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Sun will sell Redhat 6.1 Sparc version
Sun has announced that it will sell Redhat 6.1 Sparc version in it online store. This is due to the customers interest in RH 6.1 for Sparc. I wish I had one of those UltraSparc machines.. (Credit for the news goes to Linux Weekly news)
Ick!
We have one at work...cruddy IDE hard drive...SLOWS DOWN THE SYSTEM! ATI Mach 64 video, Sound blaster quality sound...IDE CD-ROM...For half the price, you can get a Intel box that will run circles around these...about the only thing these are good for is if you are doing a lot of math oriented stuff...they suck the big one as WebServers!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Good to know sun is coming to its senses.
In the tradition of open source, I hope they make it available for $1.00 plus S&H (if it's the standard rh6.1 w/o additions). I would be disappointed if they simply repackaged it and suckered their customers to pay alot more than they should.
...although it might have been smarter for Sun to include more GNU productivity tools with Solaris ... things like GNU compilers and desktops, for example...
The Kulturwehrmacht
Finding God in a Dog
Now, can they stop selling these rediculously overpriced and surprisingly underpowered lemmons known as Ultra5 and Ultra10 and make a _real_ workstation that doesn't suck even when compared to PCs?
This summer I wanted to find a chea[ used Sparc 10 or 20 box just to play around with the different hardware on a different OS (Solaris)..
Everyone told me to install Solaris on a PC.. While I wanted to play with a completely different platform.
Now I can have different hardware to run the same OS as I do now.
Personally, I prefer Linux due to the Open Source, free, etc.. But I just wanted to learn solaris by experience incase I needed it..
Ahh well..
I used to complain about how slow Windoze is, then I sat down in front of one of those UltraSparc 5's with SlowLaris loaded on it. I could write a man page faster than that thing logged me in!!
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
it will sell Redhat 6.1 Sparc version in it online store.
Jesus Christ, did you guys even make it through 7th grade? I realize this is "news for nerds", but shouldn't nerds be capable of proofreading? It's not like this is a novel or something, we're talking about 3 sentences.
I realize this probably comes across as flamebait, but is this really acceptable? Have we gotten so involved with computers that we're incapable of following the most rudimentary grammatical structures?
Maybe I can get our incoming Suns to be "accidentally" preloaded with RH 6.1 instead of (old) Solaris (mostly 2.6, but we still get 2.5.x hand-me-downs from other sites!). Joy!
Anybody know which machines this entails, only the PCI bus "Darwin" machines (Ultra 5/10) or some heftier boxen (450, 3000, 10000/Starfire (dream on....)?) From the announcement wording it looks like only Darwins, unfortunately.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
It makes perfect sense for Sun to put linux in their systems. It will only encourage people to buy their hardware. Sun probably doesn't make a whole lot of money on OS software anyways, and they need their workstation sales in order to have that critical mass that they need in order to bring the cost of manufacturing those SPARC chips. This move will hopefully bring the cost of those bad-ass servers down a bit.
It is no surprise that Sun is supporting Linux. They are a hardware company, so if the software is free, thats alright by them, so long as it helps them sell more high margin hardware. All in all, I do think that this is a good thing for Red Hat.
"Attention Citizens, 2+2 now equals 3.947547175. Please recalibrate your equipment now" --The Computer
Here Comes the Sun
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
And I say it's all right.
Little darling it's been a long cold lonely winter,
Little darling it feels like years since it's been here.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
And I say it's all right.
Little darling the smiles returning to their faces,
Little darling it seems like it's years since it's been here,
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
And I say it's all right.
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.
Little darling I feel that ice is slowly melting,
Little darling it seems like years since it's been clear,
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
It's all right, it's all right.
Sun has a page featuring free download links for the linux distros that support the ultrasparc. Currently it lists downloads for Redhat 6.0, Caldera 2.2, and Debian 2.1 - but it links back to the homepage for each of the distros.
http://www.sun.com/software/linux/ultralinux
Hopefully, they'll host a mirror of their own, or sell cheap CD's in addition.
Sun backing Linux is very important. Not only is it a good move on Sun's part, but it will GREATLY help with the consolodation of the Unix market. It will encourage Sun to develop and promote compatibility between Linux and Solaris. Sun is still the biggest commercial Unix vendor, so this is just amazing.
Now all we have to do is ensure compatibility between Linux and BSD. Bill Gates loves to try and drive a wedge between different Unix development teams and claim that the Unix market is fragmented.
I think he can shut up now
Now, lets see Sun preload their boxes with Redhat. I'll bet standard configs with Apache, optimized for use as a web server, would sell well.
While this does steal some of the thunder from Solaris, providing options to users will ultimately be a Good Thing for Sun customers. It works for Intel...
Well gi did it, so it figures that sun would do it too...
The ditro is the RedHat deluxe version @ $79.95 (RedHat's price, not sun's. I checked it against redhat's store)
Here's the link.
Here's the features list from redhat's store page:
Support & Services
180 day FREE priority FTP access- fast, easy
access to security updates and more!
30 day telephone support and 90 day Web-based
installation support
Software
Red Hat Linux CD
Red Hat Linux source code CD
Linux Application CD - access to over 40 of the most
popular 3rd party applications for the workstation
Powertools - over 300 packages of applications that
run on Linux
StarOffice 5.1a CD
Documentation
Comprehensive documentation - Installation,
Reference, and Getting Started Guides
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
http://www.rebel.com/products/clienttech/horizon-1 0.htm
Well, I'm probably going to get shot at for this, but I'll say it anyway...
Solaris is not a bad O.S. In fact, on a high performance Sun, Solaris probably is far better than Linux.
Of course, any blanket statement like that has to be qualified or it's useless. On lower end Suns (sparc 2 through sparc 20, Ultra 5's, etc), linux will probably run faster, and perhaps more stablely. However, on higher end Sun boxes, the Solaris multiproc code, the volume management software (extra package), and the years of experience Sun has with it's own hardware give it a distinct advantage over current day SparcLinux.
SparcLinux is relatively new, and from what I've seen, doesn't have some of the more robust features of Solaris. The day will come when Linux beats Solaris on it's own turf - the Linux kernel development team has already proven themselves as masters of performance tweaking, and the more mature features are in development now. However, for the time being, when I install a Sun Ultra Enterprise box, I install Solaris on it. And until SparcLinux has proven itself (as Linux x86 has, and is doing), I will continue to use Sun Solaris on my Sun machines.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
I wish I had one of those UltraSparc machines.
The Ultras are quite funny machines. Compared to ordinary PC:s, they suck as workstations. Slow, clumpsy, just a real pain in the ass. If you use them as servers instead, you will notice something strange: they can take a huge amount of abuse, and still ask for more. These things are probably as close to immortal as a computer can get. Don't waste an Ultra for workstation duty, replace one of your PC servers with it and enjoy.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
that's a great idea. Already, when I am called upon to admin a Solaris box out of the... er... box, I always set it up using RPMs (Redhat's package management system).
http://www.rpm.org/ has everything you'll need. You'll probably have to learn how to rebuild source RPMs which you've thus far avoided, but it's worth it, because suddenly a vast wealth of software becomes available and very easy to install, and very easy to deploy to a number of servers.
Sun's earlyAccess JDK for Linux only runs on i386 machines. According to Kevin Hendricks, Sun spokesman only said that Sparc might eventually get supported
- Sam Ruby
The last good version of SunOS was in the 4.x series, they when with SysV for sunOS 5.x and byond.
Linux is okay, but it isn't BSD, and us old school people still demand the idiocrancies of BSD. (Linux isn't really SysV)
I suppose most /. readers these days won't have any idea what I'm talking about since the BSD vs SysV was ages ago.
We've got a 4-processor E450, with 4 Gig of memory, large amounts of scrach disk, ect. 300 Mhz processors . It's our compute server. Since I got my 450Mhz PIII running Redhat 6.0, I can't stand to log into the Sun anymore -- I do all uniprocessor floating-point stuff, and the E450 with the Sun compiler goes slower than the PIII with ecgs on my apps, when the E450 is totally unloaded. Not to mention how sluggish it feels on the prompt ...
Sun is dumping off all support to RedHat, so probably no preloads either.
If Linux is so important then why is Sun still playing cute with Java on Linux? Lets see some real comittment: put the Linux Java source tree under GPL, forget about that stupid communittee license thingy. Scott, you will win big by doing that.
Come on guys, really show us how you "get it".
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
This is a wonderful development. The best thing (for the consumer) in any market is choices. Hopefully the Solaris development team will get nervous and make Solaris better, and then Linux developers will make an effort to beat Solaris. In the end we wind up with two better operatings systems.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
This is a very good thing that Sun are doing, at least as far as customers are concerned, because it allows people to squeeze much more out of the Sparc than is possible under Solaris.
Three years ago, we grabbed a surplus SparcServer 20, junked Solaris and installed RedHat Linux for Sparc, just for the fun of it. Although we were expecting good things, we were astounded at the magnitude of the improvement: under Linux, most O/S-limited operations ran at about four times their speed under Solaris. Since then, both Sparc Linux and Solaris will have improved considerably I expect, but I bet that there is still an efficiency advantage with Linux, and this ought to translate into older Sun kit being given a new lease of life.
And of course, anything that promotes the use of Sun hardware has to be to the company's advantage.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
solaris 8 will have many familar gnu tools with the exception of gcc. sun, after all, has their own compiler.
If Dave Miller (now redhat) were still at Rutgers I bet he'd have SparcLinux running on this by now...
http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/~e10k/
He said it wrong, but he is right. The first thing I noticed about this article is how poorly the slashdot message was written.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Over the summer, I had an oppurtunity to work with some very nice Sun boxes. In actuality, I was working as an intern for Sun in Europe. I got to work with a number of boxes, including 4-processor AxMPs, CP1500s, and an AXi. One of my tasks over the summer was evaluating how RedHat 5.1 (UltraPenguin 1.1) ran on the AXi. I have to say that installing it was a joy; it was as easy as it is on an x86 machine. In fact, everything was as easy as it was on x86. There were a few differences, mainly in the bootloader (SPARC boxes use SILO which I managed to only slightly figure out over the course of the summer, only enough to get new kernels running), but on the whole everything was the same as it was on an x86. Which, I believe, is one of the major selling points of Linux - having seen how transparent the hardware is to it is quite amazing.
After a while of setting it up to perform various tasks that I didn't know how to do using Solaris (such as a RARP server, which turned out to be VERY easy, and UFS works beautifully; I had not one problem setting up NFS to read/write from the UFS partitions), I started using it as a desktop machine. I had a higher resolution on that machine, and so I preferred it for viewing web pages over the others. I ran X with enlightenment 15 for a long time, and I found it to be fairly stable, although I had many more problems with X unexpectedly crashing (happened about 10 times in six weeks) than the kernel itself having an error (which happened not once).
Speaking of kernels, the kernels were a cinch to configure. There were a few options that I had never seen before, but other than that, compiling and running a new kernel was easily as easy as it was on an x86 box.
Nontheless, I'm very happy to see RedHat come out with an updated version for SPARC boxes. Maybe when I return to Sun to work this coming summer I'll be able to test it out on my AXi...
If anyone has any questions about running Linux on a SPARC system, I'd be happy to answer them (from what I remember).
-- K
Sparc 5's are getting cheap. $1400 for the 360mhz with the low L2 cache. (assuming you know someone is a student)
m otions/pay.html
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/pro
This has been out for a few weeks now, and anyone can grab the .iso image from ftp.redhat.com. What I'm really waiting on is the alpha version, which is always horridly slow in being released. The Multia desperately needs an upgrade right about now. Any news on this?
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
While I'm procrastinating, does anyone know of another distro that will install on a 5/170? According to the sparclinux pages, the new kernels do work on the turbosparc, but redhat says that their installer doesn't work on it yet.
My most recently left job was with an ISP. They had a Sparc Ultra 1 and a Sparc 10. I tried for weeks to get RH installed. There are some strange inherent problems with the Sun hardware you need to know if you are going to install Linux on one. Most of the older Sparc adn Ultra Sparc machines have old firmware on them. With this older firmware you cannot boot from a floopy sometimes. I had to take Solaris 7 and install on the machine and it told me that my bios was old and did i want to upgrade. So i said yes... it chugged for a minute then pooped out telling me i could not write to the EPROM. So i had to search the net and find where the Jumper was to enable EPROM Writing. On the Ultra 1 machines this is under the video card... Take 4 screws out , pop the case, unsnap the video daughtercard out, move a jumper, put the video back in. Then restart the install of solaris. it will update the BIOS. Then i had the problem of it not wanting to read the ISO i had made. It never would recognise the CD i put in there. SO i ended mounting the CD on an Intel box, ( I DL all the RPMS and other install files from RedHat and made a CD ) in the pub FTP directory, made a bootnet.img floppy and did a networked install. After all that work It runs Great. Sound, Video at 1280x1024 on the Sun 21 " monitor. Sweet. The hardware was a Sun Ultra 1, 256M / 4G. ... OH! I almost forgot... My first experience with that machine was trying to get it to do a NFS install and use SUN's "boot net" feature. I never figured that one out. Hope this Helps anyone Aspiring to run an UltraPenguin. Any questions about what i had to do to get it up and running email me.
I wish i could have bought that machine, But i had to leave it there. I'll get one one day.
I think thats all the caveats i ran into
djpowellSPAMless at NOSPAMflogeeks.orgSPAM
Anybody got any rumours ?
this is not meant to be flame-bait. only meant
to correct someone who is spreading FUD.
to the poster: get a clue! maybe if you spent
more than 5 seconds learning Solaris you wouldnt
post such clueless garbage.
like any other OS, including linux, you must
download patches for your OS. this is nothing
new. default partitioning needs to be fixed??
why the fuck are you using default partitioning?
get a clue! partition your drive according to
your needs for the system! everyone who has been
using *nix knows this. a webserver will have
a different partitioning scheme than a database
server, than a workstation, than a.... ad nauseum.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
I hope this speeds up a port for Sparc. My Ultra 5 is gathering dust...
-------------- Sig files are stupid...
Yes, I can certainly believe for your workload you're happier with Solaris -- but I guess as a longtime (since Sun 2 w/ Barco sidecar) Sun workstation user for first ECAD, and now signal processing and pattern recognition research, they've slid from a status symbol to a legacy box -- in the compute server domain as well as the desktop. Then again, maybe we're just too small a market and they're happy to send us off to Linuxland ...
Seeing as this will undoubtedly degenerate into a flame war anyway, here are my two cents why I always install Solaris on our Suns (and yes, Linux just about everywhere else).
1) NFS
2) automount (linux automount still doesn't have a NFS "host" mount)
So, please fix those two, and I'll dump Solaris entirely (oh, and make Cadence release a Linux port of verilog)
I posted the story last week, but I guess it wasn't newsworthy enuff for Rob (poke, jab).
Sun is supporting the configuration on
the E10K. Yup, Seymour Cray's design, bought by Sun, 128 procs on 18 boards. Yum.
As much as i like Linux (using it since 1.2.13),
I think that only the uneducated would believe that this would be a 'wise' configuration for a
$1-plus-million machine.
I mean, linux makes a great web/print server (among other things), but it just isn't powerful or stable enough (yet) to utilize a machine this big.
This is most likely what Sun is counting on, I would imagine- to show linux's shortcomings compared to Solaris and the big, bad-ass servers that it was designed to run on.
you were able to read the message, right? its not the end of the world.
does linux scale to 128 cpu's? it will definately not do better on the high end. BTW linux just plain fucking sucked on an IPC. installed OpenBSD and the increase was amazing. maybe they finally fixed the mmu slowdown bug. anyhow OpenBSD uses less overhead. watch this get flamebait so fast now.
well
How much would you pay for a 64 bit cpu? What about the monitor? Does your PC come with a 17" sony monitor?
don't judge a Sun server by CDE login or dtlogin in general. CDE was, is, and probably always will be a resource pig.
If you want to compare, run the same window manager as you're used to under Linux and start comparing from there, as opposed to evaulating CDE performance.
Unfortunately for Sun, their customer base demands eternal binary compatibility, so they're more limited in what they can fundamentally fix in the OS and how fast they can allow an os version to be obsoleted.
Linux can break binary compatibility whenver someone finds a bug in glibc
ex: try to find a jdk2 for linux glibc2.0 or libc5 -- they don't exist. Now try finding jdk2 for Solaris 2.6 or 2.5.1 - they exist.
Linux distros are going to start facing the same corporate pressures for eternal binary compatibility. I hope that it doesn't slow down innovation (but it probably will!)
Posts tend to be get the moderation easier, if they:
Start the post with:
"I'll know I'll get [flamed/moderated down/shot/offtopic -1] for this, BUT..."
That'll get the attention of the moderators. Now post something pro-[controversial] (ie. Sun, Microsoft, AOL) voila! instant [Insightful/Interesting] marks up for ya.
I got a couple of Srac 2's really cheap. Since Solaris is crawling them, I put RedHat 6.0 on them it works great.
It is lot of fun to see a that Linux simulates a black backgound with a small lightgray font (Sun's hardware has a white background with black text be default).
-- Stephan Richter
I don't usaually flame people but guacamole could've at least pulled his head out of his ass before submitting that dud.
Hmm... I'm presently writing this on a Ultra2 with 1GB of RAM. When I get home, I can play with my E450 with 4 300Mhz processors and only 2GB of RAM. The 450 has two elite3D UPA cards in it and an extra 8 PCI slots I haven't filled yet. Now, tell me this is a underpowered workstation you dolt!
Yet
Another
Fucking
Lame
Sun
Move
if I had my choice of supporting 1000 Sun ultra2's running solaris or linux, I'd still choose Solaris.
... and I can script the entire install with pre and post-processing so that I don't need to do anything.
One of the main reasons is jumpstart. I can install or re-image systems to a number of different OS versions from a single server.
Try that with linux. Every version from every vendor has changed the nfs/http/ftp install rules somehow, and some of the cd's can't be mounted and nfs installed because of an improper directory structure ON THE CD for network installs (hello, redhat 6.1!). or lack of support for non-cdrom based installs (hello, Corel!)
This is a CRITICAL WEAKNESS OF LINUX. How freaking difficult is it for someone to fix this?
Maybe I'm jumping the gun... maybe only X86 linux can't support something like jumpstart becuase the X86 hardware carries around so much legacy baggage like the BIOS. Honestly, there are so many things about x86 hardware that really SUCK! It's too bad that it won't go away.
How can you change the bios settings on an x86 server when you're connected to a console server on the serial port?
How can you see any BIOS hardware error messages from a serial port connection during boot up?
Does anybody else find this weird? I mean, how well does Linux actually compare to Solaris on Sun boxes? It would seem to me that the group most capable of writing an OS for a particular platform is the group actually developing the platform itself...
Just how well can a general purpose OS like Linux really stand up against a highly optimized, well matured, platform specific (yes, I know x86 Solaris exists, but that was really an after thought), targetted OS like Solaris? Solaris has years of dedicated, well funded, talented effort poured into it *for* the Sun platform.
Personally, if I had a big ol' 4500 sitting in my cube, I'd probably *want* Solaris on it. I love Linux, but sometimes there are other choices that make a bit more sense. I'm not sure Linux on Sun machines makes sense.
There's a big difference. (Sparc vs UltraSparc, 32 vs 64 bit, etc)
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
this should be old news. sun knows that solaris just falls short when compared to redhat sparc. redhat sparc outscales, outperforms and just plain kills solaris in the enterprise computing market.
with open source to boot.
of course why anyone would use ultrasparc/linux is beyond me since a dual celeron machine can easily smoke any sun Enterprise on the market today.
but at least linux is an enterprise os for that overpriced, underpowered hardware.
Linux the choice of a GNU generation
Memory managemant sucks. Threading sucks. I really hope 2.4 will be better.
This is *great* I have been looking forward to sun doing this for a long time. I have been running s-linux for quite some time, but with sun help, maybe they will start supporting random hardware like the random video cards sun has been putting out but not releasing specs for.
-b
Umm... proof please? Show me the money.
the E450 is IMnsHO
a server not a workstation!
Sun Enterprise 450 Server
Frank
Yes! You will be handsomely rewarded.
Mmh, a few months ago there was an
Ask Slashdot
about this problem.
There a some mobos which can do it.
Frank
Try that with linux. Every version from every vendor has changed the nfs/http/ftp install rules somehow, and some of the cd's can't be mounted and nfs installed because of an improper directory structure ON THE CD for network installs, or lack of support for non-cdrom based installs.
While I don't doubt that Sun's JumpStart is a cool thing, you're really comparing apples to oranges here. Or rather, one kind of apple to all the kinds of fruit in the world. You complain that each Linux VAR does things differently, and claim that proves Linux is harder to install then single-vendor Solaris.
Well, duh. Of course a multiple-vendor Linux solution is going to be harder to manage then a single-vendor Solaris solution. Consider how hard installing all the different UNIXes from companies like Sun, DEC, HP, IBM would be! Linux is easy by comparison.
If, on the other hand, you compare installing Solaris with JumpStart on 100 machines to installing Red Hat Linux 6.1 with Kickstart on 100 (similar) machines, I think you will get a better picture of what things are like. I don't doubt that JumpStart would still win, but the comparison would be fair.
How can you change the bios settings on an x86 server when you're connected to a console server on the serial port?
You need special hardware to do that on x86. No different from Sun, really, it is just that all Suns include said hardware out of the box.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Will backdown be porting their JDK to this? I only search for Natalie Portman pRon using Sun's HotJava browser, and it needs Java.
Funny, I just looked this info up.
Sun Ultra 10
------------
proc: UltraSPARC IIi
speed: 440MHz
ram: 256MB
disk: 9.1G EIDE 7200RPM
graphics: PGX24 (24-bit)
OS: Solaris 7 (2.7)
sound: none?
monitor: 17in (Sun monitor _required_)
network: 10/100
cdrom: 32x
cost: $6350
source: www.sun.com
VA LiNUX StartX MP
------------------
proc: Two Intel Pentium IIIs
speed: 500MHz (each)
ram: 256MB
disk: 18.2GB SCSI
graphics: Matrox G200 AGP
os: VA Linux OS 6.0
sound: Soundblaster 16
monitor: (extra, adds ~$400)
network: Intel EEPRO 10/100
cdrom: 40x
cost: $3443
source: www.valinux.com
The same, better, or twice the system for almost half the money?!?!?
What am I missing?
I don't see how Sun gets away with this. Maybe the won't for much longer?
(PS: Slashdot need the pre tag in html mode!)
I administrate high-end production Sun servers for a living. While I like Linux, I can safely say that it has a very long ways to go to catch up to the high-end features of Solaris. Heck, I'd be surprised to see Linux support Dynamic Reconfiguration. (Dynamic reconfiguration is the magical ability to add hardware to a system while it is running, or remove it, or make changes. Like replacing memory that has ECC errors, or adding CPUs and such.)
That's just a sample, though. Solaris is very robust and feature filled. And the support behind it is excellent. The only thing that really stands out as not-so-hot are the prices. WHEW! They are HIGH when you get to the big servers (E3000-Starfire).
Running a Starfire on Linux? Forget it. Might as well throw away a half a million dollars in additional hardware features.
Linux as a desktop on Sparc hardware? Yeah. The kernel for Solaris 7 and below is really geared more towards high-end hardware. Linux is lean and mean and up for the task here. Not a lot of complex stuff to deal with.
Would I install Linux on my Sparc desktop? Not a chance. I've got a dual-processor ultra-60 with a Creator3D graphics card, SCSI drives, solid-state drive, and the high-end wide-screen monitor which is driven at 1920x1200 resolution. A power-user configuration. Needless to say, Linux doesn't have the drivers for it. And there isn't a chance in hell I'm going to give up my screen's real estate to run Linux. [As to an earlier comment, YES, I once wondered if it was what was making my eyes BLEED. No, it wasn't.]
Sun has some awesome hardware, and having gone through a non-disclosure presentation of future Sun hardware down the road, I can say that they've got one hell of a roadmap. It is a shame that SPARC Linux just can't hold a candle to the support of Solaris. Heck, if SPARC Linux was on the ball, they could even provide features that Sun has held back on (like multiple domains inside an E4500).
This move was done to done to satisfy their ISP customers. The kind that run the low-end sparcs in banks as web servers (or even those cool 1 RU jobs that they started selling earlier this year). It isn't for the mainstream datacenter customer. Justifying Linux vs. Solaris for any project would be suicide in a large production environment. Linux just isn't there... YET.
Is anyone pushing Linux on the high end -- datacenter features?
I think the title gets the gist of this post, but I'll elaborate a bit. Do you want a desktop system that you can use to play games on, type up a term paper, and email your parents for more money? Great, get an Intel machine and congratulate yourself.
A workstation isn't meant for that. Sun usually sells workstations as part of a package deal. Yeah, the IDE disk drives are slow... but guess what? The fiber disk array sitting behind the U3000 server you do most of your work on is pretty friggin fast. They sell the low-end workstations in bulk to corporations/universities that want to get all their machines from the same vendor. Plus, the workstations run Solaris, so the admin doesn't have to worry about incompatibilities between the workstation and the server.
In short, if you're using a workstation for a web server... well... you're probably a few crayons short of a full box.
--Mid
I wonder if McNealy still thinks Linux is a "great way to get the wrong answer".
Personally, I run solaris on my Ultra Sparc, and also on dual cpu x86 box, linux on my alpha, and also on my other x86 box, so I have to admit I really like both. I think that Solaris is much more polished, however, and I tend to think that it scales better than linux does - just from personal experience (On the same hardware, I can run more tasks simultaneously and have adequate response under Solaris than linux. Just my experience, with the standard configurations of both, ie, no tweaking/recompiling the kernel...)
My question is this:
What are the chances that linux on Ultra Sparc will support cards which don't currently have support in Solaris, and what are the difficulties in porting those drivers to Solaris from there. In particular, I'm wondering about the 3com ethernet card (the 3c50x series). These cards are supported under Solaris for x86, but not on Ultra Sparc. I think that linux would be great at supporting popular hardware that might be *really* useful on Sparc hardware.
Another question: How different are the driver models for Solaris and linux? How much work would it take to make a driver for on OS to work under the other (Solaris/linux)? Also on a related note: whatever happened to the Unified Driver Model that Sun/HP/SGI were promoting about two/three years ago?
A multi-proc Ultrasparc would probably run best under Solaris 2.7 (64-bit). Plus, if you have a big beast like an E4000 or E450, you'll probably use it for something big, like an Oracle database or something similar, in which case the binaries are going to be for Solaris, anyway.
On a lot of the older hardware, especially the Sparc and SuperSparc vintage machines, Linux is a better choice.
Why?
Because Solaris is designed to scale across many processors, and have lots of memory to play in, and to take advantage of newer hardware. Sure, it'll install on a lot of the older machines, but it was written for the newer ones.
Since you can compile the Linux kernel, you can configure it for the metal on which it runs. Plus, Linux is smaller than Solaris, and handles the older hardware much better. It might not scale up as well as Solaris, but it scales *down* much better.
I expect it won't be long before Linux challanges Solaris on it's home turf, though. I figure in about 2 years Linux will be able to make a Starfire hum.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Thank you Redhat and Sun for releasing the 64bit UltraSparc compiler. Now I can use my Ultra's in 64bit mode instead of wasting it away with 32bits.
well, i read the documentation first - took a couple of minutes to open the case: 2 screws, clamshells open; pull the jumper, close. reboot from CD & take a coffee. of course, you can do the OS upgrade on a few hundred boxes at once :-)
/point/ about solaris is that it is not as fast as NT or Linux at low load levels. but NT & Linux both break under higher loads. solaris does not. this is proven. solaris is also reliable (it is qualified for use in telecoms apps - few other things are).
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I've noticed that some Universities are getting rid of *SOME* Sun workstations. Here at Texas A&M University, the math department computer labs are almost all Intel based PII/PIIIs (depending on when the lab was installed) running Linux with KDE. They are used mostly for Maple although I believe Matlab is installed. What used to be Sun workstations are being replaced with cheaper Intel alternatives.
There are some areas where the high priced workstations are needed, such as complex visualizations and number crunching, but for the most part Intel/Athlon/Alpha powered machines will due quite nicely.
We do have Sun and SGI servers. Two 6-way Ultra Enterprise 5000s (one with 167MHz CPUs and one with 250s) with 1gb memory support the students that use UNIX. Home directories are stored on a 4-way Enterprise 3000. Two AlphaServer 2100 4/275 support OpenVMS users. And there are a ton of support servers (web servers, mail, dialin, storage). I do not see these being replaced with cheaper alternatives any time soon.
There is a place for Linux in lower end applications, but there is no way that a Linux server could handle the tasks that the above servers have to deal with from 43,000 students + faculty and staff every single day of the year.
I am posting from an Ultra 10 with 256Mb of ram creator 3D card etc. They made 1 flaw with these boxen. IDE. They should have gone with scsi. The disk access slows these down a great deal. I would rather have nice SCSI seagate 10000 rpm drive in here.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
The problem with the TurobSparc goes beyond the bootloader. The mmu is slightly different to all other 32bit SPARC processors, and none of the SparcLinux developers have acces to one.
If Sun or anyone else could donate a SS5 170Mhz - or if RedHat could buy David Miller one - then there might be some movement on theis issue. I for one would like to upgrade my SS5 110Mhz to a TurboSparc chip, but I haven't even looked into the possibility of doing this thanks to the inability to use Linux on it.
I do recall that NetBSD runs on the Turbo, so perhaps you want to look into installing it, and then adding RPM to give it that RedHat feel.
Chris Wareham
What a joke! Check out http://bugzilla.redhat.com and see for yourself. Most people can't get RH 6.1 to install on a Sparc 2, IPX, IPC and LX, including myself. The install freezes after installing the 3rd or 4th RPM... It's a documented bug. Too bad RedHat hasn't deemed it important enough to fix for the past 60 days... If Sun is smart, they will sell RedHat 6.0 and refuse to sell RedHat 6.1 until Redhat gets their act together...