The only people using Linux prior to 1995 are the folks on Slashdot with 4-digits-or-less user IDs.
Yeah, baby!! Let me ramble on about how old I am and how long I've been using Linux, Unix, BSD, SunOS and AppleDOS... My childhood highlights included being amazed at my uncle's TV with a built-in PONG. Win95's "advances" had little to do with competition from Apple and more to do with killing off OS2. "Chicago" (as win95 was known) was supposed to have Longhorn, Copeland and Dvorak in it back in 93. Dvorak was a technology that spit out crap that anyone else could guess occasionally or rephrasing someone else's thoughts into manifest fact. Copland and Longhorn were supersets of high brow concepts that were sold to early versions of Dvoraks and have never been released in the wild. Shit, I'm just writing 'cause I saw how many posts there were and hell we should make a run for the record on slashdot. MEEPT!! Beer does not agree with you after a big ass malt. Well, in closing, I hope we can find the dongles that allow us to run the x86 version of MacOS X on my non-Apple boxen. I love the OS [hate one button mice] and look forward to more details on Apple's new plans. Pssst... Apple... send me a demo box and I'll port a couple apps.
Is this proof of a weakening Wintel alliance? It is very strange to hear such an admission from Otellini. Perhaps he is upset that MS spent so little effort in the past securing PCs that the trend now is away from them [and Intel's bread and butter].
That's frickin' funny. The only indicator that you have about him would be his/. id which is in the 40 thousand range while yours is in the 600 thousand range and you assume he's young. Nice deductive skills.
BTW, everyone used to clamor for opening standards so that Linux could be compatible with the big boys. It was all in the name of choice. Now that Linux is a big player, it's not so much about choice anymore. Hell, most of the kids on here happily install fedora or whatever with their binary drivers and think nothing of it.
There are other valid licenses out there besides the GPL. Just because someone chooses the Apache, BSD, or MIT license doesn't make them bad. The source is there... use it. Learn from it. Make a compatible implementation for your own OS or project. You just have to play by their rules if you want to COPY the source. Just because you like the restrictions the GPL put on you doesn't mean I like them.
IANAL, but I didn't see anything that precluded including GPL drivers with OpenSolaris. Sun added the ability to use Xfree86 drivers with Solaris 9. Why couldn't they accomplish much the same with any other type of driver? They could include them with the other disk of GNU tools they already include.
This reminds me of a story I saw once about Stravinsky. He was asked once why he charged so much for his sheet music. He replied that he was collecting the money for himself and Mozart, Beethoven...
You should spend your money developing software and just give it away because it will enhance your reputation. For the respect of your peers, in other words.
I don't need everyone's respect. I need time with my family, a nice home, a retirement fund and my own brewpub. Ok, I can do without retirement, but I couldn't care less if everyone on/. or comp.*.kernel thinks I'm elite.
The other business model (trying to hide your source code) results in distrust between you and your users.
That is not the only other model. There is also LGPL, MPL, BSD and apache to name a few models (or licenses). Visit OSI to see the actual licenses, but they range from one extreme to the other. Most people on/. believe GPL is really as free as it gets. A Microsoft binary license is probably near the other end (though I've seen some bizarre ones). This is really a philosophical argument that dates back to at least BSD vs GPL days. If you can't see the merits of the other side, your a blind follower and we need not continue talking. I happen to think the BSD license is the most unencumbered because you are free to do with it what you wish as long as you gave attribution in the source. You can hide away your changes if you want to be a jerk or you can give them away to everyone. That's freedom. Pass the Kool Aide, please.
It also means a support nightmare in ten years when your software is still limping along but no one understands it and you're nowhere to be found.
Hmm... ten years ago software was written for Win95 (maybe), Winnt 3.51, Solaris 2.4, MacOS 7.1 (7.5 was new) or even DOS (shudder). If you are still running an app from that era for anything business critical, you are probably running it on a machine of that era (my dentist office for instance). I know plenty of people who had Vax boxes running apps for years after their "lifespan". Good luck finding someone who'll be able to fix whatever issue you run up against for less money than it'll take to move to a new "supported" app. 10 year old apps are like motorboats. They are holes to throw money into without any guarantee that you'll get to stop throwing money and enjoy the lake. My $.02
In St Louis, the satellite pic here still shows the Edward Jones Dome as the "TWA" dome. The map shows the correct name, however. The TWA was removed in 2001 when TWA ceased to exist. The new stadium for the Cardinals is missing too. This is not exclusive to the satellite pics though. The "map" version still shows spruce street around the stadium which no longer exists either, so I wonder if the map gets updated at the same time as the satellite imagery.
I think maybe you're missing the point of a college education. The training you are espousing is appropriate for a technical college or work training. A university education ensures that the individual is well-rounded and able to participate in most aspects of society. I would hate to see all the brilliant people who graduate from universities unable to converse on a broad range of topics simply because they were only trained in one discipline. University education is about more than you and your career. It's about creating people who can make rational decisions about their lives and public policy because they have a basic knowledge of art, literature, science, math, philosophy and even religion. You are perhaps looking for an apprenticeship. The blacksmith is in the next town over -- look for the coal smoke.
Spoken like someone who has never owned a nice car. Chryslers are just not the same as BMWs, Mercedes or other high-end cars. I didn't buy mine to impress you or anyone. I tried one at my wife's insistance and fell in love with the handling and attention to details. In fact, the high end cars are nearly always the first to get the best new safety features.
As far as the high-end analogy applying to computer hardware, why not? How many inane box mod stories are posted so we can see someone who fit their PC in a fishbowl or added xenon headlights to their old AT case? People are willing to spend more to mod their box, just not pay more to start. I liken this to people who spend thousands to rice out their Dodge neon. Why?!? At least start out with something nice and improve on it.
Damn type-R Neons keep getting in my way when I try to get anywhere fast.
I am suprised it took me this long to find a linux fanboy post. Wow. The zealots are getting lazy around here. OTOH, it was a nice effort to bash Windows, Apple and everyone who owns a Mac in so few words.
Umm, here's the UltraSparc page which states that USIV scales to ~1000 CPUs. I think the number is actually 1024, but hey close enough, huh. If there was a market, they could probably extend that out to a multiple with some specialized hardware, but who cares! This is all like measuring cock sizes. USIV specs
And yes I am an employee of Sun. I am not a marketing drone though. If you have any doubt about that, read my past posts. There are a few since I've been here since around the beginning.
Because it's there when the OS is fubar. If you think a BIOS will do "everything else", you probably haven't used OBP or anything like it before. You NEED to check devices for many reasons. One of the best reasons is probe-scsi or probe-fcal. Wonder why you can't boot off your device? Check if your scsi/ata/fibre controller can even see it. Want to see if there is network activity on the interface you are trying to boot from? Easy. Do that on a BIOS. While some x86 servers come with a serviceable serial interface for their BIOS, they all have real limitations or proprietary interfaces which have a learning curve. OBP/OF and others are forth based and really standard in implementation. You can get on any Sun box and the OBP is going to be the same. An OS is great for all the things, but you need to get there first.
I worked in a porn shop for 2 days. One day was a short one for training. The next was the grave shift in a 24hr spank shop. They wanted me to clean the arcade stalls and I just couldn't. Why people have to play games like "see who can shoot the highest on the wall" is beyond me. I quit when the manager came in the next morning. [He had to clean the stalls.]
This reminds me of when I worked at a video/music store to pay for college. We used to get a kick out of seeing how far into the porns people got. The gals were very disappointed in a couple of otherwise decent looking guys when they brought back theirs with only ~10 mins watched. One guy even got in trouble for mocking someone to their face. He wasn't the brightest of fellows.
M$ is not inherently evil, but you are making a flimsy justification for IE's integration. While there was plenty of papers ascribing the browser as the next desktop, there is no reason why MS could not have simply created a separate browser that stood on its own merits. Browsers were VERY unstable until near 2000 (some cynics will agrue that they are still not stable) and the "standards" for the metadata they were interpreting was changing almost weekly. Why would M$ engineers make a decision to tie that sort of environment directly into their OS graphical interface? An easier (and more elegant solution) would have been to simply add an API set that would allow improvements to IE and other browsers to be implemented with little impact on the rest of the computing experience. The decision was made with malice toward other browsers and was an attempt (successful) to kill the 3rd party browser market. This is not my opinion. It was proven in court.
What makes you think "that stuff gets ported" is that easy? I've seen quite a lot of people say that as if it'll just happen. I've looked at dtrace and talked to some engineers about what it does and how. It is NOT a simple proposition to bring this to any OS. It is very cool and hooked deeply into Solaris. [It'll actually dynamically change assembler code on a running thread. I've watched it change the assembler on a running Solaris system call and just thought: "Cool".] Check out some of the interesting dtrace scripts being written out there by volunteers. There is a lot of user support for some of the new features in Solaris 10. Should Linux have this feature? Yes. It is a great way to look closely at how apps are running on your system. Will Linux have it soon? I don't think so. At least until late in the 2.7 branch if the core developers are determined to get it done. Linus' dismissive attitude doesn't lead me to believe he has seen the light on this one. I hope he doesn't start to suffer from the NIH (not invented here) syndrome as well.
There are a LOT of (legal) concert recordings that are available online. Many old GD fans look online trying to find that one concert with that they absolutely need. How is grokster or anyone supposed to keep track of which songs are legal to swap?
$40k for servers, huh? Do you know what Big Iron means? Not to be too critical, but the topic here is not a dozen x86 boxes to run Linux. We are talking about big, mission-critical servers that cost way over a half million dollars. I'm thinking mainframes, AS/400, superdomes, F25k's and such. While linux may be nice to run on them (I'm going to try to load gentoo on a 15k coming up) it's not really relevant to the discussion. Heck, Dell doesn't even make anything that approaches Big Iron or even "Big Dog" as you refer to them. At least as people who work in banking, telecom, et cetera think of them. I'm even reluctant to group HP and Sun equipment into the category, but they're at least in the ballpark.
Ummm... Solaris comes with most of those packages now. Even if the ones you want aren't included, just put them on the jumpstart server of on an NFS share like/usr/dist or something. Are you new to this? That's a pretty good endorsement for Sun if that's your only complaint.
I work at Sun. I have for many years. I have my own opinion of where things are headed which is not based off of hallucinations from the company Kool Aide. I agree with a lot of your comments. Since I don't post a lot here I'll just rant for a while...
I was one of many who were completely pissed when they cancelled Solaris x86 development. Users and internal employees howled for months until someone pulled their head out of their ass and recommitted to the platform. On a couple of fronts, they did a good job with it. They didn't turn up the hype machine to 11 when it clearly wasn't ready for use and they decided to incorporate open source where it was needed (a la the Xfree86 drivers and gnome). Is it ready now? Not really. Not if you are looking for the/. users desktop (especially those with ids >500000). It may never fit that bill.
However, the incessant whining on/. about Sun's halfhearted support of Linux needs to be tempered with a reality check. Sun has the number one Unix OS in volume. Unix developers write apps for Solaris because it is the largest OS base. Solaris is the only reason anyone buys a Sparc box. Selling Sparc boxes is Sun's main form of income. Everyone stop and put 2 and 2 together here...
Sun cannot show any waivering on its support of Solaris. Period. Keeping developers on Solaris is vital to its survival. Without the apps can't give the slightest impression that they are waivering on Solaris' future. Sure, they can sell linux. They can't run around touting how much better Linux is than Solaris, though. That would be suicide. [Beside the fact that it's just not true.]
It is a delicate tightrope act that others (HP in particular) have not done well. Does anyone know where HP is going? One day they are in love with Itanium, the next they are for Xeon. Everyone please move your HP-UX apps to Itanic (oops) cause that's where we are going except for workstations now.
I believe Sun was waiting for the 64-bit transition that didn't happen. It's coming, but slower than anticipated. Solaris 10 will be one of how many true 64 bit OSes (user and kernel land) for x86-64? There's no HP-UX or AIX out there for x86. [BSD zealots punchin your timecards now.] OS choice is a Good Thing. That's was one of the mantras when I started using Linux (slackware baby!)
[BTW I know the 64bit version is not due until Q1 or Q2 next year. Since I am going to get flamed anyway, does linux support 64bit apps yet? Not just support for system memory above 4GB, but a full 64bit API set? Just curious as I don't know.]
For years I warned people on/. that RedHat was a for-profit company that would eventually abuse the very people it claimed to help. It's a shame that what happened to Unix in the Unix wars looks to be a possibilty for Linux too. The only hopes I ever had for truly compatible distributions were either Debian or one of the United Linux type groups. None of them worked. Debian is an example of how not to organize a group. They lost any chance of being the base from which other distros are created by always being 6 months behind even their own schedule.
It is a connected world and Solaris will never be the volume leader. It must interoperate with other OSes. That is the general direction it is headed. As examples see Janus, NFS, Java, Liberty Alliance and the Microsoft settlement. Sun can be a middleware company, a support services provider and a high-end hardware provider. IBM is an example. They are trying to differentiate themselves from IBM by formenting the idea that IBM locks you in and Sun gives you choices. Is that true? I admit I am biased on that so I'll shut up.
Where are they going? I think they/we are headed in the right direction finally. There are still a lot of areas where we are screwing up. I get pissed off at management often enough to keep looking at my alternatives. But, altogether things are getting brighter for Sun.
I really don't like either major candidate as well as I have liked previous choices. I find myself to be a kind of liberal libertarian. Strange huh?
Who I'd really like to vote for is... ME! But, I can't. Besides being just a few years too young for the job according to the Constitution, I have way too many skeletons in the old closet. I have had a lot of fun in my days. I don't want to be reminded of that drunken night with what's her name!
Unless I repent and become a born again Christian teetottler for a few years, run a few failed businesses and marry a librarian! Then all I have to do to get off the hook is look contrite when I say I did some regrettable things when I was young but I'm better now. The press would surely let me slide with that kind of answer, right? Then I could hit the stump around the country talking about my "values". Of course they'll buy it! 'Cause I'm from a ranch in Texas! Well, actually I was born in New England and went to Yale, but damn it I picked up an accent along the way! They have to go for it right?
Maybe not. Who would believe a load of crap like that? I guess I'll have to vote for Kerry since I can't run.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually the A5x00 fibre channel boxes had only one cord and three power supplies! Great design I say.
Yeah, baby!! Let me ramble on about how old I am and how long I've been using Linux, Unix, BSD, SunOS and AppleDOS... My childhood highlights included being amazed at my uncle's TV with a built-in PONG.
Win95's "advances" had little to do with competition from Apple and more to do with killing off OS2. "Chicago" (as win95 was known) was supposed to have Longhorn, Copeland and Dvorak in it back in 93. Dvorak was a technology that spit out crap that anyone else could guess occasionally or rephrasing someone else's thoughts into manifest fact. Copland and Longhorn were supersets of high brow concepts that were sold to early versions of Dvoraks and have never been released in the wild.
Shit, I'm just writing 'cause I saw how many posts there were and hell we should make a run for the record on slashdot. MEEPT!! Beer does not agree with you after a big ass malt.
Well, in closing, I hope we can find the dongles that allow us to run the x86 version of MacOS X on my non-Apple boxen. I love the OS [hate one button mice] and look forward to more details on Apple's new plans.
Pssst... Apple... send me a demo box and I'll port a couple apps.
Is this proof of a weakening Wintel alliance? It is very strange to hear such an admission from Otellini. Perhaps he is upset that MS spent so little effort in the past securing PCs that the trend now is away from them [and Intel's bread and butter].
That's frickin' funny. The only indicator that you have about him would be his /. id which is in the 40 thousand range while yours is in the 600 thousand range and you assume he's young. Nice deductive skills.
BTW, everyone used to clamor for opening standards so that Linux could be compatible with the big boys. It was all in the name of choice. Now that Linux is a big player, it's not so much about choice anymore. Hell, most of the kids on here happily install fedora or whatever with their binary drivers and think nothing of it.
There are other valid licenses out there besides the GPL. Just because someone chooses the Apache, BSD, or MIT license doesn't make them bad. The source is there... use it. Learn from it. Make a compatible implementation for your own OS or project. You just have to play by their rules if you want to COPY the source. Just because you like the restrictions the GPL put on you doesn't mean I like them.
IANAL, but I didn't see anything that precluded including GPL drivers with OpenSolaris. Sun added the ability to use Xfree86 drivers with Solaris 9. Why couldn't they accomplish much the same with any other type of driver? They could include them with the other disk of GNU tools they already include.
This reminds me of a story I saw once about Stravinsky. He was asked once why he charged so much for his sheet music. He replied that he was collecting the money for himself and Mozart, Beethoven ...
That is not the only other model. There is also LGPL, MPL, BSD and apache to name a few models (or licenses). Visit OSI to see the actual licenses, but they range from one extreme to the other. Most people on
This is really a philosophical argument that dates back to at least BSD vs GPL days. If you can't see the merits of the other side, your a blind follower and we need not continue talking. I happen to think the BSD license is the most unencumbered because you are free to do with it what you wish as long as you gave attribution in the source. You can hide away your changes if you want to be a jerk or you can give them away to everyone. That's freedom.
Pass the Kool Aide, please.
Hmm... ten years ago software was written for Win95 (maybe), Winnt 3.51, Solaris 2.4, MacOS 7.1 (7.5 was new) or even DOS (shudder). If you are still running an app from that era for anything business critical, you are probably running it on a machine of that era (my dentist office for instance). I know plenty of people who had Vax boxes running apps for years after their "lifespan". Good luck finding someone who'll be able to fix whatever issue you run up against for less money than it'll take to move to a new "supported" app. 10 year old apps are like motorboats. They are holes to throw money into without any guarantee that you'll get to stop throwing money and enjoy the lake.
My $.02
In St Louis, the satellite pic here still shows the Edward Jones Dome as the "TWA" dome. The map shows the correct name, however. The TWA was removed in 2001 when TWA ceased to exist. The new stadium for the Cardinals is missing too. This is not exclusive to the satellite pics though. The "map" version still shows spruce street around the stadium which no longer exists either, so I wonder if the map gets updated at the same time as the satellite imagery.
I think maybe you're missing the point of a college education. The training you are espousing is appropriate for a technical college or work training. A university education ensures that the individual is well-rounded and able to participate in most aspects of society. I would hate to see all the brilliant people who graduate from universities unable to converse on a broad range of topics simply because they were only trained in one discipline. University education is about more than you and your career. It's about creating people who can make rational decisions about their lives and public policy because they have a basic knowledge of art, literature, science, math, philosophy and even religion. You are perhaps looking for an apprenticeship. The blacksmith is in the next town over -- look for the coal smoke.
Spoken like someone who has never owned a nice car. Chryslers are just not the same as BMWs, Mercedes or other high-end cars. I didn't buy mine to impress you or anyone. I tried one at my wife's insistance and fell in love with the handling and attention to details. In fact, the high end cars are nearly always the first to get the best new safety features.
As far as the high-end analogy applying to computer hardware, why not? How many inane box mod stories are posted so we can see someone who fit their PC in a fishbowl or added xenon headlights to their old AT case? People are willing to spend more to mod their box, just not pay more to start. I liken this to people who spend thousands to rice out their Dodge neon. Why?!? At least start out with something nice and improve on it.
Damn type-R Neons keep getting in my way when I try to get anywhere fast.
I am suprised it took me this long to find a linux fanboy post. Wow. The zealots are getting lazy around here.
OTOH, it was a nice effort to bash Windows, Apple and everyone who owns a Mac in so few words.
Can anyone tell me if this is loaded with spyware? I'm up to my neck with a project and don't have the normal time to research this.
My apologies for the lazy attitude today, but somebody had to ask.
Umm, here's the UltraSparc page which states that USIV scales to ~1000 CPUs. I think the number is actually 1024, but hey close enough, huh. If there was a market, they could probably extend that out to a multiple with some specialized hardware, but who cares! This is all like measuring cock sizes.
USIV specs
And yes I am an employee of Sun. I am not a marketing drone though. If you have any doubt about that, read my past posts. There are a few since I've been here since around the beginning.
Because it's there when the OS is fubar. If you think a BIOS will do "everything else", you probably haven't used OBP or anything like it before. You NEED to check devices for many reasons. One of the best reasons is probe-scsi or probe-fcal. Wonder why you can't boot off your device? Check if your scsi/ata/fibre controller can even see it. Want to see if there is network activity on the interface you are trying to boot from? Easy. Do that on a BIOS. While some x86 servers come with a serviceable serial interface for their BIOS, they all have real limitations or proprietary interfaces which have a learning curve. OBP/OF and others are forth based and really standard in implementation. You can get on any Sun box and the OBP is going to be the same. An OS is great for all the things, but you need to get there first.
I worked in a porn shop for 2 days. One day was a short one for training. The next was the grave shift in a 24hr spank shop. They wanted me to clean the arcade stalls and I just couldn't. Why people have to play games like "see who can shoot the highest on the wall" is beyond me. I quit when the manager came in the next morning. [He had to clean the stalls.]
This reminds me of when I worked at a video/music store to pay for college. We used to get a kick out of seeing how far into the porns people got. The gals were very disappointed in a couple of otherwise decent looking guys when they brought back theirs with only ~10 mins watched. One guy even got in trouble for mocking someone to their face. He wasn't the brightest of fellows.
M$ is not inherently evil, but you are making a flimsy justification for IE's integration.
While there was plenty of papers ascribing the browser as the next desktop, there is no reason why MS could not have simply created a separate browser that stood on its own merits. Browsers were VERY unstable until near 2000 (some cynics will agrue that they are still not stable) and the "standards" for the metadata they were interpreting was changing almost weekly. Why would M$ engineers make a decision to tie that sort of environment directly into their OS graphical interface? An easier (and more elegant solution) would have been to simply add an API set that would allow improvements to IE and other browsers to be implemented with little impact on the rest of the computing experience.
The decision was made with malice toward other browsers and was an attempt (successful) to kill the 3rd party browser market. This is not my opinion. It was proven in court.
Yes. It is in Solaris 10. Here's an interview that addresses your question that I pulled up from Google in a few seconds of effort on my part.
What makes you think "that stuff gets ported" is that easy? I've seen quite a lot of people say that as if it'll just happen. I've looked at dtrace and talked to some engineers about what it does and how. It is NOT a simple proposition to bring this to any OS. It is very cool and hooked deeply into Solaris. [It'll actually dynamically change assembler code on a running thread. I've watched it change the assembler on a running Solaris system call and just thought: "Cool".]
Check out some of the interesting dtrace scripts being written out there by volunteers. There is a lot of user support for some of the new features in Solaris 10. Should Linux have this feature? Yes. It is a great way to look closely at how apps are running on your system. Will Linux have it soon? I don't think so. At least until late in the 2.7 branch if the core developers are determined to get it done. Linus' dismissive attitude doesn't lead me to believe he has seen the light on this one. I hope he doesn't start to suffer from the NIH (not invented here) syndrome as well.
There are a LOT of (legal) concert recordings that are available online. Many old GD fans look online trying to find that one concert with that they absolutely need. How is grokster or anyone supposed to keep track of which songs are legal to swap?
$40k for servers, huh? Do you know what Big Iron means? Not to be too critical, but the topic here is not a dozen x86 boxes to run Linux. We are talking about big, mission-critical servers that cost way over a half million dollars. I'm thinking mainframes, AS/400, superdomes, F25k's and such. While linux may be nice to run on them (I'm going to try to load gentoo on a 15k coming up) it's not really relevant to the discussion. Heck, Dell doesn't even make anything that approaches Big Iron or even "Big Dog" as you refer to them. At least as people who work in banking, telecom, et cetera think of them.
I'm even reluctant to group HP and Sun equipment into the category, but they're at least in the ballpark.
Sun sells nvidia cards in their x86 workstations that run either Solaris x86 or linux, so yes.
Ummm... Solaris comes with most of those packages now. Even if the ones you want aren't included, just put them on the jumpstart server of on an NFS share like /usr/dist or something. Are you new to this? That's a pretty good endorsement for Sun if that's your only complaint.
I work at Sun. I have for many years. I have my own opinion of where things are headed which is not based off of hallucinations from the company Kool Aide. I agree with a lot of your comments. Since I don't post a lot here I'll just rant for a while...
/. users desktop (especially those with ids >500000). It may never fit that bill.
/. about Sun's halfhearted support of Linux needs to be tempered with a reality check. Sun has the number one Unix OS in volume. Unix developers write apps for Solaris because it is the largest OS base. Solaris is the only reason anyone buys a Sparc box. Selling Sparc boxes is Sun's main form of income. Everyone stop and put 2 and 2 together here...
/. that RedHat was a for-profit company that would eventually abuse the very people it claimed to help. It's a shame that what happened to Unix in the Unix wars looks to be a possibilty for Linux too. The only hopes I ever had for truly compatible distributions were either Debian or one of the United Linux type groups. None of them worked. Debian is an example of how not to organize a group. They lost any chance of being the base from which other distros are created by always being 6 months behind even their own schedule.
I was one of many who were completely pissed when they cancelled Solaris x86 development. Users and internal employees howled for months until someone pulled their head out of their ass and recommitted to the platform. On a couple of fronts, they did a good job with it. They didn't turn up the hype machine to 11 when it clearly wasn't ready for use and they decided to incorporate open source where it was needed (a la the Xfree86 drivers and gnome). Is it ready now? Not really. Not if you are looking for the
However, the incessant whining on
Sun cannot show any waivering on its support of Solaris. Period. Keeping developers on Solaris is vital to its survival. Without the apps
can't give the slightest impression that they are waivering on Solaris' future. Sure, they can sell linux. They can't run around touting how much better Linux is than Solaris, though. That would be suicide. [Beside the fact that it's just not true.]
It is a delicate tightrope act that others (HP in particular) have not done well. Does anyone know where HP is going? One day they are in love with Itanium, the next they are for Xeon. Everyone please move your HP-UX apps to Itanic (oops) cause that's where we are going except for workstations now.
I believe Sun was waiting for the 64-bit transition that didn't happen. It's coming, but slower than anticipated. Solaris 10 will be one of how many true 64 bit OSes (user and kernel land) for x86-64? There's no HP-UX or AIX out there for x86. [BSD zealots punchin your timecards now.] OS choice is a Good Thing. That's was one of the mantras when I started using Linux (slackware baby!)
[BTW I know the 64bit version is not due until Q1 or Q2 next year. Since I am going to get flamed anyway, does linux support 64bit apps yet? Not just support for system memory above 4GB, but a full 64bit API set? Just curious as I don't know.]
For years I warned people on
It is a connected world and Solaris will never be the volume leader. It must interoperate with other OSes. That is the general direction it is headed. As examples see Janus, NFS, Java, Liberty Alliance and the Microsoft settlement. Sun can be a middleware company, a support services provider and a high-end hardware provider. IBM is an example. They are trying to differentiate themselves from IBM by formenting the idea that IBM locks you in and Sun gives you choices. Is that true? I admit I am biased on that so I'll shut up.
Where are they going? I think they/we are headed in the right direction finally. There are still a lot of areas where we are screwing up. I get pissed off at management often enough to keep looking at my alternatives. But, altogether things are getting brighter for Sun.
I really don't like either major candidate as well as I have liked previous choices. I find myself to be a kind of liberal libertarian. Strange huh?
... ME! But, I can't. Besides being just a few years too young for the job according to the Constitution, I have way too many skeletons in the old closet. I have had a lot of fun in my days. I don't want to be reminded of that drunken night with what's her name!
Who I'd really like to vote for is
Unless I repent and become a born again Christian teetottler for a few years, run a few failed businesses and marry a librarian! Then all I have to do to get off the hook is look contrite when I say I did some regrettable things when I was young but I'm better now. The press would surely let me slide with that kind of answer, right? Then I could hit the stump around the country talking about my "values". Of course they'll buy it! 'Cause I'm from a ranch in Texas! Well, actually I was born in New England and went to Yale, but damn it I picked up an accent along the way! They have to go for it right?
Maybe not. Who would believe a load of crap like that? I guess I'll have to vote for Kerry since I can't run.