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Sun Works to Converge Linux and Solaris
Jucius Maximus writes "A new change has appeared in Sun's strategy as reported by CNET. Instead of dismissing Linux as inferior, it is now trying to integrate elements of Linux into Solaris for easier porting of applications. This looks like a step in the right direction for Linux acceptance in the professional server market."
IBM's AIX 5L has Linux integration...available now.
The "L" stands for Linux Affinity.
You can't be serious. Scalability and SMP that actually works, a working VM and scheduler subsystem, a filesystem that doesn't destroy itself, superior networking stack and NFS code...the list goes on and on. Are you naive or just stupid?
It's fast and stable, and yet it sucks? What more could you want? Uhhh, hello! CDE is NOT Solaris. It's merely a front-end, much like Gnome, KDE, et al are front-ends. You can put Gnome on Solaris and suddenly it's just as shiny as Linux. Moron.
You're kidding, right?
One of our Sun servers here has *28* UltraSparcs and 28 GB of RAM. How many CPUs can Linux support, 4? How much RAM, 4 GB? Not to mention that Solaris has NFS support that actually works well. And what do you mean "filesystem support"? Are you saying that being able to read/write FAT32 is something to crow about?
Linux is not in the same league as Solaris for anything other that ease of use.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
The only thing that Linux can't do is manage that spec on x86.
Max processors? 16 in stock kernel, 38 in some RH patches.
Memory? 64GB using PAE means that it should handle 28GB in a better system.
Other bits? Yeah, has drivers. What? You think those drivers don't work?!?
Funny. Yet another sheep praising Linux without a clue. If you'd been paying attention, or knew anything about Linux, you would have realized that the 2.4 series has had a problem with everything the previous poster mentioned.
There have been serious problems with almost every kernel in the 2.4 series, and the 2.2 series kernels were slow as hell.
Really, what do you think you're accomplishing by lying about Linux's shortcomings?
In theory it should be feasible (Wine proves it can be done even for two completely different systems).
In practice I wonder how much overhead you are going to pay (I keep hearing that system calls on Solaris are much more expensive - and consider that each system call in UML in turn would be implemented as several system calls to the hosting system).
GUI shouldn't be a problem: interactive applicatione are usually 99% idle anyways, and using them should be as simple as an "export DISPLAY=..."
OTOH, I/O bound processes probably would be penalized too much, and it would be a good idea to execute then directly on the hosting system.
In the end, if the ability to be root in your very own "partition" is worth the (hypotetic) additional overhead, I'd say "why not?" Of course, some numbers are needed here...
I guess they can join IBM in the ol' "Spiral of Death" eh?
Puh-leeze. IBM has wholeheartedly embraced Linux and is stronger than ever.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Here's the configuration for our largest server:
HOSTNAME: grande, OS: SOLARIS 5.8, MACHINE TYPE: E6500 , USER: Server
MEMORY: 28GB, SWAP: 9GB, PROCESSORS: 28 400MHZ, DISK: Fibre Channel Raid 136GB
Nothing, in comparison to 2 E10K's I've played with last week. And you know what? That is nothing to GS320 with 256GB RAM and 32 CPUs, which had Linux running on it (check linux-kernel mailing lists).
Bottom line is - Linux runs on big hardware. It's just that you never tried it.
"Apparently you are, since Linux has all of these things. "
Ugly, bad working, not made for anything serious implementation, yes, but for serious work you need a really good OS like solaris.
Gee, adding Linux compatibility to a proprietary Unix. Isn't that exactly what Big Blue has done with AIX 5L?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
His point is that they work a hell of a lot better under solaris than linux, and i think he is right. Linux does have advantages over solaris but not in these areas.