Re: [cobalt-developers] Re: EOL Product Info

[Anders <andersb@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> Yes I am sure. Look at the new Cobalt products since Sun bought Cobalt.
> What new products? Exactly my point. The 550 was in development prior to
> the acquisition.

Not surprisingly, since it's a rather "quick port" from the Qube 3 ?
(all in good spirit, since the first RaQ was a port from Qube 2700)

> So Sun obviously had no plans to release any new Cobalt products. If
> they had, they would have been out by now.

They had the hardware. They're now selling it as the "Sun LX50"...
(without the Cobalt interface, but with RedHat Linux 7.2 on instead)

Half of the available material still says "Sun Cobalt LX50 server".

> Yes, I had a hour conversation with Sun's Linux Developer relations
> dept. Sun is very serious and committed to Linux.

Somehow, I find that hard to believe. Everything they've shown so far
has been quite the opposite. "Sun Linux 5.0" was a cruel joke, for sure.
 
But it's nice to have Linux as a supported Java platform, these days.

> Suns stance on Cobalt was the complete opposite. Basically there is no
> more Cobalt. They color still lives on, but that's about it.

"The color" ? Does that mean we'll get another LX50 offering ? :-P
More blue hardware without the software to make it special...

> Nope, the control station still lives, and supposedly can control
> LX50's. I can't seem to find anything saying that the control station is
> also EOL. Anyone?

The control station can monitor the LX50 and push an RPM or two.
Nothing really special, and nothing one can't find elsewhere...

Not EOL yet. Although it does run on RaQ 4 hardware, if that is a clue ?
(it'll probably last as long as the RaQ 550 and Sun LX50 does, though)

> Hopefully the will do something beneficial to the Linux world with the
> existing GUI and admin stuff?

Hopefully. After all, Linuxconf/Webmin needs all the GUI help they can get.
(being extremely technical and hopelessly ugly, as they after all are)

See http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/linuxconf | http://www.webmin.com

> So Cobalt as a company, releasing new products, and supporting current
> ones is dead.

The best thing to hope for is Sun doing the right thing and opening up
the source code, so that the users can help themselves to updating it...
Most of the server software is third party open source already,
but not the Cobalt graphical user interface and "special sauce"?

The most interesting being the Sausalito generation of course,
including CCE, UIFC, BlueLinQ packages and the Active Monitor.
(http://ftp.cobalt.sun.com/pub/developer/TechNotes/DevGuide.pdf)
The rest is "just" standard RedHat Linux, albeit pre-configured.

--anders