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Toshiba To OEM Laptops With OpenSolaris
ruphus13 writes to tell us of Sun's latest attempt to drive OpenSolaris adoption. The company has inked a deal to pre-install OpenSolaris on Toshiba laptops. "Slowly but surely, major laptop vendors are taking to the idea of shipping systems with pre-loaded open source operating systems. The latest case in point is Toshiba — one of the longest-standing players in the market for portable computers — and its new plan to pre-install Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris on its laptops. The machines are supposed to ship in early 2009."
That is called competition. A thing that has lacked for too long in this field.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Why go with Solaris and not Linux?
In terms of usability and functionality for a Laptop Solaris would be at a disadvantage to Linux and even Windows. Unless you job is to write and compile and or run Solaris X86 Apps. Then you are in general at a disadvantage to Linux which has more application written for it, communicates very well with Solaris Based Type Networks, As far as End User is concerned Linux and Solaris really look so much alike that it wouldn't be much of a learning curve.
Solaris is superior as a server OS. But for a desktop Laptop OS... Why?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What exactly is the selling point here? I can see how ZFS is enticing for servers, and perhaps a narrow range of power users, but most FOSS stuff is more work to install on Solaris (Open or otherwise).
Perhaps on a two-harddisk laptop ZFS is an interesting option.
Not totally. Java isn't going anywhere (Microsoft hates Java), OpenOffice.org isn't going anywhere (Microsoft hates OpenOffice.org), OpenSolaris isn't going anywhere and Sun's partnerships with Canonical (Ubuntu), Red Hat and Novell/SuSE aren't going anywhere either.
Everyone thinks Microsoft is the only company to play dirty and use alliances as a means of a trap. Companies like Sun and IBM invented these tricks.
My blog
Solaris to beat Linux? Somehow I think hitting Mr. Linux Torvalds with a Solaris disc will probably do more damage to the disc....
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the next obvious move?
MS to scrap the OEM tax and instead install an OS that is free for 30 days and then asks you to did into your wallet and type in a credit card number.
MS will never allow this to continue without a fight, they drop the prices or allowed older operating systems anywhere they can to ensure machines are shipped with their OS.
It seems clear that threatening OEMS with more a expensive windows tax if they do not cooperate is becoming less effective these days.
They might even give the OS away free if they have no choice at all and get money back on cloud, upgrades, applications and web services. But I cannot see them ever willingly accepting PCs sold in large numbers without windows.
But I have a feeling it won't last long... OpenSolaris is even more niche that FreeBSD. Once it's obvious the cost of giving people the choice is more than the the extra business it brings in it'll get dropped like a stone.
Verbing weirds language.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I feel bad for Microsoft. They are getting hit from multiple quarters. Dell wants to ship Linux with laptops and now toshiba with Open solaris. Apple is expanding their notebook sales. In this economy, people need to protect our flagship company. I think this can solved by govt. by providing a bailout package of $30 billion to MS. Please call your representatives and senators so they can save our Flagship company.
Nobody's asking the right questions.
1) Why is Toshiba doing this? This will make them money either directly (Sun is paying them with either money or services) or indirectly (Toshiba wants to get a better deal from Microsoft).
2) Why is Sun doing this? I think they want to drive adoption of OpenSolaris among the open source developers that would normally use Linux. The low-hanging fruit is probably Java devs like me who would otherwise prefer to use Linux.
The market for developer workstations is not small, even the market for Java developers. Just look at how much of a stink Apple created when they left initially Java 6 off Leopard (now it's available for 64-bit Intel Macs only).
This space left intentionally blank.
OpenSolaris automatically detected my HP Photosmart printer by name and instantly installed the proper driver while displaying a nice, comfortable, professional-looking message window. That alone should win over skeptical Windoze fanatics.
I bet Sun is 'paying' for this with a guarentee of a minimum customer base - expect to see Toshiba notebooks in the hallways at Sun facilities. Right now I see allot Macs running Solaris at Sun facilities and most Sun employees have XP installed on their non-Mac notebooks.
I like Solaris but there is essentially zero market demand for Solaris on notebooks.
/LabMonkey09
I'm typing this from OpenSolaris 2008.11 and I'm actually surprised how "desktop-friendly" Solaris has actually become. The default GNOME-based desktop is gorgeous and works well. Hardware support may not be all that broad, but when hardware is supported it's REALLY supported: even booting off the live CD, my Atheros wireless card, NVidia 3D card and crappy on-mobo sound were "auto-magically" detected and set up. Performance is also quite snappy, even on my aging Athlon XP 3000+ with a measly 1 GB of RAM. In short, OpenSolaris is more than up to the task of working on Toshiba's new laptops.
That will fix most of the problems you will run into with Solaris. Other than that, it's a solid OS. Why they would put that Network Auto-Magic shit in, I have no clue.
The game.
Seriously:
If I could have Solaris as an option, I would take it. There's a justifiable niche here.. Solaris is a supported alterna-UNIX with class
leading development tools.
If OpenSolaris provided the second-best iPhone application development environment, it would be strong enough to justify the move.
If Sun takes the opportunity to bundle and better integrate OpenOffice with their new Enterprise Desktop, and add all sorts of security and platform robustness choices, it might have a chance.
There's enough technology present in Solaris to make a reasonable case for allowing it to compete against the much unloved Vista for Business, especially when Linux has taken the first wave of public criticism (Eee PC, Ubuntu, et al.)
If they can somehow coordinate a "Shake 'n' Bake" style maneuver with Apple (iPhone/Solaris/Dev with Apple/Sun/ZFS backend and iPhone integration) it could be a very good thing.
Apple will never take the Corporate Desktop summit, and I seriously believe they have stopped caring. Perhaps Sun recognizes this as well.
I'm not sure if it's that the OEMs think they can sell that many, it's that they think Microsoft can't stop them any more.
We'll not know how many they could have sold before, because it's only recently that they've dared to try.
Microsoft is like a castle under siege, there's an attack from Asus on one wall, then IBM on another, then Dell at the main gate, now Toshiba... Each wave is beaten back, but the defenders look increasingly shaky.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Solaris uses "CUPS" for printing. CUPS has come a long way. For one reason because Apple alsouses CUPS in Mac OS X nd has put some effort into making it work. Including hiring the project leader and paying hiom to work full time. Most linux diistros use CUPS also.
I have had the same resilt with CUPS. It finds prints well even networked printers all over the building
The stupid in those links burns my eyes.
The first link means that the Bios had a bug that only shows up in Vista. They released a fix but didn't test with XP and because of that they only recomended Vista users to upgrade. Or maybe they tested with XP and something broke. Still if they tell people using XP not to upgrade, don't complain if upgrading breaks shit. There is no conspiracy. Companies 'not supporting' something means they haven't tested it and don't guarantee it works, not that they've sabotaged it.
The second link. Sounds like a Bios bug. They released a patch for it.
Buying a machine that doesn't support the software you want to use and then ranting and raving to some lowly tech support person when it doesn't work is dumb, entitled and obnoxious. They don't have a say in what is supported - that's a decision taken by the marketing department based on the relative popularity of the OSs. Ranting that your favourite OS is unsupported will just make them write the fact it is unsupported in bigger letters, not spend money testing and bug fixing to make it supported.
Plus, it's Linux. There are always ways to get it to boot on anything, supported or not if you do the work as people pointed out to the OP in the second link. All this hackactivism attacking of tech support people is just an attempt to punt the work onto them.
To give you some idea of how awful this behaviour is consider how you'd react to some Windows zealot email bombing your Linux only project with bug reports that it doesn't work on Windows.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Actually, by being licensed under GPLv3, I think OpenSolaris is a morally superior choice.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Really, I personally think OpenSolaris is coming along quite nicely since Ian Murdock is managing things but that's a different comment.
If they can make a toshiba laptop suspend and hybernate flawlessly that would be awesome. Maybe I'll even make the switch. Unix is Unix.
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
HAHAHAHA,
just an example: Excluding myself, I personally know 5 persons with Toshiba laptops running Linux. We are all unable to use the build in Toshiba SD card controller because bl**dy Toshiba flat out refuses to release *ANY* information for this bloody SD card controller. Does anybody think that this ignorant attitude would get any better with Open Solaris ? I don't think so.
So until this controller finally gets supported for Linux by Toshiba they will never again see any money from around here - not with Windows, not with Linux and not even with Solaris.
lspci:
01:0d.0 System peripheral: Toshiba America Info Systems SD TypA Controller (rev 03)
Cheers
Max
US car companies have ignored the future for 40 years, fighting every environmental and fuel economy standard that would have make them competitive.
I use HP-UX and Solaris on daily basis: business software of my employer run there.
You have to try to do something on Unix once to start seeing that Linux is not Unix and start hating Unix.
Solaris e.g. still doesn't install any capable text editor by default. You end up with original 'vi' which was last update 1996 and still doesn't support arrow keys (actually it's worse: it interprets unknown key sequences literally). But Solaris is paradise compared to underwhelming HP-UX, where you really end up with bare minimum. Infamous messages "line too long" from awk or sed (yeah, they still do not handle strings longer than 1000 characters). Lack or recursive grep, when you have to pipe 'find' to pretty much anything - but what is not always possible.
Default install of any Linux is quite usable. Default install of both Solaris and HP-UX is miserable torture. (*) For business software, with all its bogosities and hacks, commercial Unix is better: they provide workarounds for literally everything. But deploying (process which takes months) anything on Unix is royal pain. Using Unix daily - is even more so.
Apparently, Unix degraded to some backbone OS: spend five minutes installing something and then just monitor it remotely. That works and works really well. But if you actually need to do something on them ... forget. It is simpler to rewrite every tool they supply in Perl and be with it. Linux on other side looks like it is actually used - actively - by all kinds of people: it is much more polished and can be used painlessly on daily basis without rewriting anything.
(*) Most bogosities of Unix can be worked around by compiling e.g. GNU tools or any other functioning analogue. But there is a catch: Unix doesn't come with compiler preinstalled or even if it is installed it is pretty much incapable of compiling anything big (e.g. gcc). That's the way Unix vendors remind you that they also sell separately commercial compilers and you are welcome to buy them.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Gnome is being tightly integrated with ZFS, you will have functionality in OpenSolaris that you will not see for a while, if at all, in Linux.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I had xubuntu 8.1 running om my old HP ze4220 with 512mb or ram, and 1.7ghz celuron processor. I decided to try opensolaris 2008.5.
Xunbuntu won hands down, in every measurable way. I could never get music, or movies, to play on opensolaris. Also, I was never able to read .chm file on opensolaris. Xubuntu was also faster to install, and booted up faster. Opensolaris was not terrrible, it just wasn't as nice as xubuntu.
Neither OS could detect my wireless NIC. XP runs noticeably faster than either xubuntu or opensolaris, and xp does detect my wireless nic.
Again, just my experience.
MAJOR work has been done in OpenSolaris 2008.11 (now available) to support a wider array of hardware since even the 2008.05 release. There's a good chance your wireless device will now be supported on OpenSolaris out-of-the-box, as they say.
Due to licensing restrictions, of which most people forget MP3 is proprietary, you need to get a license to download the MP3 GStreamer plugin on OpenSolaris. The license is free from Fluendo's website, but requires registration. Registration, downloading, and installation takes just a few minutes and is completely legitimate.
IMHO, there are many compelling reasons to run OpenSolaris over GNU/Linux which overcome the slight advantages you've described in Ubuntu's installation process (which really is slick).