[osol-mktg] RE: [osol-discuss] Solaris on Intel's Classmate PC?

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

Hi,

Yes, I can understand the chicken and the egg scenario, however, one has to
look at this; I went down the road today, window shopping, every laptop I
had a look at down at the computer retailers had the Intel 3945 A/B/G
wireless chipset - it is the most popular chipset out there, and normally
coupled with the e1000g wired NIC - why, considering how wide spread the
device is, is it left completely unsupported given that there is a *BSD
licenced driver for it?

Sure, I can understand that Sun can't support *every* device that is out
there; that would be unreasonable, but given that there is currently a
working relationship between Sun and Intel, just as there is a working
relationship between AMD and Sun, there should be absolutely *NO* reason for
Solaris not supporting all the Intel product line, just as there should be
no excuse for Sun not to support the full AMD/Ati product line.

Matt


On 31/03/07, Shawn Walker <binarycrusader at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 30/03/07, Kaiwai Gardiner <kaiwai.gardiner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > HI,
> >
> > And if they keep the attitude of only *their* customers matter, they're
> > never going to get *new* customers because they're obsessively focused
> on
> > their existing customer base.
> >
> > I'm Joe developer, I can either download OpenSolaris developer edition
> and
> > find none of my hardware works or I could simply run Windows, purchase
> > Visual Studio, and be done with it.
> >
> > And no, Joe Developer aren't going to throw out their laptop or desktop
> or
> > purchase any extras just for the sake of 'compatibility'.
> >
> > Thats one developer lost, how many more have to be 'lost' before Sun
> wakes
> > up and realises that a person who isn't an existing customer, is a
> potential
> > customer - and if they're not a customer already, maybe it would be best
> to
> > find out *why*.
>
> But that's just it. You have a chicken and egg problem.
>
> You can't say all hardware must be supported because all people could
> be your customers.
>
> You have to pick a target audience, which Sun has done.
>
> Even as Joe developer, if your hardware is new, there's a good chance
> it will work (at least the parts that matter).
>
> I bought a lot of my hardware without Linux or Solaris in mind and it
> worked just fine.
>
> In fact, I was able to use Solaris on my Core Duo 2 before I could use
> Ubuntu.
>
> Regardless of what you say, the legal research thing is not "attitude"
> it's necessary.
>
> Blindly adding hardware support in the hopes of adding customers only
> leads to burning money without any guaranteed return on investment.
>
> How would you go to your stockholders and say, "We'd like to spend
> $200 million dollars on people that aren't our customers in hopes that
> they might be someday." Doesn't sound like a great business plan...
>
> In the meantime, people in the OpenSolaris community have an
> opportunity to help drive and add new hardware support. Sun engineers
> have also gone out of their way to help fix and add support for us
> where needed. Outside of the community and paying customers, no one
> else has much of a right to expect anything.
>
> As others have mentioned, there is no practical way for Sun to spend
> time trying to support all of the older hardware. It has to be done
> for new hardware on a going forward basis, and for old hardware on a
> as-needed basis.
>
> I'm not a Sun employee, so ultimately its up to them, and they might
> have a different view, but from what I see, they don't.
>
> --
> "Less is only more where more is no good." --Frank Lloyd Wright
>
> Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst
> binarycrusader at gmail.com - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/
>
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