The post is very good but has a huge glaring hole in it.
They say Sun died because of AMD64 but that’s incorrect. It was Linux. I know this because I was in enterprise software during this era and the demise of Sun due to Linux was stunning.
Intel and Windows killed SGI, which was a huge coup. However Sun was killed because during that time, Linux went from a toy OS into a fully supported enterprise OS that was “good enough”.
I remember how at one point in time, Oracle on Solaris was just about as rock solid as you could get. But slowly and surely more enterprise software moved over to Linux, especially Oracle. And within 10 years Sun went from one of the “4 horsemen of the Internet” to being sold to Oracle. It was sad because I loved Solaris as a technology, I even had a Sun workstation at home.
That said, how quickly Linux killed Solaris/Sun is a great reminder of how quickly things change in tech.
They say Sun died because of AMD64 but that’s incorrect. It was Linux. I know this because I was in enterprise software during this era and the demise of Sun due to Linux was stunning.
Intel and Windows killed SGI, which was a huge coup. However Sun was killed because during that time, Linux went from a toy OS into a fully supported enterprise OS that was “good enough”.
I remember how at one point in time, Oracle on Solaris was just about as rock solid as you could get. But slowly and surely more enterprise software moved over to Linux, especially Oracle. And within 10 years Sun went from one of the “4 horsemen of the Internet” to being sold to Oracle. It was sad because I loved Solaris as a technology, I even had a Sun workstation at home.
That said, how quickly Linux killed Solaris/Sun is a great reminder of how quickly things change in tech.