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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!ott.istar!istar.net!gateway.qnx.com!not-for-mail From: doug@qnx.com (Doug Santry) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Solaris vs SunOs Date: 28 Aug 1996 11:31:11 -0400 Organization: QNX Software Systems Lines: 333 Message-ID: <501onv$cki@qnx.com> References: <4vabsr$4mt@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> <4vji3t$6f1@symiserver2.symantec.com> <4vsofi$ngd@qnx.com> <500vcg$a22@symiserver2.symantec.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gateway.qnx.com In article <500vcg$a22@symiserver2.symantec.com>, <tedm@agora.rdrop.com> wrote: >In <4vsofi$ngd@qnx.com>, doug@qnx.com (Doug Santry) writes: >>In article <4vji3t$6f1@symiserver2.symantec.com>, >> <tedm@agora.rdrop.com> wrote: > >>>The one thing about HP and Sun though that people forget is that they are >>>Unix hardware vendors. The real future of Unix is Unix running on Intel >>>chips, not Unix running on somebodies idea of a super-risc proprietary as >> >>Can't agree here at all. Unix has a heck of a future running on everything >>from Cray to Sun and SGI boxes. >> > >Of course there are going to be those hardware vendors that are going to >continue to sell closed hardware, and port Unix to it. However, those minority Why is Sparc closed but Intel isn't? >solutions are not going to displace the PC. Good lord, nobody ever even pretends they will! The "PC" is king for the forseeable future of desktops. >You are confusing the premise of my arguement. I assumed from the original Don't think so. I am questioning why "PC"s are open and people who don't use ISA busses and chips that implement the x86 instruction set are "closed". >poster that their use of "computing" meant "desktop computing" My arguements >make sense from that perspective only. Since FreeBSD is written for the PC it >is by default a "desktop" OS, even though there are a lot of people out there >(myself included) that routinely use "standard desktop style" PC's as servers. > >I think you know where I'm coming from so I'll suffice to say that my comparison >is between the IBM-PC architecture running some form of Unix, against the >so-called "Unix Workstations" such as Sparcstations and such. Yea, and I'm wondering why IBM-PC is open and RISC based machines are closed. >>>all get out hardware box. That's the old idea of Unix, and it is a terrible >> >>Why is Intel "open"? Because they sue people for reverse engineering their >>instruction set? Because they sue people for using the x86 "name"? Why is >>Intel "open"? They answer to no commitiees or any kind of public forum. >> >>>anchor in acceptance of Unix in the corporate arena. > >Did I say Intel was "open"? I believe those are your words, not mine. Yes, you did. Many times. And also RISC machines are proprietary but Intel ones are not. >In so far as there is a commonly accepted definition of "open" in the computer >hardware market, then yes I would say that Intel is "open" While you cannot buy >clone Pentium chips, both Cyrix and AMD produce passable processors that >apparently run the usual Intel binaries. (like FreeBSD) And there are tons of people other than Sun that make SPARC cpus. SGI buys its CPUs from MIPS, lots of other people buy the same CPUs from MIPS as well. I don't see what you are getting at. >A long time ago the US Government forced Intel to get in bed with AMD so as >to "second-source" processor chips. Well, maybe the government has given >up on this idea, but it has no less validity. AMD and Cyrix exist because a lot >of corporate types like myself buy their CPU's to save money. If Intel were as >truly as closed as you say they would never drop their prices until they have They have no choice! If they don't lower their prices, they will lose too much business. Same with "proprietary" SUN! >wrung the last drop of blood out of their customers. Don't tell me you don't think they don't try? >>>How many times have you talked to people who think that Unix cannot run on >>>the 386, 486, 586, 686 chip PC's? I've talked to lots of people like that who's only >>>exposure to Unix is some Sparcstation with a monitor weighing 200 pounds sitting >>>on it that is totally incompatible with any VGA monitor ever produced. With >> >>VGA *sucks*! And one might argue that VGA is "incompatible" RGB type >>monitor drivers. Why should the whole computer industry use VGA? Cuz IBM >>kludged, er, developed it? > >Yes it sucks, but nobody these days runs a VGA monitor in VGA resolution >(640x480) unless their in text mode. Once again your attempting to confuse >the issue. The fact is that there are so-called "VGA" monitors for sale these >days that are exactly the same size and better resolution than those 200 pound >Sun monitors, and cost less. And, there's adapters to make them run on the Suns. > >At least, 2 years after I buy the computer I can go on to reuse the "VGA" monitor >(assuming I get a good one to begin with) with a new machine. With the Sun >monitor, unless I get a new Sun I throw the monitor away. Wrong, they use RGB drivers. It is PCs that are locked out. Workstations use RGB drivers and almost always have. VGA was a cheap solution at the time. If you buy an RGB monitor, you can use it on many vendor's machines. It is VGA that is "incompatable" with the rest of the world. >Considering that probably only 10 companies on the face of the Earth make 99% >of all Cathode Ray Tubes in all television sets and computer monitors these days >I fail to see what the gain is to encase the identical picture tube in a box with a >funny connector on the back. (unless you want to lock in your market I guess) VGA has the funny connector. Workstattion monitors have 3 RGB leads that work on RS/6000s and HPs, but not PCs. >>>that kind of backing it is no wonder people are running to NT. >> >>Totally unsubstantiated. I've been hearing this for years and still don't >>know anybody using it. Even os2 out sells it by a hefty margin. >> > >The computer market has proven time and again sales mean shit, it's the >perception, stupid. I use NT and OS/2 every day, as well as BSD. I dislike Well, well, getting personal already eh? Tsk, tsk. >NT very much, it is about the most boring operating system there is aside from >DOS. I have used OS/2 ever since version 2.0 and I have watched IBM's marketing Same here, since 1.3 actually. >people fumble around with commercials showing a french farmer walking in >a pig field and very little increase of OS/2 sales result. Certainly not enough Agreed. And most disappointing cuz they had a great little system compared to Windows. >to inspire many major ISV's to develop for it. Right now Microsoft has far less >sales, but there are more stupid Venture Capitalists throwing their money away >on startups that are thinking they are going to make it big in the NT software >market, then in the entire history of OS/2. And very little has come of it over the years. >The other bad thing that I see is more people are buying NT for servers than are >buying OS/2 for servers. While OS/2 can be served the same from OS/2, Unix, NT, >and Netware, if a companies entire server network is NT then that means that >it's admins are eventually going to be all pro-NT, and in most companies >excrement flows downhill. This didn't happen with Netware because there was >no desktop OS from Novell. NT may own the office in the next decade. >>>People like HP and Sun want to sell workstation hardware, nice, incompatible, >> >>"incompatible" with what? Intel is "incompatible" with SPARC and powerpc. >>What is your point? >> >>>hardware that cannot be repaired by the local PC chop-shop, must be >> >>Those clowns couldn't repair a calculator. All they do is replace stuff, >>not repair it. >> >>>carried under an expensive service contract, and is obsolete a year later >> >>And Intel PCs really hold their value too. What a joke. >> >>>necessitating an expensive upgrade to a new hardware box. They run Unix on >> >>Still using your 386? No, a 486? No? Pentium? Pentium Pro? *All* vendors >>are constantly coming with new faster systems. >> > >All I know is that I can call up any one of a hundred companies in Computer >Shopper and have a new PC motherboard, memory and disk fedxed out the next >day, and replace it _myself_ with an hours worth of work for a tenth of the cost All I know it that I can get a motherboard from a zillion sources from SunExpert fedexed out to me next day. And I can replace it _myself_ with an hours work. Whats the diff? It isn't black magic you know. And I'm sure you could too. >of doing the same thing with a Sparcstation motherboard from one of those >Sun resellers that specialize in such stuff. If I have a hundred PC's lined up that >I want to do the identical thing to I can pay a local yokel to do it cheap. If you have that many machines you want a service contract anyway. >Even better, the obsolete motherboards are still valuable on the used market. >Hell, the employees are usually tearing down the doors to buy that stuff off >of you. Have you ever heard of anybody buying a used Sparc IPC motherboard? Yup. In fact, the 2nd workstation market and pieces is huge! SunExpert is full of adds from people wanting to buy/sell IPC/IPX and even Sparc 2s. These machines are of the 386 era. How many people would spend 25 cents for a 386 MB? >>>there because they were able to liscense the source from AT&T years ago, >>>they are not software companies, understand. >> >>Sure they are. Ever hear of a little company called SunSoft? A whole >>business division dedicated to software. HP, IBM etc. all are software >>and hardware companies. In fact, companies that only sell the OS(not the >>hardware) are a new phenom., a result of the Intel mass market. > >There are Software Publishers, Hardware Companies, and hardware companies >that want to be software developers. Actually, looking at the history of the Oh come on. IBM grosses more than Microsoft from software alone! They don't "want" to be a software company, they are! >desktop market at least, there has always been a separation of the hardware >companies from the software companies. Not really, Apple was there before IBM and they were one-stop shopping. But multiple sources of OS for your machine are a phenom of the PC. >Part of this is because of the mentality of "if our hardware products go down >the tubes we can always fall back on writing software" (as if software somehow No, it is a sales stratagy. The ability to provide complete solutions to your customers. Not to mention it is just plain lucrative. >magically writes itself), part of it is the lure of trying to lock your customers >into your product. That is why "open systems" means Unix systems. Because you aren't locked in by a vendor. Unix apps are relativily easy to port from vendor to vendor. And they all work together on a network very nicely. PCs are a bastion of weirdness cuz their disks don't work with anybody elses machines. Their monitors don't either. And their OS is totally different. So once you have chosen windows as your platform, you are stuck. But if SUN pisses me off I'll start buying HP or whatever. Cuz my code will port etc... >>>The fact is that the risc-vs-cisc processor arguement died a long time ago, >> >>You sir, are not well read. When did this happen? You might want to tell >>all the jounrals and researchers working in this area so they can "get on >>with their lives". >> >>>cisc has overwhelmingly won, and now with the advent of the PCI bus the >> >>Amazing! Really, truly amazing! What the hell are you talking about? >> >>>proprietary-workstation-hardware vs the Intel-IBMPC hardware arguement >> >>Why isn't "Intel-IBMPC hardware" proprietary? >> >>>is dead as well. >> >>What planet are you on? >> > >CISC chips have taken most of the good stuff that gave RISC the advantage >and so there is not as much difference anymore. In any case, the biggest >advantage of all the RISC workstations was not the CPU, it was that they all >used fancy high-speed busses that would run rings around the miserable >speed of the ISA bus. They still have that advantage. Workstations have boatloads of IO compared to PCs. Especially for SMP. >>>It's like Apple Computers. Everyone knows that the day that the MacOS >>>gets ported to the IBM PC is the day that Apple sells their last Macintosh >>>computer, that is why a MacOS port to Intel will never happen. The same is >> >>Mac hardware is also tons easier to configure. You buy a print and you plug >>it in. Easy. PC hardware is nightmarish with its IRQ conflicts and DMA >>quagmires. >> > >Of course, a closed proprietary solution is usually going to be easier to >configure (unless it's designers are really stupid) because that is the biggest >reason that people buy proprietary hardware - because it is easier to >deal with. > >As far as the PC being hard to configure, so what? A corporation usually Corperations aren't the only folks that buy PCs. Everybody from my Mom to Universities buys tons of machines too. Try telling your mom how to get her modem going so she can "surf the net". >buys PC's in large lots. When every machine is the same it is cheaper to >have a technician figure the configuration issues out on ONE machine >and use it as a template for all the rest of them. You get a service contract. Why pay some guy to fix PCs. >>I'm going to guess that you are one of those folks whose exposure to computing >>consists of word-processing and maybe some visual-basic programming. There >>is more to the world. Not everybody is going to use Sun, nor is everybody >>going to use Intel based stuff. Nobody has built a hardware/software >>combo yet that does everything everybody needs. Till then, there is room >>for lots of machine vendors and software vendors. >> >>DJS > >And I'm going to guess that you have little or no experience with large networks >of machines, or large corporate installations of machines, basically anything Yup. At BELL we had over 1000 HPs running our product inhouse to manage networks. Only union guys could admin them so us R&D guys had a hell of a time getting stuff done. >where there are a lot of machines that are the same all together. I'm sure that >you like your SGI, or Sun or whatever it is that you have. However, the cold PC actually. I work for QNX. >hard facts of the matter are that people have a certain amount of computing >that they need done, so many CPU cycles as it were, and their stupid if they >think they can make a logical business justification for spending lots more money >to do it. Maybe there are some protected industries, like the tennis shoe Depends what you are doing. And what the machine is used for. >industry, or the soda-pop industry, which roll along on pure marketing, and >have such obscene margins that they can afford to go out and isolate themselves >from reality and buy everyone a brand new Sun or SGI every year. Most other >businesses look at it from a pure cost justification, and if they can save 70% >of the cost of the computer and lose 15% of the functionality they are going >to do it. Totally depends on what you are doing. >Fortunately for us Unix-lovers, the jury is still out on whether or not there is >a definite, significant amount of savings on using one operating system over >another, that is why Unix is still alive, it is in the running with all the other Right tool for the right job. You don't buy Unix for the secratary, but you do for the firewall... >OS'es. However, the hardware market has definitely spoken, and it is Intel Like QNX! >on the desktop. DJS