On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 10:33:15AM +0000, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Dec 2001, cybersean3000 at yahoo.com wrote:
>> > Keep in mind that a ThinkPad with Linux is running on the
> > international space station.
>> As far as I recall, it's actually running Solaris for X86. THat's how the
> underpants gnomes are making so much money.
The flaw in this, from the underpants gnomes' POV, is that they are not
charging for Solaris licenses for up to 8 way machines now. People still buy
Sparc hardware because it and its accompanying OS form a robust operating
environment, and Sun make money on the hardware (have a look at a Sun
pricelist sometime) but the only way they make money from Solaris X86 now is
from people running >8 way Intel boxes - how many of those are there out
there ?
BTW I don't know if there is a ThinkPad with Linux on the ISS or not, but I
read in an ESA journal recently that some experiments had failed on a
mission (shuttle or ISS - I don't recall) because a notebook running Solaris
hadn't been shutdown correctly and the ensuing FS corruption meant that they
couldn't get the thing operational again. Obviously weren't running ReiserFS
then :-)
Niall
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