[OpenIndiana-discuss] oracle removes 32bit x86 cpu support for solaris 11 will OI do same?

[Gabriel de la Cruz]

Strategical decisions with not so large boundaries on the technical side, I
mean, they are not really saving much effort!
ZFS feeds on memoy like chupacabra does on blood, but still there is still
some life to those old 32 bit devices on the networking side of the game. We
dont trash servers so easily over here...

Admins are still creative people, an operating system should be flexible
enough to suport unconventional projects.... not all IT problems should be
solved with a credit card in the hand!.

Old management tricks are not apreciated, vendor lockup is not apreciated,
the good old "pay or trash" pushup isnt the place where I wanna be. What
eslse to say...


On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 7:28 AM, Jerry Kemp <sun.mail.list47 at oryx.cc> wrote:

> You are absolutely correct.  No one is going to put a 32 bit x86 system
> into production.  And no one is going to put an old 280R or V240
> UltraSparc III system into production either.
>
> But that's not the point.  Jr. admins and hobbyist pick these boxes up.
>  They come from other hobbyist.  They get picked up off eBay.  And they
> come from companies that are decommissioning them and give them to
> employee's, because it is easier to give them away, vs paying someone to
> come pick them up and haul them off.
>
> That is where new growth comes from.  A jr. admin can play with stuff at
> home at little to no cost.  And when they are comfortable with an OS at
> home, then they are ready and confident to take it to work.
> Playing/learning stuff at home is typically fine on older/slower
> equipment, but you want to be able to learn on the latest/greatest
> software.
>
> Sun learned this lesson the hard way with the secret 6 when they
> initially refused to release Solaris 9 on the x86 platform.
>
>
> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/70339/_Secret_Six_push_Sun_to_keep_Solaris_on_Intel_?taxonomyId=068
>
> Sun finally figured it out, and released Solaris on the x86 platform
> again.  And did very well with Solaris 10 on x86.
>
> I don't think that the "secret six" tactics would work on Oracle.
> Oracle will require some other method to re-establish support for newly
> unsupported systems.  And I have no idea what that might be.
>
> OpenIndiana may have a great opportunity to establish a foothold, if we
> can support, or at least state that OpenIndiana runs on those boxes that
> Oracle said no to.  I have a SunBlade 2000 on my desktop at work running
> Solaris 11 express.  It has S11Express loaded so I can play with ZFS
> encrypted file systems.
>
> If the system runs now, that means that Oracle will physically be
> pulling drivers, etc out of the code to ensure that my system will not
> run Solaris 11 GA.
>
> I believe that there is a lot of opportunity available for OpenIndiana,
> by just not pulling out code that is known to work.
>
> Jerry
>
>
>
> On 06/22/11 22:42, Gary Driggs wrote:
> > On Jun 22, 2011, at 7:19 PM, Ben Taylor wrote:
> >
> >> I can almost see dumping 32-bit x86.
> >> but dumping 64-bit US-III/IV?
> >
> > Use a kill-a-watt or a smart PDU to compare the power draw for these
> > older systems. Do you really want them in production? Solaris 10
> > isn't going away if you do. q.v. several BSD & Linux flavors.
>
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