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Sun Rays For Linux 131
Tarantolato writes "According to an eweek story Sun Microsystems will be debuting a Linux port of their Sun Ray Server at Linux World this week. This would allow Sun Ray thin clients to be run off of a SuSE or Red Hat box, where you previously needed a Solaris-SPARC setup to do that."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not yet Available it seems (Score:1)
Not too surprising, because JDS is intended for the desktop, and Sun already has a server OS...
Re:Not yet Available it seems (Score:1)
Is it? Why would anybody use JDS when you have Debian (disclaimer: other dists are available)?
SunRay (at least the no-monitor version) is a super sweet piece of kit, it was my work desktop for a year and I loved it. Up until now it has just been a shame that you have to have Solaris installed to run it.
SunRay on Debian, yay! \o/
In Related News.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've looked into Sun's Sun Ray Technology it's pretty neat. It offers a lot of features that similar windows technology does not.
Re:In Related News.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, that's a labs project, it isn't slated to become a product.
Re:In Related News.... (Score:2)
Re:In Related News.... (Score:2)
Out of curiosity, what ?
In Related News....A Blue Mood. (Score:2, Funny)
Absense of a blue screen.
Re:In Related News....A Blue Mood. (Score:1)
Re:In Related News.... (Score:2)
Re:In Related News.... (Score:2)
Terminal Services does this (well, I'm assuming the RDP client can use smart cards - but it certainly maintains the desktop across sessions).
The sun ray clients also don't need much configuration, unlike other solutions that need windows cd to be installed and configured.
Well, this is more a matter of what you're doing. If the client is go
... and Sun's potential acquisition of Novell (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:... and Sun's potential acquisition of Novell (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:... and Sun's potential acquisition of Novell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:... and Sun's potential acquisition of Novell (Score:1)
They are probably thinking they can buy novell, get ownership of sysV, sue IBM. Chances are pretty strong that this is what that deal with MS was all about. MS is going to use Sun as their next puppet to attack linux with.
"stupid conspiracy theory" moderation option? (Score:2)
If anything, buying Novell and thus SUSE, would indemnify all the SUSE users against SCO since Sun has a defined relationship with SCO allowing use of any SCO unix works. This might even put a crimp in some of SCO's complaints against IBM since they use SUSE.
Yeah -- I work for Sun but I don't drink the Kool Aide.
Re:"stupid conspiracy theory" moderation option? (Score:1)
Of course it would. But then again Novell has already imdenified all the SUSE users so that's pretty much useless. It would not however imdenify IBM or anybody else would it? SUN and MS have a common enemy in IBM. MS just gave sun a buttload of money for no apparent reason (supposedly some ip cross licensing). It's not farfetched to thin
Re:"stupid conspiracy theory" moderation option? (Score:2)
So what is it? (Score:1)
Re:So what is it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So what is it? (Score:1)
Re:So what is it? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So what is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, is closer to what Microsoft did with RDP
"What existing Linux applications would support it?"
Um, all of them?
Re:So what is it? (Score:3, Informative)
To put it in terms of X, in a thin-client system, both the X clients and the X server are on the server side (thus the name). Howe
Re:So what is it? (Score:1)
Nowadays when people say VNC, they instantly think to one of the software flavors implementing the RFB protocol. Originally AT&T made the whole cute thing for... you guessed it.... thin clients with the whole protocol processed in hardware.
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
As I recall AT&T was trying to create devices which combined the various technologies found in an average office-- a computer, a phone, video conferencing, etc.; hence, "Virtual Network Computing." Their device was a hardware VNC client (though I doubt it was really hardware; even the SunRay boxes are software based) connecting to some beefy centralized server. In the end the
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Re:So what is it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So what is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
They also handle audio and video. It's pretty neat (but not necessarily all that useful) to watch a movie on a SunRay, detach, log into another and see and hear the movie still playing.
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Wonder if I could get the bosses to switch 'em over to Sun Ray....
Re:So what is it? (Score:2, Interesting)
The SunRay appliance is a thin client that basically runs an X "client" allowing connection to remote servers. The SunRay server software (currently only available for Sparc, but as the article portends, will be ported to LINUX) provides the SunRay appliances with the information to get going (a list of login servers, for example). The appliance basically connects to a Sun server's X.
The SunRay appliance hardware is pretty small, and individually unimpressive--which makes it kind of impre
Re:So what is it? (Score:5, Informative)
SunRay server software keeps framebuffers for multiple X sessions on the server. Those sessions are sent over the network via a completely different protocol from X. Very similar in high-level concept to VNC.
This allows some neat things, the neatest of which you also don't mention
To put in practical perspective (I almost skipped my Disclaimer: I work for Sun here since it should be painfully obvious), my employee ID badge is a smartcard that I can use for entrance to the building. When I get to my terminal I can plug that smartcard in before I log in. If I want to walk away, I pull my card and my session stays open on the server, but not on the terminal. I can walk to any other terminal in the building, plug it in, and my session pops onto the terminal. I can leave things running in the session, since it never dies. I don't -have- to use my smartcard. I can log in without it, but I lose portability for that session.
It is quite cool.
Now of course the OS needs support for smartcard stuff, so the easiest way -today- is to use Solaris SPARC, but put the smartcard framework on Linux and use the Linux SunRay Server software and voila, portable network Linux sessions (as you mentioned, but pointing out the portability).
Additionally, the SunRay terminals have USB connectors and audio. With proper support (it's being worked on) these will really enhance things.
There are other neat things that I really wanna talk about, but can't
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Ha! I know what you're talking about. I stopped going to the SunLabs Open Houses 'cause it filled my head with things that I cannot talk about.
Re:So what is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Dunstan
Re:So what is it? (Score:1)
I can't resist asking... (Score:2)
Perhaps it's possible to reconfigure that (any pointers appreciated) or to use another keyboard - but really: why doesn't SUN switch to PC keyboards already and stops punishing their users?
Just curious. :-)
Re:I can't resist asking... (Score:2)
Modern Sun systems (any Blade or Sun Ray) use standard USB. You can swap that keyboard with anything you want -- I use a MS Natural Pro with my SunRay. They are similarly agnostic about mice, and the newest builds of Mozilla from Sun actually support the wheel (finally).
The only limitation is that a few of the older systems (at least the Blade 100) require that the k
Re:I can't resist asking... (Score:1)
Re:I can't resist asking... (Score:2)
He'll now tell his other customers about this, too - he feels many will be interested. (BTW: he's actually a distributor, not a SUN employee.)
Re:So what is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The most impressive part of the Sunrays is definitely that they don't feel like thin clients. Things zap around like as if you were on a local computer -- in contrast, a terminal server running Windows feels extremely sluggish, even with a powerful server and dedicated thin clients (which is basically what you have with the Sunrays :-) ).
/* Steinar */
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Your TS or your local client is severely misconfigured. I'm usually RDPed into several machines during the day and they feel no less responsive than a local display.
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Funny, I've tested a lot (well, at least several) of different RDP solutions, from multiple different clients (both rdesktop, Microsoft's own Remote Desktop Client and dedicated RDP thin clients) to multiple different servers (both Windows XP machines and dedicated Win2000/Win2003 terminal servers), and most of these are just painful to work with, even when I'm virtually alone on the server. (The machines are also mostly administrated by different people, so if there is a severe misconfiguration it must obv
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
Completely silent (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think that is no big deal, enter your standard computer lab again and pay attention to all the noise... I have worked in a large institution where the whole building was Sunray-based. A completely silent computing environment. You can actually hear the birds chirping outside. You have no idea what it feels like until you've tried it!!
Re:Completely silent-Dead giveaway. (Score:4, Insightful)
User's PCs weren't backed up, everyone had space on the servers which was raided and backed up; the cost of providing that much disk space, and backing it up, with the Sunray solution was prohibitive, and it would have been a single point of failure.
In the end, while it was cool, there were too many down sides. If I had been buying for a faily homogenous 'office' population, instead of developers, it would have been a closer-run thing.
Re:Completely silent-Dead giveaway. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Completely silent (Score:2)
You can AFAIK connect any monitor you'd like to them -- the newer Sun Rays even have DVI output.
/* Steinar */
Re:So what is it? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, but you need a dedicated 100Mbps switched network for your SunRays.
Other protocols may fair better under similar configurations.
Don't get me wrong, they're Frosted Flakes great, but it's not for free.
Not true (Score:2)
Re:Not true (Score:2)
Re:Not true (Score:2)
Re:Not true (Score:2)
The implications go far beyond that. That's the kind of easy system my grandma could use. No equipment on the user side except SunRa
I'm using a Sun Ray right now (Score:2, Informative)
Overall, I think I would rather use a Sun ray simply because of the silence. The constant sound of a high performance PC with 3+ fans in it gets to me after a while.
Re:I'm using a Sun Ray right now (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that the SunRay server might be an SMP box with FibreChannel disks and gobs of RAM doesn't hurt either
Re:I'm using a Sun Ray right now (Score:2)
I think this stems from the fact that once upon a time, Sun said "Our new UPA interconnect is so great, these new UPA cards no longer need the 2D acceleration hardware we had in the old TurboGX". (might have made sense at the time, but today it means that those cards ar
Re:So what is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
You have obviously never been to the Technical University of Denmark, or the CS Department of Copenhagen University.
Those places, especially DTU, almost soil them selves from the sheer joy of deploying hundreds of SunRay thin clients. Problem is, people want their browser, their java apps, their animated gifs and (shudder) their Xitrix Windows sessions.
End result is a very thin client like experience. When I matriculated in 2000, we had a large, bad Sun server (24CPU/24Gig IIRC). This has now been demoted to lowly X-server, and it still runs slow as mollasses.
I think SunRay is a kickass technology, I would love to have one on my desk, quiet, cold, connected to a powerful Linux server in the basement. And I would love to see them in action where there was sufficient power for a good user experience.
I totally understand the Universities that deploy them. A three man team and a bunch of cable plugging monkeys can administrate a four digit seat deployment. But the fact of the matter is that users, in my experience, tend to find other alternatives (the Windows Lab, bring their own laptops.), because the responsiveness is so low.
Well, I'm ranting, and it's pre-coffee, so it's probably coming out a little more bitter than it should. This news about SunRays being able to run off linux is good news in my world, as this will allow administrators to buy very powerful commodity hardware at a fraction of the price of Sun iron.
cable-plugging monkeys? (Score:2)
Re:So what is it? (Score:5, Informative)
My goal was to write a server in Java that could at least auth and issue a few commands, draw a rectangle, draw an image. They actually send images and image change data in ascii pixel maps. I was impressed.
The coolest feature for college anyway was the smartcards. They could store your session key and you could go to any other ray and use the card to bring back the screen right where you left off.
Re:So what is it? (Score:1)
Re:So what is it? (Score:1)
Re:So what is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporate customers were complaining about the cost of maintaining PC networks. Sun saw there was demand for low-cost multimedia terminals (companies still wanted to their staff to be able to view training videos) which would have access to a centralised server.
Re:So what is it? (Score:2)
I would prefer a thin-client solution at my office for a few reasons. 1) Noise, 2) heat, 3) I might actually have a decent response system. The main issue that I have to face howeve
Re:Obligitory: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligitory: (Score:2)
I can load the main page, but if I try to reload or go to any of the toplevel section pages, it 503s on me, but I can follow any of the links to stories, it works just fine.
That doesn't make it suck any less, however.
Re:Obligitory: (Score:1)
Assault and Battery Lawsuit Pending? (Score:5, Funny)
Thank God! (Score:2)
Now I can actually make use of them.
I hope.
Re: (Score:2)
This is GREAT news! (Score:5, Informative)
I for one am extremely happy if this goes through as planned. Hopefully, Sun will not charge for the server software and only cash in on Sunray sales.
In a not so distant past, we fell on the following website [cam.ac.uk] of a university student's project to reverse engineer the sunray protocol. Our only hope (out of expensive SPARC gear) was that this guy's project would work out in the end. I guess this won't be needed anymore, at least not with the perspective of simply running the thing of a lintel box.
Our environment at work is composed exclusively of Sunrays, approximately 25 of them to be accurate. When we close in the 20 concurrent user, it gets pretty bogged down, especially with our venerable quad cpu E450.
Shelling out money for a better Sparc-Sunray-driving-server was not desired, mainly because of the price (a 4-way V880 costs 10-20 times the price of a quad opteron, and doesn't perform nearly as well). In other words, were stuck with the current setup. The least we could do was to run Mozilla and related apps of a separate Linux X86 box and X11 forward everything. Still, driving the graphical environment for 20 users tends to bring the machine to a crawl once in a while.
For those who will ask, connecting through XDMCP on a Linux box to drive the environment was even worse: those little XSun processes would eat up to a single CPU under heavy usage of the desktop, and it would feel pretty slugish. Understandable, since the screen refreshes would go LinuxBox -> Sunray server -> Sunray (one hop too many).
Enough said: I am thrilled with this piece of news. Sun has made my day (and I haven't said that in a LONG while). Running Sunray enterprise software on a quad x86 box is a dream come true.
Re:This is GREAT news! (Score:1)
As making money off the hardware has always been SUN's business model, this is a very strong possibility.
Re:This is GREAT news! (Score:2)
I agree though that it will be nice to see Sun Ray available for Linux. It'll make the entry costs lower, particularly if all you're using the Sun Ray server for is to manage the Sun Ray network and displays, with all apps being run on Windows app servers, a fairly typical deployment for most businesses.
For users who are happy with a Solaris/Linux desktop it's also good news. You can
Re:This is GREAT news! (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't get the appeal. I've used 'em, and I like the zero-admin aspect of thin clients. But I've been doing the same with diskless X Terminals for 10 years, and lately, diskless net-booting FreeBSD boxes. Like the SunRay, something like a diskless VIA EPIA is silent and zero-admin: it just works, has access to all the stuff on the boot/NFS server. Any such machine in the house has access to the same stuff, like the SunRay does.
Oh, I don't have a "smartcard" to store my stuff on like the SunRays do. Gues
Re:This is GREAT news! (Score:1, Informative)
The smartcard is just a cryptographic session token so that the server can uniquely identify a user, n
Opening Solaris? (Score:1)
Re:Opening Solaris? (Score:4, Informative)
> compatible with the current version but integrates some flavor of BSD.
How would that be more beneficial than simply opening up the current sources? What parts of BSD would you include? Certainly, you don't mean the kernel, because you want full Solaris compatibility.
Oh, wait, you must be one of *those*.
Here's how to transform your Solaris box into a BSD box:
1. Install gcc and gnu make packages from sunfreeware.com
2. usermod -s
3. Add this to your
4. Add this to all Makefiles: LOADLIBES += -lbsdmalloc -lucb
That oughta do it.
Re:Opening Solaris? (Score:2)
I think that sun should come out with a new open version of Solaris that is fully compatible with the current version but integrates some flavor of BSD.
Solaris does integrate some flavour of BSD - SunOS. The predecessor to Solaris was BSD based, as Suns founders were ex-Berkeley people who had worked on Unix. When Sun bought a license for SVR4 from USL (or it may have still been AT&T at the time), they integrated much of the extra bits that their BSD version of Unix had.
Now if they open sourced it,
Sun rays! (Score:1)
Excellent! We're struggling with XPe thin clients! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sun Rays have always been very interesting, but up until this, they have only had a Solaris server. Not bad for general browsing and business apps, but we need something that can run MPEG4 stream players, and Solaris isn't the first place to look for that. Linux has solutions, however. This is something we will look into...
Re:License? (Score:2, Troll)
So it is [sun.com], wonder when they put that there. For what its worth, it only takes about 5 seconds if you type "SunRay Server Software" into Google. Guess I have no reason not to get my CompactPCI Ultrasparc server running then.
Re:License? (Score:2)
Re:License? (Score:2)
There were a few boards tossed around, but not sold as end-user products by Sun. There's a couple of other companies that made them.
Re:License? (Score:2)
I am not sure which netra the poster was referring to, but I don't doubt it. There is a lot of netra crap that I don't care to remember.
Re:License? (Score:2)
Re:the story is -1: irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)
As for portability - sun also has a laptop [tadpolecomputer.com] version of these things with wireless capability. Oh yea, they have batteries that actually last 6-8 hours compared to your normal laptops...
Just another AC thats shooting their mouth off on something they know nothing about...
Re:the story is -1: irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Now tell me if they are really that expensive. I think not. If a Linux server version does come
Re:the story is -1: irrelevant (Score:2)
Re:the story is -1: irrelevant (Score:1, Insightful)
1. Sunrays are not well received in the marketplace. Anonymous or not, there is no argument there. Rather than pretend that the marketplace is full of idiots who just need to see the light, sun should think about WHY sunrays are a failure and what they could do differently with other products to prevent future failures of this magnitude. That is the kind of thing I say when I want to shoot my mouth off.
2. Sunrays and ta
Re:Do the Sun Rays still require a dedicated LAN? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do the Sun Rays still require a dedicated LAN? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Do the Sun Rays still require a dedicated LAN? (Score:1)
Re:The important question is though (Score:2)