Sun made several announcements at the 2003 LinuxWorld
Conference & Expo in San Francisco, boosting its profile in
Linux.
But Sun's bread-and-butter products for high-performance
computing remain Solaris and Sparc, according to Jack O'Brien, Sun
group manager for Linux strategy and marketing. He acknowledged,
however, that Sun may build a 64-bit AMD Opteron system.
Sun is only backing Linux on its Intel-based systems, according
to O'Brien. "We continue to not do Linux on Sparc. We don't have
any plans to do it," O'Brien said. "It's not in line with what the
market's choosing."
While Linux on Intel IA-32 systems is favourable as an
economical platform, Solaris and Sparc remain the favourite for
more powerful, computer-intensive environments. Solaris is
"extremely powerful, it's the highest-volume Unix out there", said
O'Brien. "It's basically the gold standard in 64-bit
computing."
Sun, with its Opteron support, is pushing for broader Java
adoption. O'Brien, however, would not rule out a future Sun system
housing the processor. "We're not doing Opteron systems today but
certainly there's a future possibility" for an Opteron-based Sun
box to run Linux and Solaris, he said.
Sun's Sparc Solaris systems now compete with Linux on Intel. A
Dell official interviewed at the show said Dell has witnessed
migrations from Unix systems such as Sun's to Linux.
"We see a lot of traction as far as moving away from the
proprietary Unixes into Linux, especially in the back-end database
environment," said Reza Roohalamini, director of the enterprise
solutions group at Dell. Dell also has seen migrations from Unix to
Microsoft platforms, he added.
Sun has joined the Open Source Development Lab, a global
consortium of technology companies dedicated to accelerating the
adoption of Linux. In joining ODSL, Sun plans to help drive the
development of open-standard software including Linux and to lend
its expertise in the data centre and carrier-grade markets.
Specifically, Sun will participate in the Carrier Grade Linux and
Data Center Linux working groups.
With its AMD arrangement, Sun said it is allowing companies to
migrate Java applications from 32-bit to 64-bit computing with
little or no changes to code. Sun expects to make 64-bit Windows
and Linux ports to AMD Opteron available with the release of Java 2
Platform Standard Edition v1.5 next summer.
Sun is previewing its open-source desktop environment, Project
Mad Hatter. The platform features desktop applications including a
new version of the StarOffice personal productivity suite, Java
technology, the GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) user
interface, Evolution mail and calendaring, and Gaim instant
messaging.
Mad Hatter will interoperate with Microsoft Office and Exchange
and Lotus Notes productivity and communication tools. In beta
release now, Mad Hatter is due to ship later this year.
Also at the conference:
Sun cut the prices of its Sun Fire V65x systems, which run Intel
Pentium processors. The V65x 2U rack-optimised server with a single
2.8GHz processor has been reduced in price from $2,650 to $2,550.
The V65x with dual 3.06GHz processors now costs $3,995. It had been
selling for $4,595. The cuts are intended to ensure that Sun stays
"with the industry in terms of costs," O'Brien said.
Sun said it will ship the Sun Fire V60x, a 1U rack-optimised
Intel x86-based server with dual 3.06GHz processors, on 19
August.
Sun's java.net online global community has gained more than
16,000 registered users since its launch in June. Located at
java.net, the site features projects including jinux, which is a
Java operating system on top of the Linux kernel, and wirelessvoip,
a Linux gateway and PDA via 802.11.
Paul Krill writes for InfoWorld