Note that the rise of Linux was caused by the rise of low cost, high performance x86 CPUs. There was a period of time when it was obvious you could get much more bang for the buck from x86, but there wasn't a viable OS to use (for servers). Yes NT existed, and we shipped binaries for NT but it was always an awkward fit to run server software on NT. So Linux, which at the time was kind of crappy (unreliable, didn't have threading) was improved by various vendors' efforts to the point where they could re-target their server products into PC-class hardware. Sun was sunk by the people who were downstream in the value chain leading back to Sun's revenue working hard to design Sun out of the loop, by means of PC-class hardware and the Linux OS.