I snuck in and took one
Posted on 05/17/2006 9:19:50 PM PDT by AllmanBrosFan
Sun Microsystems plans to offer support for the Ubuntu server Linux distribution on its T1 server line, the company said at the JavaOne industry conference in San Francisco.
"We will be aggressively supporting the fork that Ubuntu has been doing," Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz said at the conference. "The ideals of that community are relatively familiar to us."
The Ubuntu Linux distribution is based on Debian. The operating system currently provides only a desktop version that has a strong following among software developers. A first server system is scheduled for release on 1 June.
The distribution is sponsored by Canonical, which offers commercial support for the application.
Sun's T1 servers use the company's Niagara multi-core processor. The systems were launched last December and are currently certified for Solaris only.
Sun's support is a major win for Ubuntu as it aspires to become one of the world's main Linux distributions.
Its creators seek to differentiate the offering from Red Hat and SuSE by providing support as an optional service for a limited number of systems, rather than bundling support automatically with the software.
Sun hopes that supporting the operating system will expose its hardware to a new group of users. A company spokesman denied that the support was aimed as a move against Red Hat and SuSE.
I came to the *nix scene of recently, and when I was involved, there was Gnome 2.4 and KDE 3.1.
The only time I've used anything other than a 2.6.x kernel is when I ran Slack 10.1--which uses 2.4.29 by default.
IIRC, the server that my school website and email is on uses DEC Unix...
"Long time Linux guru Bob Tallman said, "This is great for the open source movement. I have 7 different versions installed on my computer at home. Some guys I know have over 30.""
That's pretty geeky. They must be Democrats. They can't make up their minds. Linux is fun to play with.
Were you being sarcastic? Sometimes it is hard to tell here. The article was a joke.
I can think of many valid reasons for running multiple distributions at one time, mainly oweing to the fact that different distros are better suited for different tasks. For instance, while DSL makes for a really fast system primarily intended for browsing and other tasks, it's not really something you'd probably want as your primary desktop (though some might). A distro that rocks as a server similarly probably wouldn't be well suited for as casual a user as Ubuntu/Kubuntu might.
Here's a market to consider:
My co-workers dump 3 to 5 computers a month on my doorstep with virus so bad they have to be nuked. Their kids cannot stop clicking on that stuff. I wonder if a basic setup with OpenOffice and Firefox would sell to them. It cost under $250 and would work with wired home systems. Then the kids could be banned from the parents' computers.
Yup. Then again, with separate user accounts on a Linux box, (or via vmware), you can set it up so that nothing the kids can do can really affect the box. They could potentially lose their own files, but who cares about that anyway? :-)
Do you have shell access to it? If so, what's its uptime? Yeah, I'm nosy.
Yes I do. When I telnet in, I have a menu that I have to suspend to get to Unix.
How do I find the uptime out in the shell--what command do I use?
Thanks N3WBI3!!
Here it is:
(alpha) 1: uptime
23:11 up 299 days, 18:16, 25 users, load average: 0.28, 0.29, 0.31
"Yup. Then again, with separate user accounts on a Linux box, (or via vmware), you can set it up so that nothing the kids can do can really affect the box. They could potentially lose their own files, but who cares about that anyway? :-)"
Not going to happen. Parents need to run Outlook and various other Windows office applications. The problem is that their kids keep screwing up their computers with crap. Give the kids a computer that is bulletproof and cheap. Then the office people can take the computer home without danger. The kids can't stop clicking on virus and malware files. Who cares with a cheapo, WallyWorld Linux setup?
There's WINE for running Office.
I got a copy when I was up north, and that's how I run Office on Linux...8^)
Of course, keeping the computers separate is a better idea if it's feasible--then just password protect the parents' computer.
I can see your point of view on that, but that's why I suggested VMWare. I've really come to like the way that VMWare lets you return to a known good config in a really easy way. Granted, if you're going to spend most of our time using windows apps, it's not an optimum solution, but it can be extraordinarily useful, if you're willling to put up with a little bit of hassle.
A wallyworld Linux solution is just as good though.
Interesting...
1330 days? Wow.
Has to be a testament to the stability of your systems...8^)
Yeah. Also to the fact that if something works, and there is no particular reason to patch, we don't do it. I fully expect those two boxes to be shutdown and retired before they are rebooted. This is scheduled to happen in less than a year, so if they've made it 3 years, they should make it the rest of the way and retire with honor. :-)
We retired a couple earlier this year that were 1600+. We were really ready to get rid of those two though. The hardware, software, and OS had completely outlived their paid support, and it was time to send them to that great server in the sky.
What are they running?
Poser,
They could lock the box down for themselves and give the kids a live CD for getting on the net..
Zeg,
Nice! Got me beat by nearly two years
I snuck in and took one
I can think of one big one: You're a developer and are testing compatibility.
ORACLE only supports SUSE. :(
Not really if its windows xp, 2000 just set a password the kids dont know and show them how to set a password. Give the kids a cd and tell em' here you go...
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