"Sun is putting the Intel version of its Solaris Unix
OS in the deep freeze, citing support and development costs as the
reason. There won't be an x86 version of Solaris version 9 this
year, but Sun will support existing versions for seven years,
Solaris marketing director Graham Lovell told IDGyesterday. More
charitably - or gullibly if you're being cruel - CNet interpreted
the same news as a "delay".
But as you know, the body's metabolism can be fatally impaired
by spending too long in the cold, and no version 9 this year
effectively means the end of Solaris on x86.
It's been maintained at great expense over the past nine years,
and only last October was refreshed with USB support, for example.
But Sun has only ever seen a miniscule market share as a reward,
and of course precisely no downstream hardware revenue, because Sun
doesn't sell Intel servers."
