Hear, hear. What's everyone whingeing about? As long as the advertisement and terms and conditions are clear up front, then I don't see what the problem is. I'm happy to pay the market rate for the bandwidth I use.
You're a little out of date. Solaris ships with the Sun Freeware CD, which has pretty much everything you need. You can also download all the packages from sun.com.
Excellent and growing market share in the Unix and enterprise server market, have just released an excellent little Linux server, have clear differentiation over the Linux story that other vendors push, fantastic developer support and great Unix experience, with all the Unix expertise and services that make big, worldwide companies buy from large vendors like Sun.
Sun is more than just hardware. You need people to advise, set up install. I doubt these low end Linux PCs are aimed at the general consumer, but at the customers coming to people like Sun and saying 'help us get rid of Microsoft on the desktop'. Sun Ray are often a good solution, particularly for call centres and similar enviornments.
Think of a large company with 10000 PCs, that is seriously considering a move to Linux on the desktop. If they're going to do it, they need to do it through a big vendor, who is more than just a box shifter (Dell) or a vendor who backs off their support to tiny companies like Suse (IBM).
This is a market Sun need to be in, because if they don't sell the kit, someone else will.
What savings do you think you're getting on the Intel hardware over, say, the newer Sun kit such as the v480 and v880? The newer Sun boxes are more scalable, more powerful and have better support if needed and similar prices to the Intel kit.
Don't you need anything more than a few 1 or 2 cpu boxes, with no requirements for scaling in the future?
I'd seriously look at Sun Rays from Sun. There are always some issues moving to thin client, but you should get what you want to achieve - lower cost office computing environment and freedom from MSFT where appropriate. Where you need MSFT use Tarantella or Citrix, prefereably the former!
There are some cost savings here -
http://www.sun.co.uk/success/publicsector/2002/p en with.html
If you talk to Sun they've got various TCO models that help justify the move.
The main issues are migrating people's mindsets, something that training from Sun or a third party can help with.
The route I'd suggest is a small Sun Ray proof of concept to show that things work. Next stage is to migrate all the back end file server and naming stuff over. There'll be investments to make, but you should save money over time.
Absolutely. Ironically a lot of customers won't adopt something that is free of charge. It suggests the company providing it has no commitment to the product. You're not going to migrate 10000 desktops form MS Office to StarOffice if you don't believe that Sun are serious about supporting it. OpenOffice will be free, StarOffice will be branded and supported.
Better yet would be migrating to Sun's Sun Rays! You can use Gnome or KDE - unless your politics dictate that it has to be Linux. Cheaper than the PC model and cheaper than X Terminals.
If the question is 'is Unix ready for the business desktop' I think the answer is a resounding yes!
The whole point of the Cobalt's is that they are appliances and are not the general purpose servers that everyone else ships. That's how Sun compete in this low end part of the market.
If you need a general purpose server, go for Solaris and Sparc.
There's nothing sad about it. The whole point is that the Cobalt boxes are appliances. What processor is your router running? Probably not the latest of its kind, but it does the job it's intended to do. This is the philosophy behind the whole range. It's designed to do a job, it does it. If it runs out of power, they're low cost, so buy another and stick it in your rack.
They've still got the cost of a fat client architecture. If you want a Unix desktop and lower TCO Sun's Sun Ray could do this, if you're interested in the business benefits and are less bothered about the politics of your software licences.
Companies who want something that's faster than Apache and that's supported by Professional Services teams who can design and implement a solution, hence the fact that iPlanet and other web servers are still very much with us.
I think it's important to separate home from office use.
I wouldn't give my mum Linux to use at home. At work, people should use whatever's there. Everyone at Sun happily uses CDE, there's no reason why people in other offices shouldn't use CDE, KDE, Gnome, whatever.
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It's 'pronunciation' actually. Please sort your Engish out. Spelling's really not that hard.
Hear, hear. What's everyone whingeing about? As long as the advertisement and terms and conditions are clear up front, then I don't see what the problem is. I'm happy to pay the market rate for the bandwidth I use.
What problems were you having with your Sun? Find it hard to believe you were experiencing lots of crashes.
Oh for God's sake, every time Solaris is mentioned this old chestnut comes up.
IT DOES NOT TAKE 4 HOURS TO ISNTALL A USABLE SOALRIS SYSTEM.
Learn to use JumpStart, learn to use Flash archives. User the CDs that ship with Solaris. Read some manuals.
You'll take Max OS X over Solaris any day? Twit.
You're a little out of date. Solaris ships with the Sun Freeware CD, which has pretty much everything you need. You can also download all the packages from sun.com.
Nonsense.
Excellent and growing market share in the Unix and enterprise server market, have just released an excellent little Linux server, have clear differentiation over the Linux story that other vendors push, fantastic developer support and great Unix experience, with all the Unix expertise and services that make big, worldwide companies buy from large vendors like Sun.
Sun is more than just hardware. You need people to advise, set up install. I doubt these low end Linux PCs are aimed at the general consumer, but at the customers coming to people like Sun and saying 'help us get rid of Microsoft on the desktop'. Sun Ray are often a good solution, particularly for call centres and similar enviornments.
Think of a large company with 10000 PCs, that is seriously considering a move to Linux on the desktop. If they're going to do it, they need to do it through a big vendor, who is more than just a box shifter (Dell) or a vendor who backs off their support to tiny companies like Suse (IBM).
This is a market Sun need to be in, because if they don't sell the kit, someone else will.
What savings do you think you're getting on the Intel hardware over, say, the newer Sun kit such as the v480 and v880? The newer Sun boxes are more scalable, more powerful and have better support if needed and similar prices to the Intel kit.
Don't you need anything more than a few 1 or 2 cpu boxes, with no requirements for scaling in the future?
If you're looking for something that's low cost to admin, have you looked at Sun Ray?
There are numerous Universities out there using Sun Ray.
All the 'computers' are the same - they are all Sun Rays, completely removing the need to get the best machine by getting in early!!!
I'd seriously look at Sun Rays from Sun. There are always some issues moving to thin client, but you should get what you want to achieve - lower cost office computing environment and freedom from MSFT where appropriate. Where you need MSFT use Tarantella or Citrix, prefereably the former!
p en with.html
s .h tml
There are some cost savings here -
http://www.sun.co.uk/success/publicsector/2002/
http://www.sun.co.uk/success/retail/2001/pauley
If you talk to Sun they've got various TCO models that help justify the move.
The main issues are migrating people's mindsets, something that training from Sun or a third party can help with.
The route I'd suggest is a small Sun Ray proof of concept to show that things work. Next stage is to migrate all the back end file server and naming stuff over. There'll be investments to make, but you should save money over time.
It's free for education users.
It'll be paper based, 'honesty' licensing.
Erm, if you wanted a general purpose Linux server, why didn't you get one? The Cobalts are appliances and aren't meant to be fiddled around with.
Why it took you three days to find a guide to creating your own PKGs when the technote's on the Cobalt developer website is a little beyond me.
Also, the Raq 3 was not even brought out when Sun owned Cobalt, so it's not really a Sun product either!
As for the 'somewhat tarnished' reputation - tarnished in front of whom?
All the things you've described are available on all Unix platforms, there's nothing Linux specific to any of them.
Absolutely. Ironically a lot of customers won't adopt something that is free of charge. It suggests the company providing it has no commitment to the product. You're not going to migrate 10000 desktops form MS Office to StarOffice if you don't believe that Sun are serious about supporting it. OpenOffice will be free, StarOffice will be branded and supported.
Better yet would be migrating to Sun's Sun Rays! You can use Gnome or KDE - unless your politics dictate that it has to be Linux. Cheaper than the PC model and cheaper than X Terminals.
If the question is 'is Unix ready for the business desktop' I think the answer is a resounding yes!
The whole point of the Cobalt's is that they are appliances and are not the general purpose servers that everyone else ships. That's how Sun compete in this low end part of the market.
If you need a general purpose server, go for Solaris and Sparc.
There's nothing sad about it. The whole point is that the Cobalt boxes are appliances. What processor is your router running? Probably not the latest of its kind, but it does the job it's intended to do. This is the philosophy behind the whole range. It's designed to do a job, it does it. If it runs out of power, they're low cost, so buy another and stick it in your rack.
They've still got the cost of a fat client architecture. If you want a Unix desktop and lower TCO Sun's Sun Ray could do this, if you're interested in the business benefits and are less bothered about the politics of your software licences.
Companies who want something that's faster than Apache and that's supported by Professional Services teams who can design and implement a solution, hence the fact that iPlanet and other web servers are still very much with us.
Get you sister a Cobalt Qube - easy to admin and set up, runs Linux under the hood and is very cheap.
Where are you getting an 8 way Intel server for 20K?
I'm afraid your cost estimates for Sun boxes with 2 cpus are out by about $440,000.
Unless they're buying a $999 SunBlade 100 of course...
I think it's important to separate home from office use.
I wouldn't give my mum Linux to use at home. At work, people should use whatever's there. Everyone at Sun happily uses CDE, there's no reason why people in other offices shouldn't use CDE, KDE, Gnome, whatever.