Niagara Support and Ubuntu

[Paul Sladen]

On Thu, 18 May 2006, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:

Hi Colm,

> Sun are keen that the Niagara platform be supported by the next Ubuntu

My hunch is that if Sun send some of the following towards Canonical then
Ubuntu will definitely be *even more* supported by Ubuntu than it currently
is:

  a) Machines (and that includes prototypes, if Sun want new hardware to be
     working 100% on zero-day).
  b) Technical documents, giving details on how to drive the chipset and any
     quirks that have had to be worked around in other operating systems.
  c) Money, to pay for dedicated developer time.

Currently Ubuntu's sparc64 is a best-effort, based on the amount of
free-time (yes, his own free time) that Fabbione has.  That best-effort is
currently very good (as you've clearly found out and blogged about!), but it
could be *even* better.

You should remind Sun that there will be more orders for groovy hardware
coming their way (and you could even tell them that isn't for running
"quasi-open Java" while you're it! ;-).

Thanks for all your work in promoting Ubuntu on the new Niagara boxes in
such a cunning, subtle and successful way.  I hope it continues.

	-Paul
-- 
High on a Spanish mountain, surrounded by howling dogs.  Southampton, GB