Linux Versus Everything

by Jim Frost
September 30, 1999

Note: This is a response to an article (whose source I can no longer recall) discussing how Sun's upcoming release of a "free" version of Solaris was going to kill Linux.

Ignoring for a minute that Solaris is already free for a lot of people, it still wouldn't make it.

Why not? It's not a matter of software at all. It's a matter of hardware.

First, my basic assumption: People don't really care which computer system they run so long as it gets the job done. If it works well enough they will decide by price. Sun beat Apollo and DEC not by having better software (even today's Solaris is a pale shadow of Domain in all sorts of ways) but by selling fast machines cheap. SunOS was bare-bones to say the least. But Sun sold their Sun3 boxes at prices the other guys couldn't match, and then they slam-dunked them with the SPARCstation, providing three times the performance at the same price.

The "fast machines cheap" theme runs decades long in the computer world. Remember: DEC beat IBM not by having better stuff but by selling it for less.

We're seeing it happen again. The Intel and the PC manufacturers are building boxes using mainstream hardware that are the equal of some pretty expensive hardware just a couple of years back. Sure, Sun's stuff got faster too but that's not the point: the point is that people who couldn't have dealt with a PC before can now use them to get their job done. So why pay more?

PCs are cheap and up to all but the toughest tasks -- and they're getting faster and more reliable and even cheaper all the time. Lots of people, like myself, who were exclusive SPARC users for years now use PCs because they provide much better bang for the buck. So long as the PC is fast enough to get the job done it doesn't much matter that the SPARC has the performance edge.

In the not-so-distant future the SPARC will become untenable for Sun; the R&D costs will continue to climb while the number of chips they can amortize the cost over will drop due to increasing penetration by Intel-based systems. Sun will get pushed ever upward towards the tip of the pyramid of users, those few who buy the fastest machines, and will have to charge more and more for those machines just to break even.

This theme is familiar too: Sun did it to the supercomputer companies. Thinking Machines? Cray? Gone. All of the specialized supercomputer companies are gone, their markets dwindled to the point where the business was untenable.

I think we can take as a given that whatever wins in the workstation/server space will win on Intel-based hardware. It has such a huge user base that they have the most R&D resources and can spread it amongst the most user. Now the question is: is Solaris good enough on Intel hardware to beat Linux or other contenders?

Today that answer is emphatically "no". Solaris scales better and performs pretty well but it just doesn't support that much hardware. Linux runs on everything while Solaris is, well, picky. You really want top-grade stuff to run Solaris. Linux runs on that piece of junk clone 486 box with the weird CD-ROM. Or any clone box you happen to find in the pages of Computer Shopper.

What that means is that the market for Linux is way, way larger than that for Solaris. Sun could fix that, but it'll take years and cost a fortune. Linux is getting that support for free. And even if Sun makes the investment they can't beat Linux on price.

I've long wondered why Sun keeps bashing on Microsoft. It must just be for the PR. You see, Microsoft is not Sun's problem. Intel is Sun's problem. Linux just makes that problem worse.

So: All else being equal, Linux would probably win because it's faster on common hardware and supports more (read: cheaper) hardware and Sun can't really afford to make Solaris competitive.

But all else is not equal. You see, Sun doesn't make their money on software. Never did; if you needed any proof of that the Solar System fiasco really removed all doubt. Sun makes their money on hardware and they're in trouble because PC hardware is decimating their sales at the low-end and rapidly encroaching on midrange. Over the next few years Intel-based hardware will scale well up into Sun's performance spectrum and will do it at a price Sun cannot afford to match.

Sun can't afford to give away a version of Solaris that might accelerate that. Hell, they can't even afford to sell a version of Solaris that might accelerate that. Solaris/x86 was supposed to be a hole card if they had to jump off of SPARC. But Linux blindsided them. Now all their competitors have a high-quality UNIX too, and they don't even have to pay anyone else for the right to sell it.

So: Sun can't win this. They can't compete in the PC space against companies that are accustomed to razor-thin margins. They can't give away any kind of seriously supported Solaris on the PC because it'll just chop up their market even faster. And the PC is encroaching, fast. At some point they simply won't be able to afford to do Solaris development anymore, free or otherwise.

Lots of people are claiming that open source will rule the world because it's open. No, that's not it at all. Open source will rule because it's cheap. As it turns out "open" and "cheap" are interrelated in this case, but the important point is that the hardware companies don't have to pay a software tax.

For all practical purposes Microsoft is successful because they allow vendors to outsource the OS development, spreading R&D costs out over many vendors. That was true of UNIX, too, once upon a time. Well, Linux is the mother of all outsourcing operations and that will make it a smash hit. It is not only low-cost, it's zero-cost.

Linux gives the PC manufacturers - particularly Compaq and Dell - the possibility of competing head-to-head with Sun on functionality but without any of the software R&D costs that Sun has to bear with Solaris. With super-low software costs and the ability to undercut Sun seriously on hardware these PC vendors are going to beat Sun silly.

Some may argue that scalability problems will keep Linux out of the game indefinitely. I don't think so; it'll slow it down in the near term, but not much. Linux' scalability is improving at an unbelievable pace. It did in the last two years what it took Sun five to do with Solaris, and that was without significant vendor support. Linux will likely scale as well as Solaris inside of two years.

And that's why Solaris can't possibly beat Linux. Not now, anyway, and it probably never could have.

But all of this is just a specific case of a more important point that you should keep in mind whenever you're thinking of Linux-versus-whatever. Linux has effectively devalued server OS software to the point where it's not worth spending a lot of money on anymore. That is great for the consumer but it's bad for proprietary server OS vendors. It's certainly going to dent Microsoft's plans, but it's really going to hurt Novell. And you'd have to be blind to miss the fact that it's going to devalue it elsewhere too; the desktop PC is probably immune, but only because it's so late in its life and there's a lot of momentum.

Food for thought.
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