The problem: Leopard already *has* some big improvements under the hood like address space randomization. Despite their "geeky" nature these features were promoted rather heavily. But for some strange reason we haven't seen any widespread adoption. IIRC even Safari doesn't use any of those advanced secority features. And we're at 10.5.7 now.

Perhaps Apple doesn't want to make that mistake again.

if not "for months"

I'm sure that buses will get faster. I just wanted to add a perspective *how* fast Terabit/s is.

bye. egghat.

(better, acs?)

English is not my native language. There is a rather high probability that my German is better than yours ;-)

bye Anonymous Coward

But that's not terabit/s. Even with PCIe3.

Or am I missing sth?

Bye egghat

cause the PCIe bus is way too slow for transporting terabits.

Or am I wrong?

bye egghat

First:

"Top-Level Server Market Findings

        * Linux servers posted year-over-year revenue growth of 10.0%, for a total of $1.9 billion in the quarter. Linux servers now represent 13.4% of all server revenue, up from 9.4% a year ago.

        * Unix servers experienced year-over-year revenue growth of 7.7%. The high-end enterprise segment of the Unix market was strongest of all three segments (volume, midrange enterprise and high-end enterprise), as worldwide Unix revenues totaled $4.6 billion in 2Q08, representing 32.7% of quarterly server spending. Unix servers account for the second-largest segment of spending, by operating system in the worldwide server market.

        * Microsoft Windows server revenue was $5.1 billion in 2Q08, showing 1.7% year-over-year growth and comprising 36.5% of all server revenue in the quarter. Windows servers account for the single largest segment of spending, by operating system, in the worldwide server market.

        * IBM's System z servers running z/OS experienced the second consecutive quarter of positive revenue growth, with 31.7% year-over-year growth in 2Q08 to $1.6 billion. IBM mainframes running the z/OS operating system accounted for 11.8% of all server revenue in 2Q08."

So Linux is at 13.4%, proprietary Unixes 32.7%. Solaris is the Unix with the highest markt share, so Solaris' marke share is somewhere in the same region as Linux from several different vendors combined.

So yes proprietary Unixes are still relevant. And these number are rather up-to-date from Q3-08. If you look at the higher market share of Solaris in the past it's even more relevant.

I'm not saying that Sun is *such a strong* contender. I'm just saying that reports of Sun's death are greatly exaggerated. And in case you've missed it: Solaris gets open sourced more and more. I'm quite sure that it gets more relevant by this. Cause there are real gems (ZFS, dtrace) inside Solaris (and there are not many of these gems that are missing from OpenSolaris). ZFS is worth the switch alone if you're thinking about a disk storage.

Linux tends to be a bit overhyped in media. It's the winner and media loves winners. If you look at market share by the number of servers (not the revenue) Linux' numbers look much better. And Sun still sells a lot of these big iron machines.

I use Linux too. And it's good and all that. But a lot of customers still prefer Sun's stuff. They don't care about saving 5K per server when they know that they'll get a good, proven and solid combination of hard-, software and services.

Bye egghat

Sorry, don't want to waste my time discussing Sun. What matters now is Oracle+Sun. You can be quite sure that this will be managed better than Sun has been in the past (great products, worst marketing ever)

bye egghat

I'm not that sure. IBM + Sun had a lot of overlapping stuff that essentially would have destroyed value. I don't see that many overlapping stuff in Oracle + Sun.

If you think in terms of a viable competitor you may prove correct.

bye egghat

"Quoting IDC's figures doesn't lend you much credibility."

Quoting abyolutly nothing doesn't lead to much credibility either.

Don't get me wrong. IBM is not a bad company. I'm not calling the death of IBM. But I'm sure that the harm Oracle+Sun will cause is worth more than the few hundred million Dolars more Sun wanted from IBM.

And if you really really want to see Sun als a SPARC company only (which is way off the mark), i could stil point you to the demise of IBMs Power-based workstations. Face it: All non-i86 CPU-architectures between 200 $ and 10K$ are essentially dead.

Bye egghat

CPUs are a "scale" business. Bigger is better, cause it's extremly expensive too design and produce a CPU. That is why most of the non i86-architectures have vanished.

I might second you statement that Niagara *should* survive, but nevertheless I doubt it.

bye egghat.

Source IDC 2008:

market share:

"Unix, mid-to-high-end servers ($17.2 billion in 2008)

IBM 37.2 pct
Sun 28.1 pct
HP 26.5 pct

"

Don't give a flying fig about Suns servers?

IIRC Solaris still has the highest market share among proprietary Unixes. And AIX ist only third after HP-UX.

And if you think about Oracle as a database company you've kind of missed the last 8 years or so. They've bought a lot of stuff and are number two behind SAP.

"IBM provides Java and Java products. "

Well I guess Sun does that too.

Regarding virtualization: XVM Server

Should be enough to keep the troll busy ;-)

Bye egghat

Well SPARC might make money. If not, well then you are almost certainly correct (if your timeframe is more than say 2 years).

bye egghat

Oracle+Sun has the power to seriously harm IBM. IBMs big plus was the combination of good hardware + OS + DB + consultants.

Oracle + Sun can now deliver exactly the same.

bye egghat