4 ms·

This is part of the reason why Linux ate their lunch. For the price of one Sun server, you could get 4 Dell servers that ran Linux, and they were faster. Grante

by vondur 2y ago

This is part of the reason why Linux ate their lunch. For the price of one Sun server, you could get 4 Dell servers that ran Linux, and they were faster. Granted, you didn't have all of the redundancy that was built into these higher end Sun systems or the really good support, but hey you had 3 extra machines as a backup.

jhbadger 2y ago
Yeah people used to say in the late 1990s "Linux enthusiasts want it to kill Microsoft, but what it really is doing is killing Sun".
- tyingq 2y ago
  Well, and what really killed Sun wasn't Linux by itself, but Linux on Opteron/AMD64.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    I would say that there were three factors that superseded Sun, along with most of the other proprietary workstations and servers: FOSS Unix, commodity PC-compatible hardware, and TCP/IP. The big vendors used to be differentiated on how they communicated on a network, shared files, type of bus architecture, and workloads, and so each company or unit would choose a vendor and rely on them for solutions, and the staff had specialized expertise in those systems. But all those vendors found themselves adopting TCP/IP and Ethernet. And Sun's NFS was widely adopted. X11 also became standard. The BSDs already had a wide hardware compatibility list, so that spare machine with no OS license could be returned to service. A few generations of college grads had direct experience with Unix and building PCs. Once Linux on PC-compatibles began showing up in the server room, Windows NT was mature, and software vendors were porting to Linux, it was a fait accompli.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      Kind of strange to talk about TCP/IP and Ethernet. Sun was the company that pushed that from the beginning. The self configured before others. It was part of why they had more new adoption then DEC/VAX systems. It all comes back to SPARC. Price to performance. If Sun had amazing high quality x86 servers and workstation by 1998, their software would have been perfectly fine. Its not like there was anything missing from Solaris at that time. Many people were not unhappy, they just realized that they could get a faster cheaper machine, and run the same software on a linux. Even if linux was less optimized, still end up cheaper overall for the majority of workloads. Its not like running linux on unsupported PCs in the early 2000 was that much fun. But Sun by 2002 they were still trying to kill x86 based stuff. They bought x64 server line in 2004.
  - gnufx 2y ago
    The last Sun systems I operated -- x2200s not up to Sun standards -- ran GNU/Linux on Opteron in an HPC cluster.
- vondur 2y ago
  You can also add SGI and most proprietary Unix vendors at the time. To a certain extent I think Apple also had a hand in killing the workstation market. When you can get a Mac that did Unix things and also ran Office and Photoshop, why get a SGI workstation (of course not all things could run on the MacOS that people got SGI's for)
  - pasc1878 2y ago
    Not really the same for Apple. The mac running OSX is a Unix workstation. It is an updated NeXT.
  - sillywalk 2y ago
    I agree, but to nitpick, there was a port (based on the Mac version) of Photoshop for Irix.
    - vondur 2y ago
      Yeah. I think it was version 3 and never was updated beyond that for Irix.
AStonesThrow 2y ago
However, I did consider it a bit of genius when, toward the bitter end, they pretty much went all-in with the PCI-bus, ATA disks, and all those PC-compatible interfaces replaced the Sun-specific ones which had been so distinctive (and expensive) up until then. It must've cushioned the blow for orgs that were still investing in new Suns but were able to plug in regular commodity peripherals, at long last.
- wang_li 2y ago
  Sun used common stuff quite early on, well before "the bitter end". They adopted PCI in 1997. Their workstations they moved from SCSI to ATA around the same time, though the servers are still with the SCSI family today. Regardless, mostly you couldn't plug in generic hardware anyway because there are no Solaris drivers for most of it. Honestly, it was never a big deal.
  - lizknope 2y ago
    Yeah, our Enterprise E450 had 10 PCI slots of various speeds and bus widths

by vondur 2y ago

jhbadger 2y ago

Yeah people used to say in the late 1990s "Linux enthusiasts want it to kill Microsoft, but what it really is doing is killing Sun".

tyingq 2y ago
Well, and what really killed Sun wasn't Linux by itself, but Linux on Opteron/AMD64.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  I would say that there were three factors that superseded Sun, along with most of the other proprietary workstations and servers: FOSS Unix, commodity PC-compatible hardware, and TCP/IP. The big vendors used to be differentiated on how they communicated on a network, shared files, type of bus architecture, and workloads, and so each company or unit would choose a vendor and rely on them for solutions, and the staff had specialized expertise in those systems. But all those vendors found themselves adopting TCP/IP and Ethernet. And Sun's NFS was widely adopted. X11 also became standard. The BSDs already had a wide hardware compatibility list, so that spare machine with no OS license could be returned to service. A few generations of college grads had direct experience with Unix and building PCs. Once Linux on PC-compatibles began showing up in the server room, Windows NT was mature, and software vendors were porting to Linux, it was a fait accompli.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    Kind of strange to talk about TCP/IP and Ethernet. Sun was the company that pushed that from the beginning. The self configured before others. It was part of why they had more new adoption then DEC/VAX systems. It all comes back to SPARC. Price to performance. If Sun had amazing high quality x86 servers and workstation by 1998, their software would have been perfectly fine. Its not like there was anything missing from Solaris at that time. Many people were not unhappy, they just realized that they could get a faster cheaper machine, and run the same software on a linux. Even if linux was less optimized, still end up cheaper overall for the majority of workloads. Its not like running linux on unsupported PCs in the early 2000 was that much fun. But Sun by 2002 they were still trying to kill x86 based stuff. They bought x64 server line in 2004.
- gnufx 2y ago
  The last Sun systems I operated -- x2200s not up to Sun standards -- ran GNU/Linux on Opteron in an HPC cluster.
vondur 2y ago
You can also add SGI and most proprietary Unix vendors at the time. To a certain extent I think Apple also had a hand in killing the workstation market. When you can get a Mac that did Unix things and also ran Office and Photoshop, why get a SGI workstation (of course not all things could run on the MacOS that people got SGI's for)
- pasc1878 2y ago
  Not really the same for Apple. The mac running OSX is a Unix workstation. It is an updated NeXT.
- sillywalk 2y ago
  I agree, but to nitpick, there was a port (based on the Mac version) of Photoshop for Irix.
  - vondur 2y ago
    Yeah. I think it was version 3 and never was updated beyond that for Irix.

AStonesThrow 2y ago

However, I did consider it a bit of genius when, toward the bitter end, they pretty much went all-in with the PCI-bus, ATA disks, and all those PC-compatible interfaces replaced the Sun-specific ones which had been so distinctive (and expensive) up until then. It must've cushioned the blow for orgs that were still investing in new Suns but were able to plug in regular commodity peripherals, at long last.

wang_li 2y ago
Sun used common stuff quite early on, well before "the bitter end". They adopted PCI in 1997. Their workstations they moved from SCSI to ATA around the same time, though the servers are still with the SCSI family today. Regardless, mostly you couldn't plug in generic hardware anyway because there are no Solaris drivers for most of it. Honestly, it was never a big deal.
- lizknope 2y ago
  Yeah, our Enterprise E450 had 10 PCI slots of various speeds and bus widths