Tuesday May 30, 2006 Ubuntu on SPARC
I can now breathe a sigh of relief because the other half of the news I have been working on with Mark Shuttleworth concerning Ubuntu GNU/Linux is now public. When the new server-oriented Ubuntu 6.06 LTS comes out next week, it will be supported on the Sun T1000 and T2000 CoolThreads servers - the new systems that use the UltraSPARC T1 to get amazingly high performance at really low energy costs. What's more, Canonical will be offering commercial support packages so you can actually take it into production.
Why Ubuntu? Well, it's by far my favourite GNU/Linux (and I'm not alone - it was the system NexentaOS GNU/OpenSolaris was built from too), it's based on the rock that is Debian and best of all the company behind it has a very Software 3.0 approach to business. As Cote is quoted as saying on TechTarget, the possibilities with Ubuntu are fascinating.
What's especially interesting is the role that OpenSPARC has played in the process. Because all the chip designs for the UltraSPARC T1 were available under the GPL, it was possible for the UltraSPARC support in Ubuntu to be completed much faster than expected. We'd been expecting it to be ready for the second half of the year, with generic SPARC support now, but the open source chips allowed the version for the T1000 and T2000 to be completed in almost half the time and thus for compatibility testing to be moved up into the release timescale - Mark has more, including huge kudos to the Linux-on-SPARC community for their amazing work, especially David Miller.
Posted by webmink
( May 30 2006, 07:43:45 PM PDT )
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