Sun Steps Back from Linux JDS

chill writes "ZD Net UK is reporting that Sun is pulling back from their JDS desktop Linux initiative. The big question is what happened to those half-million to million-plus units that were supposed to ship in China in 2004? One hint may be that in April, Novell announced a deal with CSSC to 'cooperate to provide technology, services and marketing to optimise and promote Linux to the Chinese market.' Sun's JDS was based on SUSE Linux, now owned by Novell."

Comments

This was inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun only supports linux because it is forced too. Sun developing for linux is ultimately counterproductive to its own long term future.

Re:This was inevitable

[tomhudson]

Sun developing for linux is ultimately counterproductive to its own long term future.

Not necessarily - and actually probably quite the opposite. The whole idea was to get *away* from being *just a hardware vendor*, and sell all sorts of support services.

Someone should whack them with a cluestick - everyone knows there are severe penalties for early withdrawal (from a new market).

Re:This was inevitable

[AKAImBatman]

Sun developing for linux is ultimately counterproductive to its own long term future.

That's not entirely true. Sun's strategy has always been to sell hardware and complete solutions. It really doesn't matter to them if they're selling Linux or Solaris. In fact, long before JDS they provided an option to preload RedHat on many of their systems. Why anyone would chose RedHat over Solaris for a server system is beyond me, but a lot of customers were demanding it.

All the JDS is lacking is a true follow through. This half-assed release-it-and-then-drop-it strategy is guaranteed failure.

Re:This was inevitable

[flithm]

Why anyone would chose RedHat over Solaris for a server system is beyond me

- iptables
- proper package management (not that red hat provides that, but compared pkgadd anything seems good)
- real command line utils (GNU), ie:
- color ls
- tar with gzip, bzip support (no need for piping)

Now I don't want to give the impression I think Solaris is crap. Far from it. Obviously you wouldn't want to run Linux on a massive 64 processor server or anything. But for a small system, and for ease of use and maintenance, Linux is a lot nicer to work with.

It's amazing how much the small conveniences add up. Seriously, try going without color ls for a while. It's ridiculous, but it can be really frustrating.

Re:This was inevitable

[ozbird]

Depends on the architecture - Solaris on Sparc makes sense, why anyone would choose Solaris over Linux on an x86/amd64 platform is beyond me. (I support both at work, and aim to replace as many Solaris boxes as possible with Linux.)

RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 has become the distribution of choice at work. It's not my first choice but RHEL is easy to install - and has the support pricetag (and scapegoat) to keeps management happy.

If you can't beat 'em, find something plausible to fit their preconceptions...

Re:This was inevitable

[Cally]

Obviously you wouldn't want to run Linux on a massive 64 processor server

Actually sir... that's not... entirely... true.

Re:This was inevitable

[AusG4]

Never used Solaris, I guess?

In order:

* ipfilter (which does filtering and in/out NAT including packet level load balancing that is just as good as anything F4 is providing).

* the solaris package system sucks, yes - but compared to RedHat, by your own admission, is not worse. Download pkg-get from Blastwave and it does all the dependency instlalation and downloading for you anyways, providing a terribly "apt" like system. Who actually downloads Solaris packages manually anymore? Idiots.. that's who.

* Solaris has come with bash standard, a whole folder of GNU tools (/usr/sfw) and via pkg-get, access to anything and everything that Linux provides in the way of GNU command line tools.

- color ls isn't ls, per se - it's in the environment. I have color ls on my Solaris boxes. It's trivially easy to configure and is unique to Linux that it's set that way standard. Google is your friend.

- Solaris tar sucks for many reasons, the biggest of which is it's long standing problems with long filenames. Linux distributions use gtar, and Solaris comes with gtar out of the box in /usr/sfw/bin - so what exactly is the problem here? With Solaris, you get a choice between the two - arguably better for the user.

Point is - if you just set your environment right (this takes 30 seconds to do when you finish installing your system), most of your arguments disappear and if you get pkg-get the rest of your arguments go with it.

As for ease of use and maintenance, Solaris 10 with pkg-get and Sun's network management tools reign -hugely- supreme over most Linux distributions. I speak purely from the standpoint of some who has to manage dozens of Solaris boxes (and at one point, dozens of Linux boxes) at the same time. The only Linux dist I've used that really holds up from a management point of view is Red Hat Enterprise - which is every bit as good as the stuff Sun is doing these days.

Yes, you have to pay for both (I think Sun is actually a little cheaper, IIRC), but it costs me way less to pay Sun/Red Hat for their network manageement services than it costs me in time and labor - one day of my time can cost more than a whole year of RHN.

As for color ls - haven't been around long, have you? Color ls is a moderate convenience.. but who actually needs it? If you can't be just as efficient without it you probably need to take a UNIX course or something.

Forget China

[AKAImBatman]

The big question is what happened to those half-million to million-plus units that were supposed to ship in China in 2004?

What about those of us here in the US who *paid* for JDS and were promised major upgrades every quarter? We saw the JDS 1.0 -> 2.0 upgrade, then it stopped while Sun worked on JDS/Solaris.

Sun needs to learn that the only way they're going to make inroads into the desktop market is if they follow through. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was the popularity of Java or Solaris. If Sun would take the time to listen to their customers and implement the features they are demanding, then they'd have a very good chance at success. *sigh*

Re:Forget China

[DynaSoar]

AKAImBatman (238306) sez: "What about those of us here in the US who *paid* for JDS and were promised major upgrades every quarter?"

We're disposable. Why should we matter? It's a free OS. We can do anything else we want to.

As long companies that could make a difference with Linux vs. Microsoft take such a Hokey-Pokey (you put the left foot in, you take the left foot out...) attitude towards the market, there will be no major progress. There will only continue to be piecemeal progress done by users with the occasional company riding on their backs.

Can't say as I'm surprised about this. I had JDS from the release date, and throught the support has been among the worst I've ever gotten. I don't think they ever seriously expected it to go anywhere.

Hopefully they'll now let it go for free. It's worth that.

Re:How is Sun making any money these days?

[misaochankun]

Sun still runs things like oracle rather well. A lot of big companies continue to run Sun to keep their precious oracle databases running in a somewhat reliable manner. While Linux on hefty hardware can run oracle, and oracle in windows is a joke, you'd really need to bump up to Intel 64bit to really get close to how solaris can do it.
But that's about all I see solaris good for lately. Everything else is run a lot cheaper and faster on linux.

Re:How is Sun making any money these days?

[Decaff]

You need only check their website.

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/earnings_rele ases/pr/2005-q2.html

Sales of software, operating systems, Sparc and x86 servers, and providing services.

Might be inevitable, but is it wise?

[WillAffleckUW]

Sun only supports linux because it is forced too. Sun developing for linux is ultimately counterproductive to its own long term future.

From a business viewpoint, you're probably right, if they want to keep selling what they're selling.

On the other hand, sometimes you have to transform the firm - just ask Groves about Intel changing from making memory to making CPUs.

I don't think Sun's leaving open source desktops.

[Rahga]

If there's one thing that's a reported definite in Sun, it is that they've decided on GNOME for their desktop environment on Solaris sometime in the near future.... I think JDS was a nice experiment at rebranding of both Suse and GNOME software, but never really a serious product with R&D devoted to improving software upstream from it. To make matters more complex, Suse joining the Novell fold has made a mess of the Suse and Ximian desktop offerings. Novell up top seems to be aiming for a losely defined linux services platform in the mold of IBM, not a strongly defined Linux desktop and distribution product. No reason they should go for the later either, since that market is decently covered by other products from other companies.

So, Sun had JDS which is derived from a distrtibution (Suse) that is not nice to GNOME (wtg, germans), and are giving up on it. No biggie, IMHO.

Re:Linux Is Getting Boring

[Zemplar]

"Even the BSD's have made it to the desktop (MacOS) with more success than Linux. It's no surprise, look at the licensing differences."

Perhaps Sun and Microsoft's new partnership with end with a melding of Solairs kernel with some sort of Microsoft added GUI akin to Apple and FreeBSD? As much as I dislike Microsoft, this could be a great product!

Makes perfect sense

[cpn2000]

It is looking like Sun has finally made up their mind and has decided to ditch Linux once and for all to put their energies into Solaris. For the longest time they were doing a half-hearted job of courting Linux, but I'm glad that they have finally made a decision and moved on.

It makes sense too. They have a world class Unix based OS and it made little sense for them to just abandon it and move to Linux. If they are able to generate some interest in an open source Solaris, that might be a more sensible path forward for them