From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net   
      
   In article <10cb3rt$1hmm$1@dont-email.me>,   
   Arne Vajhøj   wrote:   
   >On 10/10/2025 6:14 AM, Dan Cross wrote:   
   >> In article <10c6jdf$1sato$2@dont-email.me>,   
   >> Arne Vajhøj   wrote:   
   >>> On 10/8/2025 3:45 PM, Dan Cross wrote:   
   >>>> I wonder what percentage of Solaris installations are on SPARC   
   >>>> and what are x86 at this point.  2037 is only 12 years away.   
   >>>   
   >>> Back in the Sun days Solaris/SPARC was way more common than   
   >>> Solaris/x86-64 (and Solaris/x86 before that).   
   >>   
   >> Yup.   
   >>   
   >>> And I doubt it has changed. I don't recall a time where   
   >>> Solaris/SPARC was considered dead and Solaris/x86-64 was   
   >>> considered to have a bright future.   
   >>   
   >> Within Sun a lot of senior engineers realized by the mid-1990s   
   >> that SPARC was going to be a dead end.  They just weren't going   
   >> to be able to compete against Intel, and the realization within   
   >> (at least) the Solaris kernel team was that if Sun didn't pivot   
   >> to x86, they'd be doomed.  And those folks were largely correct.   
   >> But Sun just didn't want to give up that high margin business   
   >> and compete against the likes of Dell on volume.   
   >   
   >Good decision. The vast majority of Solaris system revenue was   
   >made after that. And questionable whether they could have made   
   >the same revenue on x86 due to the competition.   
      
   Good in the short term, perhaps, but bad in the long term.   
      
   >>> And one migration   
   >>> Solaris/SPARC->Linux/x86-64 is cheaper than two migrations   
   >>> Solaris/SPARC->Solaris/x86-64->Linux/x86-64.   
   >>   
   >> OTOH, if someone is still stuck with Solaris for some reason,   
   >> they can still buy modern hardware from Dell, HPE, or Lenovo and   
   >> there's a good chance Solaris 11.4 will work on it.   
   >   
   >Yes.   
   >But it still does not make sense to do a migration that will   
   >require another migration later compared to just do one   
   >migration to something with a future.   
      
   One can't really make a categorical statement like that.  It   
   depends too much on the application, and how much it leveraged   
   the Solaris environment.  For instance, something that makes   
   heavy use of zones, SMF, ZFS, doors, the management stuff, etc,   
   might be much easier to move to Solaris x86 than Linux.  For   
   that matter, it may be easier to move to illumos rather than   
   Linux.   
      
   	- Dan C.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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