OK, the fact that my monitor is going south on me, and the high cost of buying a nice new one (as a singular purchase), have caused me to consider giving into the impulse to setup an Intel box running Linux as my "front-end" machine. The monitor is one reason. Another reason is the obvious mindshare given Linux and the lack thereof for Solaris. All the cool new software is being targeted to Linux, with the scaps going to Solaris and other OSes like BSD. For example, the Opera browser is great. I'd buy it in a heartbeat if there were a Solaris version. I've written Opera twice, and have received basically the same response "no plans to port to Solaris". So, I'm stuck with crappy old Netscape 4.75.
This is not to say that the Solaris/SPARC experiment has failed. On the contrary, my understanding of Unix/Solaris has increased tremendously since undertaking this experiment, and it should only increase, since I intend to keep the SPARC boxes as "back-end" servers. I'll likely use the SS10 (sparky) as the TomCat server and the Ultra 1 (buzz) as the database server. I have plans to convert this site (all of it) to be totally data-driven so that I can update it from anywhere. I'll have a kick-ass development and testing environment to do so once I've got all this set up. Furthermore, the code I develop will be open to the public. I don't know about a full open-source deal (only because of administrative overhead, not because I don't believe in OS) but the code will be available to everyone. This is all a dream right now. We'll see how real it gets :-).
Anyway, here's the basic config for the machine I intend to buy:
- dual processor Intel box, probably around 600mhz on the processors
- 256M of RAM
- 32M graphics card
- 20-30G hard drive
- 19" high-quality monitor (when bought with a package these can be quite inexpensive)
I've configured a machine like this at www.pcsforeveryone.com for around $2200. I just have to wait for some revenues to start coming in from my consulting practice to make this purchase. This should happen in February of next year.
