Ian Murdock, the father of Debian, is joining Sun Microsystems, to head up the company's operating systems platform strategy.

He says in his blog (http://ianmurdock.com/2007/03/19/joining-sun/) that "everything I know about computing I learned on those Sun workstations" in the computer science building at Purdue University in Indiana.

Murdock is leaving the Linux Foundation for his new billet and is giving broadbrush hints for what he'll be getting up to:

"You can probably guess from my background and earlier writings that I'll be advocating that Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be competitive; that while as I believe Solaris needs to change in some ways, I also believe deeply in the importance of backward compatibility; and that even with Solaris front and center, I'm pretty strongly of the opinion that Linux needs to play a clearer role in the platform strategy."

We guess that usability crack means getting a Solaris install down from a day to about an hour.

The fresh Solaris blood will be welcomed after Sun lost a number of top (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/22/sun_solaris_exit/) execs, who we understand had a smashing going away party last week.

Founded by Murdock in 1993, the Debian Project in 1993 is probably the most significant non-commercial Linux distro in use today. And the name? Murdock's wife's name is Deb and he is Ian, so ... ®

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