[LUAU] Free Niagara Server (60-day trial)

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

Julian Yap wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 22:19 -1000, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
>   
>> A friend of mind sent me this news about a free Niagara server (in 
>> Japanese) and asked if anyone has (or knows anyone who has) any experience:
>>
>> http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathanja?entry=free_server_v2_0_honest
>>     
>
> Wayne,
>
> I'm not sure if you know this already but Jonathan Schwartz is the
> current CEO (or CTO/CIO/COO whatever) of Sun Microsystems.  The link you
> sent looks like they hire translators and is on a post time delay.
>
> His official English blog is: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan
>
> English entry of post:
> http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan?entry=niagara_benchmarks
>
> I've been following his blog for a while.  Mostly because it comes from
> the viewpoint of a Sun executive.  And on occasion he has something to
> interesting to say.
>
> But yes.  The offer sounds legitimate.  But no, I don't know anyone who
> has had any experience.  There are however online testimonials and they
> encourage that because "if you write a blog that fairly assesses the
> machine's performance (positively or negatively), send us a pointer,
> we're likely to let you keep the machine."
>
> You mentioned you were going to be at the Open Source Pizza last Tuesday
> but you weren't there so I didn't talk to you about what you had in mind
> for your OpenSuSE/OpenSolaris/OpenOffice study group.
>
> Maybe you can elaborate more on list in regards to OpenSolaris on list
> to see if others are interested?
>
> Having administered previously Solaris/AIX/HPUX/Digital/QNX Unixes (&
> Linux), I'm not really sure I understand going forward what the
> advantages are for OpenSolaris vs. Linux.
>
> If they are purely technical/engineering reasons, I believe the
> developer momentum behind Linux outweighs that.
>
> - Julian
Looks like our posts crossed each other (again).  But to briefly answer 
your questions:

1.  I had been looking forward to Ron Fox's talk (on anything), but Oahu 
drivers don't know how to drive when it rains.  By the time I was able 
to see Waialae Ave. (from Kalanianaole Highway), it was already past 7 
PM.  I really felt bad that I missed Ron's talk due to bad traffic.

2.  I am glad to know that you may be interested in the 
OpenSuSE/OpenSolaris/OpenOffice study group.  Many in this forum have 
labeled me as a Fedora-zealot since its inception.  However, for reasons 
that are too complicated (and sensitive, as with a flamebait) to discuss 
here, I decided to focus my attention on SuSE.  Last week, we had our 
first meeting at California Pizza Kitchen in Kahala Mall.  In the past 
couple months, we have tested most of the major distros including 
Fedora, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Kanotix, Vector, Debian, Mepis, Mandrive, 
Gentoo, SLACK, Berry Linux, Puppy, DSM, Xandros, NexantOS, Belenix, 
etc.  This is not an easy task but we learned a lot during the process.  
SuSE is definitely not for newbees, but do we really expect an ordinary 
Joe or Jane to install Linux, or even Windows?

3.  On Linux vs. OpenSolaris, again, this is an unavoidably potentially 
flamebait-throwing issue.  But aside from technological debates, most of 
my target audiences (hardware makers--I am talking about those with 
sales in the $B level) have been told about the "Linux market" for many 
years (but nothing happens).  I know we won't like it, but from my own 
experience, this issue has unfortunately become very stale (no one is 
interested in hearing it).  OpenSolaris, OTOH, represents a fresh start, 
if some of the installation issues can be properly handled.

Wayne