[COLUG] Re: colug] Binary Compatibility - was Open Solaris and the Borg

[Jim Wildman]

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, R P Herrold wrote:

> 
> Given that a given hardware lifecycle from Dell, HP/Compaq, are tied to 3 year
> hardware availability assurance, and 5 year SCSI warranted drive life cycles,
> the OS is not going to be the constraining factor before the end user
> community start calmoring that 'they are stuck with the old stuff.'
> 
> - Russ Herrold

Interestingly, I just heard a presentation from a large user of Linux
that one of the things they like about 'commodity' hardware was the
short refresh cycle. Since the boxes are so cheap (<$1500 per), they can
be expensed as opposed to depreciated.  This allows the organization to
refresh their hardware on an 18-24 month schedule, thus keeping closer
to the technological edge and maintaining an advantage over those using
'legacy' hardware, which by 24 months is usually falling behind the
performance curve.  Obviously, this organization prizes speed, but it is
a scenario that would not work well with either SPARC hardware (does not
rev that fast), or Solaris x86, at least not until Sun demonstrates that 
they can keep it functioning as well as Linux on the bleeding edge of the 
x86 hardware space.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE       jim at rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.com
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best
state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Thomas Paine