Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 10th Sep 2009 19:41 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
There we are! It took them a while, but Oracle has finally said a few things about the future of Sun's SPARC and Solaris products. Oracle placed an ad in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal listing four plans the company has with SPARC and Solaris.
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Member since:2009-02-19
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-09-15
There are custom platforms / appliances built around Linux or xBSD that'll do pretty much whatever you want.
Here are but 2 examples:
Untangle Open Source Network Gateway
http://www.untangle.com/home
Vyatta - Routing, BGP, VPN forwarding, virtualizable
http://www.vyatta.com/products/product_comparison.php
Member since:2009-09-11
Member since:2006-01-22
Member since:2006-11-18
While the networking part is also getting some serious love, I'm not sure that it's ever going to be competitive with Cisco or Juniper. Linux or the BSDs still aren't at that level.
Juniper (and many other vendors) use FreeBSD as a base for their systems and are contributing a lot of code back, check this for example:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3835746
Member since:2005-08-18
For easy tasks, they work, but if you need firewall, content inspection, routing and QOS, it starts becoming a head-ache.
It seems you have not spent much time with Cisco. Easy configuration is not a strong point. Firewalling, routing and QOS is all easier to set up on Linux/BSD than on Cisco. Or at least on OpenBSD, can't say I'm a fan of iptables.
It's also a bonus not having to deal with the awful CLI interface of IOS (it almost makes edlin look user friendly).
Member since:2005-07-11
While the networking part is also getting some serious love, I'm not sure that it's ever going to be competitive with Cisco or Juniper. Linux or the BSDs still aren't at that level.
Note: Juniper routers run a custom version of FreeBSD.
Furthermore, it's the only UNIX out there still in development (AIX or HP-UX don't seem to get any love lately), and it's that good that it's actually worth giving up RHEL for it.
And MacOS X is also certified UNIX, and still under heavy development.
Edited 2009-09-11 17:44 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
While the networking part is also getting some serious love, I'm not sure that it's ever going to be competitive with Cisco or Juniper. Linux or the BSDs still aren't at that level.
From Cisco's giant Nexus 7000 10-Gig switches, Juniper megaswitches, F5's BIG-IP/LTM, to consumer grade wireless access points, I don't know of a single network vendor that uses Solaris (or OpenSolaris) as a base operating system. Cisco, Juniper, F5, all the major networking companies use Linux or FreeBSD (or the other BSDs).
Edited 2009-09-11 22:29 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."More News »
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Member since:
2006-01-28
The cool thing about SPARC is that it's really fast. I couldn't believe the results of a $5000 Sun T1000 server, just a few weeks ago. And it's entry level that's going to be EOL-ed.
Currently they are investing in two areas in Solaris: Storage and Networking.
If the Solaris storage part (ZFS, Lustre/ZFS and Cluster) get's a few more features it's going to fly by NetApp, EMC and the rest. It's almost a complete solution. Regardless of what anyone thinks about ZFS, it's like comparing Windows XP and Snow Leopard. ZFS just works and it works easier than anything else on the market. Storage administration is fun again thanks to ZFS. Sure, you might be able to do the same things with solutions from other vendors, but they either come at a very high cost or they are less than easy to administer.
While the networking part is also getting some serious love, I'm not sure that it's ever going to be competitive with Cisco or Juniper. Linux or the BSDs still aren't at that level. For easy tasks, they work, but if you need firewall, content inspection, routing and QOS, it starts becoming a head-ache. A free head-ache, but a head-ache nevertheless. I can't imagine Solaris being less of a head-ache. It's probable going to be a bit easier to administer in some aspects, but I don't think a general purpose OS can go there.
Everything in Solaris fortunately just works as expected. Furthermore, it's the only UNIX out there still in development (AIX or HP-UX don't seem to get any love lately), and it's that good that it's actually worth giving up RHEL for it.