[geeks] Misuse of Java

[Jonathan C Patschke]

On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 09:10 AM, Chris Hedemark wrote:

> Maybe Sun is keeping their options open for a change of hardware 
> architecture, or change of OS (Linux?)

I don't pretend to know what Sun is thinking, but switching from 
Solaris to Linux would be about as smart as Oracle dumping 9i in favor 
of selling rebadged MySQL.

I keep thinking that they use Java because they want people to see Java 
being used for something other than the "Lake" applet, and that the 
installer is slow because they've got non-Java programmers writing the 
Java UI bits for Solaris.  Of course I don't know for sure, but that 
seems to be a logical explanation.  Sun -needs- to hype Java right now, 
with all of Microsoft's chest-beating over .net, but they could sure do 
better than showcasing it in an installer that increases the 
installation time by more than an order of magnitude.

> They've been warming up to Linux more and more, and they have not been 
> very aggressive in developing new hardware or dumping their old 
> processor line.

They seem to be about as aggressive as they've ever been.  They 
released an entire new line of servers, from entry-level (V100) to 
enterprise (Fire 15000) in the last year, and they had a major CPU 
upgrade (UltraSPARC IIIcu).  That's not exactly sitting around and 
counting ceiling tiles.

Their Linux effort seems to primarily be focused on keeping Cobalt on 
life-support and selling "servers" to people who are afraid of the big 
bad SPARC.  It's not like you can order an E-series or Fire system with 
Dead Rat preloaded.  Yeeech, just the thought of it makes me ill.

--
Jonathan C. Patschke
Celestrion Information Systems
Thorndale, TX