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- Linux Athena workstations increasingly deliver superior performance at a much lower cost
- Vendors target Linux as their primary Unix-based desktop platform for both commercial and open-source third-party software and support
- The high cost of developing a custom Solaris distribution with diminishing resources became prohibitive
- As a desktop operating environment, Sun Solaris has suffered from declining popularity and lack of industry/higher education adoption
- Standardizing on a single, Linux-based Athena desktop platform lets MIT leverage community efforts in software packaging, user interface development, and hardware integration
- IS&T can deploy, maintain, and support more machines in MIT's student computing environment with reduced resources
Info title Support for Sun Solaris Athena Desktops Ends Summer 2009 As the four year life cycle comes to a close, IS&T wants to remind you that this summer marks the end of life for the few remaining Sun Solaris Athena systems in the public student cluster environment as well as those Sun Solaris Athena systems deployed to departments, labs, and centers as part of the Athena program.
Timeline
- Summer 2005: Initial communications about "Solaris sunset"; IS&T stops renewing Sun Solaris Athena workstations except by special request
- Summer 2006, 2007, 2008: Renewals of DLC and public student cluster workstations replace Sun Solaris Athena machines with Athena Linux systems
- Summer 2008: Analysis of Solaris-only third-party software packages and possible alternatives
- Spring 2009: Remaining Sun Solaris workstations come up for renewal
- Summer 2009: Remaining Sun Solaris workstations in public student clusters and most DLC Sun Solaris Athena systems are replaced with Athena Linux systems
- Fall 2009: Remaining DLC Sun Solaris Athena systems are replaced with Linux Athena systems
- IAP 2010: Athena Sun Solaris dialup systems (athena.dialup.mit.edu, x.dialup.mit.edu) are replaced
- IAP 2010: Sun Solaris Athena systems in 37-318 ("holdout cluster") are replaced with Linux Athena systems
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