Sun Microsystems is stepping away from an effort to sell the Linux operating system for desktop computers, the server and software company’s top software executive said Tuesday.
Sun cools down Linux desktop plan
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JDS/Linux can’t be used with Sun’s enterprise management tools, or rather, it could with some work but the LDAP integration in SuSE is a far cry from what’s available in Solaris.
This is a big win for enterprise customers intending to use JDS along with JES Directory Server and other Sun management tools like SMC.
I’m sure it will cause a number of complaints from home users of JDS whose hardware is supported by Linux but not by Solaris 10. But then again, that was never Sun’s market for JDS to begin with… they’d much rather push Sunray/WAN for use in the home.
That they’re focusing on OpenSolaris. It makes no sense to sell two Unices for essentially the same job.
It makes a lot of sense. They want to push Solaris forward, it would be silly to maintain their own Linux distribution. Besides, if I’m not mistaken, don’t they already offer Red hat and SuSe as Linux options on their machines?
Linux is going to fizzle out soon. Sun is wise to refocus on Solaris, a much higher quality and capability offering vs. any brand of Linux.
“Sun Microsystems is stepping away from an effort to sell the Linux operating system for desktop computers”
Gee, what a surprise. I wonder if we’ll see M$:Solaris anytime in the future.
I see it’s marked as “pending review”. Let it stand: it makes Mr/Ms Goldstein look bad, but it’s merely silly, not harmful.
Linux isn’t going away.
Besides, too much attention is paid to the kernel in any case. Assuming adequate support for the hardware, Gnome or KDE on top of Solaris is going to look and feel just the same. They are both just flavors of the GNU/Posix/Gnome/KDE/X juggernaut.
As long as Sun continues their contributions to OpenOffice and Gnome, I don’t care if they want to piss on Linux, even though I run Linux. Let them compete.
My sister just switched to linux, she bairly knows it existed. You think users like her will switch to Solaris? Linus is going to switch to Solaris? What about the BSDs? Are they going to die to?
I say to you sir TROL TROL TROL TROL TROL TROL!!!
Linux dosn’t make any sence for Sun, end of story.
Well I’m not sure about your comment about GNU/Linux “fizzling”, but there are numerous reasons why Solaris made this move. OpenSolaris plays a key role among those reasons I’m sure, perhaps they’d rather push Open Solaris as opposed to JDS at top of GNU/Linux.
As other posters stated, SUN does offer other GNU/Linux options on their machines.
I just love how Linux people hijack Open Source efforts as being tied to Linux – Gnome/KDE/Apache/GNUtools are kernel independant projects and RMS is right in stating that Linux is just a kernel – You can get exactly the same functionality on a Solaris kernel or a FreeBSD kernel or on a SCO Unixware kernel (may god strike me for uttering SCO!).
“Gnome/KDE/Apache/GNUtools are kernel independant projects and RMS is right in stating that Linux is just a kernel – You can get exactly the same functionality on a Solaris kernel or a FreeBSD kernel or on a SCO Unixware kernel (may god strike me for uttering SCO!).”
He hurd that 😉
Solaris absolutely sucks as an end-user desktop. It might be great as a part of a company with a dedicated IT staff, but the home user is *never* going to use Solaris as a desktop.
So, Sun may not even want to go after that market. That’s fine. However, they will become more and more irrelevant compared to Windows and Macintosh because they do not provide even decent GUI configuration tools for any of the hardware or software that ships with Solaris.
Linux is not particularly good in this department, either, but it is way, way, way better than Solaris. If Sun wants any sort of mindshare and grassroots support that is often associated with Linux and Mac, they need to make something that is relevant to independent human beings (or at least “consumers”) that may or may not be tied to some corporate entity. Microsoft has faults, but forgetting about the SMB (esp. small retail establishments) is not one of them. Those are practically the anchor and foundation of the economy, and hence the bedrock of Microsoft’s gigantic marketshare and dominance of the IT industry.
So Sun can drop desktop Linux, but unless and until someone else steps up and makes an integrated open source GUI-oriented computing environment, Linux will never die.
It is a notion of mine that the corporate world is going to tire soon of their brief romance with Linux, leaving Linux to the hobbyists.
When I say “Linux”, I don’t mean just the kernel, but the kernel and all the poorly organized claptrap that usually ships with it. In short, a Linux “distro”.
So much open source software is being ported to Windows that there is no longer any compelling reason for most companies to use Linux. Maybe for certain agencies that need a high trust environment, they will continue to use a completely open-source chain. If Sun keeps going with its open source plans, there is no reason that chain cannot be a Sun open source stack, further discounting the value proposition of Linux.
When OSS gets ported to Windows, it usually ends up working better. This is mainly due to modern installation infrastructure that is available on Windows vs. the infinite hell of command lines, config files, shells, directories, permissions, etc., that is Linux.
Unless Linux (kernel + claptrap) gets organized and focuses entirely on ease of use, ease of install, ease of deploy, ease of maintenance, it is going to fizzle out. Time is money and Linux is a vast sinkhole of time and energy because it simply was never designed to be simple. It may not be what people want to hear, but is the plain and simple truth of the matter.
Solaris absolutely sucks as an end-user desktop. It might be great as a part of a company with a dedicated IT staff, but the home user is *never* going to use Solaris as a desktop.
Uh, wrong. It’s already in use as an Enterprise Desktop. Enterprise Desktop needs are very different from Home Desktop needs.
So, Sun may not even want to go after that market. That’s fine. However, they will become more and more irrelevant compared to Windows and Macintosh because they do not provide even decent GUI configuration tools for any of the hardware or software that ships with Solaris.
Wrong again, JDS itself comes with several standard configuration tools, and additionally they have a graphical package manager, and a graphical system administration program. Not only that, SUN Update Connection is currently in beta and will provide functionality graphically, web wise and in other ways the same as RedHat Network.
Linux is not particularly good in this department, either, but it is way, way, way better than Solaris.
Hardly, and you need to qualify that “Linux” word you throw around. Because you know as well as I do that the quality or even presence of GUI configuration tools available on each Linux distributions varies wildly.
Please, stop trolling.
> Solaris absolutely sucks as an end-user desktop.
Remember when Sun came out with JDS on Linux – it was given high marks – what changed between Gnome on Linux and Gnome on Solaris?. All the apps are exactly the same – evolution, mozilla, star office and GNU tools – all of a sudden the same apps suck because they run on Solaris?
It was clear from the very beginning, when Sun made so much noises how Red Hat Linux isn’t really Linux, and only Sun Linux is a true Linux offering, that Sun would abandon Linux quicker than you can say “Another marketing BS from Sun”. Another half-baked attempt of ‘Bait and switch’. Try to attract potential Sun customers with Linux offering (did anyone really care?) and then switch to Solaris. As if anyone would care for Solaris-based desktop either.
Solaris is going to fizzle out soon. The constant changing of strategy will certainly see to that. Companies don’t like being sold something, only to have it changed. Make up your mind, SUN.
Uh, wrong. It’s already in use as an Enterprise Desktop. Enterprise Desktop needs are very different from Home Desktop needs.
That is what I’m saying. End user, I meant home user. However, Microsoft does so well because they have the network effect of catering to *both* audiences.
… what does a “Linux ditro” have that none of the other *NIX’s can’t just port or recompile?
Linux has an Kernel/Driver interface that appears to change randomly. This causes much hell in regards to drivers.
Solaris X86 doesn’t have this problem.
JDS is a nice operating enviroment, clean and consistent, but do you really need it on Linux? With Solaris x86 on the rise, it’s sort of redundant for Sun to have both.
Sun abandons OpenSolaris as well? Basically they thought (like MS) that open-source can be controlled by one entity (and hence the OpenOffice initiative) but now it seems to engulf them, so they’re rejecting it, criticizing it etc.
Sad to see a good technical company flipping over and over and making a fool of themselves.
Besides, I also wonder what happens to all their Java Desktop System users now? I thought they also had a large order delivered somewhere in Asia. Hmm, at least Red hat is better than this at keeping its existing customers.
Shame on you, Sun!
It is clear from your comments that you don’t really care about Solaris in any other aspect than as a threat to Linux. Truth be told, what you call a “claptrap” of apps that ship with the Linux kernel is pretty much exactly what will be used with Solaris: X, KDE/Gnome, etc.
Logic dictates that if you consider Linux to be doomed, then you should consider OpenSolaris doomed as well.
It is quite obvious that you are nothing but a pro-MS shill who hopes that the open-source community will turn on itself in meaningless turf wars. Divide and conquer, as usual. In reality, you are as much an enemy to OpenSolaris as to Linux. Meanwhile, reasonable people understand that both Linux and OpenSolaris can (and will) coexist, and as more apps are available for both, the less relevant MS’s monopolistic OS will become.
Unices (and Unix-like OSes) of the world, unite!
> Solaris absolutely sucks as an end-user desktop.
>Remember when Sun came out with JDS on Linux – it was given >high marks – what changed between Gnome on Linux and Gnome on >Solaris?. All the apps are exactly the same – evolution, >mozilla, star office and GNU tools – all of a sudden the same >apps suck because they run on Solaris?
Agreed. I’m a Slackware user who decided recently to try out Solaris 10.
It is a little harder to understand than linux, but it’s not bad at all.
JDS is a great version of Gnome & I’m very impressed. I hated gnome under Suse, & was ok w/it under Slack. I’m an enlightenment user, so I wasn’t really looking forward to JDS. Just planned on replacing it anyway. After using it, I may just keep it around for awhile.
I’m not really into the politics of this stuff, I just use what I like. So far, Solaris is looking pretty cool.
so thats the final say….. this week at least huh…
I’ve used JDS for a few years, and it’s a pretty decent desktop OS. Then I tried FC3 (ugh); I’m currently using Debian.
I’ve downloaded S10x86 to give it another go – I use Solaris commercially, and whilst some Linux distro’s may tidy up the GNOME config better, it’s pretty good. I plan to reinstall S10x86 on my desktop PDQ. (The desktop is the second PC; my laptop is my day-to-day desktop, so I try things out on the desktop first). I’d love to integrate DTrace into my development schedule, for one thing. I’m sure I won’t be throwing Valgrind away any time soon, though.
For work, my customers use Solaris on SPARC. That’s the job I do, and they don’t see 64-CPU systems as startlingly high-end, obscure, cutting-edge systems, but just a database server which they know (because it’s running Solaris) that it will just work. Similarly-scaled Linux installs seem to have all these flaws. 64-CPU (even 96-CPU) Solaris installs are run-of-the-mill.
So, in many ways, it makes sense to run Solaris on my desktop. The Linuxes are (sometimes) prettier; Solaris tends to be pretty-much vanilla GNOME.
Desktop users, don’t forget that you get StarOffice as part of the free-of-charge Solaris 10 download, though… It does beat OpenOffice.org, though I’m hard-pressed to find details, it does feel better.
If you plan on installing Solaris for x86/x64 I would highly recommend going with the latest Solaris Express release (build 15 – see http://blogs.sun.com/dp for an overview or wait until the next one) if this isn’t a production box. The new boot architecture along with a host of other enhancements are making the general experience much better than the past. If you have a nVidia card there is a good chance it can be leveraged with the new driver http://www.nvidia.com/object/solaris_display_1.0-7667.html (you may have to add an entry to /etc/driver_aliases if you don’t have one of the specific supported Quadro boards – it works fine on my Toshiba tecra M2 with a GeForce FX 5200 – see http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=45 for details). Centrino drivers are coming (I’m using beta drivers now with very good results) as well as host of little desktop improvements. Most of these things will start being made available in Casper Dik’s kit http://blogs.sun.com/casper as the legal stuff gets worked out.
Yes I work for Sun….
not many ‘home users’ use linux. it’s for people that like to hack code and play with it and build their own OSs.. complete cutomization.
Sun would gain more marketshare in my opinion if they targeted the desktop at a specific market like development and programming.
QNX did that and it expanded into home use although the company never pushed for home use and does not even want to persue that market (which is one reason why qnx fell apart in my opinion)
Solaris x86 Available
Solaris x86 Withdrawn
SUN JDS Available
Solaris x86 Available
Solaris x86 Open Sourced
SUN JDS No Longer Developed
OpenSolaris Available (soon)
…all within the last few years!
As we say in Oz: “Headless Chook Syndrome”
Solaris x86 Available
Solaris x86 Withdrawn
SUN JDS Available
Solaris x86 Available
Solaris x86 Open Sourced
SUN JDS No Longer Developed
OpenSolaris Available (soon)
…all within the last few years!
Solaris x86 was originally released in 1993. Sorry, that doesn’t qualify as “last few years”
(Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3563/is_n8_v9/ai_1417554…)
Sun wanted to end development of Solaris/x86 following the dotcom bubble burst because they were out of money and looking for R&D costs to slash.
JDS is being actively developed, just using Solaris as the base OS instead of Linux.
The Solaris code was released for both SPARC and x86 in the form of OpenSolaris.
Apart from crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on what I wrote, it’s basically correct. No need for the name calling, but I know that’s a bit much to ask in this place lately.
I’ve used JDS for a few years, and it’s a pretty decent desktop OS. Then I tried FC3 (ugh); I’m currently using Debian.
I hate to nitpick but JDS has only been around for a year and a half.
QNX did that and it expanded into home use although the company never pushed for home use and does not even want to persue that market (which is one reason why qnx fell apart in my opinion)
An OS intended for use in embedded systems fell apart because it didn’t target home users??? Hmmm….makes a lot of sense.
HP, better start shipping OpenVMS for home users, or else it will fall apart!!!!
IBM, what are you thinking, targetting high end computers and Power based servers/workstations with your AIX OS???? Ummmm, don’t you know the desktop is where it’s at. I’m sure you would make more money competing against Dell for the desktop with AIX instead of using it for its intended purpose!!!
</sarcasm>
You do realize that the QNX desktop OS is intended for people developing QNX solutions for embedded systems, right????
Your last post is very interesting. I wonder why QNX is not keen on home users? I’m in linux world using it day & night and honestly I still feel it lacks a lot when it comes to GUI and GUI based applications. I have seen QNX in actions and I wonder what is stopping them from entering into market of home users? I desperately need a stable movie player in linux that is stable just like Windows Media player.
As we say in Oz: “Headless Chook Syndrome”
Get your hand of it, It was a smart idea to move Solaris of x86 at the time because:
– x86 had lacklustre performance compared to Sparc
– The amount of Dev time for hardware support would simply not have been worth the effort considering that the OE would run like crap on x86 anyway
– The customer base wasn’t really that interested in Solaris x86 at the time bar a few vocal parties
– Sparc is not proprietary as is commonly assumed, the main reason I hear people talk about Solaris x86 being so great is that it runs on non-proprietary chipsets. Well, go to http://www.sparc.org/ and see for yourself.
Excuse me, but where in that reply did Bascule give you a hard time? he politely pointed out where your post was wrong.
If you were dumb enough to go with Sun for a Linux system, you deserve to get stranded.
Sun does not support and never has supported Linux in the way Linux should be supported. Sun is a Solaris shop. Period.
And Solaris is never going to beat Linux on the desktop OR on the server. Anything Solaris can do, Linux will match – now or later. Solaris just might be able to keep up IF it develops a community as big as the Linux one and does it within the next two years or so. I’m not holding my breath.
Within five years, Linux will bury Sun and Solaris.
And then it will start on Windows in the server and desktop space.
I really don’t understand the recent Sun bashing trend. If the company was MS, Real, Creative, SCO, … that consistently came up with crappy products or pursued unfair practices then it could’ve made sense. But Sun has always produced top notch hardware + software. They did no evil whatsoever.
You may love linux or GPL. But Sun is hardly your enemy. They set Solaris free on an OSI license, but are still being hated. Should they have given up their tradition of producing rock solid products and come up with hip-gadgets? Would you have liked them then? It’s a funny world where entities with far worse products have all the fanboys.
I desperately need a stable movie player in linux that is stable just like Windows Media player.
WHAT?!?!?!? Haven´t you heard of MPlayer and Xine these days??? Both are not only more stable than WMP but also have a smaller footprint when playing a big video/DVD and can handle almost anything that you throw at them. Even with something like K-Lite Codec Pack installed, WMP sometimes tries to download some codec from somewhere (does it really work? I´ve never seen that thing work!) and even choke on some big DivX.
And if Xine or MPlayer isn´t exactly your cup of tea, you can always resort to one of those nice front-ends like Totem for GNOME or KMPlayer or Kaffeine for KDE.
Come on… WMP is a joke when the subject is capable media players. And its interface is the most confusing thing that I´ve ever seen. You probably would be better with something like BSPlayer or Media Player Classic on Windows.
Thanks for your post… I’m glad someone has replied. Honestly I’m using mplayer for past 3 years but these days I’m bit disappointed. A small mistake in CD leads to mplayer core dump. Many times even when i fast forward any movie mplayer crashes… that is why i felt media player is much stable cause I have never seen media player crashing.. al thought what u said about interface of media is correct.
No one has replied on QNX os on home font? Why QNX is not keen on Home users? The interface of QNX looks to be very good and font rendering is also good.
It’s good Sun is focusing on Solaris.
But the annoluncement is also bad becasue Sun has been abandonning too many of its clients recently, and dropping JDS is yet another dissapointment like Solaris x86, Cobalt, UltraSPARC V, etc.
Sun is quick to point that HP’s strategy is unfocused (several processors and several operating systems) but Sun is no better in letting its clients down. Between an unfocused strategy and a drop strategy, I would buy the unfocused one (as a business).
The bad is that JDS Linux was based on SuSE Linux but not on http://www.kernel.org kernel.
The bad is that JDS Linux was based on SuSE YAST tools.
There was need to create new installer, system tools, utilities.
The good is that soon will be Janus available in Solaris x86 that will allow to use Linux software on Solaris.
I think that Solaris is more better than Linux.
I think he’s talking about the heading of Bascules reply – “Anonymous Coward”. The original post was “Anonymous”.
For work, my customers use Solaris on SPARC. That’s the job I do, and they don’t see 64-CPU systems as startlingly high-end, obscure, cutting-edge systems, but just a database server which they know (because it’s running Solaris) that it will just work. Similarly-scaled Linux installs seem to have all these flaws. 64-CPU (even 96-CPU) Solaris installs are run-of-the-mill.
Err what? 2000 called, they want their tired old worn out FUD back.
64 CPUs with Linux has been around for a while now.
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/superdome_high_end/co…
You’ve got IBM’s POWER5 systems, which, even at 16-way will blow a 64 way Sun SPARC completely out of the water. Not to mention Linux on zSeries.
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/linux/index.html
But oh no, 64-CPUs aren’t “considered startlingly high-end, obscure, cutting-edge systems”, because they aren’t (unless maybe you’re talking a POWER5 system). Sun’s old dinosaurs definite are not.
This is what us Linux people think of as startlingly high-end:
http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/
That’s right, 512. Read em and weep. Five hundred and twelve CPUs in a single system image, running Linux. 6 TB of memory. Now imagine that turning into 1024 CPUs at the end of the year when Intel introduce their dual core itanium processors, and 2048 when SGI enlarge their coherency domain with their next generation SHUB.
Hmm, you may wish to ask why SUN is outselling IBM and SGI combined in the high end servers. If SGI and IBM are so great, they should be mopping the floor with them, the fact is, that isn’t the case; SUN’s shipments are growing, which is more than I can say for IBMs POWER machines, which seem to be pushed further and further up the niche ladder. Just to make it interesting, chuck Fujitsu’s SPARC64 sales ontop, and the question is, where is IBM, SGI and HP-UX? relegated to bleeding their existing customers dry, buy selling over priced services?
Oh, and don’t think that Cell is going to be the saviour for the PowerPC architecture. Cell is a purpose built processor, not designed for the tasks that Niagara, SUN next generation SPARC chip, can accomplish.
As a programmer (not an opensource programmer), I would like to express my opinion about the subject and the fact is that I really like this idea to sell an operating system or other opensource software that developpers opensource contributes, programmers are so stupid to give their source away… but there are company’s very smart that profit from this, just go look to SUN and IBM. Why pay programmers to make code when we can get it for free? This is the result of the GNU opensource licence.
Interesting, and yet the majority of these people who contribute to opensource projects (under various licences) are either employed by Novell, Red Hat, SUN, Apple, IBM, Oracle or have a job working a non-IT related company.
Stop bringing up FUD from years ago; its already been disproven several times; the vast majority of the contributors are paid professionals; the only difference between opensource and closed; in the closed world, everyone makes their own widget; in the opensource world, everyone works on that one widget, each bringing their own set of expertise; once complete, each company will provide their own particular value added service to it.
No one loses out, and everyone gains – the industry will ALWAYS need programmers because programming is a specialised skill that only a very small number can actually master – hence the reason why there is a charge for the service if you want something customised; the fact remains, if everyone could do programming, THEN your point would be valid regarding how terrible opening up the source is, but the fact remains, however, that isn’t the case.
I wasn’t takling about sales and marketing. This is a technical site.
Post I was replying to implied Linux people thought 64-way sun boxes were huge and magical systems that Linux could only dream of running on while Solaris masters with ease.
Truth is, Solaris isn’t anything very special in the scalability department when compared to other unixes, and even Linux these days. Why do you think we hardly saw a single scalability benchmark coming out of Sun in the midst of all the Solaris 10 hype a few months back?
Hmm, you may wish to ask why SUN is outselling IBM and SGI combined in the high end servers. If SGI and IBM are so great, they should be mopping the floor with them, the fact is, that isn’t the case; SUN’s shipments are growing, which is more than I can say for IBMs POWER machines, which seem to be pushed further and further up the niche ladder. Just to make it interesting, chuck Fujitsu’s SPARC64 sales ontop, and the question is, where is IBM, SGI and HP-UX? relegated to bleeding their existing customers dry, buy selling over priced services?
But I will take you up on your offer of having a look at the market breakdown – I haven’t really paid attention to it before and it may be interesting. Links, please.
Oh, and don’t think that Cell is going to be the saviour for the PowerPC architecture. Cell is a purpose built processor, not designed for the tasks that Niagara, SUN next generation SPARC chip, can accomplish.
Err, Niagra is a special purpose chip as much as Cell is. 8 weak multithreaded cores with next to no floating point capabilities on a single die isn’t anything special and will be a reasonably niche chip – much more so than Cell, which will be used in TVs, game consoles, workstations, supercomputers.
@Anonymous
Truth is, Solaris isn’t anything very special in the scalability department when compared to other unixes, and even Linux these days. Why do you think we hardly saw a single scalability benchmark coming out of Sun in the midst of all the Solaris 10 hype a few months back?
Wrong again, almost all of the examples you cited earlier are special cases where the companies in question have down their heavy modifications to the Kernel to get things to run. Not all of those changes have made it back into the kernel mainline yet, and on top of that, just because Linux runs on 64 or 512 processors, doesn’t mean it *scales* to that many. It’s one thing for an OS to recognize or be able to “run” programs on that many, it’s a whole different story to have it efficiently scale. Linux does not yet *scale* very well to large processor system setups. Not yet.
Wrong again, almost all of the examples you cited earlier are special cases where the companies in question have down their heavy modifications to the Kernel to get things to run.
Err, no. SGI did have in their 2.4 propack to get it to run on 512 CPU machines. For their 2.6 kernels they’re using SUSE SLES as a base with very few scalability improvements.
IBM don’t even have a distro, and as such most of their development work tends to be on the mainline kernel. Ditto for HP and Intel.
Not all of those changes have made it back into the kernel mainline yet, and on top of that, just because Linux runs on 64 or 512 processors, doesn’t mean it *scales* to that many.
For the work that’s being done on them, yes it does scale. There are quite a lot of 512 CPU systems running Linux in production in the real world.
Linux does not yet *scale* very well to large processor system setups. Not yet.
Well I can assert that it does, now. What do you have to back up your assertion?
@Anonymous
Well I can assert that it does, now. What do you have to back up your assertion?
I could ask the same thing of you, which I guess leaves us at an impasse. You’ve given no links to prove by benchmark using standard SPEC results so I have no reaonable comparison. Solaris has already proven it’s scalability over many years and commercially speaking there is no disputing that fact, especially since SPEC results are available. Where’s yours?
Where’s yours?
http://www.sgi.com
I hope you all get payed well by Microsoft, because if you are not getting payed I might call you stupid.
No, really, go to Microsoft and show them your work, I am quite sure they will sign you on right away.
@Anonymous
http://www.sgi.com
I’ll ask again, where is your link to SPEC industry standard benchmark results proving your fetid tripe? Apparently you don’t have any. Press Releases saying “we’re better” do not prove anything.
http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/story/0,10801,…
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1631109,00.asp
> For the work that’s being done on them, yes it does scale. There are quite a lot of 512 CPU systems running Linux in production in the real world.
How many times do we have to go over this crap on this forum? Get this through your thick skull, Linux does not scale above 16 CPU’s. Even Linus Torvalds and John “Mad Dog” Hall publicly attested to this. Pointing to SGI Altix boxes proves absolutely nothing, since the 512 processor scalability in single image is more of an achievement of an efficient NUMAflex interconnect and not Linux kernel. Keep in mind that Altix machines are nothing but glorified number crunchers that can be efficient only with very high cache locality rates — on highly parallel computational workloads. Altix will never be able to compete as a database server with or without Linux. Sun Fire will always squash Altix simply due to superior simmetrical interconnect. The proof that Linux does not scale beyond 16 processors is quite obvious when you talk to pretty much any high end vendor pushing Linux gear for databases (Unisys, HP, Fujistu). Even though they have 32 and 64 processor machines that can run Linux, they will be quick to tell you that you’re much better off partitioning the machine into 8 or maximum 16 prosessor partitions. Solaris on the other hand scales pretty much linearly from one 1 to 128+ processors (will double that with dual core chips) on database workloads without any problem.
If the can’t make up their mind on what products to sell, what products to opensource, and each executive have different views on things, how can they expect to have customers that takes them seriously.
All this media noise they generate more and more sound like the noises of a dieing company trying to avoid its inevitable faith.
Its a bit sad to see this, as I in the past always liked Sun products and services. To get credability in business Sun need to decide on some strategy and stick with it.
> Its a bit sad to see this, as I in the past always liked Sun products and services. To get credability in business Sun need to decide on some strategy and stick with it.
What’s so confusion about Sun’s strategy? I think Sun has got by far the most clear cut and easy to follow story compared with other industry heavyweights. And with cutting Linux out of the equation Sun made it even more simple. What’s so hard about understanding Solaris, Sparc and AMD Opteron? I sure as hell trust Sun much more with Solaris/Sparc/Opteron than HP with HP-UX or IBM with AIX — both of which are facing pretty uncertain future. Sun is doing the right thing and you must be pretty short sighted not to see that.
Linux has an Kernel/Driver interface that appears to change randomly. This causes much hell in regards to drivers.
No shit.. just today, while I was typing this, I could have sworn my driver interface chnged randomly. It just didn’t feel right. The keyboard stopped resopnding and my mouse was jumpy. Of course, it could have been this wireless adapter, but I swear my computer laughed at me.
Linux likes fucking with its users like that, randomly changing things for no reason whatsoever. Sometimes it runs fine, sometimes it wipes out my windows partition and throws a tantrum until I feed it an AOL CD. Usually it just wants to rip all my CDs and DVDs, that seems to keep it at bay for a while, but it can never be trusted.
16 processors? Shit, man, Linux doesn’t scale past 1 CPU. If you use it with 2 or more, even hyperthreading, you can never tell where your processes are running. It does weird things, man, I just can’t explain it.
I’ve used both Linux and Solaris and although Linux might run on a 4 or 8 way system its only faking it. That output from /proc/cpuinfo is basicly just a lie. Its really only using one CPU and the rest just sit there idle. Solaris, on the other hand, spreads my workload out efficiently on all CPUs at the same time. If I run 1 process it gets 8 CPUs worth of processing time. You can even migrate them between SunFires. The best part is usually I notice a 2x increase in performance per chip. Its like this system scales exponentially. Its amazing!
So since Linux lies to you and only uses half your CPUs and even then it only runs 1 process on each CPU, so you would need 64+ processors just to boot Fedora.. And Sun scales exponentially and gives you extra cycles for each new CPU you add, running 1 process over multiple CPUs at the same time. I’d recommend you always buy Solaris from Sun.
—-
as a Linux zealot sometimes its hard to read through all the lies and not get frustrated by all the intentionally manipulative propoganda. But at least I can have a little fun dishing it right back at ya. If you want to throw FUD, then let’s get retarded in here. We can drag this conversation down to your level. Unfortunately that won’t help the credability of these forums any, but its unlikely anyone cares about that.
This shouldn’t be considered earth shattering news IMO. JDS3 was only released for Solaris.
Distrowatch.com (I know it’s just a popularity contest, but it does give you a relative idea of new user interest) gives the following rankings:
(Distro—–1Mo/3Mo/6Mo/12Mo/2004)
Sun JDS—–88/96/99/61/32
Solaris—–25/34/36/77/NA
Sun JDS isn’t getting any more popular and as a “pay for” Linux distribution I suspect it’s not a wise business decision to put much more money into it from Sun’s perspective. But JDS the DE will live on, for Solaris. (I can hear the cheers and sneers already
Then again, maybe it’s an indication that Project Looking Glass is just around the corner and Sun JDS doesn’t fit into that roadmap. (Probably not, I’m not very good at deciphering my crystal ball.)
What’s so confusion about Sun’s strategy?
The fact that it keeps changing…not long ago Scott McNealy was wearing a penguin suit, while only a short while before he was saying that Linux did not represent a technologically valid option.
So, as usual, it’s on-again, off-again.
BTW, “what’s so confusion” isn’t grammatically sound.
“How many times do we have to go over this crap on this forum? Get this through your thick skull, Linux does not scale above 16 CPU’s. Even Linus Torvalds and John “Mad Dog” Hall publicly attested to this. Pointing to SGI Altix boxes proves absolutely nothing, since the 512 processor scalability in single image is more of an achievement of an efficient NUMAflex interconnect and not Linux kernel. Keep in mind that Altix machines are nothing but glorified number crunchers that can be efficient only with very high cache locality rates — on highly parallel computational workloads. Altix will never be able to compete as a database server with or without Linux. Sun Fire will always squash Altix simply due to superior simmetrical interconnect. The proof that Linux does not scale beyond 16 processors is quite obvious when you talk to pretty much any high end vendor pushing Linux gear for databases (Unisys, HP, Fujistu). Even though they have 32 and 64 processor machines that can run Linux, they will be quick to tell you that you’re much better off partitioning the machine into 8 or maximum 16 prosessor partitions. Solaris on the other hand scales pretty much linearly from one 1 to 128+ processors (will double that with dual core chips) on database workloads without any problem.”
Solaris is the superior single server, multi processor, big iron server solution. Linux is the superior soltion for absolutely everything else (from cell phones, pdas, desktops, web servers, to server farms). Also, the single server, multi processor big iron server solution is becoming less relevant due to the implementation of grids or server farms. Amazon, Google, and Ebay, all of which use cheap intel based Linux servers in large server farms, is proof of this.
Apart from that, Solaris looks to be a very strong OS, particularily in the big iron arena. And I don’t blame Sun for emphasizing JDS on Solaris over Linux. This makes their R&D and support costs lower.
Err, you want SPEC results? OK. I will give you some, then you give me something to back up your claim that Linux doesn’t scale as well as Solaris.
From the SPEC website, SPECjbb:
Solaris:
Sun-Fire 6800 HotSpot-v1.3.1 8 cores 43353
Sun-Fire 6800 HotSpot-v1.3.1 12 cores 62463
Sun-Fire 6800 HotSpot-v1.3.1 24 cores 109146
Linux:
p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 2 cores 82615
p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 4 cores 160995
p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 8 cores 299197
p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 16 cores 542145
p5 595 J2RE 1.4.2 (64-bit) 32 cores 1076309
Solaris scales from 8->12 at 96%, and from 8->24 at 83.9%
Linux scales from 8->16 at 90.6%, and 8->32 at 89.9% (although that’s a slightly different machine).
There you go, on this SPEC result, Linux scales from 8->16 cores better than Solaris scales from 8->24 but not as good as Solaris at 8->12.
Where are your numbers to back up your tripe?
Solaris on the other hand scales pretty much linearly from one 1 to 128+ processors (will double that with dual core chips) on database workloads without any problem.
Err, no it doesn’t. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about Jack old mate.
Why do you think Oracle has gone the direction of clustered databases when in the dot com days it was so cozy in bed with Sun?
It is because Sun’s old dinosaurs don’t scale linearly. Show me some numbers before you go making up crap like that.
Linux is the superior soltion for absolutely everything else (from cell phones, pdas, desktops, web servers, to server farms).
I believe this is hardly the case. I think a rather lightweight solution like QNX, NetBSD, … would serve much better as an embedded OS. Linux could compete on desktop, workstations,… And on none of these it is obvious to me it is the superior solution (say compared to Solaris or BSDs).
I believe this is hardly the case. I think a rather lightweight solution like QNX, NetBSD, … would serve much better as an embedded OS.
Err, NetBSD? Yeah right.
Linux 2.6 can run on systems with 2MB of memory with a full TCP/IP stack and busybox environment, with a few hundred K left over, and can run on systems smaller than that without MMUs.
Linux while not being hard realtime, has good enough interrupt and scheduling latency for many soft-rt tasks. NetBSD doesn’t even have a realtime scheduler.
> Err, you want SPEC results? OK. I will give you some, then you give me something to back up your claim that Linux doesn’t scale as well as Solaris.
>
> From the SPEC website, SPECjbb:
>
>Solaris:
>Sun-Fire 6800 HotSpot-v1.3.1 8 cores 43353
>Sun-Fire 6800 HotSpot-v1.3.1 12 cores 62463
>Sun-Fire 6800 HotSpot-v1.3.1 24 cores 109146
>Linux:
>p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 2 cores 82615
>p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 4 cores 160995
>p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 8 cores 299197
>p5 570 J2RE 1.4.2 (32-bit) 16 cores 542145
>p5 595 J2RE 1.4.2 (64-bit) 32 cores 1076309
SPECjbb is the probably one of the absolute worst benchmark to use to measure the scalability of the underlying OS. Reason for that is results are usually achieved with multiple instances of application servers and JVM’s taking the load in the same box. So, each application server process could be using just one or two out of 32 CPU’s availble on the machine. By no means this setup can show you how good the scalability of the OS is. Pick a more meaningful benchmark.
SPECjbb is the probably one of the absolute worst benchmark to use to measure the scalability of the underlying OS.
Still, it is too much for Solaris to scale up to 24 cores very efficiently.
No, I’ve given you numbers to show that Linux keeps up. Now you give me some numbers that if you want to show it doesn’t.
A couple things about SPEC results…
All manufacturers submit SPEC results based on highly tuned, over engineered configurations (Read: You would probably never see such a configuration in a production environment).
Although it is tempting to compare SPEC results *between* manufacturers, they are really meant to be used to compare results *within* a manufacturers product line to help you size a particular manufacturer’s solution. It’s too much of an apples to oranges comparison otherwise.
Now that being said, let’s look at what you tried to compare with your selection of SPEC results. First, the SPECjbb is probably not the best indicator of raw SMP scalability, but since that is what you selected, let’s look at the comparison you set forth. A single Sun server model 8-24 CPUs running Java JRE 1.3.1 against two IBM server models 2-32 CPUs running Java JRE 1.4.2 one 32-bit and one 64-bit.
Based on the figures you provided, I’m not sure if the IBM/Linux solution scales better than Sun/Solaris or the Java JRE 1.4.2 scales better than 1.3.1? You could have at least used a more similar Java JRE in the comparisons, since the SPECjbb is meant to test the middle tier of a 3-tier Java application/architecture. Oh, here’s some numbers you possibly didn’t see from the same SPECjbb results page, a Sun Fire 15K with 74 and 104 CPUs running Java JRE 1.4.0_01. And look, they scale at 96%! (BTW, it’s fairly common for Sun SMP servers to scale at that level for pretty much any CPU/memory intensive application.) Sorry to say, your scalability conclusion is flawed.
Please don’t confuse vertical and horizontal scalability. Linux performs superbly in grid clusters (Read: horizontal scalability), as do most *NIX OSes quite frankly if you can afford the hardware. But some applications just work better with a big a$$ server (Read: vertical scalability), and yes they aren’t cheap. An OLTP database application would be a good example of an application that scales best vertically. An HPC scientific application would be a good example of an application that scales best horizontally.
Which leads me to your Oracle clustered database comment…
Why do you think Oracle has gone the direction of clustered databases when in the dot com days it was so cozy in bed with Sun?
Have you ever run an Oracle clustered database before? Do you realize Oracle was using clustered databases well before the “dot com” days? Oracle PDB (predecesor to the 10i RAC and “grid” products) was primarily run on Sun servers and many RAC implementations are currently on Sun. Don’t just read the marketing hype, try to actually understand the technology. BTW, Sun and Oracle still do sleepovers
@GO*NIX
Sun JDS isn’t getting any more popular and as a “pay for” Linux distribution I suspect it’s not a wise business decision to put much more money into it from Sun’s perspective. But JDS the DE will live on, for Solaris. (I can hear the cheers and sneers already
Ah, but it isn’t “pay for” if you get Solaris instead. JDS3 comes with that for free! Of course you know Solaris 10 is available for free commercial and personal usage as well right? :}
@Shawn
Ah, but it isn’t “pay for” if you get Solaris instead. JDS3 comes with that for free! Of course you know Solaris 10 is available for free commercial and personal usage as well right? :}
Very true, I have both a SPARC and x86 install of Solaris. But I was specifically referring to the JDS/Linux integrated product. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
You solaris zealots got nothing. Just as I thought.
Sun has clarified it’s change in JDS planning in the interview at
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1833220,00.asp?kc=ewnws063005d…
Loiacono also moved to address published reports that Sun is stepping back from selling its JDS (Java Desktop System) on Linux, telling eWEEK that Sun still fully supports JDS on the Linux platform, but is shifting emphasis, as the greatest future opportunity for JDS is on the Solaris platform.
“There hasn’t been a lot of demand for Linux on the desktop, and so, while we are not ‘de-committing’ to JDS on Linux in any way or saying that we will no longer support those who have bought that product, [in the future] you are going to see our investment in R&D coming in on the Solaris side,” he said.