Sun has launched an all out offensive today against Red Hat Linux, putting Solaris x86 at the tip of its bayonet. “We are a big supporter of the open source movement and have been forever,” said Larry Singer, SVP of global market strategies at Sun, in an interview. “We think Linux is a huge movement that is pretty good for the industry and that for some implementations Linux makes sense. We also think there are a lot of people that consider Red Hat for the wrong reasons.“
Sun slams Red Hat
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I’m the first one to say that RHEL isn’t the best, but Sun’s logic just isn’t there. All I know about Solaris is that it won’t install on my computer (hardware compatibility issues) while RedHat will. Of course, their logic is that people don’t want to spend money on an OS (like RedHat makes you do for their enterprise stuff). Of course, the neglect the Fedora Project that offers RadHat without the cost. I’ve run both RHEL 3 (my school has a site license) and Fedora and they are nearly identical. RHEL isn’t as up to date, but you can just use an older version if you want the most tested stuff. That also leads me to point out that Solaris isn’t free unless you aren’t a business. What’s the difference between buying from RedHat and buying from Sun? Well, I guess it makes a lot of difference to Sun.
Eh, I’m happy with Debian.
You silly little boy, they aren’t after customers like you, they’re selling systems loaded with Solaris, and if other vendors want their systems to work with Solaris, they’ll approach SUN and say, “hey mate, write some bloody drivers, we want Solaris available on our systems too!”.
Mr(s) Enterprise, infact, Mr(s) Customer of any variety doesn’t care if they can build their own machine from a grab-bag of parts, they want a system, and what SUN has on the board, finally, is going to actually be something worth considering.
What I am more excited about is their Opteron workstation (link at the bottom of the article), all I can say is “WOW!”, and going by the initial orders, one customer asking for FIVE THOUSAND! I’ll be there with bells on when they start selling them. A sexy Opteron workstation from the über workstation company.
Lets hope that they get some of the software vendors onboard, both the weird and obscure but mainstream such as Adobe, Macromedia, Maya etc. etc.
That was me btw 😉
” Lets hope that they get some of the software vendors onboard, both the weird and obscure but mainstream such as Adobe, Macromedia, Maya etc. etc. ”
Adobe ?
Macromedia ?
Maya ?
Unless they do a revolution on the destkop i dont see any reason why the companys would support porting software to the platform.
Maybe with suns future 3d desktop project wich doesnt show too much except strange-back-window-useless-feature-of-adding-notes ?
Now really , the same problem of desktop readiness applys to solaris as for linux and many of the bsd flavours, except of course macosx.
Maybe their supposed 5000 order will help them inovate and maybe cleaning their JDK(GUI Stuff) ( why is it so bloated is the question that arises everywhere on the net ) and comming to us with a real USER EXPERIENCE generating tool.
So … good luck SUN.
“Hello, my name is Mr SUN, I would love to see your software on our platform, however, since we have such a piss poor market share, I’ll provide you with some cash to pay for the porting of the software!”, how about that idea? why wouldn’t it float? it isn’t costing the software company anything, and it would be great in the PR department.
Maybe their supposed 5000 order will help them inovate and maybe cleaning their JDK(GUI Stuff) ( why is it so bloated is the question that arises everywhere on the net ) and comming to us with a real USER EXPERIENCE generating tool.
Care to explain why J2SE is a smaller download than .NET Runtime Environment?
Solaris is just another OS that is beginning not to matter. Free software id eliminating the market that products like Solaris and all the UNIX versions held. They are taking some cheap shots at RedHat because RedHat is their main competitor.
Of course, Sun can’t really decide what they want to do. They want to promote Java, but it is falling flat – whether you think it is based on technical merit or not. .NET is huge competition for it and it runs a ton faster with native widgets – and an open source version (2 actually). Linux has quickly become the dominant *NIX variant. That leaves Sun with an OS that simply isn’t going anywhere and a language that isn’t going anywhere.
As for Swing (the Java GUI), it’s just terrible. If Sun GPL’d it all, the problems that plague Java today would probably begin to disappear. But this is another area where Sun is happy with the Status Quo. They don’t want to GPL Java. Of course, they don’t have the resources to compete with Mono, Microsoft, etc.
Looking forward, Sun doesn’t want anything to do with C# which is going to be a real problem if it becomes the language of Gnome (which is looking more and more likely). Without an LGPL/GPL license for Java, it’s not anywhere near contention. More apps are getting written in C# including Evolution 2.
Sun can still be profitable. In fact, they can make tons of money. The fact is that it doesn’t look like Sun can be a dominant player, but that doesn’t mean they won’t make money. People today seem to assume that only Microsofts make money. Even if Java and Solaris die, Sun can still be profitable.
Sun needs to pick a direction. Be an open-source company and cut a lot of development costs or try to go head to head in the proprietary world.
“They are taking some cheap shots at RedHat because RedHat is their main competitor.”
That’s what i’ve been thinking for months. That’s no problem by itself, it’s the cheap shots which are so laughable. RedHat is “proprietary” while everything is open-source, and now they market their “open-source supported” Solaris?
“Sun needs to pick a direction. Be an open-source company and cut a lot of development costs or try to go head to head in the proprietary world.”
Actually given all this news on OpenSolaris, OpenJava, OpenLooking Glass and such, i think Sun is working on their direction somehow. Now i’m wondering how they’ll fix: Solaris == free beer development, Solaris == unique, Solaris == open-source, Solaris == Sun’s profit.
Solaris is just another OS that is beginning not to matter. Free software id eliminating the market that products like Solaris and all the UNIX versions held. They are taking some cheap shots at RedHat because RedHat is their main competitor.
Cheap shots? their shots are directly at Red Hat’s flagship product, Red Hat Linux Enterprise Advanced Server. That is who they compete with and lord only knows why a person would choose a system made by Dell running Red Hat Linux when a superior system could be purchased from SUN with an Opteron CPU and Solaris running ontop.
Of course, Sun can’t really decide what they want to do. They want to promote Java, but it is falling flat – whether you think it is based on technical merit or not. .NET is huge competition for it and it runs a ton faster with native widgets – and an open source version (2 actually). Linux has quickly become the dominant *NIX variant. That leaves Sun with an OS that simply isn’t going anywhere and a language that isn’t going anywhere.
Who gives a toss about widgets, we’re talking about “big frigg’in servers”, not dinky little palm pilots and other geek orientated crap. SUN sells servers, Java is primarily a server technology. Probably the most stupid thing I have seen so far is the reluctance to adopt SWT. They already have jumped onboard GNOME, why not really integrate GNOME and java together using SWT?
However, with that being said, their Java implementation should be licensed under BSD, allow people to submit changes, allow people to adopt, tweak, modify whilst keeping the same rules of “you can’t call it java unless it passes the Java compatibility test”.
As for Swing (the Java GUI), it’s just terrible. If Sun GPL’d it all, the problems that plague Java today would probably begin to disappear. But this is another area where Sun is happy with the Status Quo. They don’t want to GPL Java. Of course, they don’t have the resources to compete with Mono, Microsoft, etc.
How is GPL going to suddenly fix it? the problem is inheriently the way Java does things, and the best way to sort it out is taking the SWT route. As for GPL’ing it, it is the worst possible way of screwing over partners who may want to adopt the code, tweak it specifically for their device, but loose their competitive edge because Mr Socks and Sandles wearing tree hugger wants code to be free.
Set the rules, license the trademark and you won’t have incompatibilities between the different competing versions.
Looking forward, Sun doesn’t want anything to do with C# which is going to be a real problem if it becomes the language of Gnome (which is looking more and more likely). Without an LGPL/GPL license for Java, it’s not anywhere near contention. More apps are getting written in C# including Evolution 2.
You’re assuming that GNOME will take that route, there is no indication that this is the situation. Novell may fuse the two together, but that doesn’t automatically correlate to the whole GNOME organisation going boots and all into adopting C#.
Sun can still be profitable. In fact, they can make tons of money. The fact is that it doesn’t look like Sun can be a dominant player, but that doesn’t mean they won’t make money. People today seem to assume that only Microsofts make money. Even if Java and Solaris die, Sun can still be profitable.
SUN can be profitable with the current model. A hybrid priprietary/opensource model. What they do need to do is improve Solaris to make management not only easier to use but easier to learn. That is where Windows has always had its competitive edge. Boo hoo the wizards and dinky help files, but that is what has allowed the masses to get servers setup with out needing to pay a UNIX guru $100,000 per year.
As I have said, if the person knows the fundamentals of security and networking, why should they then need to spend another 2 years learning how to use a tool so that they can put their knowledge to work? the computers should work for the organisation and individual, not the other way around.
Am I the only conspiracy theorist here? Cause I’ve noticed a change in Sun since they got that 4 billion (?) from Microsoft. They seemed to immediatly attack Red Hat several times.
MS tries not to fight, it pays others like SCO and evaluation writers to fight for them so critizms don’t make MS look bad.
Instead of actually shipping boxes, OSes and tools, they decide it is somehow better to talk trash about the competition.
Next they’ll resort to claiming the TCO for Solaris is lower than Linux.
Of course Solaris has advantages, and of course they would rather see people using that than Linux.
This kind of rhetoric just makes it sound like they are terrified of Linux, and will only serve to make people curious as to why Sun spend more time telling people why they Linux is somehow inadequate than they do telling people why Solaris is the smart choice.
Where are the benchmarks showing Solaris pounding linux into the dust for file I/O?
Where is the chart showing that, dollar for dollar, a Sun workstation provides more power than anything from Dell or HP?
Where is the slick workstation desktop that makes GNOME and KDE look like amateurish hacks?
Where are the disk subsystems and clustered filesystems that makes massive,reliable and cheap storage networks childs play to assemble?
Where is the Solaris JVM that outperforms Linux and Windows by a large factor?
Where is the 3D hardware and display systems that simply isnt available on ‘commodity’ PCs?
I don’t see any of that. What do they provide instead? A bunch of crap about how ‘Linux is dying, UNIX is coming back into vogue’
I’d be laughing if it wasnt so sad.
However, with that being said, their Java implementation should be licensed under BSD, allow people to submit changes, allow people to adopt, tweak, modify whilst keeping the same rules of “you can’t call it java unless it passes the Java compatibility test”.
Why? BSD would allow not only forks (which is the chief bugbear of anti-Open Java FUD) but proprietary forks which are much tougher to deal with.
You’re assuming that GNOME will take that route, there is no indication that this is the situation. Novell may fuse the two together, but that doesn’t automatically correlate to the whole GNOME organisation going boots and all into adopting C#.
I’d agree. GNOME was started because KDE wasn’t “free enough” and there are enough of those people left on the project to block any move to a Microsoft technology. (I realize the issues aren’t precisely the same, but that seems to be the politics of it).
Who gives a toss about widgets, we’re talking about “big frigg’in servers”, not dinky little palm pilots and other geek orientated crap. SUN sells servers, Java is primarily a server technology.
The nice thing that Eclipse/SWT does is let you make server-driven apps that look and behave like desktop ones.
SUN can be profitable with the current model.
No. GPL’ing more stuff may not be the cure-all, but they are not profitable with their current model and that will not magically change.
A hybrid priprietary/opensource model.
Could be.
What they do need to do is improve Solaris to make management not only easier to use but easier to learn.
Red Hat is about comparable to present-day Solaris, and it’s doing quite well. Ease of use/learning is not Sun’s big problem.
A hybrid priprietary/opensource model.
BTW: some companies muddle on for years trying to find the right “balance” between proprietary and open-source. Red Hat just goes full-hilt open-source and does quite well for itself. Not saying that’d work for everyone, let alone Sun. But it does show the value of decisiveness.
Why all the comments about Solaris on the desktop? Video drivers and theming and Macromedia apps and all that stuff? Sun’s a server company, and Solaris is a server OS. Say they should push Solaris on the desktop if you want (I think you’d be stupid to) but hammering them for not putting out a shiny Mac-like box is like beating up on Slashdot for not running articles on 17th century French literature.
Did you even read the article, or did you find, as I did that their new product launch was totally obscured by the bullsh*t they were talking about RedHat?
Why are they shipping a workstation if they’re a server company?
Maybe you have a short memory but sun made it’s name building workstations, not servers.
The Sun IPC and SparcStation 10 I have running in my computer room (interestingly, they both run Linux) are both examples of how Sun actually did make excellent products back in the day
Why all the comments about Solaris on the desktop?
Because SUN is about to release a brand-spanking new Opteron
Workstation – the Metropolis, and , not only have they made
workstations for a long time, but it was their workstations
that made a name for them in the early days.
And, a workstation IS a desktop.
Sun produces such low value Opteron machines there really is no reason to select them as an Opteron vendor unless you want to support Microsoft’s UNIX company and Sun’s quest for giant profit margins at the expense of customer value.
I’m sure the “Metropolis” will be underpowered and overpriced compared to everyone else, begging the question “why was it not codenamed “megacostopolis instead??”
One must see the connection — the maker of a bloated OS also makes bloated hardware. The question here is which led to which? Or is the whole company always just been bloated? Kinda like that anti-Linux foment from yet another bloated ego Sun troll…
Hi guys,
What is the “definition” of “Workstation” today?
I mean what Sun is selling today (regarding the x86 and x86-64 architectures) is nothing more than some powerful PC’s, or am I missing something!?
I thing “Workstation” was in the old days a computer with a special architecture with more powerful componenets than the “Home Computer”s and the “Personal Computer”s.
But what is the diffenrence between these super-duper-gamer-PC’s with the latest CPUs,graphic cards,etc. and a “Workstation” ?
Be thankful for all enlightment!
I think Sun is right on the money with their stance on RedHat being overly expensive with their products and support and Sun being able to offer a better product at a better price. RedHat is offering rather substandard support for a rather high price compared to Solaris. I think RedHat is biting off more that they can chew claiming they can support all that hardware they put on the “supported” list. A while back I had to place a support call with RedHat on RHEL 2.1 systems that started experiencing freaky low I/O performance after a kernel upgrade. We narrored down the problem to an FC driver and the only thing that RedHat could suggest is to post a question to some forum because “they could not replicate the problem in house”. We ended up ripping out and throwing out a bunch of HBA’s just get our project going. Dared I to say to my boss that a supposedly reputable company suggested to post a question to some public forum to resolve our problem, RedHat would be out of the door the next day. If we experienced the same kind of problem with Sun hardware on Solaris (and I did before), Sun would get a tape with a ufsdump of the system in trouble from us, replicate the problem in house and at least provide us with an intelligent answer of what was going on and how we could fix it. I guess RedHat has a lot of catchin up to do before they can claim to be on the same level playing field with Sun..
Now tell me what is wrong with Sun saying that they can offer a better and more mature product at a lower price and being able to provide better support to the customers? To me as a customer this sounds like pretty good news…
Why all the comments about Solaris on the desktop? Video drivers and theming and Macromedia apps and all that stuff? Sun’s a server company, and Solaris is a server OS. Say they should push Solaris on the desktop if you want (I think you’d be stupid to) but hammering them for not putting out a shiny Mac-like box is like beating up on Slashdot for not running articles on 17th century French literature.
Based on what evidence? Solaris is indirectly a desktop operating system when they started pushing Solaris x86/SPARC along with the SUN Ray thin clients. They have, implicitly said, “Solaris is a good desktop operating system”.
Now, don’t expect to go down the road, pick up a PC from Dodgy Dans local PC dealership and ripoff Inc. but do expect soon that we’ll no only see Quad Opteron servers loaded with Solaris, but Solaris 10 loaded onto dual Opteron workstations. The responsiveness problems are being taken care of, and anyone who has tracked the progress of Solaris 10 will understand what I mean.
Solaris 10 will gain ground not because it can support 100s of pieces of hardware, but because it is Solaris! customers who once would say, “screw Solaris SPARC, lets go Linux” will now say, “well, screw SPARC, lets cluster some quad Opteron servers from SUN running Solaris”, that is what SUN is trying to achieve, and I’m surprised people here can’t see it! its so F**cking obvious!
As for the SPARC workstations, I’ve always had my reservations about them, and believed that they should have phased them out long ago in favour of Opteron. Lower costs and the ability to charge a premium because of the SUN Mystic. Put together a good system, load it with good support, possibly 3 year of free Solaris upgrades delivered on CD to your door, and I am sure there will be high end customers who will say, “fhats a good deal!” and purchase them.
But what is the diffenrence between these super-duper-gamer-PC’s with the latest CPUs,graphic cards,etc. and a “Workstation” ?
Normally workstations have things like ECC memory, built in SCSI, high end OpenGL optimised graphics card like 3DLabs Wildcat, nVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL, but these days, I think it now has more to do with the support package that goes with it than anything else.
If you are targeting the enterprise (not home user) market, then he may be right. I have never used Solaris10 on x86, but if it compares reasonably well against Solaris on Sparc then his statement should not be dismissed out of hand. Will Solaris run on as many different types of harware? No. For the hardware it is made for will it work better? Quite possibly. Given the choice of enterprise level support from Red Hat vs the same from Sun, if costs were equal Sun would win hands down.
Now others were talking about software availability. In the article it states that Solaris 10 on x86 can use Linux binaries natively. So exactly what software would you be using on the Linux box that you could not use on SolarisX86?
I realize I have said this multiple times but I want to drill it in. For enterpise customers who will need support contracts, high assurance of reliability, etc, the Sun rep may be correct. Not to say it is not an attack on linux, just that from a certain point of view it can not be dismissed out of hand.
> I’m sure the “Metropolis” will be underpowered and overpriced compared to everyone else
The “Sun is overpriced” argument is becoming seriously old and flat out untrue. Even UltraSparc hardware from Sun is cheaper than any Wintel competition in the 4+ processor space especially if you factor in the OS licensing costs. The Intel hardware from Sun is even cheaper than Dell’s. Just recently the NetworkWorld (www.networkworldfusion.com) magazine had a review of 1U servers from Sun, HP, IBM, and Dell; guess what Sun’s servers came out to be the cheapest out of the bunch followed by HP/IBM and Dell being the most expensive! I guess it is time to take a more open-minded look at Sun, they are not bashing Linux, all they are saying is that Solaris can be cheaper than Linux. I don’t see anything wrong with this picture…
Whenever anyone criticises linux, all the zealots come out like no tommorrow. It’s bizarre. Apparantly, companies like Sun aren’t allowed to compete with companies that use linux, like Red Hat. If they do try and compete, by releasing criticisms just like they do to IBM, Oracle, HP, MS and any other company, suddenly they are “under the control of MS” and incredibly evil. What are they supposed to do that’s fair? Accept the linux zealot line that linux is 100% perfect, costs nothing at all, and will inevitably attain a 100% share of the market.
When linux zealots blabber about freedom all the time, they don’t really mean it. They don’t want to see a world of many competing operating systems and solutions. They want to see a world of ONE operating system and ONE solution, and they will mercilessly assassinate anyone who so much as suggests that maybe perhaps linux isn’t cut out for every possible situation.
Ironic, considering this is what they complain about MS doing. Linux people are 100x worse than MS and SCO in the paranoid megalomania department, I’m afraid.
>>Actually given all this news on OpenSolaris, OpenJava, OpenLooking Glass and such, i think Sun is working on their direction somehow. Now i’m wondering how they’ll fix: Solaris == free beer development, Solaris == unique, Solaris == open-source, Solaris == Sun’s profit.<<
Sure, those products will open, just like OpenVMS. Calling stuff “open” is just a marketing trick. As I understand, it used to work pretty well for marketing purposes, I’m not sure about how well it works anymore.
You silly little boy, they aren’t after customers like you, they’re selling systems loaded with Solaris, and if other vendors want their systems to work with Solaris, they’ll approach SUN and say, “hey mate, write some bloody drivers, we want Solaris available on our systems too!”.
Well they’re obviously not doing it, which tells you just how popular Solaris is.
Mr(s) Enterprise, infact, Mr(s) Customer of any variety doesn’t care if they can build their own machine from a grab-bag of parts, they want a system, and what SUN has on the board, finally, is going to actually be something worth considering.
How that system gets built and customized is important, which is exactly what Red Hat, HP and IBM are doing together.
What I am more excited about is their Opteron workstation (link at the bottom of the article), all I can say is “WOW!”, and going by the initial orders, one customer asking for FIVE THOUSAND! I’ll be there with bells on when they start selling them. A sexy Opteron workstation from the über workstation company.
Yer, so says the article and so says Sun
. Sun’s workstation business is non-existent, and anyone who is running an x86 non-Windows workstation is doing so running Linux. They’ve hyped supposed purchases in China and in Britain for JDS and other things – it isn’t happening.
Sun are going out of business.
I am sorry but it is kind of funny that SUN has talked about M$ for years and years while creating their own version of Linux and making money off of it. Then M$ drops some money in their lap and all of a sudden no more talk of M$? Hummmmmmmm.
I don’t see Suse or Redhat picking on Sun. I don’t even see those companies in the news picking on M$
Anyway Solaris on X86 will not compete with Linux because Solars development is slow, the OS is harder to use and there are fewer people out there these days doing UNIX support. On top of that a lot of Windows admins are learning Linux. That won’t take away from M$ but it will take away from the pool of UNIX admins.
Also installing Solaris up to this point is crazy. Driver support sucks. Yes people can buy machines preloaded (You can do that with any OS) But what if you need to quickly put of a server because the server you bought preloaded crashes? Well I know with Windows and RedHat and Suse I can grab almost any X86 machine and get it up and running in a timely manner. Up to Solaris 9 you can’t do that. You have to be picky with hardware etc. Solaris to this point doesn’t even come with a compiler it’s a mess.
Oh and installing patches. Wooooooo. I have to patch up a Solaris 9 server (Sparc) on Monday and I have to take the server down over night to do it. I have to loose 12 hours of uptime. I mean in Windows I can remotely install a service pack, reboot and 99.9% of the time I am back up and running in 10 minutes. And with Redhat I can do the same and may not have to reboot.
Probably the most stupid thing I have seen so far is the reluctance to adopt SWT. They already have jumped onboard GNOME, why not really integrate GNOME and java together using SWT?
Becuase the last time they let IBM have thier way they got swing!!!!! AWT was what java had and IBM proposed swing. Now IBM realised swing was a conceptual mistake and they now want to push SWT (similar to AWT????). Sun took the hit for swing even though it was an IBM brain child. Why should they repeat the same mistake again!!!
Whenever anyone criticises linux, all the zealots come out like no tommorrow. It’s bizarre. Apparantly, companies like Sun aren’t allowed to compete with companies that use linux, like Red Hat. If they do try and compete, by releasing criticisms just like they do to IBM, Oracle, HP, MS and any other company, suddenly they are “under the control of MS” and incredibly evil. What are they supposed to do that’s fair? Accept the linux zealot line that linux is 100% perfect, costs nothing at all, and will inevitably attain a 100% share of the market.
When linux zealots blabber about freedom all the time, they don’t really mean it. They don’t want to see a world of many competing operating systems and solutions. They want to see a world of ONE operating system and ONE solution, and they will mercilessly assassinate anyone who so much as suggests that maybe perhaps linux isn’t cut out for every possible situation.
Ironic, considering this is what they complain about MS doing. Linux people are 100x worse than MS and SCO in the paranoid megalomania department, I’m afra
i agree with you totally. no-one here so far has given an example of how in the enterprise they work for they have compared the two and found sun/solaris to be cheaper. i think i have seen only one post where someone actually mentioned use in the enterprise – the rest have been the same “you can download fedora for free, why did he not mention this” type of responses.
open sourcing java or solaris will only have one very tangible advantage; it will reduce sun’s costs that are 100% dedicated to these two platforms. all the other benefits often touted of closed vs. open will have marginal effects. the only other “benefit” would be those that prefer to see “OSS INSIDE” on every product “MAY” adopt it.
if i were starting a company today and someone gave me the choice of 1000 expert programmers and softare engineers/arcgitects vs. the OSS community, that would be a no brainer for me. it has been increasingly shown that one expert developer can produce the results (more productive) than several good developers.
the OSS people (which includes me) should realise that just like structs are public and classes are private by default, closed and open source have a place. in fact one could even argue that the two – and all the various in betweens like shared source, etc. – are design patterns and one has to choose whichever is best for the job.
one of the things i hate about ms is that they are so hell-bent on proprietary approach it has affected their ability to be open-minded and come up with good system architectures which often require a balance between open/closed, public/private, global/local, black/white, ying/yang, etc, etc, etc – you get the idea.
my fear is that OSS community will becaome equally close minded in bias towards open source which will not be good overall.
“Ironic, considering this is what they complain about MS doing. Linux people are 100x worse than MS and SCO in the paranoid megalomania department, I’m afraid.”
What about zealots running to the arms of Microsoft with mono # stuff? i am laughing at pimple squezing zealots how they know nothing about Sun, solaris or Java or anything else in that matter. They are the ones, making me losing my respect to linux. And most of te people comments here even without reading the article. fun.
> Oh and installing patches. Wooooooo. I have to patch up a Solaris 9 server (Sparc) on Monday and I have to take the server down over night to do it. I have to loose 12 hours of uptime. I mean in Windows I can remotely install a service pack, reboot and 99.9% of the time I am back up and running in 10 minutes. And with Redhat I can do the same and may not have to reboot.
Dude, you’re either totally full of shit or just incredibly stupid and shouldn’t be let anywhere near the computers. I run Solaris servers that get rebooted once a year at best and they are patched up to date all the time – I get close five nines on my machines! On Solaris you can even do an entire OS upgrade to a different version without a reboot (reboot is required only when you’re done and you need to load a different kernel). Solaris is much more manageable than Linux across the board. Bottom line, don’t post something you’re totally clueless about.
> Also installing Solaris up to this point is crazy. Driver support sucks.
Driver support for Linux also sucks. If you exclude all the alpha and beta quality drivers, which compose probably about 80% of Linux drivers out there, you’re left with about the same amout of truly supported hardware as on Solaris. It is just Sun is much more stringent when certifying hardware for the OS than RedHat for instance. Plus it looks like the hardware support for Solaris x86 should be ramped up pretty quick with the amount of effort Sun is putting in.
> Anyway Solaris on X86 will not compete with Linux because Solars development is slow.
Yeh, I guess this is why Solaris 10 is already ahead of Linux by long mile in pretty much any department as far as features are concerned. It will take Linux years before it gets to the same level where Solaris is right now.
It’s me or it looks like lots of sparc+solaris users are switching to x86+redhat?
Looks like just a “marketting attack” to me. Not that Solaris is a bad OS, but for x86 hardware solaris is just late…
Oh and installing patches. Wooooooo. I have to patch up a Solaris 9 server (Sparc) on Monday and I have to take the server down over night to do it. I have to loose 12 hours of uptime. I mean in Windows I can remotely install a service pack, reboot and 99.9% of the time I am back up and running in 10 minutes. And with Redhat I can do the same and may not have to reboot.
What sort of freaking idiot are you? You don’t need to “take the server down” for the great majority of the patches. And expecially, you don’t hae to “loose 12 hours” (BTW, it’s spelled “lose”, “loose” is something different) even if a patch requires a reboot.
I think your comparison to Windows is definitely the weakest argument I have ever seen. “Remotely install” on Windows? On UNIX you can do everything remotely, and with Sun gear you can even power it down.
“Care to explain why J2SE is a smaller download than .NET Runtime Environment?”
maybe because there are some release of windows who include windows?
maybe because some oem install it
try to think
Solaris 10 will gain ground not because it can support 100s of pieces of hardware, but because it is Solaris!
I see no evidence of that whatsoever. At the moment – maybe only for the moment, but at the moment – Solaris has lost a boatload of mindshare. Wrongly, I think; but it has. Solaris 10 will not grow the brand simply because it is Solaris.
You also mentioned Sun Rays. I F’ING LOVE THOSE THINGS!!! Sadly they’ve historically worked only with CDE, Solaris and SPARC. Being able to run them with a good GNOME interface with an Opteron server (maybe even on Linux? pretty please?) would make my dreams come true.
Driver support for Linux also sucks. If you exclude all the alpha and beta quality drivers, which compose probably about 80% of Linux drivers out there, you’re left with about the same amout of truly supported hardware as on Solaris. It is just Sun is much more stringent when certifying hardware for the OS than RedHat for instance. Plus it looks like the hardware support for Solaris x86 should be ramped up pretty quick with the amount of effort Sun is putting in.
Rubbish. Solaris driver support on x86, particularly for workstations, is absolutely non-existant. It has taken a community years to get drivers support up to scratch for Linux. Sun is not going to manage it internally with non-existant workstation (desktop) market share. People will quite rightly say “Well, you can use Linux.” They will absolutely have to open source Solaris to get this done because they don’t have the resources, nor can they attract enough hardware companies, to get this done.
Yeh, I guess this is why Solaris 10 is already ahead of Linux by long mile in pretty much any department as far as features are concerned. It will take Linux years before it gets to the same level where Solaris is right now.
Again, like what? People have continuously hyped Solaris 10 and said “Oh it will kick Linux”, but what meaningful features are there for the average person using an average server averagely? That’s who Sun are selling to, because even the big corporate customers are deserting them now – you kow, the ones who are supposed to be using all of the Solaris features? It doesn’t matter what features it has because Linux already does what people want. Anything else is a bonus.
> Solaris driver support on x86, particularly for workstations, is absolutely non-existant. It has taken a community years to get drivers support up to scratch for Linux.
Not so, at least in just a few months Sun managed to grow the hardware compatibility list for Solaris quite significantly (I would say it almost doubled since last year). If Sun progresses with the same rate (and there is good chance of than with Sun’s connections to major IHV’s), Solaris should have a respectable list of supported hardware compared to Linux. Even at this ponit in time Solaris already supports the majortity of big vendor commodity hardware (http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/9/).
“Instead of actually shipping boxes, OSes and tools, they decide it is somehow better to talk trash about the competition.
Next they’ll resort to claiming the TCO for Solaris is lower than Linux.
Of course Solaris has advantages, and of course they would rather see people using that than Linux.
This kind of rhetoric just makes it sound like they are terrified of Linux, and will only serve to make people curious as to why Sun spend more time telling people why they Linux is somehow inadequate than they do telling people why Solaris is the smart choice.
Where are the benchmarks showing Solaris pounding linux into the dust for file I/O?
Where is the chart showing that, dollar for dollar, a Sun workstation provides more power than anything from Dell or HP?
Where is the slick workstation desktop that makes GNOME and KDE look like amateurish hacks?
Where are the disk subsystems and clustered filesystems that makes massive,reliable and cheap storage networks childs play to assemble?
Where is the Solaris JVM that outperforms Linux and Windows by a large factor?
Where is the 3D hardware and display systems that simply isnt available on ‘commodity’ PCs?
I don’t see any of that. What do they provide instead? A bunch of crap about how ‘Linux is dying, UNIX is coming back into vogue’
I’d be laughing if it wasnt so sad.” –Anonymous
Beautifully stated.
“Again, like what? People have continuously hyped Solaris 10 and said “Oh it will kick Linux”, but what meaningful features are there for the average person using an average server averagely? That’s who Sun are selling to, because even the big corporate customers are deserting them now – you kow, the ones who are supposed to be using all of the Solaris features? It doesn’t matter what features it has because Linux already does what people want. Anything else is a bonus.”
Perhaps checking out the following link to a page about Solaris 10 should enlighten you.
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/
> Next they’ll resort to claiming the TCO for Solaris is lower than Linux.
TCO for Solaris IS lower than Linux, it is a fact. Solaris is cheaper to buy and support than Linux (RedHat/SuSE) and should have less administrative overhead than Linux, thus lower TCO.
Again, like what? People have continuously hyped Solaris 10 and said “Oh it will kick Linux”, but what meaningful features are there for the average person using an average server averagely? That’s who Sun are selling to, because even the big corporate customers are deserting them now – you kow, the ones who are supposed to be using all of the Solaris features? It doesn’t matter what features it has because Linux already does what people want. Anything else is a bonus.
You constantly claim this sort of nonsense. Post some facts. Show large scale migrations from solaris. Sun still sells more volumes of machines than it did before. So more Solaris machines are going into the market.
All you have been able to show for proof is Sun’s revenue is declining and Gartner or IDC’s market share calculated by revenue not volume, which are different things.
but what meaningful features are there for the average person using an average server averagely?
WTF does this mean?????
Sys Admin Magazine
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=9171/sam0406h/0406h.htm
Is that average enough for you!!! Zones is a boon for hosting companies, there is nothing on linux that has the same ease of use and feature set in one package. ZFS is the only filesystem that offers end to end checksumming and data integrity garuntees. It is also a 128 file system with limtless capacity support.
Stop you doomsday nonsense. And provide facts.
Rubbish. Solaris driver support on x86, particularly for workstations, is absolutely non-existant. It has taken a community years to get drivers support up to scratch for Linux. Sun is not going to manage it internally with non-existant workstation (desktop) market share. People will quite rightly say “Well, you can use Linux.” They will absolutely have to open source Solaris to get this done because they don’t have the resources, nor can they attract enough hardware companies, to get this done.
If Solaris x86 supports all the drivers for a sun branded machine and that machine is cheaper than the competition and performs better, what more do customers need???
Do you think companies have time to waste buying dell machines and licenses from RedHat, install them and hope that every thinf works to save a few dollars?
What happens if a failure occurs? who will debug it to a hardware or software fault, Dell or Redhat??? OR may be some OSS hacker will take the time to fly down on-site and offer his services for free because you bought OSS!!! Get real.
Customers want simpilicity and a one stop shop. A Customer here being enterprise not end users trying to save a few hundred dollars.
Linux is popular becuase of the ubiquity of x86 hardware, companies don’t run linux just to run linux. IBM is placing a bet to that end and we will se how many linux on power boxes they sell and how thier AIX customers like it. Customers hate platform transitions, ecspecially two changes hardware and software together.
Sun has a good strategy and compelling products. Redhat hat has nice packaging of freely avaiable software. Redhat can not garauntee the same level of support for thier entire stack hardware and software like IBM, HP and Sun can with thier native products.
Of the three only IBM has the resources to make linux work across the board on all the different hardware they would like to support for thier global services organization to sell systems to every customer. In case, you haven’t noticed IBM is transitioning to a services company and thier largest customer for thier systems is thier global services organizations. That is the reason they are even considering linux, becuase linux now has mindshare and they can use it as a competitive weapon against Microsoft and Sun.
Sun is doing the best thing it can and should have done a while ago make alliances with AMD and Fujitsu to make it possible to offer more compelling products and insure a long term roadmap for Soalris/SPARC and rejuvenate the market for Soalris/x86( remember customers petitioned Sun to being Solaris x86 back). Going by your rationale customers shouldn’t have cared and just switched to linux.
Go spread you FUD elsehere.
“Sun has a good strategy and compelling products.”
No.
Raptor, you often go on the defensive for Sun here on OSNews. But the fact is Sun does not have a good strategy and they are losing market share, to Dell and the likes on the low end and IBM and HP at the high end.
They are continuously downsizing and ex-Sun people who lost their job are not too happy about it.
They have also lost their technology edge. Solaris – just like any other proprietary version of Unix – doesn’t stand a chance to Linux. SPARC is all but dead. Java is nice but C# is building up momentum.
Blindly defending Sun won’t lead you anywhere.
They have also lost their technology edge. Solaris – just like any other proprietary version of Unix – doesn’t stand a chance to Linux. SPARC is all but dead. Java is nice but C# is building up momentum.
An blindly supporting linux is ok. Care to show me what linux offers technically that Solaris doesn’t. Don’t give me open source idealogical BS. A lot of that BS has made quite a few developers abandon linux development. cdrecord being a big example, cdrecord is no longer being developed by it’s orginal author for linux, guess what he chose instead, Solaris.
SPARC is not dead. It is still the largest selling 64-bit architecture, Fujistu and Sun sell more 64-bit SPARC chips
than any other architecture. SPARC is far from dead.
Sun is losing revenue marketshare not volumes. Understand the difference. Sun is selling products with lower margins than before, becuase the market is buying volumes systems. So marketshare interms of units shipped has gone up over the years, infact more than it’s competitors volumes. Sun is down sizing becuase it isn’t selling at high margins, it needs to cut costs accrodingly. Sun grew at an alarming rate during the dot com boom, they held of cutting staff a lot longer than IBM, Cisco and the others. When you hire at an alraming rate like sun did, growing 2x in one year. It is immpossible to hire quality people. Sun is taking measures to reduce cost just like everybody has done after the dotcom boom. Sun started late, so they will finish late, Sun is also doing small layoffs and not one massive sweep like the others. HP layed of 25000 emolyess after the compaq merger. Sun till date has layed off 9000, while still hiring.
I am not blindly supporting Sun. I am correcting ignorant FUD spread around here. FUD on baseless claims like ” Solaris doesn’t stand a chance against linux”.
You constantly claim this sort of nonsense. Post some facts. Show large scale migrations from solaris. Sun still sells more volumes of machines than it did before. So more Solaris machines are going into the market.
Do you know what kind of position Sun are in?
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0415sunposts.html
They’re making losses and they’re revenues are down, and they’ve made losses in ten straight quarters. They’ve needed two billion dollars of Microsoft’s money.
I’m not interested in how many servers IDC says Sun is selling, because ultimately this is what matters. I can see this isn’t going to penetrate the skull though.
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3335611
You might call all that nonsense – I bet Sun doesn’t find it that way.
All you have been able to show for proof is Sun’s revenue is declining…
Holy crap. Revenue declining, and losses. Don’t panic!
…and Gartner or IDC’s market share calculated by revenue not volume, which are different things.
Der, McFly! I recall that being in response to Windows having 60% market share by 2008. It has no relevance here.
Is that average enough for you!!! Zones is a boon for hosting companies, there is nothing on linux that has the same ease of use and feature set in one package. ZFS is the only filesystem that offers end to end checksumming and data integrity garuntees. It is also a 128 file system with limtless capacity support.
That isn’t average. No one is going to be excited about what is essentially a benchmarking tool. If you have a reliable server, OS and applications, you have to wonder why that is hyped as a feature. That’s what Sun support is for, and I don’t pay for tools to make their life easier. People also seem to be doing pretty well so far without the features of ZFS, as the filesystems around are pretty reliable. There’s just nothing compelling there.
Stop you doomsday nonsense. And provide facts.
Obviously Sun going bust, dithering over strategy and then trying to FUD the opposition isn’t enough.
Perhaps checking out the following link to a page about Solaris 10 should enlighten you.
Already have done. There is no enlightenment to be found:
The biggest hyped feature is DTrace, and no one is going to be excited about what is essentially a benchmarking tool. If you have a reliable server, OS, filesystem and applications, you have to wonder why that is hyped as a feature. That’s what Sun support is for, and I don’t pay for tools to make their life easier.
99.99999999999999999 (19-9’s!) probability of detecting corrupt data.
Somehow, I think that needs to be worded differently.
Massive capacity – Dynamic File System has 16 Billion Billion times larger than existing file systems.
Wow.
Provides cryptographic services to users and applications.
Cryptography just isn’t on my radar as far as an OS feature is concerned. If it’s secure, that’s all I care about.
Solaris out-of-the-box installation designed with security in mind.
Derrrr….
Provides network address translation and firewall services.
Derrrrr……
Solaris 10 is a single source OS, optimized to run multiple applications on multiple platforms.
Wow. It runs on multiple applications does it? Does it run on a Power PC?
If Solaris x86 supports all the drivers for a sun branded machine and that machine is cheaper than the competition and performs better, what more do customers need???
If…..
Do you think companies have time to waste buying dell machines and licenses from RedHat, install them and hope that every thinf works to save a few dollars?
That’s what everyone is doing, and that’s why Sun is desperately trying to throw mud at the opposition in this article. Where’ve you been?
What happens if a failure occurs? who will debug it to a hardware or software fault, Dell or Redhat???
That will be detailed in your support agreement. Millions of Red Hat on Dell servers have been sold, so people must be managing somehow – wouldn’t you think? That’s why Sun are saying the stuff they are about Red Hat.
…may be some OSS hacker will take the time to fly down on-site and offer his services for free because you bought OSS!!! Get real.
Yes. Quite. You don’t seem to understand how this support thing works.
Customers want simpilicity and a one stop shop. A Customer here being enterprise not end users trying to save a few hundred dollars.
Tell that to people buying servers from companies like HP or IBM.
Linux is popular becuase of the ubiquity of x86 hardware, companies don’t run linux just to run linux.
That’s part of it, yes. You have to wonder what kind of room there is for Solaris.
IBM is placing a bet to that end and we will se how many linux on power boxes they sell and how thier AIX customers like it. Customers hate platform transitions, ecspecially two changes hardware and software together.
IBM have a load of PPC servers running Linux. If customers hate platform transitions then they’re not going to like switching from Linux, are they?
Sun has a good strategy and compelling products.
They’ve been in the red for so many quarters, I’ve lost count. Whatever they have, it isn’t enough.
Redhat can not garauntee the same level of support for thier entire stack hardware and software like IBM, HP and Sun can with thier native products.
If you’d bothered to even read up, or work out how using Linux works, you would know that Red Hat doesn’t sell hardware. HP and IBM actually use Red Hat and Suse as their Linux operating systems, and they use them for support. That’s how the support system works – but the customer doesn’t have to see it.
Of the three only IBM has the resources to make linux work across the board on all the different hardware they would like to support for thier global services organization to sell systems to every customer.
Which is x86, and PPC at the high-end. There isn’t a terribly great deal of resources put in from HP and IBM because they don’t have to fully support and drive development for their own proprietary UNIXs by themselves, as they have had to do in the past – and as Sun currently does.
In case, you haven’t noticed IBM is transitioning to a services company and thier largest customer for thier systems is thier global services organizations.
Well done Sherlock. It doesn’t have anything to do with what I’ve written though.
That is the reason they are even considering linux, becuase linux now has mindshare and they can use it as a competitive weapon against Microsoft and Sun.
Wow. Really?
( remember customers petitioned Sun to being Solaris x86 back).
Yes, Sun customers. It doesn’t make a lot of difference to those who don’t care.
Go spread you FUD elsehere.
Unfortunately, it’s not FUD, which is why you’ve replied.
What about this comment:
“Which is x86, and PPC at the high-end. There isn’t a terribly great deal of resources put in from HP and IBM because they don’t have to fully support and drive development for their own proprietary UNIXs by themselves, as they have had to do in the past – and as Sun currently does.”
Doesn’t HP support and develop HP-UX and Tru64 UNIX, and IBM support and develop AIX? The last time I looked these were the proprietary UNIX flavors sold by HP and IBM.
I’m not interested in how many servers IDC says Sun is selling, because ultimately this is what matters. I can see this isn’t going to penetrate the skull though.
I guess it isn’t getting in to your skull.
That’s who Sun are selling to, because even the big corporate customers are deserting them now – you kow, the ones who are supposed to be using all of the Solaris features?
Let’s see, you claim corporate customers are leaving sun. I respond with sun is selling more systems than before. And you go back to revenue. Duh,Is anybody home!!!! Selling more units means more people are buying, genius. Not the other way around.
No one is going to be excited about what is essentially a benchmarking tool.
This statenment pretty much exposes your grasp of OS technologies. Dtrace is a tracing tool. Dtrace doesn’t benchmark anything. I guess you are too dense to grasp the difference. Since you can’t comprehend the difference between a dymanic tracing facility and a benchmarking tool here are a few examples: Bonnie, lmbench, iozone, TPCC, SPECWeb99 are benchmarking tools, go read up on them. Read up on Dprobes DUH!!!
They’re making losses and they’re revenues are down, and they’ve made losses in ten straight quarters. They’ve needed two billion dollars of Microsoft’s money.
Another brilliant flash of intellectual display. What part of the word “settlement” don’t you understand. Microsoft settled with Sun to lawsuits and licensed technology, like they settled with AOL and a bunch of others. But you have proven your intellectual capacity. I couldn’t have expected any better.
Der, McFly! I recall that being in response to Windows having 60% market share by 2008. It has no relevance here.
Doh, I don’t seemed to recall every responding to a comment on microsoft’s marketshare. You must have confused this in your head just like everything else.
In Resposne to:
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0415sunposts.html
Excluding a $300 million noncash charge related to deferred tax assets, $203 million in costs for restructuring and other one-time items, Sun (SUNW: news, chart, profile) said it lost $260 million, or 8 cents a share.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yhoo/story.asp?source=blq/yhoo&site…
If you knew how to read and comprehend things, Sun took one time non-cash chrages last quarter. You are painting a picture which is not true.
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3335611
You might call all that nonsense – I bet Sun doesn’t find it that way.
Opinions by a magazine and analysts… ooh I must panic and change my mind. Oh these analysts are always so right, They told people to buy overvalued stock during the boom and looks how happy everyone is today. Duh…
I ask you to posts facts about the massive migrations to linux that you so blatantly claim here. You show me opinions and financial results.
Sun is selling more machines than before, not less. A massive migration to linux would mean Sun’s volumes would decline but facts show the contrary. I have quoted you directly, claiming this so called corporate defection to linux. Got any proof to that claim.
That will be detailed in your support agreement. Millions of Red Hat on Dell servers have been sold, so people must be managing somehow – wouldn’t you think? That’s why Sun are saying the stuff they are about Red Hat
Care to show me data to back this up???
Yes. Quite. You don’t seem to understand how this support thing works.
Duh, you don’t obviously.
Tell that to people buying servers from companies like HP or IBM.
Sure let’s tell them how HP is abandoning PA-RISC and HP-UX and supporting IA64.
That’s part of it, yes. You have to wonder what kind of room there is for Solaris.
Lot’s of it.
If you’d bothered to even read up, or work out how using Linux works, you would know that Red Hat doesn’t sell hardware.
Wasn’t that my point as to why they can’t offer the same level of support. Duh.. too complex for ya.
Which is x86, and PPC at the high-end. There isn’t a terribly great deal of resources put in from HP and IBM because they don’t have to fully support and drive development for their own proprietary UNIXs by themselves, as they have had to do in the past – and as Sun currently does.
They still do am I missing something. HP still develops HP-UX, even on IA64, IBM does AIX and all thier Mainframe OSes. You really need to get out more and take your linux blinders off.
Yes, Sun customers. It doesn’t make a lot of difference to those who don’t care.
Doh… Didn’t you claim Sun customer’s are leaving an migrating to linux…. But they seem to be asking for solaris. You really need to unconfuse things in your head pal.
Unfortunately, it’s not FUD, which is why you’ve replied.
That’s precisely why I responded, Sherlock.
David claims:
Millions of Red Hat on Dell servers have been sold, so people must be managing somehow – wouldn’t you think? That’s why Sun are saying the stuff they are about Red Hat
Fact:
Measured by units shipped, Hewlett-Packard remained the leader with 462,000 for the quarter, Gartner said. Dell was No. 2 with 319,000, IBM was No. 3 at 274,000 and Sun Microsystems was No. 4 with 84,000.
But a different ranking emerges when measured by growth compared to the same quarter of 2002. By that measurement, IBM was tops, with 39 percent growth, Sun was second with 33 percent, Dell was third with 30 percent, and HP was fourth with 21 percent.
http://news.com.com/Server+shipments+boom+in+2003/2100-1010_3-51497…
If dell only shipped 319000 units per quarter, dell would have shipped maybe 1.5 million servers tops. So by David’s rationale all of them should have been linux servers. However, fact is dell sells more windows servers than linux servers. Even if you take the number over the years since the volumes are increasing, dell can’t possibly have sold “millions” of units with Redhat.
The second paragraph is even more interesting. Sun’s shipments grew 33 percent year-on-year, that too faster than Dell.
All david has contributed to OSnews has been FUD, which can’t stand up under scrutiny. Corporate customers are leaving Sun. Indeed. Nice peice of deductive reasoning, David. May be if you stopped somking what ever it was, things might clear up.
Certitudes:
* Sun still ships a hell of a lot of boxes.
* Sun has been losing money.
* Solaris is technically superior to Linux in some areas.
* Pure-play SPARC is no longer an option.
Anti-Sun assertions still disputed:
* Large Sun accounts have been migrating to Linux.
(perhaps better phrased as “cheap Lintel servers have forced Sun to cut prices and lose revenue”)
* SPARC is dying.
* Solaris’s technical advantages are not significant enough to outweigh Linux’s cheapness.
Pro-Sun assertions still disputed:
* Solaris 10 on Opteron will have a better cost/benefit ratio than Linux.
(too early to say, perhaps.)
* Sun is doing just fine as it is.
(seems pretty untenable to me.)
* Sun servers are cheaper than Linux ones.
(I’d say: sometimes.)
IBM/HP Sideshow:
This seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Clearly both IBM and HP want to preserve their existing proprietary Unix cash cows. In my experience HP salesmen will privately spew anti-Linux FUD to existing HockeyPUX customers while stealing away AIX accounts with cheap Linux; same applies mutatis mutandis for IBM salesmen. But both will more often than not push Linux on a new account.
This is the difference between the HP/IBM and Sun strategies for proprietary Unix servers: the first two see them as a lucrative legacy market, but still a legacy market; Sun, at least until recently, has seen them as the only way forward.
> SPARC is dying.
What are you stoned? Sparc is by far highest volume 64-bit processor out there. Plus with Sun and Fujistu joining their efforts in SPARC development, SPARC has got by far the best 64-bit processor story out there bar none. Fujitsu’s SPARC64 processors should provide a healthy injection into the product lineup and should remedy the situation in the short term. In the long term Sun and Fujitsu will have quite a diverse and complete product line more than enough to fend off IBM/HP/Intel all without breaking the binary compatibility (something IBM/HP/Intel can’t provide). If anything SPARC should have quite a bright future, especially with Itanic being essentailly a dud and with rather pathetic market share and possibilities for Power chips.
No, I’m not stoned. Someone stated it, someone else (I think you) disputed it. It’s an anti-Sun assertion still disputed, as I said.
Personally I like the SPARC architecture, and don’t know enough about the business side to make a judgement about its future.
Doesn’t HP support and develop HP-UX and Tru64 UNIX, and IBM support and develop AIX? The last time I looked these were the proprietary UNIX flavors sold by HP and IBM.
Yes, but how many of those get sold now? They’ve stayed pretty static for many years now.
I guess it isn’t getting in to your skull.
No, it certainly isn’t. No matter how many servers someone says you are selling, the financial figures are the real deal. Your bank manager wouldn’t be interested – neither are Sun’s.
Duh,Is anybody home!!!! Selling more units means more people are buying, genius. Not the other way around.
Thy’re obviously not making it work for them then, are they? Revenue, losses and profit are your bread and butter. No one is interested in your unit sales if this doesn’t add up.
Dtrace is a tracing tool. Dtrace doesn’t benchmark anything. I guess you are too dense to grasp the difference. Since you can’t comprehend the difference between a dymanic tracing facility and a benchmarking tool here are a few examples: Bonnie, lmbench, iozone, TPCC, SPECWeb99 are benchmarking tools, go read up on them. Read up on Dprobes DUH!!!
Wow. I’m truly not really interested, because most people will see it as a benchmarking tool they will never use. That’s the way people will see it, and it will not be compelling for people to spend money on Solaris. How often are they going to use DTrace? If they have to use it often it means that there is something wrong with their systems.
It certainly wouldn’t convince me about Solaris, and if I pay big money for Sun support, as I said, I’m not paying for a tool to make their life easier. Your thinking just about sums Sun up at the moment.
What part of the word “settlement” don’t you understand.
You take what Sun and Microsoft say at face value? You and they might call it a settlement, everyone else knows that it was something else.
Doh, I don’t seemed to recall every responding to a comment on microsoft’s marketshare. You must have confused this in your head just like everything else.
For the uninitiated, this is what you wrote Sherlock:
…Gartner or IDC’s market share calculated by revenue not volume, which are different things.
That was nowhere in this article. I did respond to a Windows article stating things to that effect, but I don’t know what this means – only you do.
If you knew how to read and comprehend things, Sun took one time non-cash chrages last quarter. You are painting a picture which is not true.
For ten straight quarters? The truth is pretty clear for everyone else.
Opinions by a magazine and analysts… ooh I must panic and change my mind. Oh these analysts are always so right, They told people to buy overvalued stock during the boom and looks how happy everyone is today. Duh…
Opinions? Yes. Are Sun’s financial figures wrong? No.
I ask you to posts facts about the massive migrations to linux that you so blatantly claim here. You show me opinions and financial results.
Well, since everything is an opinion I had best let Sun say it themselves:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/17/sun_ashamed_of_solaris_x86/
The comments are more interesting than the article.
“There will be a transition back to Solaris,” he said.
Which means? People have been moving away from Solaris in big enough numbers to worry Sun.
Sun is selling more machines than before, not less. A massive migration to linux would mean Sun’s volumes would decline but facts show the contrary.
Are they? Do you believe the opinions of analysts like IDC in light of Sun’s poor financial showing?
I have quoted you directly, claiming this so called corporate defection to linux. Got any proof to that claim.
Oh the “Get cornered and continually ask for proof” routine. I’ll let Jonathan Schwartz say it for me:
“There will be a transition back to Solaris,” he said.
Care to show me data to back this up???
There’ve been many surveys to that effect, but they are all opinions really, aren’t they? This is Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz:
“There will be a transition back to Solaris,” he said.
Even if you take the number over the years since the volumes are increasing, dell can’t possibly have sold “millions” of units with Redhat.
Oh dear. Dell isn’t the only company selling servers with Linux on them, and Red Hat isn’t the only vendor of Linux distributions, which you and Sun just cannot grasp at all. HP, IBM and others all sell Linux servers, and Suse also sell a Linux distributions and product lines for groupware, directory services etc. You just can’t get over this one supplier thing.
The second paragraph is even more interesting. Sun’s shipments grew 33 percent year-on-year, that too faster than Dell.
Dell isn’t the only company selling servers that are taking market share away from Sun. That’s the whole point. Considering that this was 2002/2003, it hasn’t made a difference to their bottom line this year.
All david has contributed to OSnews has been FUD, which can’t stand up under scrutiny.
Everyone else can see that it does, because ultimately, it shows up in their bottom line. You can’t call that FUD unfortunately because it’s there in black and white, and red(!) ink.
Corporate customers are leaving Sun. Indeed. Nice peice of deductive reasoning, David. May be if you stopped somking what ever it was, things might clear up.
I think everyone is hoping that Sun will do that sometime. Preferably soon, for their own sake.
RE: Robert Escue (IP: —.hr.hr.cox.net) – Posted on 2004-06-26 22:25:08
Doesn’t HP support and develop HP-UX and Tru64 UNIX, and IBM support and develop AIX? The last time I looked these were the proprietary UNIX flavors sold by HP and IBM.
HP has already killed off Tru64, OpenVMS is hanging around, but for how long? HP-UX? well, lets look at HP, Microsofts full on b***h and the chances of then using Linux for anything more substaintial than grand pissing competitions? bah, highly unlikely.
As for AIX, its on its last legs, thanks to Lou Gestner who place services at the front at the expense of product development, the current CEO has no other choice than bend over for the penguin.
SUN is in a unique position, they have a highly scalable UNIX that is pure 64bit and will be available on Opteron and SPARC. Take that, and consider that atowards the end of this year SUN will be ditching their UltraSPARC in favour of the SPARC64 from Fujitsu which is rocketing foward in the benchmarks.
Coupled with the massive CMT technology they’re going to bring on board next year, embracing the Opteron on the low end, and unifying the whole lot under Solaris/Java, I think the future is bright for SUN. be it with a little more pain than there needed to be, they will bounch back.
As for the SUN Ray appliance, JDS will be delivered on Solaris, and the SUN Ray appliance will take its place in the enterprise; don’t believe people use thin clients? just go into ANZ, Australia Tax Office, New Zealand Ministry of Defence etc. etc. thin clients will be the future for the enterprise.
Coupled with the massive CMT technology they’re going to bring on board next year, embracing the Opteron on the low end, and unifying the whole lot under Solaris/Java, I think the future is bright for SUN. be it with a little more pain than there needed to be, they will bounch back.
I quite agree. Let’s hope Sun just go out and do it, rather than throwing mud at companies like Red Hat. Let us also hope that they don’t screw things up like they have done in the past.
“They are just not there. SuSE has not become as arrogant with the market because they do not have the dominance that Red Hat has had.”
So they only compete head to head with arrogant companies? SUN needs to invest in some good PR people I do not know who this Singer guys is but they need to keep him put away.
[i]Sun plans to roll out in-house designed gear that is said, by many industry insiders, to be nothing less than fantastic later this year.[i]
So its fantastic who cares! as a SUN stockholder i want to know if it will compete with HP and IBM in the same area (I am assuming low-mid range computing). Based on SUN’s track record of mediocrity JDS,Solaris 10 etc.. I am still not convinced that SUN has any clear goals od business plan layed out. They just keep stabbing at things hoping one thing will take off.
One thing is true, UNIX is always better than UNIX-Like.
Wow. I’m truly not really interested, because most people will see it as a benchmarking tool they will never use. That’s the way people will see it, and it will not be compelling for people to spend money on Solaris. How often are they going to use DTrace? If they have to use it often it means that there is something wrong with their systems.
Don’t you just love it when some one thinks he can speak for everybody!!!!
It certainly wouldn’t convince me about Solaris, and if I pay big money for Sun support, as I said, I’m not paying for a tool to make their life easier. Your thinking just about sums Sun up at the moment.
IT really doesn’t matter if it would convince you. You are a lost cause anyway. But it sure wil convince a lot of real customers who do understand the need for such a tool. Even if it is a tool for sun support engineers, it will convince people that Sun has tools no one else has to quickly assess realworl problems and reduce downtime. But a dense linux zealit like can’t be expected to think realworld, yes.
You take what Sun and Microsoft say at face value? You and they might call it a settlement, everyone else knows that it was something else.
Again, speak for everyone else….. This is getting irritating. Didn’t you every learn not to impose your opinions and make general statements. Sun settled Two lawsuits, these are public record. Some really potent stuff you are under, mate.
Opinions? Yes. Are Sun’s financial figures wrong? No.
No Sun has always been very accurate with accounting. But opinon pieces like your nwfusion and internet news, blow the losses out of porportion to without detailing one-time charges. cbs market watch and real financial publications detail the charges and paint the real picture. Well it is obvious you believe anything negative about Sun with out reasoning. You are baised, yes.
The comments are more interesting than the article.
“There will be a transition back to Solaris,” he said.
Yes they are if you take them out of context.
“As one of the most successful open source products on the planet, Linux does enjoy a sense of community that Solaris x86 can’t match. Schwartz, however, sees the fad of Linux wearing off in big businesses.
“There will be a transition back to Solaris,” he said.”
Schwartz was commenting on the coummunity sense that linux enjoys (read mindshare) in the development sense. That comment was noway related to customers. Solaris x86 was not Sun’s major cashcown anyway, not until Schwartz and McNealy decided to correct that mistake.
Are they? Do you believe the opinions of analysts like IDC in light of Sun’s poor financial showing?
You really don’t understand the concept margins and operational costs, do you? Margins are low opertational costs are high becuase sun didn’t aggressively cut cost as other comapnies(read layoffs). Sun has done just this quarter. Unlike what you claim Sun isn’t sitting idle and repeating thier mistakes, they are actively working to fix them. One costs are below revenue, profits. Revenue doesn’t directly relate to volume.
There are other vaious other factors, but again if you bothered to educate yourself you wouldn’t generalize and speak for everybody.
Oh the “Get cornered and continually ask for proof” routine. I’ll let Jonathan Schwartz say it for me:
No detect, BS, FUD and non-factual statements and ask for proof.
There’ve been many surveys to that effect, but they are all opinions really, aren’t they? This is Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz:
Well post links to that affect.
“There will be a transition back to Solaris,” he said.
out of context. Read above.
Oh dear. Dell isn’t the only company selling servers with Linux on them, and Red Hat isn’t the only vendor of Linux distributions, which you and Sun just cannot grasp at all. HP, IBM and others all sell Linux servers, and Suse also sell a Linux distributions and product lines for groupware, directory services etc. You just can’t get over this one supplier thing.
You claimed dell has sold millions of servers with Redhat. I disputed that claim. Now change the topic, typical. Only make statements you are sure of and can backup. Otherwise explicitly sate that they are your opinion. These are the basic rules of any discussion. Again is you were educated enough…..
Everyone else can see that it does, because ultimately, it shows up in their bottom line. You can’t call that FUD unfortunately because it’s there in black and white, and red(!) ink.
Arrrgh… Speaking for everyone again. Even people on this forum has disagreed with you, how on earth can you claim unanimity of opinion. Revenue != volume. Price preasures due to competition…. heavy discounting….. lower margins….cost of operations….. Do these terms ring a bell, No. The please don’t pretend to undertand financials like you do OS technologies.
Kaiwai,
Then you might want to read this about Tru64:
http://h30097.www3.hp.com/pdf/tru64_unix_roadmap_0504.pdf
As far as HP-UX and AIX goes, I don’t really care. I prefer Solaris over either one of them (and I have used both). I was simply addressing David ignoring that HP and IBM have proprietary UNIX variants they develop and support.
Thanks for that piece of information. The problem is linux zealots have blinders on and think that linux is the be all and end all of OS developments.
HP and IBM are playing the linux hype to the hilt, while in the background doing what they have been doing all along. Both have long roadmaps for thier native products, but somehow OSS advocates think that since they support linux they are dropping thier proprietary products.
UNIX is not going to die anytime soon. Linux kernels have long development cycles. 2.6 took a little shy of 2 years to become stable (2.6) and it is only now that major distros are even considering 2.6 for thier releases. 2.6 was supposed to be linux developments attempt at a quicker development strategy. I am not saying that kernel development is easy. But companies need strong commitments of roadmaps and schedules to plan depolyments. Linux development methodologies can’t garauntee that. “It will be read when it is ready” won’t cut the mustard when companies have more money to spend as the economy imporves. Customers will buy whatever has all the features they need then not wait indefinitely for someone to make up thier minds on a release date.
Proprietary UNIXs are way ahead of linux on many key features that matter to enterprises. Till that is true proprietary UNIXs aren’t going to vanish. And UNIX vendors are’nt sitting idle they are developing thier products constantly.
Don’t you just love it when some one thinks he can speak for everybody!!!!
LOL!
But a dense linux zealit like can’t be expected to think realworld, yes.
The real world is a bit different, and dare I say it, a heck of a lot more mundane.
Didn’t you every learn not to impose your opinions and make general statements.
LOL!
Sun settled Two lawsuits, these are public record.
Did they really?!
But opinon pieces like your nwfusion and internet news, blow the losses out of porportion to without detailing one-time charges.
I hope you’re joking. I’m afraid Sun’s financial situation is not an opinion piece.
cbs market watch and real financial publications detail the charges and paint the real picture.
Sun’s financial situation is well documented. Denial isn’t going to help you or them.
Yes they are if you take them out of context.
*Laughs so hard I split my sides*. You don’t make comments like that about community mindshare.
Schwartz was commenting on the coummunity sense that linux enjoys (read mindshare) in the development sense. That comment was noway related to customers.
HP has been burned by Sun’s soft Solaris x86 support. Pre-acquisition, Compaq had a decent sized Solaris x86 business on its ProLiant servers. When Sun paused in its development of Solaris x86, many of these customers ran for the hills and aren’t too thrilled about coming back.
I think that paragraph is pretty clear.
You really don’t understand the concept margins and operational costs, do you?
Oh please. You’ll swear red ink is black whatever anyone says.
Revenue doesn’t directly relate to volume.
Quite right. So why do you keep pointing me to meaningless IDC surveys when Sun’s revenue is down?
out of context. Read above.
Afraid not. Read above.
Only make statements you are sure of and can backup.
Tell me the revenue that Sun made this year. Was it up? Tell me the profit Sun made this year? Was it in the black? Pretty simple. By all means do so.
These are the basic rules of any discussion.
If you want a discussion then by all means do so.
Again is you were educated enough…..
Education…and English skills. Quite.
Arrrgh… Speaking for everyone again.
Unfortunately you don’t understand hard figures.
Revenue != volume.
Yes quite. Revenue is down, despite what the volume shipments might be saying. I don’t know why you’re telling me that for. You don’t understand it.
Even people on this forum has disagreed with you, how on earth can you claim unanimity of opinion.
Have they? Where?
Price preasures due to competition…. heavy discounting….. lower margins….cost of operations….. Do these terms ring a bell, No.
So you agree that Sun are getting hammered? I’m sure all that rings a bell with Sun’s investors.
The please don’t pretend to undertand financials like you do OS technologies.
I sincerely hope you’re not employed in either field.
HP has been burned by Sun’s soft Solaris x86 support. Pre-acquisition, Compaq had a decent sized Solaris x86 business on its ProLiant servers. When Sun paused in its development of Solaris x86, many of these customers ran for the hills and aren’t too thrilled about coming back.
I think that paragraph is pretty clear.
Yes it is pretty clear that you don’t have basic comprehension skills. Sun cancelled a product and customers weren’t happy. What does that have to do with linux???
Education…and English skills. Quite.
My english skills are quite a bit more than adequate to discuss with people like you. However, my typing skills might not be, I will admit. That’s a little low even for you, education has nothing to do with language…. English is not a pre-requiste for education.
Unfortunately you don’t understand hard figures.
Unfortunately you don’t understand basic conversational etiqutte. Here is one of the basics “Never speak for anyone but yourself”.
Yes quite. Revenue is down, despite what the volume shipments might be saying. I don’t know why you’re telling me that for. You don’t understand it.
Let me try this one last time.
Your claim….. Customers are leaving Sun.
Conclusion: Sun isn’t able to sell thier products as competitors are taking away sales and customers are going to linux. With me so far.
Fact: Sun is selling more machines. So obviously more machines are being bought from Sun so customers can’t be leaving.
Now to revenues. Sun needs to stay competitive on price so they discount heavier than before. Revenues are down from the boom times when higher margins could be sought. Reason, the main market today is low-end, low margin products. Sun’s revenues are down becuase margins are down, even though the volumes are up. Still with me.
Customers are not leaving Sun they are negotiating harder on price becuase they can. This is not a phenomenon unique to Sun. Sun is the only pure computer company today. Dell has thier entire line of consumer products to supplement thier computer revenue, HP has printers, IBM has services and many other divisions(Microelectronics, POS terminals…). So thier revenues are up, since the economy is improving adn consumer confidence is increasing.
Take HP, thier computer division is in the red, however thier printer business keeps things nice and black overall. IBM’s global services generates 50% of IBM’s revenues. IBM is venturing into HR outsourcing as well.
So please take your half-baked, ignorant views of how things work elsewhere. Since you obivously lack the etiquitte which is requiste to a civilized discussion and your objective being to troll on every Sun related artilcle, I am terminating my attempt to reason with you. Ciao.
One last word.
I sincerely hope you’re not employed in either field.
I am that is why I can detect your BS. Dtrace is a benchmarking tool….. Geez, talk about ignorance. Financial loss can only mean loss of sales to competitors…. can I claim half-baked.
Fact: Sun is selling more machines. So obviously more machines are being bought from Sun so customers can’t be leaving.
Many customers who would one decide to move to HP/Linux or IBM/Linux are now choosing to purchase their next machine as a Opteron with Solaris, a number of people on tbe Solaris mailing list have confirmed that their organisation are now sitting on their hands waiting for thte 4 way Opteron to be released along with Solaris 10.
Now to revenues. Sun needs to stay competitive on price so they discount heavier than before. Revenues are down from the boom times when higher margins could be sought. Reason, the main market today is low-end, low margin products. Sun’s revenues are down becuase margins are down, even though the volumes are up. Still with me.
And with that being said, the x86 devision is still making money. Take the SPARC business out of the equation for the moment, and SUN is making a nice profit, although not massive, it is a profit none the less. Start to see SUN fall back into profitability once they start using SPARC64 from Fujitsu and share the development of their new line of CPUs with Fujitsu, you will start to see the cost of R&D drop.
Customers are not leaving Sun they are negotiating harder on price becuase they can. This is not a phenomenon unique to Sun. Sun is the only pure computer company today. Dell has thier entire line of consumer products to supplement thier computer revenue, HP has printers, IBM has services and many other divisions(Microelectronics, POS terminals…). So thier revenues are up, since the economy is improving adn consumer confidence is increasing.
Let us also remember that Dell’s main stay is the public sector computer market; government departments and large enterprise who buy in large volume. That is Dells mainstay, not the consumer. The consumer side of their business has just been a recent phenominon.
Take HP, thier computer division is in the red, however thier printer business keeps things nice and black overall. IBM’s global services generates 50% of IBM’s revenues. IBM is venturing into HR outsourcing as well.
IIRC HP PC has been losing on average $90million per-quarter, their high end UNIX hasn’t been much better. Let us also remember that HP and IBM are not pure UNIX companies, they’re Microsoft lackies through and through, SUN on the other hand is selling systems ONLY loaded with Linux or Solaris, so of course their server shipments will be lower.
About the only thing I do have a problem with is SUN’s pathetic marketing, oh lord, give me $200million marketing budget and i would be able to sell SUN x86 servers loaded with Solaris to MCSE hardcore Microsoft fanboys and Linux addicted CIO fanboys. Too bad the current head of marketing is about as lively as a dead possum; having heard him speak, I wonder whether it was a nasty way of Scott torturing future customers into buying SUN products.
Thereare verious comments in this thread about the cost of SUN products.
I have a little experience I would like to pass on.
I was doing some work for a Client and they mandadted that the C++ & C code I was writing was compiled usingthe SUN Compiler. Fair enough I said. I was already developing using GCC so I made extensive enquiries about purchasing a compiler from SUN.
I tried to order online – Failed.
I tried to order over the phone – Failed. No such part existed I would have to buy the whole Development Suite which would have cost more than the Server I was using to develop on.
So, after many phone calls and email along with promises that they would call me back I gave up. I shipped the code to the customer and let them compile it using their compiler.
If you think the margins on M$ software is high then take a look at the SUN Software Site. Especially their Development SUN ONE Studio 8. I thought the days of a $1000 Compiler were long gone as their compiler collection is $995.00. Their UK Site shows a cost even higher (When the URL works that is…) but that part is not available here.
SUN IMHO are in deep dodo and are trying anything they can to FUD their competitors. As an ISV I am looking more favourably at other platforms now. I already do LINUX and I am porting the software to AIX and even HPUX.
There may come a time when they have to be nice to some of the companies they are currently pissing off with their FUD. I hope they tell “Thanks but No Thanks”.
SteveD
> I thought the days of a $1000 Compiler were long gone as their compiler collection is $995.00.
No, the days of $1000 comilers are not gone I don’t think will ever be. High quality compilers and I don’t mean Visual Studio for Kids are still priced at a premium, just check Metrowerks Developer Studio comiler collection that have pricing starting from $5000 or may be you should ask SGI for pricing on MIPSpro comiler. Sun is actually offering some the cheapest products, some Sun hardware and software products are actually a bargain even compared to Wintel competion.
>>Let’s see, you claim corporate customers are leaving sun. I respond with sun is selling more systems than before. And you go back to revenue. Duh,Is anybody home!!!! Selling more units means more people are buying, genius. Not the other way around.<<
But, if sunw has to lower their profit margins that low to sell more systems – doesn’t that mean that it isn’t as easy for sunw to sell systems as it used to be? And isn’t that just as bad?
Clearly, sunw can’t command the fat profit margins that sunw used to command. In fact, to achieve sales growth, sunw has to cut margins to the point where sunw can’t even make a profit.
If sunw has to sell that low in order for sunw to hold on to their customers, then won’t sunw go out of business just as readially?
“Let’s see, you claim corporate customers are leaving sun. I respond with sun is selling more systems than before. And you go back to revenue. Duh,Is anybody home!!!! Selling more units means more people are buying, genius. Not the other way around.” — Raptor
But, if sunw has to lower their profit margins that low to sell more systems – doesn’t that mean that it isn’t as easy for sunw to sell systems as it used to be? And isn’t that just as bad?
Nope, it just means that rather than their customers leaving SUN altogether, the customers now choose to purchase the x86 systems off them running Solaris. Just a recompile away, and the organisation can have their familar environment on a cheaper machine.
Clearly, sunw can’t command the fat profit margins that sunw used to command. In fact, to achieve sales growth, sunw has to cut margins to the point where sunw can’t even make a profit.
SUN has faced the realities of the market place, hence the reason they’re pushing software which has a higher price margin, ALSO, their x86 business is turning a profit, and once the R&D is merged with Fujitsu, the costs associated with developing the SPARC should reach an acceptable level thus allowing them to cut prices, increase volume and thus profit.
If sunw has to sell that low in order for sunw to hold on to their customers, then won’t sunw go out of business just as readially?
Based on what evidence? IDC has shown that SUN’s server shipments have grown at a fast rate than the industry average. I think that is pretty bloody good considering the circumstances that surround their product line up at this point in time.
But, if sunw has to lower their profit margins that low to sell more systems – doesn’t that mean that it isn’t as easy for sunw to sell systems as it used to be? And isn’t that just as bad?
Clearly, sunw can’t command the fat profit margins that sunw used to command. In fact, to achieve sales growth, sunw has to cut margins to the point where sunw can’t even make a profit.
No that is not the entirely true. Sun is selling more low-margin systems like thier low-end servers, which is where the market is today. The high-end high margin boxes are harder to sell becuase customers are looking for low-end boxes. This is true universally for the entire industry. Also to move the higher-end boxes they may have to discount them more than before further shrinking thier margins.
Another, thing that has bit Sun is thier USIII chips were lagging in performance. The new US4 line should rejuevenate that market a little, ecspecially with HP playing games with thier UNIX customers.
The market dynamics have changed low-end boxes are the in thing today
I already do LINUX and I am porting the software to AIX and even HPUX.
HP C/ANSI C Developer’s Bundle for Servers
B3901BA
HP-UX 11.23 for PA
per processor licence
1 cpu
$816
Ok so this is cheap, Sun’s entire tool kit is $995, HP sells a single c ompiler license for one particular OS version for $816. AFAIK, Sun’s developer suite is binary compatible with all previous Oses, Hp’s is not.
Talk about overpriced.
http://wwws.sun.com/software/sundev/suncc/index.html
Sun ONE Studio 8, Compiler Collection
Supported:
Solaris 9, 8 and 7 Operating Systems (SPARC and x86 Platforms).
Operating System Configurations: Developer or Full Cluster Distribution
There you go, you get both the SPARC and x86 compilers that will work on Solaris 7,8 and 9. Not just the one platform (HP servers running 11.23 on PA-RISC for $816). May be you should really do better research, your clients would benefit.
If sunw has to sell that low in order for sunw to hold on to their customers, then won’t sunw go out of business just as readially? – walter
Based on what evidence?
Ten consecutive losing quarters.
Thanks for that piece of information. The problem is linux zealots have blinders on and think that linux is the be all and end all of OS developments.
Accusing other people of having blinders? You?! Surely not. Linux isn’t the be all and end all of OS developments, but it will be the end of Sun if this pointless mud slinging continues. Why? Sun have lost money for ten straight quarters and they’ve decided to pick petty arguments with Red Hat. Join the dots…
Proprietary UNIXs are way ahead of linux on many key features that matter to enterprises.
Like what? What stuff actually matters that justifies it? I’m afraid not. The only reason proprietary UNIXes still exist is because of legacy systems that people haven’t replaced, and won’t for some time.
Yes it is pretty clear that you don’t have basic comprehension skills. Sun cancelled a product and customers weren’t happy. What does that have to do with linux???
People moved to it.
Fact: Sun is selling more machines. So obviously more machines are being bought from Sun so customers can’t be leaving.
Says IDC. Gartner and IDC surveys are not proof of anything. Companies pay big money to make bad situations look good. Why do you think Sun have come out and vehemently attacked Red Hat?
Now to revenues. Sun needs to stay competitive on price so they discount heavier than before. Revenues are down from the boom times when higher margins could be sought. Reason, the main market today is low-end, low margin products. Sun’s revenues are down becuase margins are down, even though the volumes are up. Still with me.
Taking that into account, why are HP, IBM, Red Hat and Suse raking it in and growing their businesses if their margins are so low? The conclusion is inescapable.
Customers are not leaving Sun they are negotiating harder on price becuase they can.
No. They’ve been leaving. Sun revenues down – HP, IBM, Red Hat amd Suse revenues up. Join the dots. Why haven’t IBM, HP and others been feeling the same pressures in the same way?
I am…
I hope not, but I sincerely doubt it…
…that is why I can detect your BS. Dtrace is a benchmarking tool…..
Not interested, because that’s the way people will see it. Would you expect Sun to talk to its customers the way you have? You can tell them how great DTrace is all you want, and totally turn them off, but no one is interested in a benchmarking and fault finding tool if they pay Sun umpteen thousand to support them. Sun’s engineers get their backsides in and sort it – DTrace or no DTrace. You quite clearly have no clue of that kind of environment. What they have is good enough – hence Linux.
You’re very ignorant of the reality in computing today, and that’s why Sun will continue to fail – wrong or totally bad technologies, at totally the wrong times, hyped badly and badly marketed. History? Network computers, Java on the client side, the abolition of Cobalt Cubes, JDS….. The list is endless.
Financial loss can only mean loss of sales to competitors…. can I claim half-baked.
Revenues are down – competitors revenues are up. If you won’t make the connection then your bank manager will – and you’ll get nowhere fast denying otherwise. That’s real world harshness I’m afraid.
That is exactly what has happened. You’d do well to read the article all these replies are about and ask yourself – why? If things are so rosy, why try and take some mud to throw at Red Hat if nothing whatsoever has anything to do with Linux? Like I said – if you won’t make the connection your investors and bank manager will.
You can look at specifics (low-end boxes blah, blah, blah) all you want, but Sun are not turning it into revenue and profit. That’s the acid test of ABSOLUTELY ANY BUSINESS. Anything else is a pointless waste of discussion, as Sun and their investors have come to realize. They’re not damn interested in how many boxes IDC says Sun is selling, hence the article taking cheap shots at Red Hat.
This has been an absolutely hilarious discussion. You really do believe that any business, especially Sun, can get away with being in the red for ten straight quarters given their past history.