> I'm not talking servers but desktop clients. This means that they most
> likely for most of the time end up with big vendors such as Dell, IBM,
> Fujitsu Siemens, HP and so on. If you look closer up till recenty ALL of
> those business boxes came with the latest Intel chipset and CPU. 95%
> still do as it seems no one dares to put AMD in "business PCs" at a
> large scale. Working for the infrastructure department of a german
> university we also go through this once in a while. OS hardware support
> for this latest dies is always given for Windows as but looking at the
> UNIX side it gets much harder and Linux distros and developers to a
> pretty good job there. Even FreeBSD and the others are behind so no
> wonder that the small but very enthusiastic OpenSolaris community cannot
> really keep up coding for new chipsets and on-board devices. Even if
> they could I doubt such customers would go for it as Linux is just more
> hip and decision makers for sure don't get grilled for picking it. Maybe
> those people would even consider OpenSolaris "not ready for business".
Most of this paragraph was building up to a valid point, but the ending kind of
ruined it for me :) You talk about business needs, but suddenly all that doesn't
matter since Linux is hipper anyway. Is that what decision makers are paid for
these days? And I've heard the "you can't go wrong with IBM" mantra, but it's
the first time I hear of Linux as a safe bet. Not possessing any real data I
can't disagree here, but it sounds a bit depressing.
Linux is more a GET (good enough technology) - take one average free operating system - could be anything, FreeBSD would have been just as valid; market to the hilt with some cool ad, which gets the name "Linux" out there in the no-techy world, the start pushing middleware and overpriced services - like the crack seller offering the first hit, IBM will hype, suck and strap you into their web of 'support services'.
The problem with Sun, they couldn't market their way out of a paper bag; when am I going to start seeing Solaris or Java advertisements on television? when am I going to open up New Zealand Management magazine, and see a big A4 advertisement promoting Solaris and Solaris Enterprise Software kit?
The problem with Sun, they're a company run by engineers; the last company who did that, Digital, is no longer with us. Some times it actually pays to hire some hype merchants and have a marketing department that does actually more than crap 'mock ads', gifs pushed out by double click, and gimics of 'free server for 60 days'.
Matty
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