> > To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is > not > > remotely the best engineering practice. Could you > > run Solaris 8 on a desktop? Sure. But why? It > > wasn't practical. Could you use Windows 95 as a > > server? Probably many did. But why? That wasn't > > its intended use. > And where is that Solaris now? The most widespread > server enterprise OS are Windows Server 2003/2008 and > different Linux distributions. > It's the worst policy: "we are cool server OS for > REALLY BIG SPARC SERVERS". It made Solaris 10... not > very popular. How many good Solaris admins can you > find? How much do they want to earn? And every > student can manage Windows 2003 after some months of > training. It is like Win XP. (Yes, it may have in > some type different architecture, it's not easy to > administrate it correctly (as every other OS), but it > looks familiar and simple). > Linux was the most available Unix-like OS. And after > people had tried it, they didn't want to study > commercial Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and other > monsters). These OS looked unfamiliar and strange. > RedHat appeared as mass spread desktop Linux. Ubuntu > is the most wide spread desktop Linux - and now it > goes to server market. I heard a lot some wishes for > Oracle to officially support Ubuntu Server... > And do you really say that Oracle will close > OpenSolaris project? It is the most stupid step they > can do. The popularity of OS is determined not only > by its quality, but even more (do you remember Win 98 > servers in SMB area ?) by its community ....
Nice rant. There may even be some truth to it. The big iron only approach does tend to shut out newcomers. A few points though: * I don't think Ubuntu is the top desktop Unix-like OS, that would probably be Mac OS X. (in terms of actual desktops in use, not necessarily downloads, since a lot of downloads are just people playing around, e.g. I've got a VirtualBox VM with Ubuntu Studio in it, but I hardly ever _use_ it; and Mac OS X isn't (legitimately) available for download anyway). * if I'm dealing with lots of servers (small or large), I want automated installs and serial (or better, network access via an RSC or ALOM) console access. Non-graphical, no click-monkeys allowed. Probably the server won't need _any_ of X11 installed, although sometimes it might. _Obviously_ I don't want just a character console for my desktop, but desktops aren't really running much more than browsers and word processors, and occasionally website prototypes or the like. Now with some sort of distributed scheduler, unused desktop cycles might be doing more than that, but those things would require uniform (automated) installs, and probably OpenMPI (which a non-developer desktop not sharing cycles probably wouldn't need). So not only big servers, but even many little desktops, mean that enterprise features can't be neglected for the sake of eye candy. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
