Submitted by Sun Microsystems announced Monday that its longtime chief executive Scott McNealy is stepping down from the helm and will be succeeded by the struggling computer and software company’s No. 2 executive, Jonathan Schwartz. McNealy, 51, a Silicon Valley luminary for years, will continue as chairman of the company he co-founded in 1982. Schwartz, 40, will keep the title of president.
Can’t say I blame the changing of the guard – SUN needs a shot in the arm to stay competitive and on the ball – they make rockin’ systems, but they need a bit more innovation and a marketing push to keep them moving forward.
Cheers Scott!
Bill
maybe companies like sun and sgi etc. should think about becoming the next apple (aka, become a consumer oriented desktop player). they have the kewl look, and the name branding, they could use ‘that’ open source os as a foundation (which both already support), and build a market that could keep them alive. don’t get me wrong, many of friends have worked for these companies, its just i think they have seen they day and need some up-to-date methodologies to bring them back.
You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about…Solaris has absolutely no interest in the desktop realm, Solaris is a server oriented OS and has no place on the desktop. Period. Nor do they want to be…their place is in big iron on the server and that’s what they need to focus on. Who the hell wants to run Solaris as a desktop OS? Nobody, which is perhaps why McNeally was outted.
Unix has been relegated to backend for quite some time now…a great OS, but only useful as backend material.
that’s what they said about linux too. Why would someone want him ousted because he wanted JDS to run ontop of solaris too? It’s a good OS for a workstation too, which I think has a desktop.. I think they’ve been using it on the workstation for a long time. correct me if im wrong.
Edited 2006-04-25 05:32
Solaris is a server oriented OS and has no place on the desktop. Period
The problem with your position is this. The “free” nature of Linux and greater popularity mean more to-be *unix administrators are using it.
This creates a larger base of “Linux guys” to hire from.
When Joe Geek gets hired at Acme IT and someone says “uh, build us a web server/database/network file system etc.”
Joe Geek is most likely going to select what he knows, and more and more today, that is going to be Linux.
Yes, there are other reasons for Linux moving in on Solaris, but believe it or not the “desktop” is one of them.
Edited 2006-04-25 06:06
>Who the hell wants to run Solaris as a desktop OS?
Well, that could be said for Linux and FreeBSD etc too.
Personally, I think it could be made attractive. Sun can still control ‘real Solaris’ and deploy it with any number of closed drivers, even if there is a preference among the Open Solaris crowd to have open source drivers – and Solaris has had a stable kernel interface for binary drivers for a while.
This should enable Sun to consider leveraging its relationship with NVidia, ATI, etc *as a potential or actual chipset customer* (and as a company that can deal with NDAs) to give it a major advantage over Linux distro vendors, and to compete with Apple for number 2 slot on the desktop.
After all, such a deployment could have *all* the application ‘advantages’ of Linux/BSD, *plus* the vendor supplied driver solutions that halp MacOS and XP run well on contemporary hardware.
James
> Who the hell wants to run Solaris as a desktop OS?
Nexenta, OpenSolaris, what are they doing? Ain’t those targeted on desktop?
“.Solaris has absolutely no interest in the desktop realm,”
Guess you never heard of this:
http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/
McNealy is really starting to care about sun’s stock price since he’s a major investor in the company and wall street says it will go up without him. Besides, he gets more free time to golf.
Schwartz uses the same policies, he is pretty arrogant too. His entire open sourcing issue is pretty good but he needs to copy off competitors like ibm dell, etc.. and start preinstalling windows server and other stuff. They are pouring money into something that isn’t bringing much profit.
They need to split off the software division cash cow or sell it to oracle and concentrate on microsystems! Software and not being open is what screwed them over after the dot com crash anyway (everyone else started selling small systems with windows and linux but they reffused!) Ellison wanted an OS didn’t he?
Alternatively, sun could actually sell their hardware to OEMS.. become the chip manufacturer but mcnealy and schwartz preach the idea of “why buy the parts for a car when you can buy the whole car?” its stupid. If they can sell chip servers they can take them apart and sell cheap parts. So.. I think without doing this you can say good-bye to SPARC… although their new SPARC systems rock!
They have to be flexible and do what their competitors are doing. They probably could have made a lot more money if they sold chips like motorola and ibm did. but no, mcnealy and his arrogance.
If you talk to schwartz he agrees with anything you say, any suggestion. The guy is kinda open minded but I’m afraid he will still be controled by the puppetmaster mcnealy. Maybe theres a reason why he was unable to find a job as a CEO outside the company like everyone else did?
They’re not doing a good job at marketing products either. They’re pouring money into the participation age ad campaign with schwartz’s name ritten all over it.
They should have turned the company around by now years ago and they are still talking about a major turn around. Too bad all the good execs left and became successful CEOs of other companies (google?). Since all the good ones are gone, I would suggest hiring one from outside the company.
So.. I think without doing this you can say good-bye to SPARC
Right! I believe Schwartz is instead going to try making massive reductions in costs by becoming more “open” and crutching on the R&D budget of AMD. A shift by Sun more towards AMD would continually make SPARC a less practical solution in price/performance.
Fast forward a few years and you have them pretty much trying to sell Solaris/x86 as “Big Iron” against Linux and Windows on the _same_ hardware. How long with that last?
Right! I believe Schwartz is instead going to try making massive reductions in costs by becoming more “open” and crutching on the R&D budget of AMD. A shift by Sun more towards AMD would continually make SPARC a less practical solution in price/performance.
I doubt it, SUN, internally, is split into two camps; people who realise that the future of SUN is Opteron where it makes sense, and SPARC where it makes sense – Opteron for where SPEC/FP results are important, and UltraSPARC T2000/T1000, where throughput is the higher priority.
The otherside you have the SPARC facists who think that the whole world should revolved around SPARC, SUN, irrespective of how shit their performance is when compared to the current crop of x86 chips on offer – these people would keep pushing more and more money into a large SPARC development, irrespective of whether there is a decent ROI, and the costs could be justified in increased sales and profit margins.
The problem is with SUN is that their decisions are too political, too ‘lets keep everyone happy in the company’ rather than having a CEO with balls the size of watermelons and willing to say – “here is my vision, this is how we’re going to get there; if you don’t like it; the door is on the left”.
The problem is, there isn’t one decent manager in the whole company, and sorry, Jonathan is one that needs to also leave as quickly as possibly, preferably with no golden handshake.
If it isn’t for the pathetic marketing manager, is the hardware manager who can’t even publicly promote his products properly, its the software manager who doesn’t even bloody know what software they sell or how it is used in the enterprise!
The whole SUN boat is a rickety ship of holes; its going to die, the question isn’t whether it does, but when, and how many people/companies are dragged down with it.
The otherside you have the SPARC facists who think that the whole world should revolved around SPARC, SUN, irrespective of how shit their performance is when compared to the current crop of x86 chips on offer – these people would keep pushing more and more money into a large SPARC development
That about sums it up. It happens with Solaris as well. Many in Sun continue to hang on to the coat tails of SPARC and Solaris no matter what, regardless of the truth staring them in the face. I’ve been criticised for mentioning Cobalt before, but it’s true. They screwed a very good business because it was perceived as threatening SPARC.
If Sun can create something of a critical mass with Solaris and OpenSolaris then fine, but what’s happening there is pretty much the same thing – hanging on to Solaris regardless of what’s staring them in the face.
The problem is, there isn’t one decent manager in the whole company, and sorry, Jonathan is one that needs to also leave as quickly as possibly, preferably with no golden handshake.
Same with a lot of companies, including Novell.
True, true. Solaris is a good product, the fact is, they left it to languish, and their biggest mistake was cutting off x86 development.
Now here we are, 2-3 years later, and they’re STILL catching up on the x86 with basic features that have existed in Linux for years; and they’re going to get even further behind the eigthth ball as they’re not concerntrating on the failings of Solaris.
There seems to be an awful lot of people who seem to have fallen into the SUN reality distortion field, that ‘everything is ok’ and ‘perceived technological superiority will win out’, when in reality, none of the hype so far has actually translated into whats important – profit.
SUN needs stop kidding itself and start being serious, because all I’ve seen so far is a large company in denial of its failings; who would rather bad mouth its competition than sitting down and working out why they lost a customer to HP, why SPARC sales, in terms of revenue generation is lower, why people aren’t willing to make a move to Solaris x86, why most of the x86 machines they ship are still pre-loaded with Linux.
Edited 2006-04-25 18:09
Scwhartz will be taking over, part of the reason for this change is because some people (investors etc.) felt McNealy needed to make more drastic changes to improve profits (Read: cut costs).
So expect some major changes at Sun in the name of cost cutting which will probably equate to a short term stock gain (wall street loves job cuts).
We can always expect to see R&D get hit on pink slip day, and with Sun moving more and more to AMD/x86, I would expect future R&D on the UltraSPARC CPU is going to suffer.
In my opinion, if the UltraSPARC begins falling behind x86 they are only going to find themselves in a much more difficult position.
Edited 2006-04-25 06:30
Well then I hope someone else will take the GPL design of the Sparc and keep improving them with os without Sun
The thing I fear most is that if Sun bites the dust, so does Java, and Java is about the only thing they did right in the last 10 years. I’m not sure whether a change of CEO alone can turn Sun around, but it certainly confirms that they see the need for change. In my opinion, what they would have to do is:
1) Scrap the SPARC platform. Offer overpriced SPARC support service for those who still need it – there’s no need to keep prices down in a business that’s going to die anyway, so the more money made the better (at least from Sun’s perspective).
2) Sell commodity hardware servers running Solaris and support them well. Solaris isn’t that bad as a server OS and in some cases it’s preferred over Linux just because it’s backed by a large company.
3) Keep on improving Java, because it is widely used in business, it’s about the only alternative to .NET, and because it’s one of most versatile programming environments available.
Scrap SPARC? Take one look at HP and their “enterprise strategy” and you will see the reason why Sun should stay with SPARC. Maybe it doesn’t perform quite as fast as POWER, but Sun trying to be another Dell is not too smart. I know that I can take Solaris 10 and put it not only on the latest hardware I have, but some of the oldest. We have several E4500’s and similar machines that we can milk a couple of more years out of before replacing them. Sun knows this and that is one reason why people come back to them.
Not every computing problem can be solved by throwing a bunch of “cheap x86 boxes” at it. And that is why Sun sells their X2100, X4100 and X4200 servers, to fill the demand for people who want an x86-64 solution.
There may be life in SPARC yet. I’m willing to believe that Colm knows what he’s talking about: http://www.stdlib.net/~colmmacc/category/niagara
(Also willing to believe that there’s more performance to wring from tuning Apache to Solaris).
I suspect that actually for the same money you might go faster with Opteron cores, but this is in the right ballpark, and the power consumption is on the money.
(Have to hand it to David Miller for that SPARC port and the Ubuntu SPARC guys, don’t you?)
Tell you what though – if I was Sun, right now, I’d pull the plug on Java on Linux completely, and rather publicly. Or at least announce it will EOL it in 12 months. Sun has a competitive operating system in that space, and there’s no sense in helping Linux eat its lunch – better to use existing Java on *NIX on Intel as a lever to get Solaris 10+ in to replace Red Hat, and never mind the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the wilderness. They don’t have long to do this, because GCJ and classpath *is* improving – but currently has pretty much zip deployment in Sun’s actual customer base for live use.
I think the only way SPARC will last if Fujitsu and Sun get more OEMS to use the chip, or it will keep shrinking in marketshare. Both of them aren’t good in marketshare. But I think it will take atleast 10 years for them to kill it off (to cash in on upgrades from existing customers) but maybe I’m wrong. IBM has been pretty successful selling POWER servers while Apple’s share had been declining in the powerpc world.
But IBM also did better marketing than both of the sparc companies.
Sun also released SPARC notebooks and such that directly compete with the few SPARC notebook companies out there–it will essentially put them out of business and lead to reduction in marketshare I think.
Schwartz believes that if they have a volume Solaris Os on x86 then magically it will become a volume OS on sparc. I don’t see this happening. I mean, windows on itanium didn’t take off like it did on x86, did it?
I stand firm that they should split off their software division but this new CEO apparently wants sun to become more of a software company that gives away software.
I think the only way SPARC will last if Fujitsu and Sun get more OEMS to use the chip, or it will keep shrinking in marketshare. Both of them aren’t good in marketshare. But I think it will take atleast 10 years for them to kill it off (to cash in on upgrades from existing customers) but maybe I’m wrong. IBM has been pretty successful selling POWER servers while Apple’s share had been declining in the powerpc world.
But IBM also did better marketing than both of the sparc companies.
Or SUN and Fujitsu drop their respective SPARC processors and come up with a grand unified stratergy.
The fact is, SUN had an embedded chip, the UltraSPARC IIe; which could have easily been pitched against the PowerPC; 500Mhz UltraSPARC IIe consuming 13watts; the problem isn’t they never pushed it.
Now, there is nothing wrong with pushing the ‘whole system in the box’ as Scott did (I’m a big supporter of ‘everything you need under one roof’), but at the same time, you shouldn’t do that at the exclusion of possibly making money off selling components to third parties so that they can create appliances which are outside the core concerntration of the parent company.
IBM know they’ll never make set top boxes, and hence, they’re quite willing to design, manufacture, and sell those components to those companies who need the parts.
Sun also released SPARC notebooks and such that directly compete with the few SPARC notebook companies out there–it will essentially put them out of business and lead to reduction in marketshare I think.
SUN don’t make these laptops, they’re merely rebranded ones already out there; and quite frankly, they need to rapidly drop the price to make them atleast reasonable when considering you can do everything you want, on a x86 machine running Solaris 10, without too much fuss; couple that with a SPARC -> x86 morphing software, which is being rumoured about, one askes, where is UltraSPARC given its poor price/performance/features.
Schwartz believes that if they have a volume Solaris Os on x86 then magically it will become a volume OS on sparc. I don’t see this happening. I mean, windows on itanium didn’t take off like it did on x86, did it?
Its a good idea, but like I said, their marketig is terrible, their hardware support is crap-tacular, their willingness to ‘bribe’ over companies to create software for Solaris is non-existant.
I stand firm that they should split off their software division but this new CEO apparently wants sun to become more of a software company that gives away software.
Why? the whole idea is to leverage their software to push hardware sales; its a good idea, if they did it correctly, the problem is simple, they have terrible managers, pathetic sales team, and a non-existant marketing team.
All of this adds up to the issues SUN is having today.
The thing I fear most is that if Sun bites the dust, so does Java
Official Java might slowly die, but it would set Jikes, Classpath and other open source java initiatives on fire.
http://jikes.sourceforge.net/
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/
Lets be fair to the man, he made a HUGE company!
As with many at the time he didn’t forsee the bubble bursting. Sun was lucky in the fact that they were already big and well respected enough to ‘survive’.
I do hope they have a resurgance though, I always liked sun hardware… could never afford it, but always liked it :-p
While Sun has a dominating role, Java is safe, if Sun goes down, IBM or others in the JCP will take over. I have more fear for things like OpenOffice, the outright excellent Studio Creator2 (the first RAD Tool Sun ever did right) and Netbeans which are all while opensource projects (well Creator2 is not but soon hopefully will be) are hugely dependend on Suns Money.
Unfortunately, if Sun crashes and burns, members of the JCP would have no way to continue its development, since they don’t own the complete source code to J2SE, don’t own the trade marks, don’t have the relicensing rights to the involved patents, etc.
In that case, Java(TM) would be stuck at the last version published, as long as noone buys the respective rights to sources, brand, patents, etc. from Sun’s hypothetical pile of dead ‘intellectual property’.
cheers,
dalibor topic
Basically companies are not buying the big computers they used to and Sun needs to find another way to create revenue. The way they will cut costs is easy: massive layoffs. Just wait it will happen soon. I have heard rumors that Sun might start taking on more linux products similar to Redhat’s Enterprise edition. Whether the market needs/wants another Linux OS company right now could be a problem for them.
Edited 2006-04-25 10:39
Maybe Sun could BUY Redhat. It used to be the one they supported, it’s the most successful Linux company, and a better fit than inside Oracle, IMO.
Basically companies are not buying the big computers they used to and Sun needs to find another way to create revenue. The way they will cut costs is easy: massive layoffs. Just wait it will happen soon. I have heard rumors that Sun might start taking on more linux products similar to Redhat’s Enterprise edition. Whether the market needs/wants another Linux OS company right now could be a problem for them.
Linux isn’t the solution to their problems, just as embracing Windows isn’t the solution; the problem is simply this; they’re a hardware company who relies heavily, in terms of revenue generation on SPARC, but the fact is, the amount of R&D to keep the SPARC ship afloat is pretty hard to justify given the poor returns – the problem will keep getting worse as Intel and AMD start to squeeze SUN in terms of features being added and being made comparable to SUN’s line up.
Couple the above with an abysmal marketing team and shocking sales team, you can see how SUN Microsystems is actually killing itself rather than it being simply a situation of ‘they had their time, they’re on their way out’.
In terms of software, they need to look at the competition and do a basic matrix; what do we have, what do they have, and where do we fall short; what features do they have, which we don’t, why are they winning customers with their products, and ours aren’t.
Its pretty basic stuff, but it appears that SUN would rather ignore the obvious and instead run off to the EU to whine about perceived ‘anti competitive behaviour’ of its competition rathern than accepting the fact they’ve done little to improve the hardware support for Solaris, fix the abysmal software portfolio of Solaris x86 both as a workstation (contra to the bullcrap spread here, it is a workstation operating sytem AND a server) and server, or even attempted to bring Solaris kicking and screaming into the 21st century in reference to the autodetecting, /dev creation and mounting of devices.
As for reducing the head count, when I hear the number of people employed, it either tells me that either SUN is really crappy at allocating its employees to set tasks or they have a hell of alot of incompetant sales people with a very small number of programmers actually doing something – assuming these programmers actually do something more besides sitting around whining that they can’t get hardware specifications because upper management is unwilling to throw money at the problem.
There is a really, really good joke in there somewhere about the power of the Shwartz…
and they’re STILL catching up on the x86 with basic features that have existed in Linux for years; I have to disagree with this sentiment. In fact, Solaris has a variety of features that no other OS has. Solaris is so far ahead with advanced features, most sysadmins are still learning their power. Solaris has the most advanced optimizing C compiler, it can run Red Hat and Red Hat applications natively, it supports compartmentalization in Zones, it has a complete Grid package, it has the most advanced profiling optimizer, it has the most advacned file system, ZFS. There are more. These features are deep and not for hobbyists or desktop use. These applications are highly productive for larger business. Larger businesses have longer evaluation and adoption curves. It takes time to build these markets.
Solaris is truly a highly advanced OS. But the learning curve is non-trivial.
Sun’s challenge is to market and sell these features. That’s the challenge that will make or break Sun in the coming years.
1) Use the reply system; its there for a reason, use it.
2) I have a Dell 8400, Solaris kills the USB controller at boot time, resulting in having no key board funcationality, meaning, I can’t install it.
I did actually eventually get it to install, pluging an dunplugging at random moments.
Sorry, this is the ‘advanced operating system’ that can’t even get USB detection working properly? the so-called ‘operating system’ that had $500million thrown at it, and it still can’t the basics correct.
And lord knows, don’t get me started on their antiquated shit which they called a sound API, or the /dev that seems to be stuck in the static UNIX world of 15 years ago!
What will make or break SUN is whether they shut up, and listen to people like ME who could be potential customers and resellers, but instead go with FreeBSD and Linux, because they developers who maintain these titles actually give a shit about their ‘end user’ – regardless of the fact as to whether they’re directly paid by them.
Sorry, someone needs to set alight the SUN Microsystems ivory tower, push the programmers out the top window, and get them actually talking to customers and finding out why so many think Solaris is shit, why their market share is shit, and why no one gives a toss about the direction of Solaris x86 given its abysmal standing in terms of priorities in the so-called ‘SUN”s grand plan”.
Funny, I don’t have any problems with USB on a SPARC, the very hardware you recommend Sun dump. And if you are that concerned about problems with Solaris x86, have you ever tried posting your concerns on one or more of the forums on OpenSolaris.org? The e-mail I see on a daily basis from a variety of forums looks to me like people are getting Sun’s attention and they are actually fixing things in both SPARC and x86.
Funny, I don’t have any problems with USB on a SPARC, the very hardware you recommend Sun dump. And if you are that concerned about problems with Solaris x86, have you ever tried posting your concerns on one or more of the forums on OpenSolaris.org? The e-mail I see on a daily basis from a variety of forums looks to me like people are getting Sun’s attention and they are actually fixing things in both SPARC and x86.
I subscribed to the Solarisx86 group on Yahoo – Yes, there are SUN engineers on that; to put it politely, I was better off singing to myself for all the good it did.
All I hear from engineers from SUN are excuses; lets stop the excuses and start getting some results. ATI and Nvidia drivers that support consumer and professional graphics card; how about a sound API that isn’t a complete joke – like getting rid of that shit Java based sound mixer for one, and one and for all, purge that damn Java mediaplayer.
Funny, I don’t have any problems with USB on a SPARC, the very hardware you recommend Sun dump. And if you are that concerned about problems with Solaris x86, have you ever tried posting your concerns on one or more of the forums on OpenSolaris.org? The e-mail I see on a daily basis from a variety of forums looks to me like people are getting Sun’s attention and they are actually fixing things in both SPARC and x86.
I subscribed to the Solarisx86 group on Yahoo – Yes, there are SUN engineers on that; to put it politely, I was better off singing to myself for all the good it did.
All I hear from engineers from SUN are excuses; lets stop the excuses and start getting some results. ATI and Nvidia drivers that support consumer and professional graphics card; how about a sound API that isn’t a complete joke – like getting rid of that shit Java based sound mixer for one, and one and for all, purge that damn Java mediaplayer.
Sorry, this is the ‘advanced operating system’ that can’t even get USB detection working properly? the so-called ‘operating system’ that had $500million thrown at it, and it still can’t the basics correct.
Have you heard of this concept called a bug. A defect in software that is not normal operation.
So Solaris x86 fails to run properly on your Dell laptop. So thier USB implemention is not advanced enough?!! Hardware and software have bugs. Sometimes drivers need to workaround hardware bugs. Linux doesn’t run well on my Toshiba laptop either but XP does so XP is more advanced than linux, right?
Care to show me one OS without a single bug. I can bet you any amount of money that any OS o piece of software you think is advanced enough I can find a case where it does not work right.
And lord knows, don’t get me started on their antiquated shit which they called a sound API, or the /dev that seems to be stuck in the static UNIX world of 15 years ago!
What is wrong with the /dev on Solaris? Have you heard of devfs in Solaris and /devices directory, auto configuration? Solaris is UNIX and customers that millions require those standards be met.
All I am hearing from you is whining on an open board, where no one can actually help you from Sun. Sun provides channels for customers like “you” to express your concerns. Show me evidence that you have pursued those means and I will tolerate your whining.
Here is the entry from the HCL on BigAdmin concerning the Dell 8400 which is certified as Test Suite Level 1 using Sun’s HCTS tool:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sol/systems/views/all_desktops…
It’s on the HCL and certified, which makes me even more suspicious of Kaiwai’s complaints.
My point is giving useful information about a problem will usually get a better response than whining and bad mouthing ever will.
Sun has many channels by which a bug can be filed. You mentioned OpenSolaris forums as well. But instead of purusing an issue in a civil manner it is easy to come to a discussion board and bad mouth the company if one’s only agenda is to perpetuate FUD.
…But instead of purusing an issue in a civil manner it is easy to come to a discussion board and bad mouth the company if one’s only agenda is to perpetuate FUD….
You know, I think you might have hit the nail on the
head there! 😉
It’s on the HCL and certified, which makes me even more suspicious of Kaiwai’s complaints.[/i]
And YET you make NO F**KING EFFORT to find articles by me, posted relating to ME trying to get it running on Solaris; ok idiot, I’ll provide a f*cking link to proove you wrong.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisx86/message/20772
But hey, you keep going around bad mouthing me without the full facts, because it seems that people liek YOU would rather live inside a nice ‘n cosie reality distortion field.
Care to show me one OS without a single bug. I can bet you any amount of money that any OS o piece of software you think is advanced enough I can find a case where it does not work right.[/i]
Explain to me why FreeBSD 6.0; a freebie operating system can detect and install without any problems; all my hardware works out of the box; I don’t need to fiddle with my BIOS (ATA related) settings just so that the hard disk is properly detected.
An Intel 925X chipset is pretty bloody common; if I were running some weird, exotic chipset that only came out in the last month, then sure, lynch me for expecting SUN to support hardware that didn’t exist at the time of driver writing, but this is common hardware, 2004/2005 gear – hardly on the bleeding edge of hardware.
What is wrong with the /dev on Solaris? Have you heard of devfs in Solaris and /devices directory, auto configuration? Solaris is UNIX and customers that millions require those standards be met.
How about when I plugin a piece of hardware, it is properly detected rather than having to deal the ugly POS that is SUN volume manager that seems to be a never ending hairball that gets more buggy with each release (if at all humanly possible!).
All I am hearing from you is whining on an open board, where no one can actually help you from Sun. Sun provides channels for customers like “you” to express your concerns. Show me evidence that you have pursued those means and I will tolerate your whining.
Why don’t YOU spend some TIME searching for articles by ME under THIS user name; I consistantly use this username over and over again; I subscribed to the Yahoo Solarisx86 group, to say the least, the help ranged from abuse, to Microsoft appologist to, “its YOU with the problem, not Solaris!”.
Solaris is currently geared for use as a server operation system. There’s little place for audio on a server. As such, audio support is not a big priority. Is your USB hardware listed on the Hardware Compatibility List? That’s the first thing to check before an install. Hardware compatibility for Solaris is not the strong point.
get them actually talking to customers This is something we can agree on. This is always a good move.
Solaris is currently geared for use as a server operation system. There’s little place for audio on a server. As such, audio support is not a big priority. Is your USB hardware listed on the Hardware Compatibility List? That’s the first thing to check before an install. Hardware compatibility for Solaris is not the strong point.
Ah yes, the revisionist history.
1) Solaris was designed FIRST as a workstation operating system THEN a server operating system.
2) If its a server operating system, then why the f*ck are sun so keen at getting people to use Solaris for a workstation operating system? why have they go a project on the opensolaris.org website outlinging what needs to be done for make it more ‘desktop acceptable’?
3) SUN Ray appliances ARE desktops; irrespective of whether Solaris is accessed via thin client, dumb terminal or running directly on an end users machine, its still a general purpose operating system that fullfils the job of a workstation AND a server operating system.
Edited 2006-04-27 06:04
Ah yes, the revisionist history.
1) Solaris was designed FIRST as a workstation operating system THEN a server operating system.
Desgined to work on Workstations designed and developed by Sun. Not every PC class machine. To make it simple for you think of MacOS X and how it won’t work on every garbage PC in the world either.
3) SUN Ray appliances ARE desktops; irrespective of whether Solaris is accessed via thin client, dumb terminal or running directly on an end users machine, its still a general purpose operating system that fullfils the job of a workstation AND a server operating system.
The audio and USB on those devices work as advertized. Audio on all Sun branded machines work with no problem. Your problem is Solaris not working on every PC on the planet. No one OS supports every single device on every single machine out there.
Edited 2006-04-27 08:14
Desgined to work on Workstations designed and developed by Sun. Not every PC class machine. To make it simple for you think of MacOS X and how it won’t work on every garbage PC in the world either.
Ah, so we evolve from “only does servers’ to ‘only does workstations made by SUN’ – ah, maybe we’ll eventually get to the point where you admit that with SUN selling Opteron machines, and promoting the idea of Solaris x86 on more than just the machines they produce, then we’ve made progress in the truth stakes.
Scott and Co made it quite clear that they intend for Solaris to run on more than just their own machines – look up their website, and search through the questions relating as to whether SUN intends to support hardware outside that which they produce themselves – Scott then goes into his usual tirade of ‘consumers want choice, and we’re giving it to them; we’ll support you with Solaris, whether its on our own hardware or HP, or some other parties’.
Edited 2006-04-27 09:15
Ah, so we evolve from “only does servers’ to ‘only does workstations made by SUN’ – ah, maybe we’ll eventually get to the point where you admit that with SUN selling Opteron machines, and promoting the idea of Solaris x86 on more than just the machines they produce, then we’ve made progress in the truth stakes.
Are you incredibly stupid or just being obstinate? Solaris x86 does work on machines that Sun doesn’t produce. It doesn’t work on your Dell 8400. May be you F*ked up your machine’s BIOS setup with your ignorance or you just have broken hardware. But you won’t say anything to describe the problem you are having other than slander Sun and Solaris. Forgive me If I don’t take you seriously.
You subscribed to a yahoo news group and posted one message more than a year ago. You call that filing a bug with Sun. Sunsolve.sun.com, the discussion groups on the opensolaris.org bugs forum would have yieled at least something. But you didn’t do squat and now you are spreading FUD.
It’s ironic that your words show you know nothing about operating systems but are quick to point out design flaws in Solaris. When asked many times about what the design flaw is you just start complaining about the volume manager. Even you rants are not articulate enough to give you any credence.
Edited 2006-04-27 15:18
It’s ironic that your words show you know nothing about operating systems but are quick to point out design flaws in Solaris. When asked many times about what the design flaw is you just start complaining about the volume manager. Even you rants are not articulate enough to give you any credence.
And yet you’re doing nothing to make you case, except to slander me; oh, look what I am running:
# uname -a
SunOS unknown 5.10 Generic_118855-02 i86pc i386 i86pc
#
WOW! say it ain’t so! say it ain’t so!
Sorry, when someone finds a problem with a product; how about listening instead of abusing that person – I don’t know what industry you are in, but I would hate to have your domenor on the telephone given the way you’ve treated me here!
The fact that ATI graphic cards aren’t properly supported, the fact that hardware support is thin and best, and worst still, the fact that SUN Volume Manager seems to be an ongoing issue – hell, if it were just me having problem, then I deserve the citicism, but at the same time, however these are issues not being addressed.
What am I supposed to do? jump around thinking that SUN can do no wrong and in the perpetual state of ‘things can get better’ – well, I had that ‘belief’ since SUN promised that Solaris x86 will be a first class citizen at SUN, and here are a couple of years later, greatly disappointed at what they consider ‘first class support for x86’. If this is first class, I’d hate to know how it could get any worse.
And yet you’re doing nothing to make you case, except to slander me; oh, look what I am running:
# uname -a
SunOS unknown 5.10 Generic_118855-02 i86pc i386 i86pc
#
WOW! say it ain’t so! say it ain’t so!
What does that prove? You have Soalris running on a x86 box. So are you saying it works?
The fact that ATI graphic cards aren’t properly supported, the fact that hardware support is thin and best, and worst still, the fact that SUN Volume Manager seems to be an ongoing issue – hell, if it were just me having problem, then I deserve the citicism, but at the same time, however these are issues not being addressed.
Stop jumping around. You said you had a USB device problem on your Dell 8400. ATI graphic cards aren’t USB devices. What is your problem with Sun volume manager again?
You haven’t actually described a problem yet. All you are still doing is ranting. I hope you don’t go to your doctor and describe an illness this way.
Let’s go through what you would sound like if you did:
Dr: “what is the problem?”
Kaiwai: “I am in pain.”
Dr.: “Where does it hurt?”
Kaiwai: “It all be good if I can find a painkiller with no side affects!”
Dr.: “Where does it hurt?”
Kaiwai: ” If pfizer would just make a painkiller with no sideeffects it would all be cool.
Dr.: “Again where does it hurt? What do have to do make it hurt?”
Kaiwai: “Stupid pfizer and thier marketing makes you think everything is safe when it isn’t, what’s up with viagara, don’t even get me started on that”
… on and on and on….
I gave examples of hardware not working on Solaris – if you can not follow something that simple, then obviously you have some comprehension problems.
I clearing stated that hardware support was terrible, and gave two examples of this; the fact that volume manager doesn’t support hotswapping even though the rest of the operating system does, and the fact that SUN has done squat to bring ATI support to Solaris.
Atleast when I ran FreeBSD with Xorg unaccelerated, I could atleast say, ‘hey, they’re a non-profit organisation, bringing together a damn good operating system, and I should be thank ful for that’ where as with SUN, sorry, I don’t hold that; the crappy hardware support is what holds me back from purchasing a individual user support policy – SUN could make money from me, but hey, its their choice to ignore me, just like they ignored my quote request on the New Zealand SUN Catalogue site, requesting information on a Ultra 20 workstation – and I actually had the money all lined up ready for that transaction; too bad they lost a sale because of their incompentency.
Edited 2006-04-28 03:20
Atleast when I ran FreeBSD with Xorg unaccelerated, I could atleast say, ‘hey, they’re a non-profit organisation, bringing together a damn good operating system, and I should be thank ful for that’ where as with SUN, sorry, I don’t hold that; the crappy hardware support is what holds me back from purchasing a individual user support policy – SUN could make money from me, but hey, its their choice to ignore me, just like they ignored my quote request on the New Zealand SUN Catalogue site, requesting information on a Ultra 20 workstation – and I actually had the money all lined up ready for that transaction; too bad they lost a sale because of their incompentency.
I don’t believe this for a second, I don’t think you would have purchased anything.
I don’t believe this for a second, I don’t think you would have purchased anything.
Based on what evidence?
> 2) I have a Dell 8400, Solaris kills the USB
> controller at boot time, resulting in having no key
> board funcationality, meaning, I can’t install it.
Which version of Solaris have you tried? There have
been steady improvements in the USB system over
the past many months – if this is reproducible in
Solaris Express, have you tried to file a bug regarding
this at bugs.opensolaris.org?
With respect to /dev, what sort of issues are you
referring to?
Finally, what makes you think that the Sun engineers
are not “leaving their ivory towers” and talking
to customer? If you participated in the numerous
OpenSolaris forums you would see many Sun engineers
working with customers directly on these sorts of
issues and working together to determine what Solaris
should look like in the future. If you want to
fix or change something, please participate
constructively there.
Which version of Solaris have you tried? There have
been steady improvements in the USB system over the past many months – if this is reproducible in Solaris Express, have you tried to file a bug regarding this at bugs.opensolaris.org?
I was running Solaris 10 01/06 (the latest ‘stable’version) – I don’t run Solaris Express, because I don’t have the bandwidth and luxary of time to be able to titoo with beta versions of software – I might wait until the June edition of Solaris 10 is released; assuming they’re releasing one then.
With respect to /dev, what sort of issues are you
referring to?
Well, plug in hardware and see what happens; the /dev understands hot plugging, but the volume manager seems to be stuck back in 1988 – could someone, for the love of pete, fix that up; I mean, its not much to ask.
Finally, what makes you think that the Sun engineers are not “leaving their ivory towers” and talking to customer? If you participated in the numerous OpenSolaris forums you would see many Sun engineers working with customers directly on these sorts of issues and working together to determine what Solaris should look like in the future. If you want to fix or change something, please participate constructively there.
Ah, constructive suggestions from SUN employees like, when I ask what is happening with ATI support in Solaris – “oh, just upgrade to an Nvidia, its already supported!” – oh great, I just have $400 just laying around, I mean, not like I have any bills to pay, I have $100 notes just sitting around taking up space! doing nothing! thanks for the suggestion to purchase an Nvidia graphics card with all the spare cash I have on hand!
Please, when I ask SUN about getting ATI support, what do I hear? the excuse industry – what it really sounds like is a clip out of ‘Yes Minister’ and the department trying to come up with excuses not to do any work – its too hard, already been done but failed, legal problems, national security – I mean, I’ve heard all the excuses engineers have used for their lack of support for ATI products! I wouldn’t be surprised if they claimed that ATI can’t be supported because it has links with Al Qaeda!
Please, you’re telling me, that a company like SUN, with $3billion under its belt, can’t go up to ATI and work something out? it seems they don’t want to work something out rather than it being an issue of ATI not willing to work with SUN.
Well, plug in hardware and see what happens; the /dev understands hot plugging, but the volume manager seems to be stuck back in 1988 – could someone, for the love of pete, fix that up; I mean, its not much to ask.
What device did you plug in? A USB storage device? are you trying to create a software RAID volume out of USB devices. Can you be a bit more descriptive and a little less dramatic?
Please, you’re telling me, that a company like SUN, with $3billion under its belt, can’t go up to ATI and work something out? it seems they don’t want to work something out rather than it being an issue of ATI not willing to work with SUN.
How will spending a few million on ATI driver support help Sun make more money if all thier hardware is using nvidia? To what end? How will it improve shareholder value?
How will spending a few million on ATI driver support help Sun make more money if all thier hardware is using nvidia? To what end? How will it improve shareholder value?
Which goes back to Scotts promise that they would support third party hardware beyond their own.
I’ll give you a small lesson:
Billy purchases a computer from Dell.
Billy later has a look at Solaris, seeing what a great deal this is, he downloads a copy of their website.
Billy is greatly disappointed that his hardware isn’t properly supported.
Billy decides to use Linux (or some other operating system) rather than Solaris.
Billy would have been happy to purchase a support contract for a single user, yielding SUN a healthy profit margin off the individual, but instead they lost that opportunity because of a lack of investment into hardware support.
Now, lets make it interesting and assume that this is a small business – Microsoft then approaches Billy and offers him a great deal of Windows 2003, Office, Windows XP, the works, for a good price, Billy is quite pleased with this deal.
Fast forward 5 years, and his small company is now employing 500 people; Microsoft has experienced increased sales as his business as expanded, and SUN has enjoyed nothing, as it shunned Billy 5 years ago.
Edited 2006-04-27 18:53
What device did you plug in? A USB storage device? are you trying to create a software RAID volume out of USB devices. Can you be a bit more descriptive and a little less dramatic? [/i]
USB thumb drive, USB external harddisk and digital camera (using the PTP protocol which gphoto supports).
USB thumb drive, USB external harddisk and digital camera (using the PTP protocol which gphoto supports).
And what was the problem? You mentioned keyboard and mouse a while ago?
The keyboard and mousing spontaneously dying; obviously is a bug in the driver, because FreeBSD hasn’t got the same problem, and it seems to have not reappeared after I sourced a ‘bootleg copy’ of a patch cluster.
The keyboard and mousing spontaneously dying; obviously is a bug in the driver, because FreeBSD hasn’t got the same problem, and it seems to have not reappeared after I sourced a ‘bootleg copy’ of a patch cluster.
THis goes back to my first comment about it being a bug. Which apparently was already fixed. What a waste of time this has been???!!
I was trying to make some sense of your incoherent babbling and we are back to where we started.
You know what every company has dissatisfied customers. Some customers are never satisfied no matter what a company does. You know what that is ok, one can never please everyone. But from what you have said you have done nothing but whine. You could have participated in the channels Sun provides for you voice to be heard but instead you chose to rant on OSnews. Hey that’s your prerogative. Live well.
THis goes back to my first comment about it being a bug. Which apparently was already fixed. What a waste of time this has been???!!
Fixed through the use of bootlegged version of a patch cluster; one that I am not entitled to, and would have had to wait till June for that fix to be made available to the unwashed masses.
Does SUN know? of course; until I started digging at them on the Solarisx86 mailing list, and they started moderating out the comments which they didn’t like.
Fixed through the use of bootlegged version of a patch cluster; one that I am not entitled to, and would have had to wait till June for that fix to be made available to the unwashed masses.
The fix will be made available to all and it is already fixed. By june you mean june 2005 because your post about it to the yahoo groups was on feb 21 2005. I don’t see the problem Sun has already fixed it. Solaris express and open solaris should have had the fix. Sun releases patches after rigorous testing if you wanted the bleeding edge you should use Solaris express.
Does SUN know? of course; until I started digging at them on the Solarisx86 mailing list, and they started moderating out the comments which they didn’t like.
I would moderate your comments too. Because this whole thread has been anything but productive. YOu have been bitching about non issues and problems that were fixed and year ago.
I cna bet you that linux/ freebsd still won’t work properly on my toshiba laptop.
The fix will be made available to all and it is already fixed. By june you mean june 2005 because your post about it to the yahoo groups was on feb 21 2005. I don’t see the problem Sun has already fixed it. Solaris express and open solaris should have had the fix. Sun releases patches after rigorous testing if you wanted the bleeding edge you should use Solaris express.
You obviously didn’t look through the mailing list, because I can assure you, I had only flirted with Solaris 10 for a wee bit, but from around that time to around a month and a half ago, I was using an iMac loaded with MacOS X 10.4.
According to yahoo groups, using the handle kaiwai.gardiner; the last post relating to these issues can be traced back to 24 February 2006.
But hey, you keep abusing me – heck, right now you seem qualified as a SUN employee given the level of abuse and accusations that I am receiving.
Edited 2006-04-28 21:32
Solaris has a HCL. To avoid dissapointment check that
first. However, in my experience most reasonably modern
(put possibly not bleeding edge) hardware works. It
may surprise you to note that Redhat also has a
compatability list.
Solaris 10 HCL:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/contest/hcl.jsp
To search for a bug in OpenSolaris:
http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/search.do?process=1&categor…
To log a bug in OpenSolaris:
https://www.opensolaris.org/enter.jspa?targetPage=%2Fbug%2Fr…