WSJ: IBM in Talks to Buy Sun Microsystems
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 18th Mar 2009 11:48 UTC, submitted by PLan
In the News In a move that would certainly shake up the computer industry quite a bit, IBM is reportedly in talks with Sun Microsystems about the possibility of IBM acquiring Sun. Sun is going through hard times at the moment, and has been actively looking for someone to be acquired by.
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RE[3]: Solaris is dead.
by kaiwai on Wed 18th Mar 2009 20:50 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Solaris is dead. "
kaiwai
Member since:
2005-07-06

What makes the Linux kernel flexible is how easy it is to port it. As you know its been ported to almost every hardware configuration you can think of. From Phones, to set top boxes to PC's to Super Computers.

Solaris has been ported to what? X86 sparc and maybe one or two other platforms.


What has that go to to do with the price of fish? The problem with Solaris isn't the lack of technology, it is the lack of leadership within Sun to bring all the products together in a cohensive offering to customers so that a solution can work out of the box rather than having to spend thousands on assembling the individual componens oneself.

There is a reason why Windows has made a jump in marketshare on the server - people want turnkey solutions and Sun is still stuck in the day when the likes of SCO were charging extra on their products for the TCP/IP stack, UFS support and individual components. Customers don't want that, they want an out of the box turn key solution.

Yes Open Solaris has a much bigger HAL then Solaris proper, Linux can be ported quickly to almost anything you throw at it.


Who uses HAL? neither Linux nor OpenSolaris uses HAL; OpenSolaris have good separation between platform specific code and agnostic code but you could hardly qualify a smart programming decision as equating to the implementation and use of a HAL akin to that of Windows NT line.

The other flexibility is that no one company controls it so there are no restraints to what you can do to it. So for the customer or random developer you can do whatever you want with it. It doesn't fall under some restrictive Sun (IBM) license. Notice that there are tons of versions of linux and even the linux kernel. When open solaris was first talked about people acted like Slow Laris was so much better then Linux and when it went open source that would be the death of Linux. LOL! Not.

No one serious has given Open Solaris a good look. Meaning that hosting companies still push Linux, companies that sell virtual servers still push Linux, companies doing cloud computing still push Linux.

Open Solaris has not taken off and Solaris proper is dieing.


Just because something is popular or well marketed doesn't mean that the product is inherently superior.

I wish people would spend a bit of time to ask themselves why Linux originally took off in the first place - based on its early beginnings 12 years ago instead of listening to rabid fanboys like yourself who jumped on the Linux bandwagon in the last 3-4 years. If you understand why Linux took off then you'd realise why dimissing OpenSolaris or any other opensource alternative is a stupid precept at best.

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