Well...

Around 1998-2000 my dad made a little business out of setting up linux servers on commodity hardware in my hometown. Primitive social networks, LAN provider servers, mail servers all worked just fine. Not without some involved convincing, and tinkering, and kernel patching but they did work.

One or two of the companies later became regional champions, running 100s of linux/x86/dell machines.

None of them would be able to afford a proper Sun server. Sun would never bother itself with these original tiny contracts.

It dont think Sun even stood a chance in this game. They couldnt even realize this happening!