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Ian Murdock Joins Sun

Posted by kdawson on from the long-time-admirer dept.

RLiegh sends us the second piece of news today featuring Debian founder Ian Murdock. In an entry on his blog, Murdock announced that he is joining Sun Microsystems as their chief operating platforms officer. As he put it in his opensolaris post, this "...basically means I'll be in charge of Sun's operating system strategy, spanning Solaris and Linux." In all likelihood one of his first priorities will be "closing the usability gap" between Solaris and Linux.

5 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What usability gap? by good+soldier+svejk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I presume he is talking about package management. Do the current SunOS/Solaris versions ship with modern package management? Because the stuff that came with 2.8 and was crap.

    --
    It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man

    -James Baldwin
  2. Re:What usability gap? by McFadden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe I'm just a cynic, but when I read "In all likelihood one of his first priorities will be "closing the usability gap" between Solaris and Linux." - I genuinely wasn't sure which one was supposed to be ahead of the other,

  3. Re:Shooting too low, again. by Ilgaz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He wants to make Solaris as useable as Linux? Um, what about shooting for the best usability in the industry, champ?

    -jcr Does Solaris userbase (real ones, the ones paying millions to Sun hardware or running mission critical) want "Usability enhancements" or do they want to race with Ubuntu or OS X? I know a genetic engineer who spends her life on Solaris, I didn't see her complaining about usability at all. In fact she lives actual problems on Windows XP desktop since she is not used to it.

    Same went for Debian, some actual admins spoke their mind saying they want peace of mind and a stable OS instead of Ubuntu racing, Digg headlining Desktop.
  4. Re:Replacement Gap by Kymermosst · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, except I'd pick Solaris to run a mission-critical app over Linux any day.

    I started off as a Linux admin. Today I am a Solaris admin and I like it that way. Yeah, some of the user-land utilities could be improved, but overall Solaris is a solid operating system that handles some of our hefty applications admirably. Sun also has the best support money can buy. Our x86 vendor is a pain in the ass and there is nothing quite like your Linux vendor and your hardware vendor blaming each other while you wait to get your problem sorted out.

    --
    "Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
  5. Shoot for the stars by Graham+J+-+XVI · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about closing the usability gap between Solaris and OSX instead? ;)