The horse may be dead, but to beat on it a bit more... Note: I've never posted here before, but I'd like to respectfully offer my perspective on this...
Some background: I've used virtually every version of Windows since 2.0, every version of OSX, and Slackware (and other) Linux since 1997. I've been online since 1990. I spent two semesters at DeVry, but left after discovering that the recruiter lied about DeVry teaching Unix administration. I've worked at Schwab, Wells Fargo, and a number of other fortune 500s. Currently, I work in IT in education. Virtually everything I have learned about computers has not come from a University/School setting. The classes I have taken have mostly covered things I have learned on my own already. The other day I was talking to the head of computing services for my employer. He related that he was using Rosetta Stone to try to learn a new language but was annoyed that he had to carry the discs with him. My response was "that's easy to fix" to which he replied "Remember, I'm management, it can't be too complicated." My boss is an intelligent fellow, but not a seriously technical one. Many of the people making purchasing decisions have less technical knowledge than he does. Many of those working in IT don't have much more technical knowledge that he does. Bill Gates is a smarter man than I am, at the very least his IQ is a few points higher. It took me a long time to understand how. The mess that is Windows certainly doesn't reflect it, but that's because his focus was not on the software. Bill Gates envisioned what was _required_ to build an entire industry; the software industry... before it really existed. To build an industry you have to make things that morons can operate after making a "step a, step b, step c" list, because an industry _requires_ more people than there are intelligent/knowledgeable people to do the work. From this perspective, Oracle's purchase of Sun is an incredible value since it gives Oracle the ability to ship something that is more of a database appliance; which has been preconfigured by experts which works properly when it arrives on premises. Idiot IT people can ruin your reputation with a customer due to no fault of yours. How complicated your product is to operate will determine the size of your market. To build an industry you must have an accessible certification system in place for anything that requires any amount of knowledge. Managers often don't know much about what it is they're managing. A manager often cannot discern between an expert and someone who is full of BS. They often rely largely on the validity of certifications and degrees, and only secondarily on previous job titles, performance, etc. Readily accessible certifications, which in turn led to a large number of certified people, is a major factor in Cisco's success. The same is almost certainly a factor in Microsoft's. Managers don't want to buy products that they're not sure they have people (or can easily get people) to operate. With Cisco or Microsoft this is a non-issue. Linux really wasn't idiot friendly, and only recently has had much of a semblance of certifications/certified people. Yet it's made some serious inroads. This is largely due to yet another requirement, which is mindshare. This is also why many IT departments now support iPhones. What is chosen/supported often has nothing to do with what's better for a task, but demand/mindshare. Demand, in both cases, was spurred by cheap/ready availability coupled with the resultant familiarity/mindshare that is provided. I'm likely the only person working in my organization using ZFS right now. I'm pretty sure that my boss has heard of Oracle, but I'm fairly certain that it would be a cold day in hell before any Solaris boxes were being administered there unless more people there had the incentive/availability to learn it. OpenSolaris is the only way it will happen where I work. Unlike some people, I'm not suggesting that it should be more of a desktop OS, or that it should support laptop sleep/hibernation (although it should support whatever power management features Intel's desktop/server CPUs). I could give much of a crap about using it as a primary OS on anything at all except for whatever box I'm planning on deploying on as a server. Apple may have what it takes to compete with Microsoft in the desktop arena and not go broke, and Linux might get a few desktops here and there because it's open and free. But I'd give up hope of Photoshop being ported over, and no GIMP is not even close to good enough. On the other hand when I initially installed OpenSolaris it loaded a driver for the onboard Realtek ethernet, but nothing I tried would make it work. If it had simply failed to load a driver, I'd have gone looking for a 3rd party on right off. Instead I wasted parts of a few days after work trying to figure out what why it wouldn't pick up an IP from my DHCP server. I found a driver which supposedly fixes the issues, but as the driver is source-only and I've yet to figure out which compiler/packages are optimal, I've not installed it yet. I instead used a spare Intel card. A number of the work-arounds I tried were significantly beyond the abilities the skills of most of the IT staff I work with, and all but a few would balk at compiling anything. If a huge number of the motherboards being sold didn't ship with Realtek chipsets, this would be more understandable, however Realtek chipsets are used far more than most of the ones that are supported. While I believe that it's not in Oracle's best interests to support whatever hardware someone slaps together, it is in their best interest to ensure driver support for common desktop-grade hardware that would be required for a server (NIC, ATA, SCSI, Fibre, UPS, motherboard chipsets), but not necessarily the rest (sound, firewire, cameras, scanners, etc). Provided I feel I can get away with it at some point, I'll advocate using Oracle gear at work provided that it appears that it can be maintained easily enough. Otherwise, I'll probably end up trying to push for a NexentaStor based solution. While I, personally, will probably never end up buying new Oracle gear, or a support contract, my employer would buy these things (i.e a Thumper) if convinced it was the way to go. The ONLY reason I would consider putting my reputation on the line is that I've had access to test it, feel it out, determine how friendly it is, and see how much better it is than what's currently in place. Personally, I could only do this provided that it worked on inexpensive hardware. Even better was that it mostly worked what I already own. This approach has worked for Linux in spades... I hope that OpenSolaris can help Oracle avoid what has become of so many of the niche players along the way. Hopefully they realize that it can. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
