Re: Solaris
SethMeister G. (seth@home.com)
Sat, 4 Oct 1997 00:52:41 -0700 (PDT)
> On Fri, Oct 03, 1997 at 12:57:43PM +0200, Andrej Presern wrote:
> > > Somewhat amusing is the way the licensing works for Solaris-x86.
> > > The same binaries are used for single and multi CPU kernels (if you like,
> > > all Solaris kernels qre built qith the __SMP__ equivalence for Linux).
> > > The difference is the _license_. Desktop is single CPU only, so putting
> > > a 2nd CPU in your box running a desktop Solaris just means you are
> > > running it in an unlicensed configuration. On, for an SMP license,
> > > you need to buy the server pack which comes with ODS, etc.
> >
> > You pay a factor of the price for the same binaries? Sounds like a
> > robbery to me..
> >
> > Andrej
> >
> Reminds me of WinNT Workstation and Server. The kernel binary is exactly the
> same, there was an obscure registery setting that MS went great lengths to
> hide that told the kernel what to act as.
This is nothing like that :) Sun is not hiding the fact that this is the
case. Is it really so outrageous? I mean, you would pay a factor of the
price for putting it on another machine, wouldn't you? What's the big
difference between doing that and adding a second processor (and getting a
caparable performace boost?).
-Seth