Sun Microsystems, SuSE Link Up To Sell Linux 272
ChilyWily writes "Reuters is reporting that Sun Microsystems Inc. has agreed to resell and support closely held German software firm SuSE's version of the Linux operating system, the leading variant in Europe, the companies said on Friday.
This agreement follows a similar one in May between Sun and Red Hat Inc. While I'm happy to see Sun's finally beginning to warm up to Linux (aka if you can't beat 'em, join 'em strategy) I wonder if this is too late for Sun?"
It's about time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not neccesarily. In the unlikely event that SCO were to win their case, Sun would be distributing any tainted parts of Linux without a valid license from the original copyright holder of the tainted code. For SCO to win, the GPL has to be invalidated, at least in a limited sense, which will leave everyone, including SCO and Sun, scrambling for legal cover.
Re:It's about time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not neccesarily. In the unlikely event that SCO were to win their case, Sun would be distributing any tainted parts of Linux without a valid license from the original copyright holder of the tainted code.
How so? Sun has been in bed with SCO for months [newsfactor.com]. They paid some portion of many millions of dollars for the right to the Unix code. To me it looks like Sun is playing both ends of the game, and in the middle is Solaris. I certainly wouldn't construe this as a friendly move -- just another move for Sun.
Re:It's about time... (Score:2)
I suppose if Sun distributed a Linux kernel that had code in it that IBM got from AIX or Dynix?
Re:It's about time... (Score:2)
I suppose if Sun distributed a Linux kernel that had code in it that IBM got from AIX or Dynix?
Sun was already free and clear. Then they secretly purchased an additional license from SCO, which they don't need but indemnifies them for using the so-called UNIX(C)(R)(TM) code. Now, the licensing deal has been made public. Sun will look like a legal Linux distributer to many. In the worst case of a brain-dead judge in the SCO/IBM case, Sun just drops Linux and laughs all the way to the bank, while helpf
Re:It's about time... (Score:3, Interesting)
What I think is interesting is whether or not Sun can and/or will go after SCO to re
Re:Um No (Score:5, Informative)
SCO can try to license their alleged 80 lines in whatever way they want. The problem is you just are not allowed to distribute the other millions of lines together with those 80 lines in any case. Which means any license to do so is worthless.
Re:Um No (Score:3, Insightful)
iqu
Re:It's about time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats fine as long as they are fee and clear to distribute it under the GPL, you and I are free and clear by proxy.
Re:It's about time... (Score:2)
They can't sue you unless there is a court decision saying they own what they claim they do.
it never too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it never too late (Score:2, Interesting)
However, as for Linux "destroying" Microsoft, the case isn't as clear as you simplistically state. There is a far greater difference between a Red Hat/SuSE and 2000 server than Solaris.
Re:it never too late (Score:2, Insightful)
Sun already lost the low-end market. They're trying to buffer their high end market by saying "we too can interact with that other OS, no need to change your high-end just to get linux compatibility"
Re:it never too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, Sun is much more than just a hardware/OS company. They're diversifying - thats good. They probably see the threat that linux/open source represents to their sun/solaris product lines, and are moving to embrace it, so they can have a peice of the linux pie when it starts eating into their solaris cashflow.
Re:it never too late (Score:2)
The big PA-RISC / Itanium boxes like superdome kick butt, and HP-UX has now matured into a serious industrial grade large server OS - NT, and (much as I love it for small boxes) Linux both have a way to go in this area.
Re:it never too late (Score:3, Interesting)
and Itanium proc's suck, they aren't even as good as alpha proc's, let alone the newer ultrasparc's. take a look at real world benchmarks for that type of equipment, like database benchmarks. Sun/Solaris OWN high end benchmarks, and still constitute the majority of the enterprize field.
and i wont get into the enterprise level of support that Sun offers, it beats everyone else hands down.
And you know how linux is making leaps and
Re:it never too late (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, this is slashdot. We should not forget that, all objective topics aside, Sun is just one heck of a cool company! If only they would get rid of that annoying Scott McNealy...
Re:it never too late (Score:2)
Can you point me in the direction of any press releases from IBM, HP or SGI that say they're #1 in the UNIX server market?
Would you like me to provide other sources that say they're #1?
Re:it never too late (Score:2)
Since SUN will be reselling SuSe, does that mean that SUN won't actually be developing Linux using technologies from Solaris? It could be great if SUN were to put a hand into enhancing Linux.
Re:it never too late (Score:2)
Hmm...
My company has a lot of Sun boxes, and invariably, every month (sometimes every other week) one piece of hardware fails (CPU, Memory, Mobo...) and the Sun guys come in and replace it.
I never, never had this failure rate with an x86 platform. Even when you buy the cheap "noname" taiwanese chips!!
Re:it never too late (Score:2)
We have an E450, Two v65's and Two sun fire 210's at work. we have had E450 for several years and the rest of the stuff is new. we have had one hard-drive fail. nothing else.
we also have a ton of workstations, going all the way back to sparcstation 5's. never had any major failures there either, few hard-drives and one stick of RAM IIRC.
Re:it never too late (Score:2)
Re:it never too late (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:it never too late (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever realy used Sparc systems? The things are tanks, no matter what sort of work load I throw at them they just don't stop. On a single task a PC will be faster, however under heavy load the PC just falls apart.
Re:it never too late (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that Sparc/Solaris is overkill for commodity tasks such as basic web servers. There's no
Re:it never too late (Score:2)
Intel PCs
Sun
IBM
with IBM being the biggest, baddest, best thing you can get that's not a custom built supercomputer ala Cray. There's other things in the middle, I'd probably rank HP between Intel and Sun.. if HP/UX is still the steaming pile of poo it was ten years ago, then HPs at more of a disadvantage... but I haven't seen it in a long time.
nah (Score:5, Interesting)
Keeps desktops away from MS! (Score:2)
Suse desktops don't really take away from Sun's sales...MS already did that. Now if Sun would work for a decent Java GUI bindings they'd have someting..QT or GTK work on almost all major plaftorms...use 'um!
cheap? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:cheap? (Score:2)
Sun doesnt have any real reason to go back to offering their own Linux distro. this is a better idea. And sun is sure as fuck not dumping solaris.
Sun tax? (Score:2)
(I know they have a free download of Solaris 9, but it doesn't run on SMP systems.)
Re:Sun tax? (Score:2, Informative)
For what? (Score:2, Offtopic)
will Sun buy SuSE? (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps the question should be - is there any reason Sun _shouldn't_ buy SusE?
Re:will Sun buy SuSE? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:will Sun buy SuSE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:will Sun buy SuSE? (Score:2)
Re:will Sun buy SuSE? (Score:2)
Re:will Sun buy SuSE? (Score:2)
Perhaps the question should be - is there any story in which 2 companies anounce working together where a slashdotter _doesn't_ think the one will buy the other?
Please, use your brain, owning SuSE has no stratigic advantage to Sun under current circumstances.
Too late for Sun? (Score:5, Interesting)
What will kill them is their supply chain however. We've been waiting a few weeks for mounting rails for the V60x machines.... however this isn't Sun's fault, they aparently OEM these machines straight from Intel. It's Intel who is now able to supply the part, it's actually effected another server we bought straight from Intel. It seems with their linux initiative they're simply relying on the services of others.... Intel for the x86 machines, RH and SuSe for the linux support. They're becoming a reseller when it comes to linux rather then a producer/supplier.
Then there's the NAS system which has been held up in QA for the past 3 months.
They have some great products coming out and good linux knowledge and service, however until they streamline their supply chain they might be in trouble. The rep told me they're putting quality as the top priority, however it seems to have created more problems then good. This new 3310 NAS system was suppose to begin shipping in May.... it's now August....
That will be there downfall, not meeting ship dates. They have the knowledge and inovation to survive, they just need to ride their hardware guys' asses a little harder.
Re:Too late for Sun? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bombproof computing, they are really making it their goal -although having just come back from watching Terminator 3 I'm no longer sure thats a good thing!
As for the holding onto Solaris thing, you can understand that. Solaris is and was a really great product. Having used AIX in a production environment I can understand why IBM aren't so bothered about loosing it to Linux. Given a choice I'd certainly pick Linux. When it comes to Solaris though, it's still not so clear cut, I'd go for Linux on the desktop because that's what everyone is targetting, but I would be sorely tempted for Solaris on the server, and it's a shoe in on the SPARC platform. If you truly believe in your product, like Sun does, it's much more difficult to accept that there may be a real alternative. Part of the problem is that Linux isn't (yet) a real alternative across Suns product range. SGI's Altix scales Linux to 64 processors, but that's the high end limit for now, until Linux gets to being capable of running on the top of the line Sun kit they can't fully commit to it, and by this I mean 128 CPU's, and be capable of handling 256 cores (coming soon(tm)). You've got to look at Suns selling point ever since it was started, Solaris from the lowliest workstation to the highest end servers. Your developers build and compile and test on the low end and deploy straight onto the highest end. Binary compatibility, surprisingly compelling, and Solaris still does this better than Linux, especially across OS/kernel versions.
That said if it was me who made those decisions I'd be sponsoring a major push to get Linux running on the SPARC platform, after all Solaris doesn't really make much money for Sun by itself but its SPARC hardware certainly does, and who cares if the customer runs Linux on Sparc or Solaris on Sparc, as long as they chose Sparc.
Disclaimer: I work for Sun, so obviously I'm biased, and none of the above statements are sanctioned by Sun in any way.
It is too late for Sun. (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux brings no value to Sun and actually destroys Sun's profits. Why? For years, Sun has hidden its performance-poor servers behind its Solaris operating system. Sun focused its marketing message on "the whole system" and said that performance is only one part of the system value. Most of that system value outside of simple performance came from Solaris.
Now, with Linux, the Sun salesperson can no longer argue that the operating system has some intrinsic value over the operation system of, say, an IBM machine. The IBM machine and the Sun machine are running the same operating system, Linux. Then, the comparison of the two machines comes down to performance. In other words, the customers will be forced to look at the quality of the basic hardware. In this area, Sun falls woefully short. Look at the results for the ""SPEC benchmark [spec.org]" or the "TPC-C benchmark [tpc.org]".
Re:It is too late for Sun. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no mention of this in the article you posted.
The revenue fell far short of Wall Street expectations, and the stock promptly crashed.
"Crashed"? Come on, quit with the exaggerations. Look at this graph [yahoo.com]. Thus far they have sunk $1 per share or ~20%. When your stock value is that low it's easy to lose a large percentage over a small amount.
I find it strange that Red Hat's stock is higher than Sun's and yet Sun brings in billions every quarter and has 6.6 billion in the bank. I think it says a lot about the relavance of using stock prices as a note for discussion.
For years, Sun has hidden its performance-poor servers behind its Solaris operating system.
Please, tell us about your experience with Sun. Have you administered it and if so for how long? Are you a user and if so for how long?
They have one of the most stable OSes out there, superb hardware and some of the best support which I'm sure amounts to nothing.
The IBM machine and the Sun machine are running the same operating system, Linux. Then, the comparison of the two machines comes down to performance
Once again, you seem ill informed. The Linux offerings are on x86 servers, not SPARCs. With x86 hardware there aren't many ways to differentiate one box from another at a hardware level.
In other words, the customers will be forced to look at the quality of the basic hardware.
You forgot cost and what's most important to companies, support.
or the "TPC-C benchmark"
Sun hasn't submitted a TPC-C benchmark since late 2001, and it was on old hardware. This may or may not be a good thing, but you cannot tell.
Before you keep bashing Sun I would seriously consider doing two things: Getting out into the real world to see how many people trust and use Sun/Solaris and do some research.
Until Sun is unseated as #1 in the UNIX server market [sun.com] (as reported by Gartner) and has less than it's 6.6 billion in the bank [yahoo.com] along with 13 billion in total assets I don't think Sun is too concerned.
Your post is nothing more than the often repeated "Sun is dying" chant that is not backed up by any relavant facts.
Re:It is too late for Sun. (Score:3, Troll)
No offense, but from this I'd assume that you're not an expert at the Stock Market. Stock price is not comparable between companies unless both companies have the same number of outstanding shares. A theoretical company worth only $1 million would have a stock price of $333,333 if
Re:It is too late for Sun. (Score:2)
A 20% decline in the valuation of a company is a pretty big fall. The price of a single share is not really relevant, and should not make it any easier or harder to lose or gain a given percentage of value, unless the price-per-share is in really crazy territory (sub-dollar, or multiple hundreds of dol
Astonishing (Score:2)
Their entire company is based on big iron using Solaris. Given that the prevailing trend is to run Linux on lots of small Intel boxes, how can this not shatter their most basic business model?
Given the way Java is going nowadays, I agree, how can Sun not be doomed?
2 flavors of Linux on Sun X-86 Servers. (Score:2, Interesting)
So now Sun re-sells two flavors of Linux for its X-86 servers: RedHat and, now, Suse.
Sun is simply giving their customers a new choice.
Running an increasing number of small Intel boxen requires increasing support costs. As needs increase, switching to fewer more powerful big-iron boxen can help to flatten support costs. Seems like Sun
Re:Astonishing (Score:2, Insightful)
Java is the most widely used programming language and is still growing at an amazing rate. Sun sell licences for enterprise java and make a lot of money doing it.
Sun have always used an interesting strategy to open up markets for their products and services. They promote open standards, and even donate technologies to the IT community (such as NFS). Sun virtually invented the idea of the desktop Workstation. The idea being that the bigger the market for open sta
Safe move (Score:2, Interesting)
And SuSE is most likely 'closed' enough already for SUN to consider it as a safe solution compared to the dangerous
Re:Safe move (Score:2)
However, there are tons of people who use the SuSE ftp install. They're getting SuSE, and they're not paying for it.
The only thing you can consider closed about SuSE is some of the software they ship (realplayer, mainactor, flash, etc). But then again, I suspect a lot of people go out and install those applications on whatever distro they use anyhow.
Nice article but its missing alot (Score:5, Interesting)
The reporter completely misssed pricing issues, platforms that sun would be selling it for, the support that would be entailed with the license, ETC.
What is truly missing is there is no comment on the SUN-REDHAT, SUN-SUSE licensing vis a vis the SCO suit and licensing. We know, to the extent that SCO's statements may be believed that sun pretty much has a license to do whatever they want with unix. The question is if they sell/distribute a linux under the GPL does that spill over ? Is it protected ? If I buy redhat from sun is it covered by SUNS rights, if it is how does that affect the GPL that comes with the distribution ?
IT would have been wonderfull if the article instead of just being a parrot had of addressed the questions.
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that how Intel's CPU's are thought of in the computing indusrty?
I just purchased an Intel Pentium 4 3.0Ghz and specifically chose an Intel 875PBZ board for it's stability and reliabilty. With The P4's heat spreader and inergrated heat protection, I consider it a high quality product.
After nearly 3 years of worry free opertaion with a dual Pentium box running almost 24 hours a day without so much as a hiccup on Debian Linux, I thought I made a wise choise with buying Intel.
Can anybody shed some light?
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
You proved his point right there. *Almost* is something that someone buying Sun does not want to consider. Almost is not good enough.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
My mistake, I really should have clarified this point. The only time the machine went down is because my girfriend would not stay over if she had to sleep in the same room with the box running. She couldn't sleeep even with the low RPM fan I installed. So offline she(the box, that is
Other than that, the machine has been problem free.
Re:The enterprise is a big cluster intercourse (Score:2)
You need to work in the real world a little bit. The sun workstations I know are rebooted only when the power goes out. These things operate just fine without reboots. Servers have a higher expectation, most operate for years at a time. When they are rebooted it is only because the out of date OS is no longer worth the gain of uptime, and then a slow time is picked well in advance. Well in advance means if you want to reboot on christmass this year, you are too late, the plans take longer than that.
Re
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
They cost a fortune because downtime costs a fortune.
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had sun boxes on my desk for years, and from what I've seen, this hasn't been true for quite some time. If you opened up a Sun Ultra5 you'd find that it was made almost entirely out of low-end commodity compon
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Alright, you can swap it out for another if it fails, but how much time will that take and to business, time is money.
You're correct. If I had to bet my life support machine on a single piece of hardware and software, I'd pick Solaris on SPARC over Linux on x86, mainly because of the extra hardware reliability from Sun.
But with the way that clustering technology is developing, it's getting to be a reasonable cost-effective alternative to pickup 2 or 3 Lintel boxes.
If your Lintel box has 99.99% uptime a
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Informative)
This is ridiculous. Parity is cheap now, any decent PC vendor can sell you a machine using ECC SDRAM.
Meanwhile, of the three Sun machines I've had from new at work in my current job, the Ultra 10 blew a disk, the Blade 1000 had a fp bug (US-III 750Mhz) and blew a disk, and my v240 has both an ethernet bug in all four NICs, and had to have the power supply replaced before it would boot for the first time as a brand new machine.
I don't buy the hardware quality theory for Sun any more. Sure, the metalwork on
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
There's still a large body of software for engineering and scientific disciplines that runs only on Sparc/Solaris. This software and userbase are left over from the days when RISC machines were far faster than x86 machines.
Everyone is moving away from Sun workstations, but these migrations take time. Notice that Sun's hardware sales are down 20% year-on-year. Sun already realizes that its workstation business
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
There are quite a few niches in which any x86 or Mac machine wouldn't be enough.
Very, Very Big CAD projects need a 64-Bit processor and the extra address space that comes with them. The G5 (or 970) is 64-Bit, but OS X isn't yet 32-bit clean. x86 is out of the question.
A lot of specific applications are also better run on Workstations. I've been told that Molecular Analysis simulations are faster on a MIPS R1k/195 than on a 2 GHz Intel.
Thanks to a lot of open source stuff, lots of applications ar
What does the SCO'undrels think of this (Score:2)
Videos of interesting interviews about SCO's lawsuit,Sun &Oracle [search.com]
Is this new? (Score:2, Informative)
What do you mean, "finally warming up to Linux?" They've been selling it in their Cobalt products [cobalt.com] for years.
Re:Is this new? (Score:3, Informative)
Cool (Score:2)
Re:Cool (Score:2)
Bright sun (Score:3, Insightful)
Waddya mean?
* They have StarOffice, based on the GPL'd OpenOffice; they have a great future.
*Java (that pesky little language) was doomed too but still hangs around, much like Basic, Pascal and Visual Basic
*Solaris still has an unbeaten reputation for carrier grade quality in telecom compared to Linux, yet...
*They have their own hardware too, even if Opterons...
SUN is better than its reputation here, I believe.
Re:Bright sun (Score:2)
Sun keeps laying off and laying off and hiring Indians just to stay alive. Solaris on intel is considered dead thanks to premature killing of it earlier and Java is free so they tet no money from it.
Sun is in trouble.
Great! That means they'll... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice Microsoft advertisement (Score:3, Interesting)
I think Sun is just hedging their bets here. Plus, they can offer 'immunity' since they have the license from SCO. I know, I know, it's all crap (the SCO issue), but they can trumpet the fact that they have a proper license to all the code no matter what. None of us gives a shiat, but some PHB's might find it puts them at ease.
Re:Nice Microsoft advertisement (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way for this license to have some value is for SCO to identify what part of Linux it covers, and for that part to be a module or a user-level program or library (such licensed properties are allowed to be added to a Linux distributionj). SCO is definately claiming the exact opposite.
Sun should give up on sparc (Score:3, Informative)
The sparcIII was years late and already obsolete when it hit the market. SparcIV has been delayed which also gets in the way of the upcomming sparcV which supposed to come out late next year.
The sparcIV supposed to be just as fast as a pIV and a sparcV is going to be even faster. However by the time the sparcIV comes next year it will already be obsolete as well.
Also sparcs are expensive.
My solution would be to switch to AMD64. They are cheap, really fast, and Solaris has already been ported. They can keep their expensive bus technology and only use the cpu's in exchange from sparc's. Or even better just use hypertransport and reduce the costs.
They should also look at the powerpc970 and 980'd. Unfortunately no version of solaris exist for those platforms. AMD64 would probably be a better bet.
Sun's are expensive and underpowered. Commidity hardware makes sense.
Re:Sun should give up on sparc (Score:2)
Sun (Score:2, Interesting)
Smaller Business Apps (Score:2)
You people have really missed the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Fortune 1000 companies require this type of backing on any new 'deployment'.
3. Sun now has an 'in' for their sales and support team.
4. Eventually, the solution to further growth will be something linux is 'unable' to do.
5. Experience with Sun, means Solaris is a natural upgrade choice.
6. Profit!
Sun doesn't care at all, they'd support windows if they could figure out some way to convince people that Solaris was the natural upgrade path from that. Linux will always have the 'hobby' stigma attached (mainly becuase Sun will always be whispering in the right ears. After all, they have access.) and thus Solaris is an easy sell, along with the dedicated, lock in hardware for it. Sun can't lose, even if they cna't upsell the client, they have still made a truckload of money on the support contract.
Grow up everyone, Sun isn't run by technologists, and doesn't give alick about Linux (or Solaris for that matter). What they want is money, and this is a means to that end. It may align with some peoples goals to promote Linux, but don't get confused about what Sun is really doing.
Well imagine that (Score:2)
Now what I really want to know is how this fits in with the whole SCO debacle and the special golden child status that Sun apparently has with SCO.
Yay! (Score:2, Informative)
I'm glad of this - I run several Oracle installations on Solaris and a couple of small ones on SuSE.
SuSE and Redhat are the two platforms that are certified by Sun, and I had been worried that they'd drop the SuSE support when they got into bed with RedHat more.
Happily it looks like that's not going to happen which is good for me.
(Now if we could only get somebody to pay for Sun to certify Debian ;)
Solaris 10 (Score:5, Informative)
I imagine it's also just as profitable for them to do support/development for Linux. And I think that they're expanding, not downsizing or rethinking an entire business model.
Re:Solaris 10 (Score:2)
Re:Solaris 10 (Score:2)
What really caught my eye was the improvements in how you can designate resources for a particular task. I believe these features are present to a certain extent in Solaris 9, but I don't think it was so finely grained and optimized. I don't know Solaris that well though so don't take my word for it.
Another thing that caught my eye was the security improvements. I'm always happy to see those in any OS.
Re:Solaris 10 (Score:2)
They're not so pro linux (Score:2, Informative)
Missing the point about SuSE (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun has also always had a strong Indian connection and it is unsurprising that it should leverage that.
The "Sun is doomed" crowd closely resemble the "Apple is doomed" crowd. They seem to think being a mere $12G player in a huge industry is somehow a guarantee of failure. Depends. Spreading your alliances, being perceived as more rest-of-world friendly than Microsoft, being good at big tin that has to run with low outage, these could be good strategic positioning.
And the short-term opinion of the NYSE on this counts for precisely zilch. (as does the instant opinion of the typical /. reader, me included.) Stock exchanges are not able to make rapid long term evaluation of strategic decisions by enterprises. If they were, they would be economic analysts, not traders.
Throughput Computing (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry guys, but Sun is a great company. They have supported open standards before anyone had a clue about it and they have already given a lot to the community. Java gains groud where microsoft still tries to enter the market (mobile phones etc), solaris is a mature product (solaris 10 is being used/tested inside sun for almost a year) and their hardware may soon fill the performance gap.
I do not see why it may be too late for them.
Re:Throughput Computing (Score:3, Informative)
heir hardware may soon fill the performance gap
Perhaps the throughput computing stuff will be great, but until then, Sun has a bit of a problem in their traditional markets, because their cpus don't deliver competitive bang for the buck in the workstation and small server markets any more. This is where they grew all the mindshare which got them a lot of success. Since they announced US-IIIi at 1GHz, Apple/IBM came back with 2GHz G5. I am fairly confident a dual 2GHZ G5 Powermac is a better unix workstat
Re:Throughput Computing (Score:3, Informative)
What Sun is doing is putting multiple fully functional CPUs on a single die. Think of it as a single Pentium 3 Slot A cartridge that contains 10 Pentium 2 CPUs.
Solaris uber alles (Score:2)
Film at 11
aka if you can't beat 'em, join 'em strategy?? (Score:3, Informative)
I work for a large data hosting company which shall remain unnamed so I don't get a memo with a copy of the NDA and privacy policies I signed, that has somewhere around 15,000 - 20,000 servers. We primarily offer 3 basic managed systems. Windows 2000, Sun Solaris, and RedHat Linux.
Of the servers about 55% of them are Compaq servers running Windows 2000, 40% of them are Sun Solaris servers, and a whopping 5% of them Compaq servers running RedHat Linux.
Who's beatin' who huh?
* Of course I believe Linux will eventually surpass just about anything, that or a fork of Linux or another open source project. But as it stands now, Sun Solaris is still one of the major UNIX operating systems in the market, and will remain so for years to come.
Re:Let the Sun Bashing commence (Score:2, Insightful)
Why hit Sun? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sun tries so hard to damage M$ that they hurt themselves, their friends, and their clients.
That said I'm a Solaris admin, and I like Sun hardware and software in spite of the Applesque pricing (yes that HD is $400, yes it is physically identical to the $80 PC drive, no you can't get the mounting bracket separately).
Re:Let the Sun Bashing commence (Score:2)
Sun was Microsoft before anyone knew what Microsoft was.
And they're still the same, only not as successful.
Doesn't mean they never do anything good, but it's never been smart to trust them.
Re:Why not DEBIAN?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not DEBIAN?? (Score:3, Informative)
The parent is not flamebait material. Just because you use debian or love debian does not mean you have to mod a post flamebait. This is the absolute truth. I did not say that debian suxors or some bullshit like that, I stated that debian is NOT very attractive in the corporate sense due to support and what some would call bad "marketing".
That said, debian is a solid distro and has contributed great things to the open source world. I have no ill will toward the debian project.
Perhap
Re:Why not DEBIAN?? (Score:2)
Re:Yet another split direction for Sun (Score:2)
Actually, AIX is still selling and making money so it will continue until profits are gone. At that point, AIX will stop. However, IBM has openly said and likewise shows that Linux is the real future for them. It is the only OS that runs on all their hardware. Likewise, they are only porting to Linux. Finally, it is the only platform that gets nice discount. If you wish to run the standard AIX, MVS, OS-400, etc, you
Re:SuSE == bad (Score:2)
The only thing bad about redhat is it comes with apache2 which the mods are not all their yet. This means you need to compile apache and install it manually. Second is the rpm package system.
SuSE has alot of nifty features like SAX2. This also makes it kind of sluggish compared to FreeBSD or debian.
But that does not mean its bad. It just does not fit my personal tastes for a fast light customizable OS. If you do not have the time to install and cust
Re:Their Death is Near (Score:2)
I'm a SCSA, a SCNA, and an enterprised-certified service engineer. My company is a Sun Strategic Partner. This means FUCK ALL as far as either technical knowledge (which it's supposed to indicate), or internal business knowledge.
So after my rant about "ooh, I'm an SCSA and I know all about Sun," let me proceed to some useful data.
1) Sun has seen some hard times. They know it, we know it, MS knows it.
2) For Sun to respond