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Solaris Might Become LSB-compliant
lvv writes "Register: according to Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, Solaris - one of the most proprietary Unixes, might become LSB compliant OpenSolaris. Also some info about future of Solaris desktop (Gnome)."
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For a second there I thought it said "LSD-compliant"... how cool would it have been to be able to hear the video output and see the audio output?
you gotta be kidding! I wanna see this!
C|N>K
Thats pretty cool. you mean, open as in.... well, let's not start that again.
Da comp cant tell u da emotional story.It can give u da exact mathematical design,but whatz missin is da eyebrows. -FZ
I use Solaris on a daily basis at work and love it! This would be great if it happens. With it's simple interface and usability I could see OpenSolaris becoming very popular. I am going to follow this one closely.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
hang on, solaris, becomeing linux compliant???? eh???????? i thought solaris, being UNIX was posix complient, and so didnt need to be LSB compliant. hang on wont this turn solaris into a linux clone, but linux is a unix clone................ i'm gonna go and lie down, i think i'm dreaming
dybia felly dwi a hampster (i think therefore i am a hampster)
:-))
--
That, that is, is.
That, that is not, is not.
That, that is, is not that, that is not.
That, that is not, is not that, that is.
Solaris - one of the most proprietary Unixes
I'm going to take issue with this statement. Solaris isn't open source by any means, but it's a free download on SPARC and until recently Intel platforms, and you can download the source after agreeing to Sun's license. You can make changes to the source, recompile anything you damn well please, and contribute changes back to Sun (I have done so myself), the only thing you can't do is redistribute it. It's not on par in the open nature of Linux or FreeBSD, but compare this to DEC/Compaq/HP Tru64 or HP-UX or AIX where you pay a huge sum of money for a binary CD. I'd hardly call that the most proprietary.
Is your browser retarded?
I think that this will finally earn them the right to increment a Major Version Number!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In another fantastic display of pandering, Schwartz noted, "OpenSolaris will be based on UnitedLinux, because that's the direction everybody's going, isn't it? Isn't it?"
i thought solaris, being UNIX was posix complient, and so didnt need to be LSB compliant.
Any LSB conforming operating system can use source RPM packages that meet the LSB specs. This should expand the selection of free software that runs on the Solaris operating environment as well as make it easier to install.
All your Linux Standard Base are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A lot of us like to accuse Sun of being no better than Microsoft at a lot of things. This may be true on some level, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. While their motivation may be purely profit-driven, at least they are taking the approach of "Linux is getting popular, so we should be more like it", rather than "We need to squeeze every last $0.01 out of our locked-in customers".
Lately, Sun seems to be establishing a good track record for openness. They've created a fairly decent platform-independent programming language and development environment, and have made their Solaris environment look more like the other Unices out there. They are starting to come out with Linux products, or at least are talking about them. Even the source code to Solaris 7 used to be available for purchase on CD-ROM (although they may have backed away from that).
I hope that this is more than just a bid to recapture lost market share, but a real committment to play fair and adhere to open, published, and somewhat popular standards.
that and the fact that they've run out of decimal space for SunOS 5.X. And suits don't speak hex.
Is there anything wrong with a 5.10.0 release? That's how most free software projects seem to handle minor versions past 10.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"2 things to come out of Berkley: Unix and LSD"
all this time on 56k to download solaris 9 images for my Ultra 60, blew several days on configuring it to my liking and now sun has to go and do this... =P Oh well, I suppose I mucked up my sol9 install enough to warrant a reinstall anyways =)
-- AcquaCow
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
Oh...my...friggin'...god. Please, people, DO NOT CLICK THE MOTHER-FUCKING LINK!!!
Proprietary: Having a good OS and making money at it
No. Software that produces revenue is called "commercial". The term "proprietary", when used in the context of copyrighted works such as software, refers to licensing that restricts your users.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Please mod down if you you have mod points
So in other words. Because of the influence of Linux. What couldn't happen before will. The unices are going to be more and more unified. Shame it took domination by a monopoly and a white knight out of nowere to make it happen.
Is Solaris already compliant with all the other bits?
Sigs are bad for your health.
What does this have to do with least significant bits?
Solaris doesn't make Sun any money. It's the hardware that keeps them afloat. Every developer they've got working on Solaris is a salary that doesn't go to working on the money-making hardware.
Running Linux as their main system allows them to get an OS for free. Granted, it's not quite as polished or stable as Solaris, but they don't have to apply any development effort, people are willing to give their work away for free!
Having seen the other comments posted so far, I would have to disagree with this post.
look up the meaning of the word `arrogance'.
dell doesn't compete in sun's market segments, nor could they if they wanted to.
I think it's the fact that Linux apps will run almost out of the box on Solaris that makes the move wise. This means Sun now has the thousands of Linux software developers as a resource.
LSD and BSD come from Berkly.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Sorry folks, but the above link is really not one that you want to see right before dinner.
Posting without A/C, because maybe someone might actually believe me, therefore not clicking, and therefore being saved the pain.
workstations...it is the workstations that give Sun the cash.....dell can compete in the workstation market with sunvery easily.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Here's a clue for free: The people that buy Sun, for the most part, aren't buying Sun because they're locked in by apps.
Solaris isn't open source by any means, but it's a free download on SPARC and until recently Intel platforms, and you can download the source after agreeing to Sun's license. You can make changes to the source, recompile anything you damn well please, and contribute changes back to Sun (I have done so myself), the only thing you can't do is redistribute it.
... because we still have legacy machines from when that was all the tools would run on. But the simulation farm was ported to Linux long ago. New machines are PCs and the Sun boxes will run - mostly as legacy desktops - until they die or become too painful to maintain.
And if they'd done that ten years ago, when I (and others) had a significant need to hack up some min or features and no budget to buy into their source distribution package it wouled have been wonderful - and might have headed off the obsolescence of Solaris.
Now, with Linux (+ GNU utilities + X + Gnome|KDE), and Free/Open/Net BSD, and Mach, and the rest of the Open Source world, it's too little too late.
I've reverse-engineered OSes on IBM, Control Data, DEC, Mac, and Altos when useful to add features or custom hardware. But with Spark's RISC instruction set and Sun's insistance on keeping both hardware and software closed, the cost/benefit balance was tipped.
I retired my last Solaris home machine on Dec 31, 1999, rather than upgrade it for Y2K.
At work:
- The serious networking software development is now done on NetBSD and variants. BSD desktops.
- The ASIC development is still partly on Solaris
- And of course the administrators are still on Windoze - though it wouldn't surprise me to see them move to Linux in the near future.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think you're making a false assumption... If Solaris becomes LSB-compliant then it can install any LSB-compliant packages just as easily as on any other platform, but Sun could still release their software in a Solaris-specific manner.
.deb which takes advantage of specific Debianities that other LSB-compliant distros don't have. (I'll admit the analogy is weak because Debian's .deb package is well documented, but the concept still holds.)
For example, Debian is LSB-compliant (or working at becoming) by supporting RPMs in addition to its default packaging system. Any LSB-compliant software will install fine (once Debian's compliancy is finished), but you could still release a
that if they become LSB compliant, all Solaris apps will run almost out of the box on Linux
Not necessarily. Making the OS LSB compliant does not magically make all the pre-existing applications Linux-compatible. Just like you can run MS-DOS programs on Windows, but you can't run Windows programs on MS-DOS without Windows (or loadlin+Linux+Wine, but does that count?)
Now, imagine, you in your uber-geekness, can sell a SUN box to your boss, AND you can run your linux toys on it.
You geeko's should be crying with joy and sending McNally your first born. For the first time, you can bring LINUX in the FRONT door. With salesmen carrying the boxen!
Yes, and my housecats will be beating olympic sprinters any day now. It's just a matter of training.
While I'm at it, I've been wanting to see about those flying pigs in the backyard. I figure they'll learn faster if I toss them off the roof.
Hell, these pigs will be taking marketshare from the major air carriers a long time before Dell competes with Sun in any market.
Actualy if they are LSB complient it mean all those hords of Linux developers can now have skills ported over to Solaris. Solaris developers arn't going to chuck their Solaris experience just to develop for Linux. Sun is a hardware company and as such Solaris runs better on Sun boxes expecialy if programs are optimized to the hardware. Think of it as layers. There is teh LSB layer that can be used to compile Linux code out of the box on Solaris. Now there is the Solaris layer that has optimized syscalls that developers can use to get more performance out of their program. What Sun is doing is making sure that if you need the power that a Sparc chip can give you, you are not going to overlook it just because XYZ program will need some investment to port to Solaris. Sun has had Linux binary compatabiliy for a long time now. LSB complience just goes one step further.
RPM is provided on the Solaris Companion CD so you can already use source RPMs with Solaris.
Stick Men
MAybe i'm not _geek_ enough but i really didn't think there are levels of proprietaryness. Is not something either proprietary or not proprietary? "Wow this is the most useless software i've ever used." .. responce, "You mean it's more useless than than the other useles software you have no use for, wow that's damn useless..?"
My responce to the article, "Wow that's damn proprietary."
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
I can spel - honust. Must proof-read, must proof-read ...
Sigs are bad for your health.
So does that mean that Windows can become LSB compatible? Microsoft could modify Internix so that it includes all the required directories, or someone can adapt Cygwin/Xfree86, which is already complete enough to compile run many X applications.
nt
Oh my, what an idiot you are!
A C compiler is NOT an installation tool for Solaris. Solaris has a modular kernel. You do not need to recompile the kernel when you make configuration changes.
This has been true since Solaris 2.0 (a.k.a., SunOS 5.0).
This is way a enterprise-grade operating environement is supposed to work.
er... excuse me, but Dell makes servers. They already compete with Sun. What do you think prompted the LX-50?
For that matter, the other common misconception is that Scott McNeally's apparent over-emphasis on the dangers of M$oft and billy-boy is misplaced because presumably M$oft makes desktop stuff while Sun makes server stuff so why should there be a conflict. Well, M$oft also makes server stuff, plus M$oft shows zero willingness to cooperate with anybody on anything. If you make a desktop system, eventually you have to cooperate with the people that specialize in servers, yes? Well, their attitude isn't cooperation, but domination, so of course they're going to bump up against Sun from time to time and cause friction. I wonder if this is why EMC and NetApp are successful, because they don't try to make general purpose servers, and therefore aren't a danger to M$oft, but can concentrate in making servers that just look like disk drives.
- David
When Dell ships a pc with more than 4(8?) cpu's I'm sure Sun might care. Sun stopped being about best single cpu performance some time ago as Intel and AMD caught up and recently surpassed them, but there are things that a Sun box can do that no Intel can do.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
... I expected that I'd have both comments within 5 minutes of my posting. Call it poetic license - it's funnier this way. Good thing I beat you to the typo, eh?
Sigs are bad for your health.
Until now, Solaris has been based on MSB (Most Significant Bit) technology, which made it incompatible with many PC devices. For instance, you couldn't network a Solaris and PC machine without going to the TCP/IP level, because what would leave the Solaris machine as
11100000 00000111
woule return as
00000111 11100000
As you can tell, this was a major PITA. I, for one, am glad that I'll be able to use all my favourite hardware on my Solaris machine now.
Last post!
i will tell u what will sell
Solaris + linux on a 2000$ box
with c++ + j2ee + java development tools , easy to set up wireless netwk downloadable modelling tools plus a software publishing site for solaris + linux plus a scanner printer fax binder like the one dell is giving and i will stop buying dell/hp/rig up my own hardware for life and oh a decent broadband discount
Hello?!? Earth to afidel??? a) Who cares what Dell ships, and b) we bought our first 8-way boxes over a year ago. Blade servers are seeing increased n-way performance across multiple blades, and SGI has announced (w/ Jan availability) a 64-way Itanium box which (they say) will blow to doors off an E15k.
The world is fast catching up with the best Sun has to offer, for a HECK of a lot cheaper, and with lower service contracts to boot. (And let's not even talk about the Ultra II and its designed-for-ECC-failure modules.)
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
http://www.sunsource.net/
...and UNIX came from Murray Hill, New Jersey.
Given that Linux 2.4 and previous are very similar to SunOS 4.1.3, one could fairly say Solaris is about 10 years ahead of Linux 2.4. Linux 2.6 will be a big improvement with its new threading models, and bring Linux up to about the Solaris 2.6 level (1996) in some areas.
With Solaris 2.0 (SunOS 5.0) Sun went to a modular kernel architecture.
In 1994 Solaris supported hot addition of CPUs and memory to a running system.
In 1997 Solaris supported hot removal of CPUs and memory from a running system.
In 2000 Sun supported 1M simultaneous processes.
I will give Linux credit for supporting Intel PAE extentions. Solaris supported similar capability on Solaris with Solaris 2.6, and Intel PAE on Solaris 7.
Here's a quick howto by IBM developerWorks (in fact written by the actual chairman of the Linux Standard Base, George Kraft IV) on developing LSB-certified apps. It's got that October freshness about it...
Incidentally there's a link to a Solaris-to-Linux porting guide in the resources section of that article but LSB isn't even mentioned in that lengthy document...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
but there are things that a Sun box can do that no Intel can do
Damn straight! I've got 15 Sunblade 1000s and those fuckers go down faster than (insert vulgarity here). The Sun rep comes in every few weeks to retorque the CPUs so that we get another day or two of uptime before they crash and burn. Meanwhile, the Beowulf cluster of components dubious origin chugs away. No, the eprom patch doesn't fix it. When fate hands you bad Sunblades, make lemonade!
What version of Solaris?
What your eeprom input-device / output-device pointing to?
What your single user mode is? "1", "s" or "S"?
In default config config, with graphic monitor, Solaris will start OpenWindows.
I think he meant BSD and LSD, not Unix and LSD
I swear, sarcasm is dead.
And if you are going to clean it up, you might as well look at how other people have done it. As for going for full LSB compliance, that might be a bit overkill, and a very surprising move away from the NIH-principle Sun usually follows. But I don't think it's going to have too many negative consequences.
I read Slashdot several times a day, and maybe I shouldn't. But that's not the issue.
The issue is that more and more submissions are fakes or slashvertisements, and the quality control on the rest have gone to the dogs.
If the Slashdot community continues to be alienated in this fashion it will dry up. Oh wait, is that a new business model?
1. Alienate your viewers
2. ???
3. Profit!
/etc/hosts and /etc/netmasks are soft links too /etc/inet/hosts and /etc/inet/netmasks. It would make sense if /etc/inet was designed to store host dependant information that could be mounted via NFS. However, there are files like /etc/defaultrouter which are NOT in there, which is confusing!
/etc/netmasks file set. So if your netmasks come from NIS but your NIS server is not on the same subnet, then you are treated to a hang at bootime. /etc/nsswitch.conf to files only to get it to use that netmask, and live without a NIS distribution list. Or modify the boot script to use the one in /etc/netmasks explicitly.
There are other little quirks. Solaris does something weird when you use NIS during startup. It sets your netmask to a 24-bit default before trying to find an NIS server via broadcast even if you have the
You have to change the netmasks line in
Also I hate how interfaces are identified via IP explictly (there is no way to assign two interfaces the same IP address, it balks and says device busy) This may simplify routing code but it makes designing interesting network topolgies more difficult (and the related hosts files, YOW)
I could go on... but I like Solaris more than any other commercial Unix so I shouldn't be TOO hard on them. ^_^
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Two xSDs came out of Berkeley, L and B.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
- Versions have been from 2.6 to 8; haven't tried it in 9 yet.
- Not screen/keyboard, IIRC
- 1, s & S are equivalents. I've either started it as reboot -- -s from the OS or boot -s from the OK prompt.
In default config, Solaris never starts openwindows. It does start dtlogin at run level 2. If it's starting any GUI at run level 1 (i.e. single user mode), it because you've changed something in the Solaris config or there's something in the"Even Sun's Linux box is no bargain; I laughed when my VAR gave me a quote."
So tell me where you will find a multi CPU intel box with SCSI devices for less money ?
1) commoditize your hardware!
2) commoditize your software!
3) ???
4) $$$!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Kelly Osbourne!
I see you on TV
You are fat and ugly.
I would rather fuck Sharon in her cancer, butt fuck her cancer colon.
I don't know - anywhere? I have a quote in my inbox right now for an equivalent dual-CPU Intel box w/ 2G for less than I can buy the LX50 even with my standard Sun discount.
And Sun upgrades are so economical, too. Witness the difference between the 'medium' and 'large' configurations -- you lose 36G of hard disk and gain 1G of memory -- for only a thousand dollars.
If you can't beat those prices, perhaps you'd allow me to start supplying some of your parts?
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Most of the 'Solaris' news that I have heard recently has been about the new movie remake so when I first saw this headline I couldn't figure out how a movie could become LSB compliant!
Apparently, the MPAA wants to give the movie a R rating for showing George Clooney's bare butt. The studio disagrees because it is not even in a sexual context and you can see just as much on network TV (ie NYPD Blue).
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AC.
where are you dude? dude when you going to call? fuck you never come on AIM. im depressed.
...the little things - like 'ls -h'.
Hooray!
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
The most effective has probably been Linux/8086 - that was a joke
that got out of hand. So far out of hand in fact its almost approaching
usability because other folks thought it worth doing - Alistair Riddoch
especially.
-- Alan Cox
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