As executive vice VICE president of Sun’s software group, Jonathan Schwartz heads the company’s new unified software business and is leading the charge to promote the Linux open-source technology. Schwartz met with InfoWorld Test Center Director Steve Gillmor and Technical Director Tom Yager to discuss Sun’s recently announced Linux desktop strategy and to explain how it’s in the industry’s best interests to develop an alternative to arch-rival Microsoft.
Sun Challenges Microsoft on the Desktop
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I really wish sun would sell their own version of Linux on Sparc architectures, particularly the Sun Blades. There are many Sun Blades at the university I go to, but they all have Solaris 8 /w CDE on them. While this is great, I’d rather be able to use both Solaris and Linux on the systems.
Unfortunately, like SGI and HP, Sun is only interested in Linux on Intel. IBM seems to be the only one that really cares about other architectures.
challange with what ? CDE *lol* ? GNOME *lol* ?
Man do they teach stuff like this in business school?
“Schwartz: There are a series of dynamics in the industry that are yielding some interesting disruptive opportunities.”
Sun seems to have lost direction completely. Everything they are doing seems to be a reaction to somebody else. Jealousy isn’t a good enough motivation to run a good business.
What do they put in the water there?
The architectures that we’ve established for the past six years write to Java on the server, write to a browser on the front end, write to J2ME-enabled clients, and use Java Card. Even at InfoWorld and at The New York Times and at CNN, all of your applications are available through a browser. For the most part, you don’t write to Windows anymore.
And also…
What’s interesting to me is the desktop PC is the only unauthenticated network access point left. Everything else is associated with something. Your set-top box is identified and authenticated. I just got a dish box; you pop open the front and there’s a little conditional access card in there. My automobile has a key. My phone has a power button and a phone number associated with me. My PC? I can walk up to any PC anywhere and go send a virus around.
So let me see if I can cut through the marketing bullshit.
1) Applications should be available through a browser? What planet is he from? How much bandwidth does he think we’ll need for – let’s see – a word processor and a spreadsheet and a graphics package? Should developers be included? Is this just so some corporate bean counter can tally up the TCO for the next staff meeting?
2) Identification and authentication mean what? A locked down PC where your every move is tracked and restricted. Great for corporations but keep it far from me.
Thanks for nothing Sun.
Then there’s this:
One is called Sun Ray, which is a solid-state client. If you unplug [it] from the wall, it’s a piece of plastic, it’s useless. So the FBI no longer has a problem of worrying about people taking their computers home with them. You can’t take this one home with you.
So where does “takes home computers” rank on the FBI list of “things we’re worried about”? What horse manure…
We can also do things in a Linux desktop environment that are really, really difficult to do in a Windows world. For example, you can’t use Visual Basic. You can’t add any file to your desktop. You cannot access your local drive. There’s a bunch of things that we can do that are relatively difficult to do.
Oh my Gawd! You can’t run VB on Linux! The world will now end for Microsoft! I know he’s referring to VB Script as in Melissa macro virii. But will it stop Apache/mod_ssl worm (aka linux.slapper.worm) or the buffer overflow vulnerability in CDE ToolTalk or the integer overflow buffer overflow potential in the Sun XDR libraries? Everybody has problems Jonathan – even Sun…
there’s a great statistic in The New York Times, I think it was [John] Markoff who said this, that a security patch in the Microsoft environment in a thousand-server enterprise cost $300,000.
And just what does it cost in a Sun or Linux environment? Jon’s trying to make the case that it costs more but I’ll maintain that the salary of those high-priced *nix sysadmins will cost you as much when they have to patch those arcane holes in *nix and Solaris…
Ah, enough of Sun ridiculous ramblings…
“One is called Sun Ray, which is a solid-state client. If you unplug [it] from the wall, it’s a piece of plastic, it’s useless. So the FBI no longer has a problem of worrying about people taking their computers home with them. You can’t take this one home with you.”
Read this article from a few weeks ago, they’re just getting started.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1730&limit=no
Apple has apps.
Microsoft has apps.
IBM has apps.
Apps are why people buy computers.
Not Java terminals — which are properly called “Jerminals”, by the way.
Sun has only expensive hardware + OS.
They are the living dead.
#p
Well, well, if it isn’t Stof.
So, since you are back, mind backing up your previous claims on GNOME?
Yes, they lost a lot of dirrection. They want to compete with everything without trying to streghten a profitable niche, like SGI.
They are as if acting like they are responsible to purge the world of Intel, IBM and Microsoft.
Continuing from junkman:
You can’t run it on a Linux desktop unless we go figure out a way to reverse-engineer the .Net framework.
You don’t need to reverse engineer .NET Framework, most of it is under the EMCA. And in his example, .NET would only be needed in the server, not on the client.
It runs [on] Amex, Citi Group, Providian, the United States Department of Defense, and the whole country of Taiwan.
Taiwan isn’t a country. Officially, it is a renegard province of The People’s Replubic of China. And it would stay that way until Taiwan officially declares independance, which is unlikely unless Mao Zedong returns from the dead.