "a day late and a dollar short" is going to apply to Sun very shortly, if not already.
His main premise is that Open Standards are more important than Open Source. On this point, I completely agree. Conforming to an open standard, which anyone is allowed to implement, is a great thing for customers. As long as they depend only upon the standard, they can choose whichever vendor they want. This is effectively a commoditization of the market.
What he fails to realize (or admit) is that Open Source has other advantages that build upon Open Standards. Even if an Open Source program doesn't conform to any well-recognized standard, the availability of the source can provide the same advantages. If you don't like the way Ximian is building their free Evolution mail reader, you can find another vendor who will take the existing mail reader and build you a custom version, fully compatible with the old. Also, Open Source programs typically embrace Open Standards with a passion. Look at Mozilla for a good example.
In addition, Open Source provides new advantages that Open Standards do not. The main advantage is control. If the company goes out of business, and you want to stick with their product, you can do that. If the vendor doesn't want to implement a feature that you want, you can do that. You get the advantages of commoditization, plus the ability to customize and modify things to fit your own needs.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Ugh, why would you want to?
Now, Solaris on an XServe... That makes sense... Server class hardware that doesn't suck, yet doesn't cost an arm and a leg, running perhaps the best multiprocessor Unix ever... Mmmmm.
The ironic thing in my view is that this is sort of what CHiRP was supposed to be - a happy universe where you could buy an RS6000 and run MacOS on it, or a Mac and run Solaris on it, or whatever. But then His Steveness decided that the clones had to go...
Several years ago, Solaris ran on Sparc and x86. Of course, the solaris X86 was the bastard child.
Likewise, mainstream Windows ran on X86 compatable only (yeah, NT ran on alpha, but that was a decade ago; And yes I saw NT on PA-RISC, but it was never released).
In addition, Windows will have a a 3'rd world distro that will cost but a fraction of their current stuff, but have 99% of what they currently offer. Historically, Bill Gates encourages theft of Windows as a way to check growth in other areas. That happened to Borland, Sybase, etc. These days MS claims that linux growth in 3'rd world country is so that it can be replaced by Windows. If so, then why do they think that a low cost version will be bought by end customers, when they can have it for free?
Linux and BSD run on many arch. and the 2 of them are making huge inroads into older OSs. Suddenly Windows and Solaris want to port to everything. Solaris on multiple platforms and low-cost to free windows is simply an attempt to stop Linux from wiping out sales
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
By spreading their 'industrial strength' OS to every platform and trading on their reputation, they are hoping to survive the shift.
Actually its a smart move.
Hardware has been commiditized into oblivion...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
SPARC is coming to an end, it's not keeping up with the other technologies out there. The CPUs, while technically excellent for their time, are failing to scale and the resources simply aren't available in the same way as they are for ix86 and PowerPC. Sun, realistically, has three choices:
- Stick with SPARC, and be left behind
- Ditch proprietary hardware and jump straight into high-end commodity PCs - they're sure to make as much of a success of it as, say, Commodore
- Switch to the ONLY other commercially viable and supported mass-market computer platform, and the only one other than SPARC that's pretty much open - PowerPC
If you were in Sun's shoes, what would you do? You wouldn't stick with SPARC. You certainly wouldn't want to try competing with Dell. Meanwhile PowerPCs are mass-market cheap, they're under active, competitive, development, thanks to IBM, Nintendo, and Apple, and reference platforms themselves aren't that far removed from those Sun produces right now - PCI (and successors), OpenFirmware, etc, etc.Whether Sun hates IBM or not has nothing to do with anything. Right now Sun has to do the right thing for Sun. If that means out-of-court deals with Microsoft, or buying CPUs from a combination of manufacturers that includes IBM, then so be it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.