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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."
Sun is trying to put Solaris features into linux.
This strikes me as a very bad move. Why would you improve "competing" products. Now addmitedly it will help them sell more solaris machines but given the open source nature of linux wouldnt this mean the improvements could be relatively ported to intel...effectively shooting themselves in the foot.
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
This is at least as much about Linux as it is about competing with IBM and HP. IBM released AIX 5L where the L stands for Linux - they tried to re-implement as much of the linux environment as possible in the AIX kernel and include a bunch of GPL utilities. HP has got a linux porting environment or something like that which is mostly a port of glibc and headers plus utilities to HP-UX 11i. All three vendors have the same goal, to keep their proprietary unix from being completely replaced by linux.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
IBM did this with AIX a year or so ago, for 5L. You can (theoretically) compile any Linux application on AIX without any source code modification, and 5L ships with tons of Linux/GNU tools now, a lot of which are installed by default. Linux is suddenly (and rather quickly) becoming more than just a buzzword in the Real World (i.e. not just Internet companies.)
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
This is a refreshing change of direction for Sun, but it may be too late in some instances -- as we all know, many companies are now phasing out their Sun hardware for inexpensive Linux-based solutions
But in the end, Solaris is still better than Linux on big iron, and there's more margin in big iron. While SPARC is on the way out for the workstation market, I think it'll be around for a long time for $20k+ servers, and so will solaris.
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
Linux can't come close to this kind of setup, and I doubt it will anywhere in the near future. Now admittedly, Linux is hurting Sun in a big way. Sun hardware is damn expensive. But we need that kind of hardware here in our shop, and Linux simply won't cut it.
Sun is doing this because Linux is hurting them on low end hardware, not because Linux is in any way better than Solaris for anything other than skinning your desktop.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
Well, Solaris sucks compared to Linux in the ease of use and ability to script your work easy, man pages, utilities, ... and many more aspects.
What makes you say that?
You're using CDE, aren't you?
You're aware that OpenWindows will happily run any window manager, right? And that any utilities you want to install will almost definitely build straight out of the box? And that you can use NetBSD's Zoularis if you want package management?
At least, you must know about http://www.sunfreeware.com/, I hope?
Solaris is actually a very good OS for a workstation. Its X implementation is really fast. Granted, the window manger they ship completely blows, but nobody in their right mind would ever user CDE anyhow.
Give it a chance before you just presume it's crap because it looks like crap on the surface.
Do you have a
if they integrate GPL code fron Linux into their OS
Instead of integrating Linux code into Solaris, what Sun needs to do, rather, is to implement some of the nicer features and interfaces of Solaris into the Linux kernel, making Linux look more like Solaris.
I mean, it already does in a lot of ways and, to be sure, they'll have to contend with differences of opinion from the benevolent dictators that control the Linux kernel (eg, POSIX threads debate), glibc, etc.
But it's in Sun's best interest to pave a smooth superhighway upgrade path from Linux to Solaris for users that grow beyond their x86 hardware.
Also, with their ownership of Cobalt, they could really make a pressing low end solution of Java on Linux/x86 to build flavored servers using open source interfaces without tying clients into a OurOneSizeFitsAllYourNeeds scheme. Then, customers wanting more complex business logic could opt for slicker building environment that Sun could sell.
The other hardware route that Sun could take is to build an x86 system with the hardware reliability that has been lacking, especially compared to SPARC systems. Linux gives you a UNIX OS with plenty of nines, there's no excuse for the hardware to crap out as much as it does, especially for servers.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This is the sort of thing where the GNU/Linux distinction becomes significant. It isn't very clear about precisely what is being copied/encorporated, but if they want to easily run software from 'Linux', they will need pieces of both.
For anything remotely shellish, they will likely need the GNU file-utils and text-utils. This would, IMHO, greatly improve Solaris anyway. They already include bash, gcc, and emacs (though they do ship their own shell and compiler as default) and are already planning to include GNOME.
In short, Solaris already includes massive parts of GNU.
Now Linux is a somewhat different issue. Duplicating kernel APIs is pretty new (by Sun of Linux, that is). It shouldn't be that big a deal, though -- there is still POSIX underlying everything.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Given that Solaris has versioning in its dynamic loader I'd be willing to bet they will add Linux API's to Solaris.
Solaris already has most of BSD's API's if you know where to look so its not too much of a leap to add Linux versions as well.
Solaris is well ahead of BSD and Linux in most kernel technologys, its main drawback is ooey, chooey GUI stuff and thats probably what they are actually going to try and make "compatable".
Look at most major open source packages older than 3 years and you'll see Solaris already is supported, its only in the more recent packages that Solaris isn't fully supported and usually because the people developing the packages don't know where to look in Solaris' API's; i.e. which header files and librarys to use.
1) An "opensource" version of the Solaris
:)
kernel with the ability to have more kernel drivers (that will make it run also on my crappy hardware)
2) Compliance to the Linux File Hierarchy Standard
3) Apt-Get and DPKG as standard packaging structure
4) An installer that allows you a better set-up (it is soo anally retentive and has less options... even OpenBSD is easier to setup)
5) Phase out Csh for Bash
6) XFree as standard XWindow implementation
7) Kde 3.0 as standard desktop
8) NTSysV-style Init scripts
9) Solaris Manpages donated to LDP
10) See the author of Solaris Format utility walking on hot coals. (Unless he acknowledges to say here on Slashdot frontpage that there is nothing better than mk2efs+gnufdisk)
If you think that I would better use Debian for all the stuff, think twice: having Solaris TOO as an alternative Operating System/Kernel and community only enriches Unix and helps to stress better development practice (for portability) and research for alternate solution. That's why Unix still wins on Windows
The problems are more in the utilities that are missing some of the more useful switches, man pages that lack behind the linux ones usually, problems with handling symlinks and hardlinks until 2.8 and other minor things that just get on your nerves with time.
Of course, I can use the GNU utilities, but I cannot write a script using them, because I cannot rely on customer having them installed so I just have to deal with the solaris's crappy ones anyway... do you get the point?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Well the use KDE if you want. Or if you want Gnome. Nothing is limiting you from making it shiny on the surface but you lack of effort. Matter of fact on Solaris 9 Sun is dropping CDE iirc.
I know I will also take my lumps for this, but for big data centers solaris is ALOT better under the hood. It expodentially scales in perforamce up to 72 processors and then linerally up to 108. Sure you can make linux clusters and the like, but for rock solid stability on big iron you go with solaris.
Having said that having the linux apis available for solaris is a good thing. Hopefully this is better than the Linux Port kit sun released, that thing failed HARD.
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
"Linux is where Solaris was five or 10 years ago."
You make your own cynical comment : )
What exactly is it about SysV cp, mv, tar, awk, ls et al that makes them so much more valuable than their GNU equivalents?
Sun has no idea how to address Linux. However, if Sun were to replace all possible SysV components in Solaris with their GNU equivalents, they would be much farther down the road towards a free OS than the Sun Community Source License ever got them. This would at least give them some short-term PR, plus cutting development costs.
I really don't understand why every UNIX distribution isn't making these moves. If I were to say that 90% of the GNU UNIX utilities could replace the proprietary components with no visible effect to the OS, would that be a conservtative estimate?
Sun could go even further by wrapping Red Hat Linux around the Solaris kernel, and scaling Red Hat onto an e15k.
And, if Sun were to take the step of open-sourcing the Solaris kernel, Sun could put an end to the question of enterprise UNIX on any Intel platform - Sun takes all.
Come on, guys, wake up! You're asleep at the wheel!
Generally however we've found that the cost of open sourcing code for a proprietary product is non-trivial. I know it seems counter-intuitive but consider this: the reality is you can't just toss code over the fence.
Open-Sourcing Solaris is non-trivial, she explain it in her answers. But working on already open-sourced coded is not. It benefit both Sun AND the Linux community because Sun's change will get back to the community and it benefit sun because they have a very solid base to work on.
Sun's position on Linux has long been friendly, since we see it as a commodity unix variant which has been very successful at growing the community of Unix users.
I wonder how much "has long been" really is, but it's not the point. I found it is rather honest on their part to say it that way. The first 8nix variant I saw was Mandrake 6.0 or somehing like that. I felt in love with it and since I had the chance to deploy aaplication on Solaris a couple of time. So the comment makes sense, Linux has a lot of visibility and it happens sometimes that it is what brings users to the realm of Unixes. So, even from a marketing point of view, it all make sense to adopt it. It gives them free publicity because of their implication with Linux. And afterward, it benefits them because they can either sell more Solaris or just more server, even with Linux on it instead of Solaris, they make te buck with thehardware.
All that being said, they had to previously (well, they have to) "support" both Linux AND Solaris and port appliation to both platform. By trying to standardise both, they keep the previous;y stated benefits, and they do a cut in the devellopment budget.
And in the end, it benefits us to. That's is the way I would like all business to work. Make your own business, cleanly, and work WITH the community. It can only do good, both for the business and to the consumer/user/geek/etc etc...
I'd rather be sailing...
This move is good for Linux, is good for Sun, its good for IBM it good for HP and it is Bad for Microsoft. When you try to talk to middle managment about using Unix systems they come up with the excuse that there is little software for that platform. And Comerical Developers will more likely program for MS Stuff becuase that is where the market share is, ms is reported to have between 30-45% Marketshare), Now Add the big UNIX guys Combined make up about 50% of the market share all start playing nice with each other, Sure they are compeating against each other but they try to make a better product the the other guy, And agreeing on a Linux format API. Why Linux because Linux is not owned by any company so you are not giving one company a head up on the other. With a simular API style it is easier for Comerical Programmer to make programs for the different platforms so say I made FooBar Server program on my Linux box that the source code can port super easy to a Solaris, HPUX, AIX box it a good thing because my FooBar Server can be accessed on 50% of the servers.
Consumers get the benefit because there are more and cheaper programs available for their Platform. And they can choos the type of *X platform they want to use.
The UNIX companies get extra insurence that there is a chance that they can get repeat business form there Customers. And have the advantage of more software for their platform.
Smaller Developers and Support personal get the advantage of easy comunication between the different Unix systems.
But it will hurt the following people.
Microsoft. Becuase they are being "more" seporated from the curent standards. And being shunned my more third party developers.
Windows only programers. But it is there fault for not following the real standards. And opening there mind into more cross platform development.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They realize Linux is popular and are building a bridge between their own high end stuff and more low end linux stuff. They are also improving their chances of being able to bail on Solaris and switch to Linux if that need arises in the next five or ten years. They also want to bring things like SunONE to Linux so SunONE will gain share over