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Linux Business

The Economist on The Rise of Linux 350

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bandwagon-still-rolling dept.
nickco3 writes "The Economist is telling the business world that Linux is a worthy adversay to Windows and Unix. It is free, runs on almost any hardware, and generally more secure than Windows As result it is dividing the industry into winners that offer Linux (e.g. IBM and HP), and losers that don't, (e.g. Microsoft). Sun is probably doomed."
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The Economist on The Rise of Linux More

The Economist on The Rise of Linux

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  • This made me confused. (Score:3, Funny)

    by termos ( 634980 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:08PM (#5721525) Homepage
    Sun is probably doomed
    According to this [slashdot.org] article SUN is the one who's not doomed.

    • Re:This made me confused. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @01:07PM (#5721830) Homepage Journal
      ... SUN is the one who's not doomed.

      Right. Note first that Solaris is highly POSIX-compliant, as is linux. This means that most software ports from one to the other with few if any problems, as long as you haven't used the private extensions of either. This isn't a conjecture; I and many others have tested this with our software. Portability between linux and Solaris is easy, almost as easy as between linux and *BSD.

      And note also that Sun is actively supporting several linux distros. There was some confused news recently about Sun supposedly dropping their linux. What they actually did was drop the attempt to "rebrand" RedHat linux as Sun linux. This was mostly because customers got confused. And some of them wanted RedHat explicitly. But Sun seems to be going strongly into the linux support business, letting someone else supply the POSIX-compliant platform that runs on their hardware and has all of their software goodies available as options.

      There is a strong contrast with Microsoft here: Microsoft has been moving strongly to a "total experience" platform which doesn't allow any software that isn't on their approved list. So if you're a software developer, you are facing a market in which you can only sell to Microsoft, on their terms. If you try selling retail, you'll find that your software constantly breaks, until you sign the rights over to Microsoft.

      Sun, on the other hand, has a strong history of supporting independent software developers by sharing information about the innards of their systems while not requiring onerous licensing of any sort. As either a software developer or an IT manager, it's obvious which would be the wiser purchase. Why would anyone with half a brain go with a secretive, monopolistic computer system when there's another available that is open and cooperative?

      And for a final note, we might observe that Sun has in the past objected to being called "SUN", since that refers to the Stanford University Network that they grew out of. They are officially "Sun", which isn't an acronym for anything. In todays environment of rabid copyright and trademark enforcement, it's important to get such things right. ;-)

  • as much as i like the (Score:4, Interesting)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <{aaaaa} {at} {SPAM.yahoo.com}> on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:09PM (#5721529) Journal
    economist.. i dont think MS is really a loser. Nor do i believe that anything else will be the dominant desktop OS. As much as we like to bash MS, they do do somethings right. Enough so that they will keep their customers. Heck sometimes they even make technological improvemsnts in their OS that others are just discovering. Look at all the research that went into Async IO in the open source world only to realise MS had done something better for nearly 10 years.
    • Ahhh... Amen to you brother.

      We've all heard of the arguments about how some of MS' tech teams (for the kernel for example) are actually quite decent... so there's no need to rehash that.

      I want to add a point though to your post, and that is that, in this day and age, anyone who utters "winner vs loser", black and white should be tarred, feathered and sent walking through the city center with a sign that says buffoon on it.

      The fact that such a bold (and stupid) statement comes from the economist is ac

      • They said, in a fine example of shades of gray, that rather than make M$ a loser, Linux will make them less of a winner.

        The fact that a slashdot poster can make such a bold (and stupid) statement is not surprising at all.

    • Re:as much as i like the (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, the article, if you read it, did not say that Microsoft was losing. Rather, it said that M$ would come out less of a winner.

      The poster of the root article needs to read the article. Doh.

    • Re:as much as i like the (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NetMasta10bt ( 468001 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:55PM (#5721770)
      MS is really doing less and less right. They are increasingly getting more greedy with their licenses. There security is to be laughed at. And every three years they release a rehash of the same old product.

      Eventually, (and soon), Linux will have the usability that 51% of the population will find acceptable, and it will landslide from there. There will be no reason to pay for Windows XY or Office YX. Software companies will start producing the little annoying things that exWindows users like for Linux, and everyone will be happy.

      Just wait until MS starts writing software for Linux. That will be a funny day.
      • Two huge things still need to happen before that. X needs to get fixed and I think Keith Packard's move is going in that direction (I want my the copy and paste and my bloody five mouse button to just work). And the more important and difficult one is Wine. They are also progressing at snail's pace (it is a difficult task I give you that). People just won't move unless most of their software works on the new platform.
      • And every three years they release a rehash of the same old product.

        Actually the fact that they FINALLY stopped the win 3.1 line that was dos+win3.1/95/98/ME and gone completely over to a NT core is a HUGE IMPROVMENT! I still don't like Microsoft but they are providing real OS as standard.

    • economist.. i dont think MS is really a loser.

      Yet when one reads the story instead of just the story post, one notices that the story post is a load of crap. The Economist said nothing of the sort -- as a matter of fact, it said mostly that Sun was in for it, and that Microsoft isn't in for that much trouble (since its dominance is in the workstation market).

      From the article:
      The most likely outcome is that customers will face a choice between Linux, which is cheap and cheerful, and Windows, which offe

      • scripsit 0x0d0a:

        Okay, I'll certainly grant integration and easier to use for unskilled staff, but where does the Economist get more "bells and whistles" from? When I think "bells and whistles", I generally don't think of Windows...

        That's interesting. I think you may understand the term ``bells and whistles'' differently than I, and apparently the author, do. Would it make more sense if he had written, in lieu of ``bells and whistles,'' ``cute and briefly entertaining but eventually tedious and ultim

        • "Bells and whistles", the way I've always heard the phrase used, refers nonessential but nice features. Having the ability to run on a machine with defective RAM would fall into this category...

          "Bells and whistles" don't have to be misfeatures...
          • Having the ability to run on a machine with defective RAM would fall into this category...

            Why in hell would you want to do that? If it's defective, it should be replaced.

            Anyways, for me "Bells and whistles" is the same as the parent poster thinks: eyecandy, integrated webbrowsers, cutesy helpers, etc...

            • OK, but if the machine has defective RAM and knows it, wouldn't it be nice to be told so by the machine, rather than having to trouble-shoot? As much as I love to try and solve mysteries, sometimes it's nice for the computer to give me a smack on the back of the head and let me know what the problem is.
    • remember its econimics. so if you make 1 billion one year, and set a goal to make 1.1billion the next year, yet only make 1 billion, you're a loser. the fact that you make a billion doesn't seem to matter.

    • Actually, Microsoft is a prime example of what they are now critizising: They never invented something, always reimplemented or copied. (The GUI was on Apple, Amiga and Unix years before, everybody except Apple had preemptive multitasking, etc. etc.)

      Microsoft currently has a stronghold on the desktop (> 90%), but is declining everywhere else (on servers and embedded systems. But also the desktop stronghold gets cracks, many entities have already proven that a MS-free office is possible.

      To put it in o

    • Only a Slashdot economist could consider a company that owns 90% of the OS market and has over $40 billion in the bank a "loser".

      Even the article itself doesn't think that Microsoft is in any serious trouble. And I quote:

      "The most likely outcome is that customers will face a choice between Linux, which is cheap and cheerful, and Windows, which offers more bells and whistles, is tightly integrated with other Microsoft products and is easier for unskilled staff to use, but costs more. In short, Microsoft wi

  • Sun is NOT probably doomed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:12PM (#5721541) Journal
    Sun is a hardware company; as much as they like to trumpet their 'value add' components and services, their bread winning business is SPARC. Java, a great language, generates little revenue and is a tool that drives need to purchase their hardware. Remember iPlanet? Approaching 0 on the latest web surveys as Apache dominates that space.

    IBM and HP are making smart moves adopting Linux business models. As Linux matures and benefits from a gazillion different implementations, AIX and HPUX will begin to look less and less desirable.

    Getting back to Sun, Solaris is not a revenue piece for them either. There was alot of complaining in the Slashdot crowd and Sun's commitment to Solaris on Intel has waned, but really, would you like to be running Solaris instead of Linux or Debian? Thought not...

  • Hmmm. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by villain170 ( 664238 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:12PM (#5721543) Homepage
    Furthermore, Windows is the preferred target for computer viruses. Servers running Linux are generally more secure.

    But if Linux is deployed more and more, won't those devious writers of viruses target it more?

    I totally agree that Microsoft has some security flaws that make it an easier target; however, as more and more people take the Linux plunge, they might be more of a target (especially the newbie users).

    • Re:Hmmm. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:21PM (#5721584) Homepage
      I totally agree that Microsoft has some security flaws that make it an easier target; however, as more and more people take the Linux plunge, they might be more of a target (especially the newbie users).
      This is my big fear with Lindows (where the default is to run as root). One of Linux's main strengths is the lack of the almost daily security alerts that Windows suffers - not that MS doesn't deserve it! Once a large number of noobs are blundering around installing anything they recieve by email on their new Lindows machines, the perception of Linux as a stable, relatively secure OS will begin to disintegrate.

      I've always suspected Lindows was set up as a get-rich-quick scheme, that will only harm Linux in the long run, but by then Lindows will be gone, and the directors will be cashed up and laughing...

      • Right. And it will be nearly impossible to explain to someone who isn't familiar with Linux about all the various distributions and their strengths and weaknesses.

        If your proposed scenario takes place, many will equate Lindows as being synonymous with Linux and notice that they aren't getting much of a security benefit as they thought they were.

    • Re:Hmmm. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by virtigex ( 323685 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:40PM (#5721692)
      Linux has the advantage that the two biggest vectors of viruses, Internet Explorer and Outlook, do not run on it. Browsers like Mozilla do not allow you to run executables by clicking on a link. Although there are of course ways for malicious code to run on your PC, these are by far the biggest culprits requiring only social engineering techniques to effect.

      Also, running as a privileged user is not the norm in a Linux environment (although some commercial products such as Lindows and previous Zaurus do), so damage from an exploit is limited.

      Also, Windows services are pretty opaque, whereas Linux services are fewer and better documented. The area that I would like to see improve in Linux is to have more daemons run as non-root (by executing setuid if necessary - similar to Apache) to mitigate hacking the daemons.

      • "damage from an exploit is limited"

        The most valuable files for a user are bound to be in his ~ directory, where a virus can do anything it wants even in unprevileged.

        Operating system and application files can just be reinstalled, users' files cannot.

      • Re:Hmmm. . . (Score:5, Informative)

        by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @01:04PM (#5721810)
        The vectors you speak of are 'newbie user' vectors.

        I've never gotten a virus from either IE or Outlook, because I'm slightly vigilant about their usage. Now, a serious vector is IIS... Not because many people like to make fun of it, but rather because it's a service. It doesn't need user interaction to be broken into. But then again, soon, Apache will be targeted just as much as IIS.

        Running as Administrator on Windows is a newbie issue as well, and anyone who is a seasonded user and still doesn't run as something else is being lazy. I haven't run as Admin in years. Since NT 4... and it works just fine. I do not believe people who complain about programs not running without Admin priv. (and in the worst case scenario, you can always "Run As..")

        You mention Linux services are fewer and better documented, I beg to differ with that as well... you can launch apt-get, and be very easily suckered into (as a newbie user) installing a shit load of things you don't need. Windows has a set number of services that come with the installer... you might have to disable some, but they're set. Now, I don't really know if there is a 'better' one among the two: the bottom line is you need to be contientious. I disable all my unnecessary services right off the bat after I install a machine.

        And last but not least, Windows up till recently didn't have a firewall built into it. Which isn't brilliant, but I can see where that came from: it wasn't originally meant to be a network OS (it was meant to be a desktop OS). With XP and Longhorn, they are coming up with stuff that will put it back to par regarding Firewalls. My point being: an unfirewalled Linux machine is *just* as vulnerable as a bare NT box... don't fool yourself.

        PS. Btw, you must have never read Microsoft documentation... they do a pretty decent job.

        • But then again, soon, Apache will be targeted just as much as IIS.

          There are still serious flaws with Windows servers that are not just newbie issues. For example far too many Windows services *must* be run at root level.

        • Re:Hmmm. . . (Score:3, Interesting)

          by loucura! ( 247834 )
          Apache is installed on more servers than IIS, how do you reconcile that?
      • You know...for casual users like me, these are not advantages. I've never had problems with viruses on Windows, and few of my friends hav (any? not sure). And I could care less about documentation...

    • Re:Hmmm. . . (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:44PM (#5721713)
      But if Linux is deployed more and more, won't those devious writers of viruses target it more?

      Linux is as widely-deployed, if not more so, than Windows (see netcraft.com [netcraft.com] for a single example). At least when we're talking about servers. The recent MS-SQL Slammer worm, for instance, was *really* bad, it took out networks all over the place. And it specifically targetted ... you guessed it, Windows servers.

      Worth noting that there have been a number of really serious exploits for software that's often run on top of Linux. They just don't spread as much. There are a bunch of factors in this, and they're almost all technical. (Before you say "well, Windows admins don't patch as much" as an excuse, implying that Windows is just as good technically, but is administered by adiots, go ahead and try and maintain 100 Windows servers. It's bloody impossible. They're a pain in the bloody ass, and that's definetly a technical problem).

    • But if Linux is deployed more and more, won't those devious writers of viruses target it more?

      Nah, all the dependencies will kill any risk of that.

  • Good news for schools (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Qacker ( 658930 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:13PM (#5721553)
    Mabey this will make all the schools that blindly follow whatever the offices downtown run swich to Linux too. The sysadmin at my school said it would be to expensive to by the Linux CDs?! ( he used to be an art teacher) Oh well mabey in a few years.

    • Re:Good news for schools (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I live in Finland (In Oulu more specifically, school is Oulun Lyseon Lukio [edu.ouka.fi]), and our school is switching all computers to run Linux. Gentoo actually :) It was quite confusing for most in the beginning, but everyone got used to it pretty quickly. KDE and fluxbox is installed on all the computers, additionally to the kde applications also mplayer, xmms, mozilla, opera, openoffice and the gimp is there on each computer. I actually have seen quite many non-techy people use fluxbox, and use the tabbing etc. I wa
      • I agree wholeheartly Im a support technition at a high school and would love to roll out linux desktops but two big factors are stopping me.
        1. The teachers notes are all written for MS products and they are totally against having to learn new products and alter them.
        2. The parents expect MS produts the PTA even tried to make us drop our non ms backroom servers (linux and novell).
        With opposition on both fronts there is no chance of getting in Linux anytime soon :-(
  • A worthy adversay indeed. Possibly one of the most terrifiying adversays in the history of IT!
  • The most likely outcome is that customers will face a choice between Linux, which is cheap and cheerful, and Windows, which offers more bells and whistles, is tightly integrated with other Microsoft products and is easier for unskilled staff to use, but costs more. In short, Microsoft will be not so much a loser from Linux as less of a winner. In the server market at least, Linux is providing Microsoft with some much-needed competition.

    I think this sums up the consensus of the article -- Linux is coming, but not to the desktop.

    • Re:News Flash: Linux still not ready for the deskt (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drooling-dog ( 189103 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:35PM (#5721678)
      I think this sums up the consensus of the article -- Linux is coming, but not to the desktop.

      Well, after years of dual-booting with Windows, Linux is the now the only thing going on my desktop, and I've gotta tell ya, I'm doing just fine (better than ever, IMHO). Maybe I'm dreaming? Or maybe the Microsoft fuddites don't know what they're talking about.

      • Yeah, but the fact that you know how to dual-boot means you're already more technically astute than 99% of the people out there. I see your point, and feel the exact same way, but people here seem to forget that Linux is a good choice - even, perhaps, the ideal choice - for the desktop for many people here because of its power and customizability, which the n00bs don't care about. I've been using Linux exclusively for several years and I now find Windows downright difficult and obnoxious to use.

        My proble
    • OT: Your current sig:
      "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Norman Schwarzkopf
      is contradicted [snopes2.com] by a well-known urban legends site.
    • I think the real reason that this is not happening is the one hinted at the article in terms of TCO (or at least the perception of TCO). There are a lot of low garde, low paid Windows sysadmins out there and they are a powerful conservative force in the offices of the world.

      However, if I was running a new company I'd have nothing to do with Windows, it's too expensive, too inflexible. I'd just hire a better sysop.

      Where I work the admin is very resistant to Linux (it frightens him to be honest, because he

  • Sun isn't doomed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sir_Bill_William_Jen ( 653115 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:18PM (#5721575)
    Sun will be around for quite a some time, because they offer specific product for one market on which they have quite a monopoly.

    Linux will probably take some share from Microsoft but It won't be so huge that it will be used more than Windows. Microsoft is too smart to let Linux take hold of them. They will do everything to stop Linux from taking their share, whether it be through Advertizement, Deals with companies, or Palladium.

    However Unix might fade away, BSD and Linux provide great alternatives for Unix... But they won't be completely gone.

  • Sun increase market share against x86 last year (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChrisRijk ( 1818 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:32PM (#5721650)
    In the "low-end" of the market (systems costing under $100,000) Sun increased their revenue market share last year (2002 over 2001). Ie they grew faster than the industry average. Almost no Intel, Windows or Linux based systems are sold for more than $100,000.

    So if Sun was being hurt by Linux (or x86 based systems in general) why did their market share increase?

    It wasn't anything to do with the LX50 (dual P3 Solaris x86 / Linux) systems they launched late last year - they only shipped a bit over $1m worth by the end of the year.

  • "Open Systems for Open Minds" ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Big Jojo ( 50231 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:32PM (#5721652)

    Sun's just being forced to go back to its roots, which were running a commodity Open Source OS (SunOS started as BSD) on commodity hardware (m68k at first, then SPARC except for a couple years when they also sold 80386 hardware, as they started Solaris). That should be a healthy thing, long term, though they have to get rid of a lot of closed-system attitudes. Like the ones that have crippled so much Free Java work.

    If Sun had kept true to their roots, they'd have been running Linux on x86 from day one ... instead, they wanted to keep one founder (Andy Bechtolstein), who wanted to design a RISC chip (became SPARC). So Sun sold out SunOS in favor of Solaris/SVr4, so they could switch to non-commodity hardware. Well I've got news for you: Andy's long gone, and SPARC was never that hot. And the customer lock-in is going away ... customers always wanted the open systems approach, even when Scott McNealy refused to play that game.

    • Wow. I don't know what fantasy world you live in, but it sure must be fun. You did start with a valid point, that original Suns used all-commodity everything (Motorola/BSD/VME/Ethernet), but then you faded fast.

      Let's get some things straight. Andy Bechtolsheim (note correct spelling) designed the first Motorola-based Sun1 as a side project to his PhD thesis at Stanford, before he met Scott and Vinod. So I think he knew a little about the tradeoffs they were making in the systems. He's generally consid

  • Oh (Score:5, Funny)

    by KoolDude ( 614134 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:35PM (#5721671)

    Sun is probably doomed.

    Umm... but... I thought Doom was going to be MS exclusive [slashdot.org]

    *logs off and runs away*

  • Microsoft Prices and Competition (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GregBildson ( 316305 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:36PM (#5721681) Homepage
    Thankfully, Linux has prevented Microsoft from dominating the low end server market like they wanted. From the low end, Microsoft was then going to push into the high end. Can you imagine how much Microsoft would be making off this area if Linux had not stopped them?

    On the desktop, we just bought 5 rather powerful developer PCs for $600 each. Of that price, $150 was for Windows 2000 (not XP thank you). 25% of the price is a rather large part of the cost. The decision between Linux and 2000 was pretty close on these boxes and getting closer all the time. Pretty soon, developer workstations could well be all Linux with OpenOffice and the like. I think the competitive threat to Microsoft will soon restrict their desktop and office pricing.

  • A Lesser Form of Unix (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:40PM (#5721694) Homepage
    "But for many applications, Solaris is overkill, and Linux, a less capable flavour of Unix, is good enough."

    I don't know much about Solaris, so I'd like to ask you guys out there. What makes Linux less capable? What does Solaris do that Linux can't do (at least well enough)? Just wondering.

    • Re:A Lesser Form of Unix (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @01:26PM (#5721951) Homepage Journal
      While it's not nearly the whole story, an interesting benchmark is the top 500 supercomputers [top500.org] list. Sun and linux are both on the list. Sun seems to be the main supplier of supercomputers these days. But they first appear on the list as number 156. There are only two linux systems, but they are numbers 5 and 45.

      I guess that doesn't tell you all that much about the top end, other than that linux and Sun are both quite capable of supporting raw, top-end gigaflops power. The actual computing is done by processes, of course, so this benchmark really just tells you that neither OS has any showstoppers. Neither interferes with the ability of a process to crunch bits and bytes.

      Now on to the other benchmarks ...

    • Go to Sun's web site; explore their product offerings and read the specs.

      I did. I concluded that Linux and Intel hardware are simple toys compared to Sun stuff. They are not to be confused with each other in features, reliability, or price.

      Linux is an alternative to Windows, not Sun.

      Richard
      • Linux is an alternative to Windows, not Sun.

        Not if you need a simple workstation or webserver. I can see why people would want a Sun box for high-end stuff - we just bought a couple of SGI Origins for file serving, but would have been just as happy with Suns - but I can see few reasons to buy a simple 1U Sun server, other than binary compatibility with larger systems.

        In addition, as the article points out, applications that once ran on giant multi-cpu boxes now run on clusters. Clusters can be a fuckin

    • Re:A Lesser Form of Unix (Score:4, Informative)

      by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @01:57PM (#5722116)
      I don't know much about Solaris, so I'd like to ask you guys out there. What makes Linux less capable? What does Solaris do that Linux can't do (at least well enough)? Just wondering.

      Well, scalability is one major thing. Linux struggles with more than 4 CPUs and more than 4G of memory; Solaris handles hundreds of CPUs and a terabyte of RAM. Linux lacks the manageability of system resources offered by Solaris 9, which allows system resources to be prioritized for different tasks, with a guaranteed minimum available. And even if Linux could do this, it doesn't run on hardware than can be dynamically partitioned, unless it runs as a guest on z/OS, and in that case it's z/OS doing the work. Tight integration with the underlying hardware is another advantage for Sun; they know precisely every component in every system that Solaris runs on, because they designed and built it, so there are never compatibility issues. Solaris' high-performance, high-reliability filesystems are proven, not just betas (yes XFS is also proven, but in IRIX not Linux). Speaking of filesystems, Solaris has ACLs, whereas Linux just has the relatively crude user-group model. Linux doesn't have remote shared memory or IP multipathing (IIRC).

  • Sun doesn't support Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Biolo ( 25082 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:49PM (#5721739)
    Ok, Sun is not 100% behind Linux (yet), but that's because Linux isn't ready for the high end (yet). By high end I'm talking about F15 [sun.com]
    and F12K [sun.com]
    servers. It is pretty close to having the capabilities to run on the Sun midframe stuff, for example I'm sure it would run fine on a 3800 [sun.com],
    maybe even the 4800 [sun.com], but you start to reach its current limit with a fully stuffed 6800 [sun.com] system.


    Now, step back for a minute and think why Suns UltraSparc and Solaris solution is so strong. Simple, at the risk of repeating the marketing guys the lure is that you can give your development and deployment guys a bunch of cheap Sunblade 150s [sun.com] or some cheap UltraSparc blades [sun.com] and whatever they come up with can be moved straight onto anything up to and including an F15K without recompiling. Put yourself in the place of a big corporation. Your putting together a new system, you have no idea just how big a load it will eventually have to take (say in 5 years). Today, sure you could run it on high end Linux box, but what happens if 6 months in the system needs a bigger box? If you chose Sun in the first place you simply buy the bigger box and move over. No porting, no redevelopment, and you know there is always a bigger, faster system [sun.com] you could move to. It buys you severe scalability that Linux isn't placed today to provide.


    Now, about not supporting Linux, what about the LX50 [sun.com], the Sun Open Desktop that is coming soon, the Lintel blades (Coming Soon(TM)) the fact that the entire Sun One stack (web, directory, identity, etc, etc, etc) is either available now for Linux or coming soon, not to mention Star [sun.com]/OpenOffice [openoffice.org].


    So what is the perceived issue? I think people don't see Sun offering Linux on the UltraSparc range and thing they don't get it. Sun does get it, but look at their selling point for the last 10 years, total scalability. Linux doesn't provide this yet so they can't buy into it. What they are doing is making Solaris as compatible with Linux as possible, whilst at the same time helping Linux by providing software (openoffice, SunOne and much more) and I believe some kernel code too.


    Believe me, when Linux is ready for the F15K class systems Sun will be ready for Linux to be there.

    Disclaimer - I work for Sun, but nothing I have said here is not already public information.

  • Sun, not dead, just a change of direction. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zebra_X ( 13249 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:51PM (#5721752)
    Sun really needs to rethink their strategies.

    Solaris for Intel? None of the sparc binaries run on it, it's not any faster than linux. Linux 1, Solaris 0.

    Solaris for web applications... absoultely not. Tried and true OS for sure. Though web sphere, atg, web logic and most other large scale app servers have linux ports. java's relability will never exceed the uptime of an OS i.e. the JVM or app server will crash before the OS does. That then precludes having a bullet proof OS. Web applications need redunancy, both from a geographic perspective and application. Doing so requires a duplicate hardware investment. Not such a good deal with sun. Linux 2, Solaris 0.

    Maintainance... will be cheaper with linux rather than solaris. The reason being that Linux and it's friendly varients are all freely avaialable. To learn and use linux is not a big deal, solaris on the other hand need solaris hardware to run. As a result of easier access to hardware and software (linux) labor costs go down because the skill sets require to administer and maintain linux and linux apps are more freely available. The same is not true of solaris. Linux 3, Solaris 0.

    Solaris, and it's hardware IS good for massive multi-proc applications. Data Warehouse with Multi-tera bytes of data? Linux and Intel are not suited to such tasks. Large transactional databases that require nearly 100% uptime and reliability, i.e. the database is nearly as reliable as the Operating system. Solaris is the OS for that application. Linux 3 Solaris 1

    Sun is no longer suited to playing in the high(er) growth markets of dedicated servers, web applications, IT support devices (dns, dhcp, network management) and such. Their role is increasingly being boxed into ultra highend applications where a large number of processors, ultra high reliability and what sun has stood for still means something. Where the applications are almost as reliable as the OS, and that the OS and hardware is required to be up nearly 100% of the time and never unexpectedly. The difficulty they face is that that the role just described is not in particularly high demand. As IT budgets continue to shrink - decision makers are going to continue to look to linux to solve their problems.

    Linux is cheap - costs less to maintiain - and the hardware can be repurposed. Sun just can't argue with that. Sun needs a change of direction.

  • Sun's Doom is like Apple's Doom... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bug-Y2K ( 126658 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:52PM (#5721758) Homepage
    Content profitability in a comfortable niche market.

    Too long have people labored under the delusion that one company MUST dominate the "computer market"... only because one company (Microsoft) seemingly *has* dominated. Just because one does today, doesn't mean that is the natural order of the market place. If anything it is unsustainable, as Microsoft is beginning to find out.

    Sun makes some excellent high end gear, and in that market niche they are by far the largest player. They aren't even competeing with M$ in that space... and there is plenty of money to be made there. Sure CEO Jeff won't get to cross-check Bill in the teeth as often as he'd really like, but hey... that is NOT what Sun is in business to do.

    Shake the current "one must dominate" worldview out of your heads /.'ers. It won't work. Microsoft's whole strategy, both internally and externally, is "For us to win, they have to lose." You WILL lose if you play that game with Microsoft because they play it better than anybody... but if you play a different game... Steve Jobs' game... where "we need to make something of quality that some percentage of the market wants and not worry about Microsoft" then you will do fine. There are billions of dollars to be had and significant percentages of market to be owned. Sure, you won't have dominance, but you don't really *need* it.

    • Parent makes a lot of sense. It's funny that geeks should expend so much effort arguing about markets, popularity and economics. I'm in it for the tech. I can't understand any so-called nerd writing off platform (x) for reasons of market share, dominance, etc. Everyone who thinks of themselves as a geek owes it to themselves to get out and *try* every option available: tinker with every OS, link against every library! Disassemble every case! Hell, you might find something you like more than what you'v
    • I agree 100%. Sun's problem is that they're trying to be everything to everybody. Im-fucking-possible. Even MS knows that they're not on the top end boxes. They keep trying, but they don't make a lot of headway. MS's business is the desktop and low-mid range servers. Sun's business is very high end servers. Apple's business is very high end desktops. No business on the planet caters to everybody. Not a single one. Sun should quit worrying about MS on the desktop and focus on what they're good at.

  • Sun Doomed? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:56PM (#5721774) Journal
    When the hydrogen runs out, we're *all* doomed!

    Oh, not that sun, OK.

    In that case, I think the reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated: Sun the company has rolled with a lot of things, and it hardly seems too late for them to come out with a (genuine) "Linux play." They seem to think so, too, since they have been flirting with it over the past few years.

    Sun hardware is very nice, and Gnome running on Solaris (which I've seen and played with, never used seriously) looks and feels like ... Gnome running on a GNU/Linux system. Sun could (not "certainly," but let's say "probably based on past experience") sell on the strength of their hardware, support and engineering expertise; I doubt that many of their sales are based on the name of their operating system. They could shift *towards* Linux over a period of years, weaning themselves from Solaris ... this already seems to be the path they're drawing, or (again) at least flirting with.

    (Or a different brand of apostasy, Sun could shift toward one of the BSDs, same points still apply.)

    timothy

  • Future of Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @12:57PM (#5721788)
    These "Linux is taking over the work" articles make as much sense as the "BSD is dying" articles. And they're about as likely as each other. Yes, there are a bunch of people who will win and lose from Linux, chief among the former is IBM who have discovered a way to get expensive people to work for free, and chief among the latter are the traditional Unix vendors like Sun. I don't see it being such a problem for Microsoft; in my experience people choose "a Unix" or "NT", and once they've chosen to go down the Unix route, they then decide which Unix in particular. There is a good reason for this; it's much easier to retrain a (say) HP-UX developer or sysadmin to (say) Solaris than it is to take that same individual from Unix to NT or vice versa. Ultimately, all business is not about technology, it's about people.

  • Furthermore, Windows is the preferred target for computer viruses.

    It's hard not to be preferred when you're running an OS that allows everything execution rights...

  • The Economist didn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @01:05PM (#5721823) Homepage
    Traditionally, the Economist has been one of the earliest media outlets to get technology. The first printed press reference to the Internet outside the tech press is from the Economist, ditto for Linux, but this time around they are way off the mark.

    The reason Linux is so popular is not that is free. BeOS is also free. Linux is successful due to convergence of many different factors:

    (1) Free
    (2) Open source
    (3) Unix compatible
    (4) X-windows (X11) compatible
    (5) designed for x86 (yes it runs on many other chips, still Linux is an x86 project from the get go)
    (6) Multiple vendor supported
    (7) Plenty of third party support

    Moreover each of these things feed of each other. That is why Linux is so popular.
  • The author states "Only in Mr Mundie's nightmare scenario would Linux and other open-source software wipe Microsoft from the face of the earth. Mr Ellison's prediction might then come true, but with a drawback: his own firm, Oracle, would be wiped out too." I'm not quite sure how this could be true, since Oracle still sells database software that runs on Linux. It was a really good article right there until the end...
    • I think any writer who takes predictions from Larry Ellison seriously has zero credibility. What happened to the network computers we were all supposed to be using the last 7 years?

    • scripsit bc90021:

      The author states "Only in Mr Mundie's nightmare scenario would Linux and other open-source software wipe Microsoft from the face of the earth. Mr Ellison's prediction might then come true, but with a drawback: his own firm, Oracle, would be wiped out too." I'm not quite sure how this could be true, since Oracle still sells database software that runs on Linux. It was a really good article right there until the end...

      It actually does make sense, even if it's not laid out as clearly as

      • To say it perhaps a bit more clearly -- like mud -- it seems the Economist is just saying that the rise of Linux and FOSS in general could lead customers to replace Oracle DBs with MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.

        It isn't entirely inconceivable, even if there is still a pretty big gap between Pg, Mysql and Oracle.

  • John Naughton, author of the excellent "Brief History of the Future" [amazon.co.uk] wrote an interesting article about the costs of Windows versus the cost of Linux on the desktop. He's definitely not [briefhistory.com] an unbiased observer (no pun intended), but his article has real numbers in it.

  • The Slant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by evocate ( 209951 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @01:44PM (#5722050)
    Why is Mundie listed as "Chief Technical Officer" and Ballmer as "Chief Executive [Officer]", but Ellison is listed as "Boss"?

    How is Sun the main loser if Linux hasn't replaced many system in the the "highest echelon"? Are telecom billing systems and airline reservation systems running on Windows? I doubt it. E-mail, web servers, file and print sharing. Applications for which Solaris is overkill. Hmm, that sounds like Windows territory to me.

    Ownership cost is mentioned, and again Micosoft gets the spin due to lack of full description.

    Mundie's collapse predictions are left completely unchallenged. Why does Ellison need a grain of salt, but Mundie does not?

    Button-pushers like "cancer" and "nightmare" in the closing paragraph definitely set a tone for the reader's afterthoughts.

    Trying to discredit Ellison's prediction by assuming the demise of Oracle on the basis of Mundie's questionable prediction is just wrong on many levels. There is more than one business model - I'll leave it at that.

    Overall, this is less obvious than something that comes out of Microsoft-funded "independent analyses", but more it's more insidious too. Did Microsoft influence this author? Are Economist executives invested in Microsoft? Why the divide-and-conquer routine against Sun? Why start with such an optimistic view of Linux only to end on such a sour note?

  • Correction Mr. Mundie (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @02:29PM (#5722261)

    Sorry Mr. Mundie, but Apache is NOT a clone of comercial software as you tried to claim. Apache is a fork (clone) of the Origional NCSA web server, which was NOT commercial. (open source, but I'm not sure exactly what license was used so it might not meet the exact legal definition of Open Source). IIS, and the other comercial servers are clones of an open source webserver.

    Of course this is all an accidemic exercise, but don't try to claim some high ground where Apachee has it.

  • Apache a CLONE?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @04:03PM (#5722709) Homepage Journal
    "According to Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief technical officer, as the open-source movement grows, it will get better at producing free clones of commercial software."

    I give up. What is Apache a clone of? I wish they had included an actual quote on this. Maybe the journalist was "interpreting".

    Most of the article is on target though. The easy way to evaluate the strengths of the companies mentioned is to look at how diversified they are (or aren't).

    IBM is no longer primarily a hardware company. They have a strong consulting division, they do fundamental research and grab pattents on REAL things (rather than new parsing algorithms like some companies I can think of), they have a very strong software development component, they farm out hardware manufacturing that is no longer profitable (disk drives) while hanging on to things that they do best and can make money on (chip fabrication).

    Sun is primarily a hardware company. Their operating systems are (almost) exclusively sold to customers who use their hardware. Java and Star Office are far from being cash cows. Their weakness is that as Intel, AMD, etc, chips get cheaper there is less incentive to use Sun's higher priced hardware components. Supporting Linux helps them a bit, but it is the price of their hardware that puts them at a disadvantage.

    Microsoft is a software company. They are trying real hard to become something else too, but like Sun they are having a heck of a time making anything else work. They don't really do fundamental research, but instead try and grab patents on programming concepts so that they can bully other companies in court when it suits them. They don't really make any hardware, but instead stamp their logo on a few things to make it seem that they do. They do select good subcontractors for mice and keyboards, I'll grant them that. Everything they do except Windows and Office lose money. Prospects for either of those (because they are already so successful) can only go down. They currently have a scatter shot approach to the "next big thing" which consists of trying everything at once and seeing if any of it takes off. Few companies have the money to do this. But they will bleed themselves dry rather quickly if they are not carefull. Something tells me they are not going to be carefull.

    Apple is trying to diversify too. Since they are starting small the only way they have to go is up. It would be nice to see them further popularize the power-pc server. My personal experience with OS X is that they are rushing versions of it out the door too fast. I've decided to wait for XI (or whatever they call it) and switched to running Linux on my iBook. Those gel buttons are cute though.

    • Re:Apache a CLONE?? (Score:3, Informative)

      by MyHair ( 589485 )
      I give up. What is Apache a clone of?

      IIRC, Apache started off as a clone of NCSA httpd. I can't find the reference (I thought it was in the config file or man page, but no), but I think they wanted identical functionality and config files at first.

      Of course it has grown into so much more now.

  • Open source competition stifles innovation? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mariox19 ( 632969 ) on Sunday April 13, 2003 @04:37PM (#5722899)

    Okay, here I quote the most deliberate piece of misinformation and propaganda:

    "According to Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief technical officer, as the open-source movement grows, it will get better at producing free clones of commercial software. [...] Such products reduce the incentive for commercial firms to innovate...."

    In short, competition from quality products stifles innovation -- according to Microsoft. Commercial firms have no incentive to actually come up with products having more features, more stability, better documentation and ease of use than open source products because no one is willing to pay for such benefits?

    Well, as they must be fond of saying over at Microsoft, "If you believe that, I've got an operating system to sell you."

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