Now that IBM has finally agreed to support Solaris on the x86 hardware platform, Sun executives are hoping that this may be the catalyst for a range of other agreements. Top of the list is having IBM become the first top-tier OEM for Solaris, but IBM officials are pouring cold water on the idea.
Windows is the #1 desktop (in market share).
Solaris is the #1 UNIX…
It only makes sense.
And Solaris now would run nicely on IBM’s own Xeon/Opteron hardware.
(and remember, Linux fans, GNU’s Not UNIX, on purpose)
It’s possible I guess. IBM was already slowly phasing out AIX in favour of Linux, which is why they’ve been so involved in helping develop Linux (contributing things like JFS and SMP capabilities). I don’t know why Sun would want that though, it would cut into Sun’s hardware sales, since IBM is such a juggernaut in the industry.
Other than increased hardware sales though, what advantage would it be for IBM?
A consistant platform to base all their software upon, and unlike Linux, they won’t beholden to the distributions. If IBM and SUN work together on Solaris, and IBM simply have an OEM contract, and support Solaris on x86, POWER, Itanium, it would provide them with a clean platform to base all their software upon – a operating system designed to be platform independent from day one.
“Solaris is the #1 UNIX… ”
Pretty much all of the Unix market has been broken down by Linux and “open” solaris is a late reaction by Sun to that
“(and remember, Linux fans, GNU’s Not UNIX, on purpose)”
remember that GNU itself is a quirky humor and Linux is not GNU
I wonder if in the future if their is an OpenSolaris port to Power chips, if IBM will support it?
It won’t happen as long as IBM’s own AIX is still in use.
It would be really neat, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if volunteers ported OpenSolaris to POWER, or at least PowerPC. It would let people get more use out of the last remaining PowerPC based Macintoshes (including XServes) and those FreeScale based PegasOS boards.
–JM
How do you know that. That would be like saying IBM won’t push Linux while AIX is still in use (it did happen). If IBM sees an advantage to this, they will push it, AIX or no AIX.
there is a project fo open solaris http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/power_pc/ to port solaris on ppc (and so on power). i think is an interesting move and ibm shuold support this; after all they have the “power everywere” slogan….
“Other than increased hardware sales though, what advantage would it be for IBM?”
What advantage is it to IBM to sell Windows? That’s a lot of money that goes to Microsoft right off the top. Microsoft is the weathiest software-only (not counting XBox) company on Earth, and I bet that really annoys the hell out of IBM to be making the situation only worse with more Windows licensing.
That’s why I claimed if IBM continues to sell Windows, it makes equal sense for them to sell Solaris. If IBM thinks Solaris is unnecessary, then they need to re-think Windows, too. Linux and Solaris are better servers than Windows, and IBM certainly has the resources to polish off GNOME or KDE even beyond what Sun, Novell, or Red Hat already have.
If IBM, Sun, Novell, Red Hat, etc. all sell largely compatible desktops around GNOME/KDE, Mozilla, and OpenOffice.org, and push it really hard, Microsoft will be a distant memory within a decade.
…. make off every IBM + Linux sale?.
Since IBM doesn’t ship Debian or Gentoo or any other non-big-company backed version of Linux with its products, why should they care about whether Sun makes money off SOlaris?