On May 2, 12:10 pm, "Colin B." <cbi...@somewhereelse.shaw.ca> wrote:
> santiago...@yahoo.com <santiago...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Shares are down 20% this morning. I see all around migration from
> > Solaris to Linux, but have yet to see the reverse. Usage of Solaris
> > x86 seems to be confined largely to enthusiasts, much as OS/2 and
> > BeOS. Most young computer savvy people I know love Linux and despise
> > Sun.
>
> > Every indication is that Solaris is moribund :-(
>
> (First of all, yes I realise it's a troll)

Not a troll. I like the OS very much and use it at home. I just feel
like a Betamax owner with a large collection of video cassettes must
have felt in the early 80s.

> Fascinating. Migrations may be going in one direction, but that has nothing
> to do with new growth and installations. Sun is selling gear--I know,
> because we're buying it and the oil patch is buying it. Besides, migrations
> to Solaris _are_ happening, mostly from Windows. eHarmony (the dating site
> with the obnoxious commercials--oh wait; that's all of them!) switched from
> Dell/Windows boxes to Sun/Solaris-x86 a year ago.

Good for them. If I weren't already married, I would definitely use
their service.

> Basically, Sun has two products: Solaris and Sparc, and the only directly
> make money off of the latter. Traditional Sparc is definitely facing
> extinction sooner or later, but Niagra has given them some strength for
> a few more years. (Of course, AMD and Intel are going to go down that
> route as well, now that they've figured out how to put more than one core
> in a CPU die. It may be another three years, but we'll see it.)
> Sun's purchase of Montalvo will be very interesting--x86 asymmetric core
> CPUs could be massively useful, but as near as I can tell, the OS would
> need some knowledge of the asymmetry to be useful. If Sun owns them, then
> they can certainly build this into Solaris, but Microsoft won't touch
> the idea with a ten-foot pole, which means that it'll be another fantastic
> niche technology. Of course, that's assuming that they'll actually get out
> the door with these things. Montalvo couldn't, so can Sun? Good question.
>
> From a financial point of view, Solaris only exists to sell Sparc boxes
> and service contracts from Sun. This is important.
>
> Now from a business point of view, Sun is really NOT holding themselves
> together. Great product, good support (as much as we complain, it's still
> well above average in this industry), and a remarkable ability to screw
> things up. In tough times with a lagging stock, the idiot at the top has
> managed to do such critical things as changing the stock ticker symbol to
> JAVA, and force through a 1:4 reverse split so there's more room to fall.
> How about fixing the actual business model? How about fixing your money
> bleed before buying speculative companies?
>
> I'm quite concerned about Sun's future, and am afraid that it'll get worse
> the longer that Schwartz is in charge. However, today's sell off is WAY
> over the top--in another week or two, it'll have made back half of what it
> lost today. This is just panic selling.
>
> In the meantime, Solaris is going to revolutionise the computer industry.
> Memory management and kernel are better here than in the alternatives, and
> they'll learn from it, even if they can't incorporate the code because the
> GPL is incompatible with every other license on the planet. ZFS is likely
> going to become part of the generic infrastructure in another ten years.
>
> Whether or not Sun will be around to see that, I don't know.
>
> Colin