View from the Hill

A Better Windows than Windows... A Better Linux than Linux?

For some quirky reason Sun Microsystems' launch of their Linux for Intel architecture systems at LinuxWorld in mid August, put me in mind of IBM's marketing push to get their OS/2 into PC's back in the mid 1990's, long after everyone in the PC world realised that the PC OS race was already over, and had been won by Microsoft.

IBM's phrase "A Better Windows than Windows" sounded good, and was relatively harmless. Less harmless, however, was the realization that if you bought a low cost IBM PC with Windows, then the disk also came packed with OS/2 and a bunch of other stuff which IBM thought you might find useful, just in case you changed your mind about which operating system you really wanted to boot up AFTER you had placed your order. Removing the OS/2 crud to free up disk space, was something you only did once. Next time you didn't make the mistake of buying an IBM PC. IBM's marketers at the time padded their "market share" data with millions of these dual boot, never used copies of the ill fated OS/2.

A recent Sun press release says that in keynote address to Linux enthusiasts at LinuxWorld, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy said Sun is redefining value in the low-cost, entry server market with one of the first pre-integrated enterprise-class systems running Linux.

"There is no reason not to go to Sun for Linux - we've got the Sun ONE stack, price performance, support and services, scalability and an upgrade path," Sun CEO Scott McNealy said. "We are part of the Linux community and will stay committed through sponsorships, donations, and product deliveries. We're leveraging the Linux opportunity and helping customers at the same time by bringing enterprise-level support to the open source community."

Sun's entry level x86 server, the Sun LX50, launched a few days earlier comes preconfigured to run either Solaris or Linux, and the tone of Sun's statements about their entry into the Linux market are very much along the lines that you'll get a Better Linux than Linux from Sun.

I didn't attend LinuxWorld so I don't know if McNealy had his fingers crossed behind his back, or choked whenever he said something positive about Linux. From Sun's point of view, this is the operating system which brought rivals HP and IBM back into the Unix mainframe market long after Sun thought they had already won that race with Solaris. Sun hoped that Linux would go away, or stay a hobbyist market, but it didn't. They hoped that Intel, IBM and HP would always stay behind Sun in the race to produce the fastest processors, but that that didn't happen either. Then within less than a year of killing Solaris x86 off, and saying many rude things about Linux, and Intel, Sun has now eaten humble pie and launched a dual boot Linux/Solaris x86 server.

Who would believe it?

Well... the words "humble" and "Sun" don't fit together comfortably in the same sentence. No, instead, of eating humble pie, Sun has decided that it is going to ship a version of Linux which has lots of proprietary Sun add ons which will make it "better". If you see the light and change your mind about the Linux thing after placing your order, then not to worry. You can boot Solaris x86 instead. Somehow, I'm not sure that users will find it comforting.

Sun's Linux may be "better", but it's not Linux. Remember the fuss that Sun kicked up in the courts a few years back? When Microsoft tried to make Java better, by adding Windows and Visual basic extensions? I think Linux users will be distrustful of Sun's improvements which are designed to make applications less portable, unless you want to port over to Solaris. They've already been there with AIX and HP-UX. No thanks.

From the outside world, Sun's x86 Linux strategy today looks very similar to IBM's OS/2 strategy in the mid 1990's. Sun would have done better launching these products a few years ago when its marketing power carried more weight in the wider computer community. I suspect that most users would feel more comfortable buying a no-name brand PC installed with Red Hat Linux than a Sun LX50. A Linux box from Dell will cost less and scale upwards from day one. Or maybe I'm wrong and should stick to talking about hardware...