Beta program! Why didn't someone think of this sooner?! :)
yahoo.cnet.com
<cached>
Sun's new Solaris takes aim at
Microsoft
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 2, 1999, 12:45 p.m. PT
-update- In a jab at fierce rival Microsoft, Sun Microsystems will release
its newest operating system for general use the same month that
Windows 2000 makes its debut.
Sun said today that it will unveil the new Solaris 8 OS in February. On
February 17, Microsoft introduces its much-anticipated, much-delayed
Windows 2000, formerly called Windows NT.
Solaris 8, the new edition of Sun's version of Unix, will become generally
available that month, product manager Tom Goguen said in an interview
today. But Sun is trying to prime the pump with a new program: Starting
November 27, anyone who is so inclined will be able to begin beta testing on
Solaris 8 for about $25.
The timing of Sun's Solaris announcement isn't
coincidental, said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst
with Illuminata. "It's a poke in the side [at
Microsoft]," he said.
Sun chief operating officer Ed Zander said that
Solaris 8 is "years ahead of NT," in a conference
call last month. Future Sun server computers using
the company's upcoming UltraSparc III "Cheetah"
chips will use Solaris 8, he said.
Microsoft's Chris Ray, product manager for
Windows 2000, wouldn't say whether he believes
Windows 2000 to be better than Solaris 8, but he
did say it will offer major improvements in resisting
crashes and running mission-critical jobs.
"What we're trying to do with Windows 2000 is
increase reliability. We're going to deliver that," he
said.
The rivalry between Sun and Microsoft is growing
more entrenched. Sun is a wholehearted backer of Unix, an operating
system that predates Windows but has grown in popularity with its use in
Internet applications. Windows' origins lie with personal computers, but
Microsoft came up with Windows NT as a way to attack Unix. Though
Windows NT servers sell well, most analysts agree that it hasn't come close
to displacing Unix.
The cultural divide between Windows and Unix is deep. Windows, which
ships on millions of desktop computers, is easily recognized and relatively
familiar to lots of people. Unix, in comparison, has deep roots in the Internet
and ties to the hard-core programming community, but it's less well known to
the average user.
Still, Unix has fragmented into several versions from Hewlett-Packard, IBM,
Santa Cruz Operation, SGI, Compaq Computer, Sun, and others. And the
Unix landscape has been turned upside-down with the arrival of Linux, a
clone of Unix that's available for free or very low cost.
Unix is much better than Windows NT at running big servers and handling
heavy computing loads than Windows NT, Eunice said. "The Unixes are all
very comfortable with 16-processor and 32-processor environments," he
said. "It's gotten to a very high level of scale. NT hasn't gotten to that plateau."
But in time, NT likely will catch up to where Unix is today, he said.
And Unix advocates should be familiar with NT's underdog status, Eunice
said. NT's status below Unix in the reliability pecking order is similar to the
position of Unix compared to more powerful mainframes about 10 years
ago, he said.
"Big scale is genuinely hard. That's a reality that Microsoft will overcome in
2003, 2004, or 2005," Eunice said. "NT is a decent operating system. It has
its good parts. But implementing at scale is ten times harder than most
people realize."
Sun began beta testing the new version in September. |
