[Gllug] Sun hardware/firewall memory

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Wed, 2004-12-22 at 13:41 +0000, Ben Fitzgerald wrote:

> Still, standards do emerge - let's hope x86
> delivers a good headless BIOS. If it did, would you accept that x86
> offers strong competition to SUN in other hardware areas and therefore
> is a serious rival?

I'd say x86 is already a serious rival. One thing that technical people
often forget (and this applies particularly to us Unix types) is that
technical superiority (or even parity) is not a necessary precondition
to strong competition. As has been shown time and time again, both in
computing and in other fields, people on the whole aren't willing to pay
more for quality. There used to be many who never even considered the
x86 PC as a real computer. Most of the companies who used to take that
attitude have now been killed by x86. When Microsoft brought NT out, it
ran on 4 architectures - the non x86 offerings have since been dropped.

It may very well be true that x86 will never equal Sun hardware in terms
of technical and build quality. That still won't stop Sun from getting
steamrollered by it. The dot-com days of endless cash are over, and
Linux on x86 may well be the combination that kills Sun. The days of
proprietary UNIX systems are numbered, IMHO. IBM has seen the writing on
the wall, and has moved to endure they can take maximum advantage of
Linux. Sun has looked down on Linux for a while, and believes that it's
safe beacuse Solaris/SPARC is "better". They've got too much cash to
just go away, but I wouldn't call them a wise investment at the moment.

Mike.

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