I was a press reference for the recent Ubuntu on T1’s announcement. What does this mean, you ask? It means we were pre-briefed last week on the announcement and that Sun referred press folks to us for quotes. (More details on that arrangement here.)
Linux on SPARCs
In summary, the announcement is that Ubuntu will be a supported Linux distribution on Sun UltraSPARC T2000 and T3000s. Those are the some of the big, honkin’ servers that you can try out for 60 days for free. I’ve been tempted to try one out, but I’m not sure I’d qualify or have much to do with them…I bet the MP3s encode real fast though ;>
The top question that everyone, reports and otherwise, ask is, why does this matter? Indeed, that’s the real question.
The answers are:
- It’s not earth shattering.
- There’s a clearer answer to the question of running Linux on Sun hardware, meaning Sun will have a new market of sysadmins to sell hardware to.
- It’s further signaling of Sun’s maturity when it comes to open source.
- The future — where we all shall live — would be more interesting if Sun and the Ubuntu/Debian community cross-polinated more.
“A low ‘hrrrmmmm.'”
In the age of blogs and IM, there aren’t that many earth shattering announcement anymore. Even when Apple, the kings of hype, finally announces, the community has already figured out what the possible new products are and if they like them or not. Of course when they something lame like fancy speakers for iPods, the community just rolls their eyes.
It’s like I tell everyone: until Apple releases everything I’ll ever want, all at once, and all for $50, there’s really no looking forward to Apple announcements.
Generally, the same applies to other tech companies. Look at the “we’re going open source Java!” announcement at JavaOne: while folks like RedMonk, Sun, and the OSS-irati got all excited about The Age Old Debate — and rightly so, it is exciting in our silo of life — for the most part, it was just inside baseball for the 9-to-5 set.
On the other hand…OS X on WinTels. Now that’d be something: the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria.
So, yes, Ubuntu on T1s: not the announcement of the month, but not much really is anymore. Interestingly, several people I talked with were more iterested in seeing Ubuntu on Galaxy. We’ll see what happens on that front: the Sun and Canonical folks we talked in no way said “no” to any future scenarios, no matter how seemingly whacky.
Luxury Linux, But Linux Nonetheless
As Ars Technica’s hilarious diagram illustrates, Sun’s position on running Linux on Sun hardware has been murky at best. While [Open]Solaris seems like a solid contender now-a-days, Linux is still the king of the server market I tend to pay attention to, micro- to mid-market. Users want to run Linux, and preventing users from doing what they want makes it easier to buy Dell.
With official Ubuntu support, now it’s “only” the price that’ll drive folks away from Sun hardware. The people I tend to focus on (the “long tail,” as it were) are the ones who don’t have the time or desire to do the TCO studies it takes to feel sane spending $3,500-27,000+ on a single piece of hardware. As one one person I talk with regularly said about the announcement:
Does not affect me, unless it’s cheaper than Dell…is it? ‘Cause then I might care.
This is why mainframe sales are going to be even harder outside of the traditional silos. But that’s another story.
Sun’s try-and-buy program is working on that TCO problem. As more people run their own IT, and because they can get a box free for 60 days, they’re starting to at least think about spending more up-front. Which isn’t to say that they will spend more, but breaking the PowerEdge habit is tough, especially when Google gets mad props for their churn-and-burn farms.
Good luck against anything Mr. $372.75 claims as gospel.
Familiarity breeds use
Google IT aside, I’m sure there’ll be several people who’ll buy the luxury Linux setup, but my feel is that it’s not going to at the scale to start freaking people out.
More interestingly, once Ubuntu proves itself as “enterprise” grade, it’ll be another distribution to consider when the discussion comes up in IT departments: it could soon become a question of RedHat, SUSE, or Ubuntu. For those people who’ve been driving up Ubuntu’s popularity over the past year, this will be gravy: getting to run your pet OS at work is always a treat.
My Open Source is More Open Than Yours
Recently, we’ve had a gut feel that Sun really “get it” (this time ;>) when it comes to open source. While I eye-rolled at people who get into angels on pinheads about open source recently, there does need to be a “there there” when a company says it’s doing open source. Furthermore, once a company sanctions competing with itself — Solaris vs. Ubuntu — it’s achieved a whole new level of getting it.
I’m aware that Sun has a sordid history with getting it, but this time it seems quite clear: if users want to run Linux on Sun boxes, go right ahead. This isn’t to say that sales reps won’t keep pushing Solaris, but at least there’s a clear blessing for ignoring them and going with Linux.
Sharing Means Caring
As Simon pointed out, the primary thing I’m interested in is getting some cross-polination going between Ubuntu/Debian and Solaris. Sun is an interesting petrie dish of open source nowadays: how do open source all the assets of a BigCo? How do you make money, lots of money? How do you contribute back to the community? How do you pull code in from beyond-the-firewall?
For example, can Sun pull in apt-get for package management? Sure, there’s The Lawyer Anti-pattern to deal with on both sides but set that aside for a moment. What coder cares about paper-work over code anyhow? How cool would that be if a commercial company decided to ignore NIH and just pulled in existing package management? Going the other way, could we see DTrace or ZFS ported over to Linux?
The other interesting OSS angle is the role OpenSPARC played in porting Ubuntu. Open source hardware is beyond my keen at the moment, but it’s another out of the ordinary aspect of the story. The lack of open docs and specs for drivers has caused too much frustration in the Linux world.
More Exciting Than the Usual
Beyond vendors sports (what will IBM and Novell do?!), for the most part, announcements are not much to get excited about. They’re more like small bread-crumbs. Really, when Apple can’t even amaze the world, there’s not much hope for everyone else. Honestly, I don’t think this is a bad state of affairs. In a Cluetrain world, transparency is the best long term bet, and announcements are inherently opaque and clubby.
In my systems management think, I tend to position Sun as a the wild-card. At JavaOne, I got some confirmation of that feel in systems management from the services folks, and blessing a competing OS on their own hardware widens their wild-card status further. Who knows which fork they’ll choose for their salad?! ;>
Update: Hrm. Looks like Sun chose the really BIG fork. This is probably going to be a distraction for awhile.
Disclaimer: Sun and IBM are clients. And I’ve only today gotten Ubuntu up and running, so I haven’t had much of the dog food.
What do they call the current Ubuntu version – Arty Aardvaark or something? I last used Warty Warthog, and was pretty impressed – nice and clean, performed quite well (on very clunky hardware),and I liked the package management better that RedHat’s (which was my previous incarnation of Linux). I actually blew away Ubuntu to try SuseLinux 9, but the hardware finally gave up the ghost – maybe Sun will give me a freebie?
Cool. Yeah, their names are funny, but I like ’em.
I’ve heard that SUSE has fantastic config tool in YaST. You’ll (or anyone else) will have to tell me how it compares.
You should order up one of the try-and-buys. I always want more data points of people using Sun hardware, and marketing, to draw from.
Dude, if you need more motivation: it’d be great blog content 😉
Yeah – YaST wasn't bad – you could automate the updates (just like WIndows!) of stuff you already had installed, or you could go looking for new stuff – a bit like the Eclipse model, but all at one place. It would tell you what updates were available, whaether or not they were a security update, and present them all for inclusion or otherwise – pick and choose the ones you wanted. I liked it.
I've just d/loaded Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake!) – both the live CD/Desktop and the server edition. Just need to find some hardware now …
Yeah – YaST wasn’t bad – you could automate the updates (just like WIndows!) of stuff you already had installed, or you could go looking for new stuff – a bit like the Eclipse model, but all at one place. It would tell you what updates were available, whaether or not they were a security update, and present them all for inclusion or otherwise – pick and choose the ones you wanted. I liked it.
I’ve just d/loaded Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake!) – both the live CD/Desktop and the server edition. Just need to find some hardware now …
The server names are T1000 and T2000, not T2000
and T3000.
Furthermore, the releasing of the chip hardware source code of Niagara played no part in making
the port of Linux any easier or harder.
I see often this thinking that OpenSPARC helped
the Linux port somehow. I had the port done
before any of the chip source code was posted
there.
Yes, the chip programming manuals helped, but
those I also had several weeks before they were
posted on the OpenSPARC site.
And, finally, good luck doing an OS port to a new
processor without being able to ask questions to
at least a few of the chip architects and systems
folks. You will find bugs in either the docs or
the implementation or both, and someone will need
to guide you on how to handle that.
Thanks for the clarifications, David. It's good to get word from the source.
And, apologies to all for the sloppy typing.