Sun's Linux Killer Examined

gnaremooz is one of several users to mention Thomas Greene's look at Sun's supposed 'Linux Killer'. From the article: "If Sun gets very serious about Solaris 10 on x86 and the Open Solaris project that it hopes will nourish it, Linux vendors had better get very worried. That's because, in the many areas where Linux is miles ahead of Solaris, Sun stands a good chance of catching up quickly if it has the will, whereas in the many areas where Solaris is miles ahead, the Linux community will be hard pressed to narrow the gap." However, he goes on to describe many more difficulties with an install of Solaris than I seem to remember having with just about any recent Linux install.

Comments

Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't kill something that's non-commercial

Re:Better luck next time

[ciroknight]

Sure you can, you just can't do it through strangulation like SCO is trying.

Sun could kill Linux with starvation. If Sun could promote Solaris in a way that Geeks would start a mass sendoff from Linux to Solaris, then Linux would simply run out of developers, and thus, die.

Only, that will never happen. Where Sun is the only company behind Solaris, Linux has hundreds of companies supporting it; Redhat, IBM, and Novell being the big contributors.

If Sun decided to open Solaris about 5 or 6 years ago they would have had a chance. Now they've virtually assured that Solaris will die from the same starvation as above (Sun won't pay anyone to work on their platform if they can get people out of the company to do it for free, now would they?).

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't kill something that's non-commercial

My neighbor's cat was non-commercial...

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

[NorbMan]

From TFA:
Unix has been around since Linus Torvalds was in short pants.

Yeah, and Solaris x86 has been around since 1992. Hasn't killed Linux yet.

Worried? Why?

[Bogtha]

If Sun gets very serious about Solaris 10 on x86 and the Open Solaris project that it hopes will nourish it, Linux vendors had better get very worried.

Open Solaris is Free Software, yes? So if it becomes a "Linux killer", then the Linux vendors will simply become Open Solaris vendors. It doesn't matter if Linux dies if what is replacing it is just as free. Hell, the user-space applications are 90% the same anyway.

If Linux isn't successful because something else is better at doing the job and just as free, then that's a cause for celebration, not worry. The only people who need worry about this are the zealots and PHBs who have latched onto Linux for its buzzword value and not its merits.

Let me guess: it has Java!

[Pomme de Terre!]

I already posted this on TechNudge.com:

I'm not a big reader of The Register, and having just finished the article, I remember why. The article's premise: Solaris didn't crash *as much* as Linux, so Linux had better look out.

Oh, but he couldn't even detect a NIC without the manual editing of conf files, and wasn't really unique or remarkable in any discernable way.

How tone-deaf is the writer to the PC world, anyway? It doesn't take a Bill O'Brien to see that the OS market is supersaturated, and anything short of the second coming of MacOS X will be greeted with a great big yawn from the collective computing community. (Well, a very small band of users will love it and sing its praises. I mean people are still clinging to Amiga OS, for crying out loud.)

This is aside from Sun's remarkable in its ability to ruin every good technology it creates through corporate nonsense and heavy-handed tactics (read: Java), and really, Solaris wasn't really all that thrilling on Sparc. (I spent my entire undergrad shackled to it.)

Neither the article, nor Sun, answer the most critical question in the OS world today: Why should x86 users switch? Why should I leave my comfortable XP or Debian or Red Hat or SuSE for Solaris?

Wait, let me guess: because Sun is including (insert Java widget here).

Note to Scott McNealy: the magic Java dust has lost its power.

Pomme de Terre!

Re:Let me guess: it has Java!

[inspector_grim]

I just spent the last two weeks in hell at work trying to install, configure and use Solaris10/x86 (yes it is free to stuff around with at least: go here and download or order a media pack: http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem/g et.xml

I may be very rusty but I used to be a pretty hardcore SUN admin person and I was completely screwed: I found the documentation to be the worst kind of useless toilet paper.

Just one pieve: SUN seem very confused about what kind of admin gui they really want: Swing, command line or web portal: for historical reasons they have them all... good luck !

Going back to WinFriggen2K was a RELIEF... my idiot big button installers where all back. (for instance: compare the simplicity of installing a win32 service versus a service on SUN properly). The Java Desktop is very pretty though.

If Open == GPL, then who cares?

[Just Some Guy]

If Solaris is available under a Free Software license, then who really cares which one "wins"? If I find myself using a Solaris kernel that incorporates the good stuff from Linux, I lack the imagination to see how I'd be worse off. If Solaris isn't available under a GPL-compatible license, then I can't see enough people migrating to it to make a huge dent in Linux usage. Once again, I'd be no worse off.

I guess this just seems like a non-issue. Linux Killer? No way. Linux's Friendly Competitor? Welcome to the club!

That Poor Little "Community"

[John Hasler]

> ...in the many areas where Solaris is miles
> ahead, the Linux community will be hard
> pressed to narrow the gap...

After all, it's not as if Linux had the backing of a major computer company with a three letter name.

Oh. Wait...

Solaris will have the same problem as OS/2

[brokeninside]

IBM discovered the hard way in the nineties that a hardware manufacturer trying to get competing hardware manufacturers to support their OS is a dead end. Discussions between IBM and the other PC vendors sounded a lot like similar conversations will if Sun tries to get PC manufacturers onboard the Solaris wagon:

Sun: Hi, HP, what do you think about preloading Solaris on your workstations?
HP: Yeah, right! Why would we want to license or support our competitor's operating system for our hardware?

Sure, Sun might be able to get a few PC peripheral vendors on board. But, honestly, what kind of target market can Sun tempt them with? Solaris x86 has a smaller presence than Linux and you've already said that these same vendors aren't getting on the Linux bandwagon.

"Linux-like"

[Earlybird]

This year's most ironic statement:

• Solaris 10 and Open Solaris (which you build and install on Solaris Express) are both very nice, Linux-like operating systems.

Linux is no longer "Unix-like", people. It's Unix that is "Linux-like".