[SunRescue] Q on "optimal" OS for Sun4c machines, now that Solaris 8 won't run

[James Lockwood]

I hate to get involved with this, but I feel I have to say my piece.

On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On July 11, Ken Hansen wrote:
> 
>   This will only happen on commercial OSs.  They do it for a simple
> reason...the sun4c machines aren't ready to "die" yet.  There are
> thousands upon thousands of them out there doing the same jobs they
> were doing nearly ten years ago.  Sun wants them all to go away so
> that those people will (they assume) go buy new Ultras.  It's called
> "Forced obsolescence".  In other words, commercial OSs
> Unix and the other commercial OSs out there) are profit
> vehicles...products, like any other, designed to make money.

Geez, and I thought I was cynical.

Forced obsolescence is something quite different.  Forced obsolescence
would be if your brand new shiny toaster had a timer in it that would
force it to self-destruct after 5 years or 5000 slices of toast.

What Sun is doing is analogous to stopping the sale of toaster
enhancements.  Your old Sun toaster still makes toast, in fact it makes
better toast with recent versions of Solaris than it did when it was new.
Software support for the versions of software that it does run will
continue for a number of years.

Sun isn't dropping support for all OS versions that run on sun4c.  They
are dropping hardware support for _future_ OS versions.  This is an
important distinction.  Those systems doing the same jobs they did 10
years ago will continue to do them for another 10 years.

I know a few people inside of Sun involved with core OS work, and at no
time have I heard anything that would point towards the dropping of h/w
support being a marketing trick.  It's simple cost/benefits analysis,
manpower that would go to maintaining things like the sun4c MMU code and
archaic 1.x PROM workarounds could be better used in other areas.  As
someone whose day to day work requires the power of at least a dozen
UltraSparc CPU's just to get off the ground, I can understand their point
of view. 

Companies who need Sun hardware support for their equipment already
upgraded to newer systems when Sun stopped h/w service agreements on
sun4c.  Companies who need software support have no problems in the near
future as Solaris 7 has quite a few more years of life with patches before
becoming anything like obsolete.  I still help run Solaris 2.4 on a batch
of 4/300's belonging to a friend, and it does the job admirably.

>   The free operating systems, on the other hand, are purely
> functionality-driven.  They don't arbitrarily drop support for
> hardware because that *removes functionality*.  The NetBSD/sparc
> folks, for example, will ENCOURAGE you to use that old SS2 sitting in
> the corner...not tell you to "throw that old trash away, buy a new
> Ultra!" like Sun will.

I'm a fan of the NetBSD project personally, but you have to keep in mind
that it has a different goal than the Solaris development group.

NetBSD will indeed continue to support hardware.  _New_ hardware support,
on the other hand, is lacking.  I distinctly remember being badly burned
back in 1995 when I considered it an alternative to Solaris 2.x for a pile
of sun4c systems.  OBP 2.x support didn't exist as such, I had to hack it
in by hand.  Keep in mind that 2.x systems had been shipping for nearly
four years.

Now it's 2000.  UltraSparcs have been out for what, 5 years?  Can I stick
with NetBSD when my computing needs outgrow the SS2 or SS5 sitting in the
corner?  Fine-grained SMP and support for any modern Sun gear is still a
far-off dream, as is being able to "plug and play" a wide variety of SBus
cards.  No other Unix I've seen can touch the ease of system installation
with Jumpstart, and Sun's NFS implementation is top notch.

Unfortunately, SPARC is a fringe port for all of the free Unices.  It
doesn't have the price/performance or popularity of x86, and you lose the
integrated hardware support that you get when you run everything from a
single vendor (even if some of that support does eventually expire). 
Sure, we all know that the hardware is "nice", but that doesn't sell it
for a lot of people. 

>   Use your sun4c machine, Ken.  Don't stop using it until it can no
> longer do the job.  Run a free OS on it and you'll always have a
> useful machine.

If NetBSD does indeed fit your needs better than Solaris, then by all
means go for it.  Keep in mind that neither one is in any way perfect, and
_always_ consider your intended use first.

-James