On the heels of its landmark Sun Java Enterprise System announcements, Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced more than 300,000 registered licenses of the Solaris 9 Operating System (x86 Platform Edition). This volume attests to a surge in customer demand for the secure, reliable and highly performant Solaris OS on a variety of x86 systems, setting the foundation for continued growth and interest in Sun’s Java Enterprise System. Read more for the rest of the press release.
GetMore Securities, Gracenote, Maya Online, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical
Research and Tellme Networks, Inc. are among a growing list of customers and
partners from key industries such as telecommunications, entertainment and
finance who are already taking advantage of the feature-rich Solaris OS x86
platform.
Customer value will continue to increase with the recently announced Java
Enterprise System. The Java Enterprise System will offer users an integrated
Web services stack with bundled consulting and support services — all for
$100/employee/year, at unlimited scale for internal and external deployed
applications. Sun’s Solaris OS, available on Sun x86 and SPARC(TM) systems
and more than 160 third-party x86 platforms, is at the heart of the Java
Enterprise System. With the Java Enterprise System and the Solaris OS x86
platform, Sun is providing one of the most affordable, reliable and secure
software infrastructures in the industry.
Superior Performance
“With the Solaris OS x86 platform, GetMore Securities enhanced Home
Trading System performance by more than 3X by migrating from NT to the
Solaris
OS x86 platform,” said Chongmo Kim, IT Manager, GetMore Securities, a
provider
of online stock exchange systems. “By utilizing the Solaris OS x86
platform,
we not only benefit from the associated cost benefits, but also from
increased
system reliability and scalability, helping us to quickly respond to
customer
requests and increase our overall level of service.”
Sun’s investments in the Solaris OS for x86 platforms include projects
that aggressively leverage x86 extended instruction sets and architectures
to rapidly drive performance advances.
“Customers are finding real value in the security, performance and
stability of Solaris OS x86 platform. And with the Java Enterprise System
users can further extend their value by taking advantage of the integrated
software components on x86 hardware — provided by Sun, or our OEMs and
partners,” said Ann Wettersten, vice president, systems software product
marketing, Sun Microsystems. “The recent increase in demand — including
ISV adoption, increased hardware support and channel partners — demonstrates
that customers from key industries such as telecommunications and financial
services are benefiting from Solaris x86 platform cost savings today.
Whether it is operating systems, network identity services, portals, communications
and collaboration, security, availability or Java Web services, Sun is
committed to driving out cost while increasing value to our customers and
partners.”
“By utilizing the Solaris OS x86 platform, we were able to take
advantage of the Solaris OS threading library, enabling Gracenote to provide improved
performance on Intel-based hardware,” said Matthew Leeds, VP Operations,
Gracenote, a provider of information services for digital music and media.
“This performance gain directly benefits developers at music companies like
Sony and Real Networks, allowing them to provide customers with faster, more
reliable service.”
The #1 UNIX(R) on x86 hardware systems
Organizations with expertise in the Solaris OS can leverage familiar
tools and their UNIX experience to bring the Solaris OS to their x86-based
hardware.
“Our staff levels are considerably lower than those of a typical
commercial environment. Anything we can do to reduce the cost, training and
work required to establish our research infrastructure is critical to the
overall success of the project,” said Gerry Vest, Systems Administrator for
Department of Genetics, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research.
“Because we were already familiar with Sun’s Solaris OS, the Solaris
(x86 Platform Edition) allowed us to minimize training, which enabled us to
get a large research project up and running with minimal time and staff.
Using the Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition) we were also able to save money
using commodity servers.”
Reliability and High Availability
Businesses can’t afford unplanned downtime, especially in today’s
service-oriented economy. The Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition) helps
companies achieve higher levels of system availability — allowing them to
pass these benefits directly to customers.
“System stability is definitely our critical success factor. In the
past, online game companies often developed their products on NT platform, which
created a problem of system instability and complicated administration,”
said Huang Chi-cheng, COO of Maya Online. “Maya Online is the first online game
company in Taiwan to develop its product on a Solaris platform. During the
process, we were very excited to see the advantages of high stability,
cross-platform operation and workload balance.”
Increased Efficiencies
The Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition) helps improve scalability and
performance of applications, providing users with increased efficiencies.
“Tellme runs Solaris OS x86 on our customized, high-density rackmount
servers. Solaris x86 helps us to ensure optimal hardware utilization,
essential in serving the needs of our Fortune 500 clients,” said
Jonathan DiOrio, Director of Business Development at Tellme Networks, Inc.,
the world’s largest and most commercially proven Voice Application Network
provider.
Security and Protection
On top of the built-in security of the Solaris OS, Trusted Solaris(TM)
is
the only enterprise-class operating system that provides the highest level
of
assurance compared to any other operating system in the market.
Broad Hardware Support
In addition to enterprise-class features, customers can also take
advantage of broad hardware support for the Solaris OS x86 Platform Edition.
Currently, the Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition) is available on Sun
hardware
and on more than 160 third-party systems.
Competitive Pricing
“What customers really want is to lower costs — but not at the expense
of
performance and security. Sun’s Solaris OS x86 is an attractive alternative
to Windows,” said Alban Richard, director, Solaris x86 marketing,
Sun Microsystems. “In a typical workgroup or Web infrastructure
environment,
the Solaris OS x86 can deliver up to 13 times lower acquisition costs over
Microsoft Windows 2003.”
OK, to be honest, I don’t follow SUN that much. I don’t really do any server admin work and i don’t code in Java. But every week recently it seems like there’s news of who’s going to buy Sun, How Sun can keep from going under, whether or not Sun’s already doomed, etc… Now they are doing GrEaT. What gives?
I don’t know how SUN is staying alive. Sure, the press reports probably exaggerate their situation, but their financial report of the last quarter surely doesn’t. They are being squeezed at the high end by IBM and the low end by Dell and Linux. What is sustaining them?
Before the Sun advocates come start spouting how great Solaris is, it may well become a moot issue if Sun doesn’t pick it up sometime soon because they will go down hard. To be honest, their flip-floping with Linux isn’t doing them any good either. One day they are all about Linux, the next, “Linux, what is that? Some kind of hobby OS that doesn’t belong on the server?” (Honestly, I don’t know how they kept a straight face when saying Linux didn’t belong on the server.)
Sun has certainly done some good but they have also been antagonistic at times and made some enemies. Personally, I think their stuff is way overpriced. I wish them luck in sustaining their ship because the market always needs more offerings than Windows Server 2003 (and no this is not a challenge over the merits of this piece of software). Choice is good.
I bought a copy. Now if I could just get the thing installed. The installer is crap, and the drivers are outdated (at least the ones included with the installer).
It’s crazy how many BIG computer science schools are adopting Java as their primary programming language over C++. Sure, it’s good for portability and you don’t have to teach pointers, but you’re gonna have to teach ASM at some point anyway, so it’s not like you can ignore memory managment. If this company goes under, a lot of diplomas are going to be worth less.
Sun needs to focus on Solaris and ditch their love have relationship with Linux.
They need to show their customers that they are focused on making Solaris the best Unix solution for the desktop and server.
Part of this is having a desktop solution that can be deployed using X86 hardware, even if the X86 hardware is sold by Sun only.
This two prong strategy of does not speak well for Sun’s confidence in the scalability of Solaris and creates doubt with companies considering Sun hardware.
Hi there, evil one! ^_^
If Solaris x86 takes off, then Linux will be nothing more than just another Unix in the long run. As for it’s scalability range, if Windows can scale nicely from 1 proc to 64 procs plus, there’s no reason why Solaris x86 can’t – and what about the single proc SPARC workstations they sell; shouldn’t it be ‘impossible’ for Solaris to scale that low? Come on.
There are so many Solaris admins out there already – the zero learning curve for them to incorporate x86 hardware now is a huge selling point.
I wouldn’t mind getting a copy of the x86 version to download it. You know it is *free*. Free as in pay for the cost of downloading.
Downloading costs $20 for a copy. I’d love to be their service provider at that rate
Which schools are standardizing on Java? I know that the AP people have standardized on Java, but I hadn’t heard of any colleges. Why are they even standardizing on a language? Specific programming languages are just a necessary evil in a computer science course. Students should be exposed to as many as possible, so as they don’t get overly comfortable in a single one. Standardizing on a single language (especially a constraining one like Java) does students a disservice.
I’m not a CS major, but IMO, a good CS program should teach students 3 things:
1) The practical considerations of working in a group environment.
2) The underlying theory behind computer science. By the time you get out, you should be able to pick up a new language in a matter of weeks — you should just need to map the specific syntax and features to general concepts.
3) The wisdom to not ever implement anything they’ve learned until a thorough Google search reveals that there isn’t already a library that does what they want
Sun, the schizo company in the world of IT.
“Linux is great; No, no,Linux is a renegade OS that you shouldn’t touch. Why? We know because our SCO friends told us so. Ummm, never mind, um, um, we got this great “Linux Desktop, we mean, “Java Desktop System”, that is really stable, has better hardware support than our X86 Slowaris, but you know that expensive Solaris that you can only get from us is what you should get if you are deploying a server. But, sure, if you want a no-good Linux server, we’ll sell it to you and, even though, it’s a good-for-nothing renegade server, we’ll support it, because we are doing great financially and can afford to support crappy operating systems. Or maybe, it’s a good OS and that is why we support it. Hold on, let me go and take my pills to see which it is.
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/sol_index.html
I used this link to get a free (no $20 fee) copy of Solaris 10 early access edition. Was a working link as of Sept 19th.
Read about it here http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11632
The only problem I had was that the third CD was a corrupted zip file :o( But you can install the system with just the first two, although without all the software that comes on cd 3 (Netscape browser, etc.)
And it runs very quickly on an old K6 500mhz box with only 96mb ram. Imagine that… I’ll have to play with it some more this weekend.
Check it out – for free…
“It’s crazy how many BIG computer science schools are adopting Java as their primary programming language over C++. Sure, it’s good for portability and you don’t have to teach pointers, but you’re gonna have to teach ASM at some point anyway, so it’s not like you can ignore memory managment. If this company goes under, a lot of diplomas are going to be worth less.”
It is crazy to tell so many BS in one sentence
WHy the hell should the basic programmer know ASM ? I think Java is a good starting point, because its syntax is much cleaner than C++ (ADA95 is much better, but is is not very common). Of course, most programers should learn C++ after that, because you can do nice things with it, and it is a industry standart. I begun my programming courses with C, and it is a nonsense.
Java, and after that C. And you have all you want for the industry ( easy to learn the other after that).
Oh yeah, an important thing from the story…
“What is new, is the fact that you can download the binaries “for commercial use” for a $90/year subscription fee, which also gives you 90-day online support for each release. Downloads for “personal, non-commercial use” are free, and without support.”
Thats pretty cheap I thought…
“It’s crazy how many BIG computer science schools are adopting Java as their primary programming language over C++. Sure, it’s good for portability and you don’t have to teach pointers, but you’re gonna have to teach ASM at some point anyway, so it’s not like you can ignore memory managment. If this company goes under, a lot of diplomas are going to be worth less.”
I have some major complaints about how schools teach CS, but this is not one of them. I have a B.S and an M.S. in CS and I was in undergrad just as my school was transitioning from C to Java for the intro courses.
Of course, teaching Java for intro courses is not a problem at all. Here is a list of reasons why not:
1. It is easy to learn (language wise), allowing people to concentrate on the IDEA they are trying to learn.
2. It has a very rich api allowing people to do things later on that would be more interesting quickly….think AI and distributed systems and, nowadays, 2D and 3D rendering (though, OpenGL is still the standard taught at my old school).
School is not about a specific language or platform. That is not what CS is about. Ideas, theories and concepts are what is important.
So, no, teaching Java at school is NOT a problem.
It is a lot less expensive than SuSE and RedHat’s enterprise edition. This is a cue for many of you to immediately say that Linux is free. However, if you aren’t using white box server hardware and require hardware and software support, Solaris at $250 is much cheaper than $750 for RedHat or SuSE. Also wasn’t Java Desktop $100 a year per customer for full support. Am I missing something? This seems pretty cheap to me?
A programmer must understand whats going on at the lowest levels of the system. I was pleasently surprised to find that the first assignment in our school’s intro C class (first semester of 2nd year undergraduate) was to annotate a SPARC assembly listing, without being taught either C or assembly language before-hand.
High-level languages are nice because they don’t require a programmer to think about what’s going on underneath. That’s different from not *understanding* what’s going on underneath. I’d hate to work with a programmer who didn’t know exactly what a virtual method call entailed, or how a JIT VM worked.
“If Solaris x86 takes off, then Linux will be nothing more than just another Unix in the long run. As for it’s scalability range, if Windows can scale nicely from 1 proc to 64 procs plus, there’s no reason why Solaris x86 can’t – and what about the single proc SPARC workstations they sell; shouldn’t it be ‘impossible’ for Solaris to scale that low? Come on.”
Well, that may be the case. Solaris has a long way to go for the corporate desktop however. It is good for engineering, not for general office work. That is where Linux would fit into the scheme of things. I admin Windows and Solaris machines, and for the average user, Solaris is just not there. I would still go with Linux as the x86 Solaris needs lots of work in order to be ready to work on current x86 hardware.
I have been doing some checking at *UNIX* soloutions between HP and Sun and when It comes down to it it seem that Sun was the cheaper of the two and had better support. I really don’t think solaris is that bad though I have to agree that they need to pick the wedge out of there butt about the linux thing. If anything offer Solaris as highend server solution and then linux as a desktop solution. That is untill they have the R&D time to make Solaris desktop worthy..if that is possible.
I rather pay to run solaris then have to suffer from running windows. 😀
Solaris x86 is a very good thing, the more they invest into it the better. However, they can’t have Solaris x86 compete with Linux by the assertion that Linux isn’t as good as Solaris. Instead they should offer Linux or Solaris on x86 and say that it is the customers choice, they fully support both products. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Let the products speak for themselves, if Solaris is that much better they can talk about the strengths of Solaris x86. But they HAVE to resist the temptation to bad mouth Linux as a competitor, this will only alienate Linux fans and piss off the zealots.
They have to say that Linux is good enough for the server, and say that Solaris x86 does the following super duper cool things, even compare it to Windows and the BSDs as well as Linux. They should definately resist comparing Solaris x86 directly with Linux. They should never, never talk about Linux as being a hobby OS or as a weak alternative to Solaris. Talking smack about Linux is a recipe for disaster. Promoting one and saying the other is works well (when asked), would make it obvious that they prefer Solaris without ever having to publicly state it. That would keep the Linux fans happy and the focus would still be on Solaris x86.
“I’d hate to work with a programmer who didn’t know exactly what a virtual method call entailed, or how a JIT VM worked.”
I’d hate to work with a programmer who knew exactly how a JIT VM worked and was clueless about implementing business logic and processes.
There *is* a reason for a language as Java and that is that too many programmers had to think too much about low-level details so progress on Enterprise apps was made a snail speed.
Heck, it’s the reason for inventing C++, Stroustrup was tired of programming assembly. After that, programmers got tired of the whole memory management thing all together. I guess you’re very good programmer who doesn’t need all that ‘modern’ stuff. Still there very good programmers who are on another abstraction level, that of the enterprise rules and processes. Not everybody is a games/multimedia programmer.
“I would still go with Linux as the x86 Solaris needs lots of work in order to be ready to work on current x86 hardware…”
Some specific reasons would be nice if you want to convince me that you’re not just fudding.
“I’d hate to work with a programmer who didn’t know exactly what a virtual method call entailed, or how a JIT VM worked.”
I’d hate to work with a programmer who knew exactly how a JIT VM worked and was clueless about implementing business logic and processes.
I agree with Harmen here.
I once worked with a fellow, and he was working on Delphi based SQL apps. 6 months into it, as he was rolling it out to the customer we were talking and he mentioned that “he never did quite figure out the difference between memory and disk and how all that worked”. i.e. this guy had absolutely no clue about basic computer architecture.
Waa I flabbergasted and apalled? Yes. Philisophically, this is heresy. But, when you think about it, it’s a credit to Delphi, in this case, that this guy was able to function and be productive at all. He didn’t know anything about memory management, because he never encountered it, and it was never important to this application.
Was his application the bestest most perfect ever? Nope.
Did it do the job and satisfy the customer? Yup.
Modern tools raise the level to where Ordinarty People(tm) can make effective use of their computers to solve their problems. There are millions of content, happy, productive people using applications today written by folks who would simply stare blankly at any debate of memory management, architecture, caches, alignement, pages, pointers, etc.
Criticize the VB, Alpha 5, Access, and Filemaker “programmers” all you want, but give credit to the tools that empower them to at least step up into the ring and join battle to attack the vast application backlog.
I’d hate to work with a programmer who knew exactly how a JIT VM worked and was clueless about implementing business logic and processes.
>>>>>>>
Well, I don’t work in business logic, but I too would hate to work with a programmer who didn’t understand the problem domain. However, nothing about understanding the inner-workings of the system precludes understanding business logic.
Heck, it’s the reason for inventing C++, Stroustrup was tired of programming assembly. After that, programmers got tired of the whole memory management thing all together. I guess you’re very good programmer who doesn’t need all that ‘modern’ stuff.
>>>>>>>
I never said that. Hell, my preferred languages (C++, Dylan, Python) are a lot more high-level than Java. My point is that there is a key difference between having to consider the details, and being able to consider the details.
Still there very good programmers who are on another abstraction level, that of the enterprise rules and processes. Not everybody is a games/multimedia programmer.
>>>>>>>>
If this good abstract programmer is a smart guy, he should have no trouble understanding the details of the computer. This knowledge, in turn, will make him a better programmer even in an abstract problem domain. If he can’t understand the details, then his programming skills are clearly limited. These low-level things aren’t complex concepts to a person in the field. Let me use a different example. Most engineers have to take many years of physics. In the real world, they almost never solve physics problems by hand — they use computers and simulations. But an understanding of the fundemental knowledge in a field is absolutely critical, even when operating at a high level of abstraction.
Criticize the VB, Alpha 5, Access, and Filemaker “programmers” all you want, but give credit to the tools that empower them to at least step up into the ring and join battle to attack the vast application backlog.
>>>>>>>>>
Nobody ever said that these people aren’t perfectly productive members of the computer community. But its debatable whether they are programmers, and they most definately are *not* computer scientists. Remember, the conversation is not about specializing on Java for “Ordinary People” but for CS majors.
I didn’t say intro programmers needed ASM, but if you get a bachelors degree that didn’t include ASM, you got robbed.
Also, my intro classes were C and i didn’t have any problems, so I don’t see the need to have an easier programming language.
Java is widely regarded as a rapid development platform, why would you start people off on something tangential? Why not teach intro kids HTML?
Also, M$ is really getting behind C# which directly targets java. Gee, i’ve never seen M$ come in and replace an existing technology before.
I don’t know what so many people have against Sun, but any competition to MS is a good thing. I wish them luck in fending off the tiger. As long as they don’t pull a SCO and turn on linux.
Funny, a person posting via http://www.anonymizer.com ip range. Could this be our old friend Walterbyrd paying is “respects” to a company who has already set a path: Solaris x86 and SPARC on the server and Linux on the desktop.
SUN has a long term stratergy. Where is IBM’s or HP’s? last time I looked IBM and HP have no desktop stratergy or a server one apart from selling servers with Redhat Linux/SuSE Linux preloaded. That isn’t a stratergy, that is simply a reselling opportunity.
It would be like Dick Smiths saying that their Linux stratergy is selling boxes of SuSE Linux at their retail chains.
I bought a copy. Now if I could just get the thing installed. The installer is crap, and the drivers are outdated (at least the ones included with the installer).
Heeeeey, don’t post too many details 😉
What is the system specs. What disk are using, the Webstart boot disk or the Solaris disk 1? also, you failed to point out exactly what isn’t supported and what version you are trying out, is it Solaris 9 08/03? 04/03? 11/02?
It’s crazy how many BIG computer science schools are adopting Java as their primary programming language over C++. Sure, it’s good for portability and you don’t have to teach pointers, but you’re gonna have to teach ASM at some point anyway, so it’s not like you can ignore memory managment. If this company goes under, a lot of diplomas are going to be worth less.
Java is useful in that it teaches OO fundamentals and Java is the best tool for that so that students don’t get into nasty habits.
Regarding teaching languages, IIRC that should be a final year subject where they are totally commited to one language. From my experience at University you get a choice between either Java or C++. Some opt for Java and others opt for C++. I don’t see it that computer science oriented colleges would make such a stupid decision as to ram a certain language down peoples throats. It isn’t in their interest to do that unless I read the situation of Universities in the US.
Oh, btw, Microsoft tried the same stunts that happen in the, they wanted Universities to full standardise on Windows in New Zealand, the government turned around and told them that Universities in New Zealand are not indoctrination institutions for large corporations.
Borland was extremely happy when they heard this news, same with Lotus, Corel and other companies who supply software to NZ Universities.
Oh, I finally got a rumour confirmed. Solaris 10 x86 will be able to run Linux applications out of the box without emulation or add libraries, also, the ability to run Linux drivers on Solaris will be possible. I am not too sure if it was binary or source, but either way, one can always recompile it as all drivers that come with Linux’s source are opensource.
Solaris x86 is benefiting from the added features aquired from UnixWare which allows it to run alot nicer on x86 uni-processor machines. The SPARC get away with this by have multiple versions of the kernel where as Solaris x86 only has one version which is clunky on uniprocessor but lovely on SMP configurations.
Solaris x86 is a very good thing, the more they invest into it the better. However, they can’t have Solaris x86 compete with Linux by the assertion that Linux isn’t as good as Solaris. Instead they should offer Linux or Solaris on x86 and say that it is the customers choice, they fully support both products. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Let the products speak for themselves, if Solaris is that much better they can talk about the strengths of Solaris x86. But they HAVE to resist the temptation to bad mouth Linux as a competitor, this will only alienate Linux fans and piss off the zealots.
Well, even SUN employees I know prefer using Linux for desktop and laptop, and some even opt for either a Tadpol UltraSparc powered laptop or an Apple. Solaris, as I said previously, is a good 2-3years away from being a good desktop solution.
They have to say that Linux is good enough for the server, and say that Solaris x86 does the following super duper cool things, even compare it to Windows and the BSDs as well as Linux. They should definately resist comparing Solaris x86 directly with Linux. They should never, never talk about Linux as being a hobby OS or as a weak alternative to Solaris. Talking smack about Linux is a recipe for disaster. Promoting one and saying the other is works well (when asked), would make it obvious that they prefer Solaris without ever having to publicly state it. That would keep the Linux fans happy and the focus would still be on Solaris x86.
If you take a look at their Solaris x86 site, everything is a comparision to Windows not Linux. People who want to run Linux are going to run it even if a comparision is done with Solaris. What SUN want are the Windows people, who want commercial “support” and “software”, to move to Solaris x86, which has a very low aquisition cost AND the support is top quality.
They should have done that when Solaris was king of the server room in most banks (That’s where I work) and the scientific workstation of choice back in the 90s and that windows 3.11 and 95 troubleshooting guide was a one page poster saying “REBOOT”
There was an opportunity to get Lotus to port their Office suite and other products to it and make Java the pervasive programming language throughout the whole Solaris familly and Windows. Even Internet Explorer was available for Solaris some years ago.
But when a 36Gb hard drive is still priced £900 today, that gives you an idea of how much these guys have made selling hardware during the last decade.
My first reaction when discovering linux 4 years ago was that solaris should be ditched wherever possible. I am not surprised that a lot of people come to that conclusion in their own time. Linux can run on anything, as cheap or expensive as required. Pro 3d workstations with dual opterons are available from £4000 today for linux and desktop 64bit start at about £1300. Commodity office PCs are about £300.
Windows won’t shift that easily because of the range of apps available only for it. But solaris on x86 is irrelevant.
Solaris is for the server. Who gives a fully continental about the desktop. They aren’t, never have and never will aim Solaris for the desktop. That is what Linux is suited for, namely, the desktop.
>>Solaris is for the server. Who gives a fully continental about the desktop. They aren’t, never have and never will aim Solaris for the desktop. That is what Linux is suited for, namely, the desktop.<<
Isn’t it curious that sunw is putting all this time/money/effort into x86-solaris, and sunw’s own “java desktop” only to give the market away to linux? It doesn’t make sense to me that sunw will promote linux on the desktop, while sunw is pouring millions into sunw’s direct linux competitor x86-solaris.
Maybe the desktop doesn’t matter. I think within 5 years the desktop will be the laptop, or the tablet PC, or the thin client. But for now, what sunw is saying, and what sunw is doing don’t seem to coincide.
Isn’t it curious that sunw is putting all this time/money/effort into x86-solaris, and sunw’s own “java desktop” only to give the market away to linux? It doesn’t make sense to me that sunw will promote linux on the desktop, while sunw is pouring millions into sunw’s direct linux competitor x86-solaris.
Again, where is their Solaris desktop stratergy? have I completely missed it? How about instead of making unsubstaintiated rumours, why don’t you invest some time to where SUN is focusing their Solaris efforts. I can assure you that EVERY bit of work they have done has been to improve the server aspects of the operating system.
How is SUN going to lose if Linux as a desktop when Solaris wasn’t even used on the desktop in the first place. It would be like me saying that Linux is losing market share in the space station market even though Linux isn’t even in that market at all.
Maybe the desktop doesn’t matter. I think within 5 years the desktop will be the laptop, or the tablet PC, or the thin client. But for now, what sunw is saying, and what sunw is doing don’t seem to coincide.
<SARCASM>
gee, I see sooooooooooo many tablets being sold that there is a waiting list!
</SARCASM>
SUN can’t use Linux because of the GPL, but they can use Linux through Java. No company can use Linux because they would have to give away all of their investment in the open source platform to their competitors for free. It is not feasable.
I happen to completely agree with CooCooCaChoo here, Solaris x86 should only be used for server systems. I think Linux was built primarily with a high-end workstation in mind. It still is being guided by this, Linux is primarily aimed at being a workstation first, server second.
<excerpt from an interview with Linus regarding the 2.6 kernel>
************************************************************
NewsForge: With all the work on threading in 2.5, do you think 2.6 will mean Linux scales better on bigger boxes?
Torvalds: Absolutely. Some of the improvements have found themselves into 2.4.x too, but 2.6.x will work quite well on big iron. It’s not just the threading stuff, it’s also things like much improved locking in various subsystems (filesystems and the block IO layer come to mind).
NewsForge: Are you concerned that Linux’s “sweet spot” will move so high up the hardware ladder than ordinary users will begin to notice it’s not as quick on their machines as it once was?
Torvalds: No, mainly because I still use it day-to-day on regular desktops, and that’s what I care most about. For example, the latest patch that I worked on myself (as opposed to working on merging other people’s stuff) was to get X11 and Mozilla to load faster by improving the read-ahead heuristics for page faulting in the executable images.
Obviously my “regular desktop” tends to be a fairly high-end one, but it’s not that high-end. So I have a gig of RAM and a 3GHz CPU in this thing; that’s what I’d expect pretty much any new machine to be in a year or two.
So I’m aiming for the high-end desktop, because that will be “normal” in a few years. And we still do care about low-end machines too, so it’s not like we’re trying to leave those behind either.
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It isn’t that Linux has a problem running on high-end hardware, it does so just fine. Threading stuff has been a big sticking point for me on Linux, it is nice that a real threading model will be used in 2.6. Linux is just now inheriting some attributes that other Operating Systems have had for some time. Linux just isn’t built from the ground up around server applications, appearance and broad hardware support is important in Linux distributions, latency and UI is more important than throughput and scalability.
Solaris is the other way around, it isn’t as pretty and polished, stability and security are paramount, they care much more about server applications and high performance workstations and they concentrate on specific hardware platforms. I think using both operating systems, each based on their own strengths, is a great idea.
Linux works much better as a desktop, Solaris works very nicely as a server.
People such as myself who had to register to download it by paying my $20, then found out within a week that Solaris does not fit my needs on the desktop and stopped using it? Technically that makes me a registered Solaris 9-x86 registered user, even though I don’t as it does not fit my needs. My point is that the numbers are true for registration maybe, but how many did as I did and got it just to try it? How many actualy USERS of it are there?
How would that be any different to Joe Distro swap-a-roo who downloads 5 distributions but decided that they are going to buy a copy instead of downloading it.
I would think that the 300,000 organisations/persons are most likely be on the number of physical shipments. Most people I know, who have an interest in Solaris buy the $20 version and if they like it, they buy the physical package that includes StarOffice and few other things.
I think a better measurement of the Solaris uptake would be either a follow up or only count those who have bought support contracts or the Java Enterprise subscription programme.
If SUN can point out the number of quality customers they’ve converted, ISV’s will see that there is a good market with a decent number of potential customers that can buy their product. Lets hope that more ISVs start offering Solaris x86 software so that it can over take Windows as a server solution.
What Sun should be really concerned about talking about competitors is the BSD family.
Linux IS a hobbyOS and a very expensive one. People pay more for using Linux than Solaris or BSD and both outperform Linux.
At some point the IT industry have to become rational on this issue. Last time it was the .com crash, this time it’ll be the server crash. When people start counting what cost most for server, Linux distros will be thrown out and there will be Solaris/BSD/Windows that will fight on the server.
I’m confident any IBM employed would love to prove me wrong, but since the bill that goes to IBM is exactly what is making Linux far to expensive, I see Sun as a more popular option futurewise and I can see that all those companies who relied on Sun are really happy that they chose to work with an extremely stable partner!
I bought the package, got it installed after a few false starts
(great installer- not)
wish I’d spent the money on SuSE Linux.. Everything was outdated and there is a general feeling of CRUDENESS. I just got the Sun Java Desktop Demo, that’s another piece of work they should have left alone..We have Knoppix.. Maybe they should just go away..