A coworker of mine and I had discussed my stance on Apple — it hasn’t really changed much since I wrote that, in case you’re wondering — and she asked me for my thoughts on what I look for and expect in a Linux system, so I offered to write them down here. Most of these considerations and observations also apply to other Unix, or even non-Unix systems, too.
Category Archives: Sun
So Much for Sun
Posted by fdiv_bug
on July 10, 2006
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So Sun finally got back to me about the Try and Buy thing. Long story short, they wanted to authorize a roughly $5,000 — the price of the Ultra 40 I was looking to test drive — charge against my credit card in order for me to get the system. I don’t have that kind of credit just hanging around, so I’m unable to participate in the program. This is unfortunate, and does tend to unfairly punish individuals who aren’t as likely to have that much available credit, unlike businesses, but I can understand why they do it that way. Sun is a business, and they need to protect their assets. Oh well.
Sun Microsystems Experience, Part 2
Posted by fdiv_bug
on June 28, 2006
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So I called again to follow up on my Try and Buy order of my Ultra 40, and I spoke with a very friendly and helpful lady who informed me of some things of which I was not previously aware.
Sun Microsystems Experience, Part 1
Posted by fdiv_bug
on June 26, 2006
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While I still haven’t gotten my Ultra 40 yet, I did take an opportunity today to call Sun and ask them where my order was in the process. The menu options were sensible and easily navigated, and I was speaking with a friendly gentleman in short order. He was unable to find my order in the system, and he said it’s probably in the Try and Buy processing queue or something to that effect. I gave him my email address at his request, and he said he’ll follow up once he knows what’s going on with the order. I’ll update you folks once I’ve heard back from him.
All in all, though, a rather quick and painless phone call, even if it didn’t yield immediate results. It was a rather nice change from the phone operations with which I’m accustomed to dealing. We’ll see how things play out from here.
Test Plan (Draft 1)
Posted by fdiv_bug
on June 23, 2006
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This is the initial plan for how and what I’m going to be testing on the hopefully forthcoming Sun Ultra 40.
Fun with a Sun
Posted by fdiv_bug
on June 20, 2006
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So I got the quote for my Ultra 40 that I’m going to be using for participating in Sun’s try before you buy program. Hopefully they’ll soon be shipping me a $5,000 system for testing Ruby on Rails.
One thing that I did notice, thanks to a comment on Jonathan’s blog entry about the promo, is that Sun explicitly forbids benchmarking in their Solaris Software License Agreement. To wit, in part 5(f):
You may not publish or provide the results of any benchmark or comparison tests run on Software to any third party without the prior written consent of Sun.
So, to that end I’m going to not post any hard numbers for benchmarks in Solaris. Instead, I’ll be commenting on how performance feels in relation to Linux — basically whether or not I think it would be a contender in an environment where performance was very important. Then again, it does say “third party.” If I’m publishing them myself, would that not be publishing to a third party? I might take that up with Sun’s legal department, just to be certain.
Sun’s “First One’s Free” Push
Posted by fdiv_bug
on June 19, 2006
1 comment
Sun Microsystems, venerable system and software vendor of the Unix world, has a rather interesting promo going on. It’s part of their try-before-you-buy deal, where you can get a free 60-day run on one of their mid- or high-end servers and workstations. According to Jonathan in his blog post, if you post a thorough review (in the eyes of the product team) regardless of whether it’s favorable or not, you can keep the system for free. Presumably they’ll take your words and use them as marketing copy if appropriate, but for a free Sun system they could use them to promote an end to tooth-brushing for all I care. 
I’ve already submitted my application for an Ultra 40 dual-Opteron workstation. I intend to use it for testing Ruby on Rails deployment and performance. I’d like to install Rails on Solaris 10 (preinstalled!), Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Ubuntu Linux, and Windows Server 2003 to see which one comes across as most manageable, and with the best performance. This is the first of my entries in that series.
I selected the Ultra 40 workstation primarily because that’s what will fit best in my office at home, under my desk, and it gives me the ability to test Windows in the equation as well as Linux distributions that don’t support SPARC64. We’ll see how this shapes up, and I’ll try to keep you posted.