> To be sure we are NOT running with blinders on. We > are very aware of the issues because it impacts us in > more ways than you can imagine. Any approach we take > has to address a larger scope.
I guess, every reliable OS vendor has to. So, not really something special and hearing the "backward compatibility" excuses again and again starts to bore me. > While a solution that > addresses 100% would be nice, having a solution that > addresses 65% is not acceptable either. My gut feel > is that it better be close to 100. Yes, and wrt. packaging with a soft dep flag perhaps one might reach it in time without giving up too much. Yes, getting 100% is a honorable aim, but the question is: Has one the power/capacity to reach it _in time_? At least wrt. to know how I think, there are no questions. But on the other part I have my doubts... And again, how really needs 100%? I would say, 95% of potential customser can live pretty good with 95% or even 90%, if the distro gives them the features and performance they want/expect. Sure. Right now one might still to tend to say, the remaining 5% is currently our best customer, so we keep the 100% strategy/comaptibility and live with what the 5% spent for it. But this is IMHO a one way street. But what about software/comunity in this case? To the best of my remembrance NextStep was a nice/innovative little? thing. But to expensive -> "no" software <-> no market <-> to slow -> AfterStep. Or OS/2: to slow -> no user acceptance -> no software -> and finally even the big companies (like the financally strong banks) replaced it with windooze - still listening ? ;-) Or linux: cheap, runs on cheap machines, modern GUI, "nothing" carved into stone aka is flexible <-> modern software <-> big community. At least this tells me, that something has changed since the nineties: market penetration starts today at the users desktop (SME) and may thus find its way into the perhaps more profitable server market. Yes, at the moment, Solaris is set in in the server market, but wrt. the current state I have the feeling, that at most 10 years are left ... > But then again how do we measure this ? User acceptance is the first thing, which comes into my mind. Actually that's the problem, what I see here at the university. Even Blade 1500S stations are very slow, the software is outdated, so no wonder, why the students choose to work with much faster/modern Linux/Windooze boxes. Yes, I might update the pools to Sol10 and update the unbundled software, but after working about 3 month with Sol10, I think, it isn't really worth. We would still have the awefully slow GNOME 2.6 and acceptance would be still below the bottom line. So next year, when I probably get the budget to HW update the pools (or better, the remaining sparc stations), I'm probably forced to buy cheap linux boxes, since nobody wants Solaris anymore. It's a great pity - 8 years ago (when I left the university) exactly the opposite was reality :( > Among the many issues > that need to be addressed is backward compatibility. la la la. Sorry! > For example, let's say we take a radical approach > and go with a completely new packaging scheme, in > Nevada. > How will this impact people who want to > upgrade from Solaris 10 or Solaris 9. Who really cares? Its a completely new system, so one has to bite once in the sour apple and has to make a fresh install. Windows users do that all the time (even when they do not upgrade to a new version ;-)). So I think, it probably has not a big impact - might be unusual, but probably not more. And if they see, that they really get something new, modern, fast and a companion DVD with a lot of "uncommon" software they might need (of course in a little bit better quality than the current one), small wounds will heal very fast. BTW: Has somebody ever made a survey, who really needs live upgrades and who actually does it? I would guess, this is a big savings potential. > Until recently we supported upgrades from 3 previous > releases, which meant we had to support Solaris 8 > too. I am not sure what kind of backward > compatibility is required by Linux distros like RHAT > or Suse. Not sure, what your defintion of "backward comaptibility" is. The common practice I see (some small companies + LUG members/students), if there is a new release, a fresh install is made and thus all software runs as it should ... > The good news is that since there are other > OpenSolaris distros, one can now experiment with > various options. Nexenta for example uses the > Debian format. Sun package tools are good, install software (at least for home users/new comers) is bad. BTW: I still prefer jumpstart as the main install method, so ... > And of course some of the feedback > from such efforts and others (like you) will > definitely help. And I deeply hope, before there are no users left, which may take advantage of it ... Regards, jens. This message posted from opensolaris.org
