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Where Is Sun Going With Linux?
jg21 writes "LinuxWorld has an interview with Sun's head software honcho John Loiacono which provides an opportunity to gauge Sun's intentions with regard to Linux in particular, open source in general, and where Solaris fits in. In spite of the assertion "Sun was founded on the principle of open source. We have contributed more lines of open source code than any other entity on the planet except for Cal Berkeley," Sun seems to view Linux somewhat grudgingly, judging from Loiacono's tone: "Linux is something that we'll have to interoperate with because it may exist far beyond whatever Solaris turns out to be." An important read, if only because a Windows-free Loiacono notes that he's been using the Linux-based Java Desktop System for a year. "It is not perfect by any means," he concedes though. Refreshing honesty from Sun's top software exec."
The way I see it, solaris is converging with linux. Sun plan to provide a consistent UI so that end users wont see any difference between Java Desktop on a dell system and Java Desktop on Sparc or Operton running solaris.
Solaris does have some features which are missing in linux and Sun have the advantage that solaris is designed to work with Sun hardware... much like MacOS is designed to work with Apple hardware.
- they have given the community Java, Open Office, NFS, & RPC. While Java is not strictly open source it is widely used.
- Sun's John Bosak created XML.
- they still make most of their money from hardware and services
- just about all the machines they sell can run linux (and bsd)
Red Hat. They've done a hell of alot more for Gnome in every regard including usability guidelines. Gnome 2.8 is an excellent product, its the first time I'm using gnome over kde. But don't go giving Sun too much credit, check the change log sometime, you'll see lots of red hat.
Regards,
Steve
Even though they had fantastic engineers DEC was run by morons. When the PCs (Z80 based CPM ones) were gaining popularity DEC had a PC with both a 8080 and a Z80. This machine could run DOS and CP/M. It had high resolution color, it had a 132 column screen with smooth scrolling, it had built in VT100 emulation. It was the best PC on the market and they could not sell it.
Very soon after that they shrunk the PDP-11 into a desktop machine. A sixteen bit PC with thousands of applications running on it. It had HUGE (for the time) storage both hard disks and floppies. Oh and get this it had a GUI straight out of Xerox Parc. With menus and resizable windows and everything!. They could not sell it.
Very soon after that they came out with the micro-vax. This was a minicomputer on your desk. Way more powerful then any PC on the market and it ran more software then DOS. They could not sell it.
Then they came out with the alpha chip. A screamingly fast 64 bit machine in a tower case that destroyed any PC in terms of performance. They could not sell it.
How a company can create one fantastic product after another and still get it's ass kicked like a 90 pound weakling is beyond me. I can only attribute to the incompetence of people like Ken Olsen and his top level staff.
By all rights Digital should have ruled the desktop.
evil is as evil does
"Read this as: It was the most expensive, overfeatured PC on the market, and no one wanted to buy it compared to the alternatives."
I was around back then and I can tell you that it did not cost more then a regular PC.
"(Nods) Yep, I knew uVAXes, they were awesome little boxes - for business purposes. Much tooo expensive for desktops in offices or homes compared to PCs."
It was a high profit machine. They could have cut the costs on it. Management blunder.
"And "running more software than DOS" doesn't count if that software wasn't the MS Office suite, even back then."
They had this thing called "all in one" which was out before office was even a thought in Bill Gates mind.
evil is as evil does