Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)

Workstations

In old days it was Solaris that dominated workstation market as Intel CPUs were still not powerful enough to compete with RISK based CPUs. Sun started as a workstation company and it is not accidental that Sun trading symbol was SUNW (Sun Workstations; It was recently changed to Java, which might be a sure sigh of Java decline ;-).  But those days are long gone and with them gone is noticeable Solaris presence in workstation market. Now workstation market is dominated by Windows with linux share stable for many years at single digits. So on high level both linux and Solaris have difficulties of holding the ground against Microsoft assault. Also with the growing popularity of laptops the distance between Windows and linux and Solaris as a desktop OS not only do not shrunk but became more and more pronounced.  In fact it is safe to state that on a very high level if we are guided by the level of market penetration alone as a desktop OS linux made very limited progress for all 15 years of its existence and Solaris disappeared from the radar screen.  Web site statistics that we have access to suggests that approximately 10% hits for a Unix oriented site from linux desktop/servers. Dominant 90% hits comes from Windows workstations. And this 10% share is pretty stable for the last 3-5 years it did not fluctuate more then 1% up or down.  In this sense it is clear that linux is growing on desktop but the page of growth is approximately the same as the pace of growth of windows market.

In modern environment if we are talking about workstation we usually taking about laptop.  Laptop gives developers and administrators important mobility advantages. Also computing speed-wise modem laptops are actually yesterday servers in disguise :-). Dual core 2GHz CPUs and 2G of RAM are now are standard configuration of mainstream enterprise laptops. 4G of RAM becoming more and more popular.

Another factor is that Windows works with newer hardware much better then any other OS. For example dual displays a must for any professional Unix administrators work best on windows. It is possible to use dual monitors on selected linux hardware configuration but the implementation is less mature. For example, Ubuntu 8.04 supports ATI Radeon 3850 and uses a new version of X.org which allows adjusting the system to 2 monitors. 

Still if you have laptop with docking station on which there is a Nvidia graphic card capable supporting two monitors (like Dell D620/630 -- a popular corporate laptop) Windows is you only reasonable choice because you lose too much if you cannot use dual monitors capabilities. That's why VMware provides more flexible solution without sacrificing Windows excellent hardware compatibility and attempt to use linux as a single OS on laptops make sense only in  severe cash strapped circumstances which are pretty rare for people who can afford more or less powerful (and expensive) laptop like D630.  Even is this cases you can always buy used laptop with Windows preinstalled ( ~$500 for more or less capable used D620 with 2G of RAM and 2GHz or better CPU)

Also in case of laptops OS X is a power to be reckoned with so linux does not compete strictly with windows in this environment, But detailed picture is more complex and along with large dark areas there are some bright spots.  For example in 2007 linux recently became an official installation option on desktops for Dell and some other less well-known PC manufactures producing mini-laptops (Asus eeE, etc).  Solaris also became more competitive after Sun adopted equal levels of support for both X86 and SPARC platform.  Also a couple of interesting and interconnected trends exist that favor both linux and Solaris as alternatives to Windows:

• Virtualization trend.  For linux the fairy tail of "world domination" now is replaced by harsh reality of co-existence as a minority often in a form of a "guest OS" under Windows (often with VMware as a VM). For Solaris this is the main and probably only way to make some inroads to the corporate desktop.  
   
• The decisive victory of "Corporate IT socialism"  against capitalism in large corporations :-). This is probably the most powerful and the most underestimated pusher of intelligent developers and users to alternative OSes be it linux, Solaris of some flavor of BSD.  Windows, especially with paranoid micromanagers at the helm and degenerative members (which in large corporation is often a dumping ground for people who cannot be used anywhere) windows became more and more like IBM terminal. don't do this, don't do that enforced by Active Directory dramatically increasing attractiveness of linux and to lesser extent Solaris.
   
• Reemergence of BSD as a viable workgroup server and by extension a desktop for high end users and developers. With such distributions as PC-BSD "the increase in responsiveness (i.e., everything seems to just run faster) and ease-of-use will surprise you."  See for example LinuxDevCenter.com -- Linux vs. BSD, What's the Difference

Let's start with "classic" software development. There are three major programming languages in this area which dominate in large corporate environment: C, C++ and Java.  In all three cases Solaris on Opteron is pretty competitive with linux but that does not matter much. Windows is even more competitive: it became de-facto standard for developing commercial applications.  Still intelligent developers can get some value out of Solaris in two major cases:

• Developer who often face complex situations when the bug can be OS or libraries related and common tools does not help much. In this case a developer is ready to pay any price for "on the edge of impossible" debugging facilities. That's why Donald Knuth recommended to select a platform and the language not on its intrinsic advantages or disadvantages but based on the quality of the debugging environment. Here Solaris has an edge over Windows and Linux due to the existence of such a brilliant debugging tool as DTrace. DTrace can be used if nothing else work (and actually should be used this way). In a way this is the "last hope" and as such it is priceless. For the same reason Solaris is attractive for applications that need to be heavily optimized as bottlenecks are difficult to spit without careful instrumentation and can be anywhere, not only in the application optimized.   Zones are also a unique debugging tool (because satellite zones are isolated from the root/main zone and can crash without affecting the whole system; that makes dumps much more useful, in fact as useful as they are in mainframe environment. Those who remember history can point to the fact that famous IBM VM/CMS was first created as a debugging tool). As in large corporate environment the software development  is more outsourced and remaining part is more concentrated in research labs  (as with few exceptions "infrastructure-related" software development did not survive outsourcing)  the latter case became a more frequent case then before. All those genome crunching applications running 24 hours or more can really benefit from DTrace-based optimization.  It just stupid to run them on linux where no such thing as DTrace yet exits. The point is that Solaris is attractive for development of complex application in C++ or Java due to availability of DTrace and zones as well as a good compiler suit.
   
• Developers who are developing applications for Java. Despite the fact that Microsoft does not support Java directly most Java development is done on Windows. Eclipse is often used as a development platform and despite the fact that it is written in java it is quite usable development platform. But here Solaris have an advantage of being a "native" platform for Java and not to use this advantage with Solaris 10 freely available means some sacrifices (if and only if the target deployment platform is Unix.)  Linux is weaker platform for java development in comparison with both Windows and Solaris despite IBM pushing of Eclipse for Linux.   It also a weaker platform for running Java applications, especially if Webshere is used (this notoriously complex and semi-reliable middleware is even more semi-reliable in linux ;-).

Linux dominates open source software development space first of all became availability of well packaged distributions that provide tremendous amount of software development tools "out of the box". Life is short and developers prefer to spend their time developing software not installing applications. But with the developer edition of Solaris 10 it might eventually became a worthwhile contender.  Actually Windows is still contender too and with the availability of such environments as SFU 3.5 and Cygwin is more contender then many open source zealots would like to admit.

At the same time both Solaris and linux recently received a significant boost in workstation space due to the virtualization trend. With the current dual-core CPUs in workstation environment it does not make much sense to run a single OS: modern laptops and desktops are powerful enough to run two or even three OS instances without breaking sweet.  New emerging standard for workstations and corporate desktops is a virtualized environment with both Windows and some flavor of linux or Solaris. Most often virtual environment is installed on Windows as Windows is a standard desktop in most large corporations. VMware Workstation 6 is now a leader in this space but Microsoft Virtual PC also has some adherents (it is free).

Currently linux have the largest share of the "guest OS" market on VMware. But Solaris 10 is supported by VMware Workstation 6 out of the box and it is gradually entering this turf too due to developer advantages that I mentioned above and first of all availability of DTrace.  Still by a significant margin linux is more common "guest OS" and now is commonly deployed by staff who does very little development work but needs to present complex multiplatform software demos to management of clients as well as by consultants, for example Tivoli consultants. 

It can be stated that a new type of demos of complex software product emerged due to availability virtual machines. Often they are called virtual appliance demos and come as VMware of Microsoft Virtual PC images. That actually now permit easy demonstration and studying of applications which previously were beyond reach of most enterprise IT staffers with their typical level of overload.  And it helps to avoid blunders that were unavoidable in previous years due to limited exposure to a particular application before making critical decision whether to buy it or not.  All-in-all this is a very progressive development and it can improve the software selection process in large corporate environment.

Performance-wise laptops (and close to them small forms factor PCs) have become almost complete substitute for traditional "tower" desktops; in corporate space mostly "engineering workstations" continue to benefit from "tower" form-factor as with the only difference in video adapter they are actually small servers in disguise ;-). 

For both Linux and Solaris the most popular virtualized environment is VMware although Xen3 and Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 grows their market shares very rapidly. Such dual OS environment  became the standard professional workstation environment and as I mentioned before is now widely used for complex software demos as well as software training.  For example, if you need a Tivoli consultant to do some custom development or a marketing specialist to demo you some complex application, he/she typically uses laptop with two or three virtual servers under VMware. Actually Intel Duo-based laptops are the fastest growing segment of corporate PC market. 

The second important  trend that favors both linux and Solaris in large corporate environment are intrinsically connected with "mainframization" of Windows environment in large corporations. I would call it "corporate IT socialism"  as this term more precisely reflect the essence of the problem with misguided and hypertrophied  role of central planning (often "in the name of security" or SOX compliance, no more no less; as if SOX has anything to do with IT, despite quite successful efforts of major auditor companies to prove otherwise.) and simultaneous uncontrolled proliferation of IT bureaucrats and the drive to create all-encompassing policies and procedures, often partially or even completely detached from common sense.

Partially as an overreaction to SOX, partially due to the greed of auditing companies, partially due to stagnation o IT in general, IT management more and more resorts to severe limitation of Windows functionality in the best "Brezhnev socialism" style.  Group policies can be perverted to the extent PC became semi-usable. If we remember situation with mainframes and growth of mainframe bureaucracy, one can say that this is another example that "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce". As talking about security became politically correct and universal "good thing" in large corporate environment many otherwise incompetent IT dwellers realized that it can boost your career even if your suggestion actually is damaging to the environment that you want to protect against some misunderstood threat.  Active Directory group policies present plenty  of opportunities for such career boosting moves and as a result as a new generation of corporate desktop is rolled out they are becoming less and less user friendly and more and more restrictive.  

I would like to stress that it looks like there is a "secular" (using investment jargon) trend in increasing of the rigidity of Windows environment and proliferation of red tape in the name of compliance and security, the complex phenomenon that we defined above as  "corporate IT socialism".  In many ways Windows environment start emulating mainframes (BTW mainframe administrators were universally hated by users ;-). And as in any socialist environment there are forces that naturally create and organize powerful resistance movement ("IT freedom fighters"), the movement aimed to weaken or even defeat those, often completely stupid and counterproductive restrictions enforced from the center.  Restrictions that are damaging to the corporation as a whole (especially negatively affecting  productivity and morale) and which  has nothing to do with real threats and protection from them and increase compliance and security only on paper and/or in the heads on incompetent micromanagers ("control freaks")  two appropriated this area in a particular large corporation and their peers. 

While most of this guerilla war is fought in the Windows space, the most advanced part of the users already started to realize that change of the ground of fighting to less known to the opponent might benefit them greatly. That might partially explain tremendous success of VMware in desktop environment of large corporations: in a very subtle way it became a powerful tool of fighting strangulating restrictions implemented by misguided and incompetent IT micromanagers.  While dual boot can help quite a bit, as soon as you have VMware installed you can install Windows the way you like and run it as a guest OS. If you do not like some applications you just do not install them. that's much more constructive way of fighting "corporate IT socialism" then just tinkling with setting on your "standard corporate desktop".   Most often this is a second "custom" instance of Window (for example standard Dell distribution on PCs and laptops crippled by corporate "standard OS image"), but in some cases users are adopting alternative "guest OSes".  That increases the distance from the ground occupied by IT micromanagers even further. Most often this is linux as it is already have some share of typical corporate applications (for example, Lotus Notes) and also it has huge PR support in mainstream IT press, which makes arguing the case significantly simpler (with the availability of such a powerful accusation as resisting cost-saving trends ;-). I think any reasonably competent IT staffer can always explain his/her manager why he/she needs linux for software development in a pretty convincing terms.

In any case both linux and Solaris are now became more attractive choices for corporate dwellers that it was the case before not due to their real or imaginable advantages, but because of proliferation of corporate IT socialism.  The level of this additional attractiveness is directly correlated with the amount and severity of excesses and abuses of group policy in Microsoft Active Directory environment as well as security excesses :-). Of course this trend is more pronounced only among "top guns" of IT but such moves are now viewed more or less favorable by most  IT dwellers.  In a very paradoxical way Active Directory instead of cementing Windows dominance proved to be the best friend of alternative OSes such as linux and Solaris ;-).  Also it is really amazing how much damage one micromanager in the position of the head of security department can  inflict on unsuspecting users and the company using group policies. Spoiled children should be allowed to play with matches.

I think that corporate security always attracted a special type of managers which I might called "over-promoted administrative assistants" with IT skills forever frozen on the level of basic functionality of MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint but who suffer from the severe cases of addiction to micromanagement along with obsessive desire to create useless or harmful policies and procedures :-).  In case of females such types manage to use their gender as a bulletproof vest. Anyway as the tremendous amount of damage that was done in the name of security (or standardization) by some micromanagers create a powerful "countervailing forces" that benefit  linux and Solaris in a large corporate environment.  It looks like out of types enumerated in famous Stephan Zielinski's classification of system administrators (Know your Unix System Administrator) two types flourished under Windows umbrella and have found its way into security groups. Naturally they serve as the best advertisement for alternative operating systems: 

The Administrative Fascist. Usually a retentive drone (or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system administration. ... The Idiot. Usually a cretin, morphodite, or old COBOL programmer selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL programmers

In some sense running linux (or Solaris) under some kind of VM (VMware, Microsoft Virtual PC or Xen) is the last refuge from the Procust bed of badly thought out group policies and in this particular role linux and Solaris can provide tremendous value in large corporate environment, especially for developers who suffer most.

For the same reasons Solaris on UltraSparc remains an interesting option as a development workstation, workstation that can partially isolate you from the corporate security policies and compliance procedures or at least to ease their burden. "Administrative fascists" who became more and more common in management positions of IT departments of large corporations usually have some (fuzzy) understanding of linux existence (and thus might be interested in "cutting the oxygen" as such a move for them represent self-justification of their existence) but for them Solaris is like another planet. That means greater freedom from unnecessary and counterproductive restrictions enforced by more and more rigid IT environment. In addition to the value on fighting "corporate IT socialism"  there are several other advantages of using UltraSparc.

First of all this is a quality of the hardware architecture (CPU instruction set) and the existence of SunPCi cards that can run Windows. Such a tandem is more productive then pure Solaris or pure linux environment and the cost of the card is approximately the same as a copy of VMware for workstations but at the same time distance you more from "corporate desktop" and helps to avoid unnecessary questions. Now when Microsoft virtual PC 2007 is available for free and you can get a notebook with Intel's Core Duo T2400 CPU, 2G of RAM and 80G 7200 RPM drive for less then $1000 (as of mid-2007) this option became slightly less attractive.