Sun Microsystems (SUNW) had decided to add and support certain features of the Linux open source operating system in its own Solaris product.
Reuters quotes an industry expert as saying: "Solaris is hard to set up. It doesn’t have good hardware support," said Ladislav Bodnar, founder of Distrowatch.com.
The news should lead Wall St. to believe that Sun’s server sales are still being hampered by reluctance by enterprises to use Solaris. If Solaris is a barrier and Sun is being forced to add aspects of Linux to its software suite, there is a very good chance that server sales at the company are behind plan.
Sun continues to be a sort of "flavor of the month" company, adopting and creating software that it will thinks will help its market share.
Right now, that does not appear to be working.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected].