> James Cornell wrote: > > Only hardcore engineers are using Solaris, all of > the front-ends use > > Windows and all of the hr and pr people use Mac > laptops. Part of the > > Sorry, but that also isn't true. There are many > non-engineering folks > that are running Solaris or using SunRays too. > > As for your patent arguments, you generally can't > have something that is > freely redistributable that was written by a third > party and is patented > by yet another third party all at the same time -- at > least not with > media codecs. > > In general, I don't think you're going to win > arguments commenting on > something that you don't have any way to measure. > > -- > Shawn Walker
Hi Shawn, James has a good point. Yes, I am sure there are non-engineering folks who are running Solaris, but I bet'ya you can probably count the number of them with one hand. Re patented and/or proprietary media issues, I also agree with James that this is an area where Solaris can go that Linux distros can't and may eventually put Sun in Apple's category except it will be a much grander scale. To achieve that "dream", we must first have a snapshot that can appeal to the OEM manufacturers and designers (almost all of them are in Taiwan and China), so that they will feel profitable and thus willing to participate and contribute. I am sure everyone here knows better than I that Sun is one of very few companies on this planet that can provide expertise on both operating system and application software (keep in mind that Apple does not do Office); whereas, those OEMers can take care of hardware compatibility (perhaps with helps from Sun and/or other Solaris experts in writing and QA'ing the drivers, doing system design, etc.) This, of course, sounds exciting. But what we really need is an instant boost in OpenSolaris usership. Recently, because JavaFX does not work in Solaris--or at least this is what I have been led to believe, I have to frequently boot into Windows Vista. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Sun's xVM VirtualBox (the most current version is 2.0.2, but I suggest using the more stable 1.6.6) allows Solaris guest to run in Vista host in a so-called "seamless mode". This causes the distinction between the guest and the host to be blurted. As a result, if you want to play MPEG2/4 or any other patented/proprietary codec, no problem, just do it in Windows, while, at the the same, you can do your more important, more security-demanding stuff in OpenSolaris--with better confidence. For business desktop users, you should simply boot into Solaris, with or without Windows running as a guest. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
