What's the Story with Solaris and M$

Daveway

macrumors 68040

Original poster

• Feb 18, 2005

• #1

I recently demoed a Sun workstation with Solaris 10 on it. I don't know much about it but it looked almost exactly like Windows XP. Is sun and Microsoft in a licensing agreement. What's the story.

 

T

Twinkie

macrumors regular

• Feb 18, 2005

• #2

You probably just saw a Windows-like windowmanager running on Solaris.

That's something about the open source zealots that have always puzzled me... for people so rabidly anti-Microsoft, they sure try hard to emulate the Windows desktop.

 

daveL

macrumors 68020

• Feb 18, 2005

• #3

Solaris 10 on x86, I take it. That's the Linux Desktop System, update 3. The whole idea is not to freak out Windows users, thus the XP desktop theme. You can customize it, if you want; it doesn't have to look that way.

Nothing dramatic going on between Sun and M$. M$ simply agreed to license Java and stop adulterating it. Sun and M$ agreed to work together on interoperable Web services standards. Nothing sinister is going on.

 

A

AlmostThere

macrumors 6502a

• Feb 19, 2005

• #4

for people so rabidly anti-Microsoft, they sure try hard to emulate the Windows desktop.

Click to expand...

The point is usually that migration to a different system is easier if the end-users have as few changes as possible in interface - keeping documents, menu structure, application shortcuts and such like makes a big difference.