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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!act.news.telstra.net!news.spirit.net.au!news From: Blair Phillips <blairp@spirit.net.au> Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.osf.osf1 Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6 Date: Sun, 08 Dec 1996 21:38:33 +1100 Organization: Spirit Networks - Canberra, Australia Lines: 85 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <32AA9AA8.236B@spirit.net.au> References: <32986299.AC7@mail.esrin.esa.it> <casper.329c06bc@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <57ik5l$12i$1@shade.twinsun.com> <x7917mx5gx.fsf@dumbcat.codewright.com> <57shh0$o3u@web.nmti.com> <57ui72$4li@arktur.rz.uni-ulm.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-135077.spirit.net.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) To: Andreas Borchert <borchert@turing.mathematik.uni-ulm.de> Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.solaris:91817 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1734 comp.unix.osf.osf1:16937 Andreas Borchert wrote: > > There may be arguments how the transition is done best. But DEC > is surely not a good example for binary compatibility: Not that > they only are trying to support multiple OSes they also offer multiple > hardware platforms as well. This opens always the question how long > they will continue to support the various variants. What a load of old cobblers! I can only assume that you are fairly new to the world of UNIX systems and didn't live through the period in the 80's when Sun introduced (over about 5 years) the Sun 1, Sun 2, Sun 3 and Sun 4 architechtures, each incompatible with its predecessor. Then, to add insult to injury, they switched from BSD to System V (after AT&T bought a substantial chunk of the company) and dropped their customers in the brown smelly stuff yet again. Sun have always been good at delivering good performance for their price, but their attitude to their installed base seems to be: If the price/performance bonus is high enough, customers will bear the cost of conversion, and, anyway, if they switch vendors, there are plenty more (new customers) where they came from! In contrast, I can still still run a 1978 vintage executable on a 1996 VAX, or, with binary translation, on an Alpha. DEC did break their promise to provide a production version of OSF/1 for the MIPS-based DECstation customers, but at least they can run their binaries on an Alpha via binary translation. > The future > of Sun is bound to SPARC and Solaris (which is at least now > binary compatible to the previous versions) and customers trust on this > (at least we do). Hmmm, maybe I better tell the boss to cancel that order for Solaris for X86! (Not to mention the PowerPC port.) And Sun is now beginning to support the PCI bus as well as their proprietary S-bus on SPARC, so their hardware permutations are more complex than ever. > > Sun at least tries to think carefully about its customer needs. Ha! Sun always thinks carefully about what will make most money for Sun shareholders, and if they think a change will win more new customers than it will lose old ones, they do it. (I won't comment on DEC's thought processes. I have never been able to discern even this level of strategic thinking in their product decisions.) > As always, this may not be the best solution for all customers > but probably for a sufficient large fraction of them. > There are always tradeoffs between upward compatibility and > the most elegant solution. The latter is in general achieved > by throwing away everything and starting from scratch -- surely > not an option for Sun now. > Starting from scratch was exactly what Scott McNealy was advocating recently in Australia as a solution for Y2000 problems! And it seems to me that they are proposing trashing the PC installed base and replacing it by JavaStations as a solution to the PC management problem. So I wouldn't agree that Sun has totally outgrown their earlier arrogance when it comes to upgrades. -- Blair Phillips, Email: blairp@spirit.net.au Canberra, Australia. Phone: +61 411189724