Well there are definitely more folks out there with PCI and UPA video cards for their SPARC workstations. Realistically, many people are getting nice bargains on Ebay and putting together nice SPARC workstations. I know because that's how I've gotten by for the past 10 years and most of the people I've worked with during that time have done the same. If Sun would realize that there is a large market for such things and that people are paying less there. It should be a signal that Sun would stand to make a profit if they built a good solution at a reasonable price.
First off, it's a damn shame that Sun was never able to sell a descent SPARC workstation at a reasonable price to compete with the Ultra20/40. Second, the fact that Sun couldn't keep the SPARC workstation line alive, notice the only workstation now is the Intel Ultra24. Hmm.. I guess changing the stock symbol from SUNW to JAVA makes sense now. I think a lot of this stems from Sun's disconnect with the customer base which does want affordable performant SPARC workstations. When Sun was selling things like the Ultra25 or Ultra45, the prices were just as much as a low-end SPARC server, but with processors that were years behind. Not a good business model if you ask me. What we're seeing here with OpenSolaris 200* is a real disregard for what makes money at Sun. It's not the x64 servers, it's the T-Series and M-Series servers which are obviously SPARC based. Notice there isn't a UltraSPARC-T* or SPARC64 workstation anywhere for developers, engineers, SA's, medical imagery, etc. I guess if you want to develop on current SPARC technology, you better work for a company that can spare a Zone or LDom in the datacenter for you. Oh well, most companies have taken away ppls *NIX workstations and forced them to use Windoze anyways it seems. I've been very pleased with the progress of OpenSolaris 200*, but dissappointed that the SPARC side has languished until now. Of course, most of the benefits that have been delivered thus far have been around the desktop, installation, and package management. From this rather short and unimpressive list of cards that'll be supported on SPARC, Xorg will be pointless for most SPARC customers and users. People will end up sticking with SXCE or Solaris 11 when it comes out. Of course, the big question I have is, can Sun afford to keep all of these different streams of Solaris development alive and kicking? I get the impression that the majority of development and integration is on the OpenSolaris 200* side and that Solaris proper is just getting patched up with features from OpenSolaris until OpenSolaris can replace it. So if that's the long-term goal, what hope is there for customers and users on SPARC workstations? Seeing how there won't be any new SPARC workstations, anything that's done to support them will be minimal at best. Other than waiting for the folks who have Ultra25's and Ultra45's to sell their gear on Ebay, not much of an upgrade path either. I have a SB2000 with dual 900Mhz procs, 4GBs of RAM, and a Expert3D card. It's a great workstation and I've enjoyed it a lot over the past few years. But seeing the "writing on the wall", I've just bought a used Ultra20 that'll be arriving today. I'm planning on upgrading the hell out of it and putting a AMD quad-core Phenom mobo and proc in there to get it kicking and screaming. Yes, I just wanted the case for the Ultra20! So I've given up on SPARC workstations, which is sad. But it seems it's time to just drink the x64 cool-aide and get on with things. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave J. Orgeron Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com E-Mail: unixconsole at yahoo.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ----- Original Message ---- From: Alan Coopersmith <[email protected]> To: Kristian <kristian at creato.sk> Cc: desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 8:45:09 PM Subject: Re: [desktop-discuss] (Open)Sol 10/nv106 on SB2000 w XVR-1200 Kristian wrote: > Hello! > I have Sun Blade 2000 with 2 (two!) XVR-1200 PCI graphic card. > I have installed on it both Solaris 10 - the last > and OpenSolaris nv106. > I bought XVR-1200 to have better video as NVidias have on x86 architecture, > but here on SPARC, I neighter can set up the resolution nor screen savers... > The Xorg does not work at all. I have gnome on gui of course but would like > more - dual desktop might be with advanced features. > There is NO xorg.conf on system. How to create/got one for XVR-1200?? The driver for XVR-1200 has not been ported to Xorg - sorry, but you're going to be limited to Xsun, and to SXCE, not OpenSolaris 2009.*. You should be able to find plenty of google references for setting up Xsun to run with multiple heads (you'll need to modify the config file for dtlogin or gdm to start it with -dev options for each head). Resolution change is handled by running fbconfig and then restarting the X server - no runtime change or GNOME GUI is available. The only SPARC graphics that Sun is porting drivers to Xorg for are: - XVR-50 (onboard graphics on some servers) - XVR-100 (PCI board) - XVR-300 (PCI-E board) - XVR-2500 (PCI-E board) - AST2100 (Service Processor/Remote KVM) -- -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith at sun.com Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering _______________________________________________ desktop-discuss mailing list desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org
