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Sun Solaris Vs Linux: The x86 Smack-down
JigSaw writes "Tony Bourke put together a long article, benchmarking File System, System, Compilation, OpenSSL and Web Performance for both Linux and Solaris on x86 hardware. While SPARC's Solaris is said to be more optimized than its x86 counterpart on the other hand so is Linux 2.6 compared to 2.4. Solaris-x86 performed well in the tests, but Linux 2.4 seems to win most of the tests and the overall impressions."
Was Sun really serious about Solaris on x86?
The fact that they simply "give away" the OS for cheap (i actually got my copy for free from Sun) kinda makes me think they've only released the x86 version to make it "available" to more poeple.
The more people that are familiar with Solaris, in theory, the more Admins/IT staff will end up recommending SUN hardware/software at their workplace. It's a marketing strategy. Not a pervasive strategy, but a strategy nonetheless.
If you take my meaning, mr. Frodo.
do() || do_not();
If you're looking to run PHP, or Apache/Tomcat/Java (which comes pre-installed), then Solaris x86 is a solid, stable platform.
Yeah, trying to install PHP on solaris is a freakin riot. Linux wins out just based on packages alone.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
In my experience the majority of Developers don't have an in depth knowledge of OS and Hardware performance. The System Administrators almost always have a much better understanding of OS performance. The majority of developers I have worked with are Java developers. Perhaps it is different for other languages. However, shouldn't this be under a Systems Admin category?
its long been a known fact that sun has not dedicated much in terms of resources towards creating an optmized x86 solaris; in fact just a year or so ago, they declared they may not release an sol 9 for x86 at all.
honestly, id like to see how linux stacks up vs solaris on sparc iron. personal experience easily declares ******* the winner, but then again, what do i know?
(names withheld to protect the trollish)
Solaris's strength lies in scalabilitly. I have a feeling Linux/SPARC will also beat Solaris/SPARC on a single CPU machine. But keep adding CPUs and watch Solaris scale (almost) linearly!!!
This is a surprisingly good article for OSNews. Usually their reviews are limited to utterly trivial things like what the reviewer thought of the default colour scheme, or how easy it was to change the desktop wallpaper. But this one actually has some useful quantitative data in, and refers to things that workstation users actually care about, such as compile times. Whoever this chap is he should take over doing all the reviews from the girl (can't remember her name offhand) who usually does them, because she is pretty much clueless.
* from the article * Processor (2) Intel Pentium IIIs at 600 MHz, 256 KB cache Motherboard Intel L440GX+ RAM 512 MB PC133 ECC DISK (1) 9 GB Maxtor SCSI LVD SCSI Controller Adaptec AIC-7896 Dual Channel Video Cirrus Logic GD 5480 2 MB RAM *********** Was this test conducted in 1999 or 2003? ROFL. I think the hardware being tested should be modern to be representative. Throw some dual XEON systems or Athlon MPs in there. No legacy PLS!
When will the weekly Sun bashing on Slashdot end?
The first thing I do when I get a Solaris system is to install a whole heap of GNU utilities, all of which come with any of the Linux distribution.
Solaris/Intel is just a toy that grabs a few extra customers that Sun would have lost otherwise. Boy, you should see it when linux noobs get their hands on it. They get really angry when you tell them "your hardware must be listed on the Hardware Compatibility List". I've seen venomous diatribes directed at "sucky" Sun and its "sucky" OS for not having video drivers for whatever the most expensive game-playing graphics board is these days. And if they actually get the system to install and they see CDE...oh man.
I don't hang on #solaris any more, but damn we would get the same reactions over, and over, and over about Solaris/Intel.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Who bothers to use Solaris on x86? Oh yeah, idiots who don't understand the 'right tool for the job' philosophy.
But what if Solaris x86 is the right tool for the job?
It may not be often but it is at times.
Processor (2) Intel Pentium IIIs at 600 MHz, 256 KB cache
Motherboard Intel L440GX+
RAM 512 MB PC133 ECC
DISK (1) 9 GB Maxtor SCSI
I bet Solaris is designed to run on more serious hardware. I bet DOS apps will run even faster than Linux on this box, even without taking advantage of dual processor.
Meanwhile Solaris 9 for x86 (aka SunOS 5.9, as the article says - it misses the point that Solaris simply means (in Sun nomenclature) SunOS plus the windowing environment, and it once means SunOS plus openwindows, and that Solaris 1.x is SunOS 4 (BSD-based, mentioned) and Solaris 2.x is SunOS 5 (SVR4--based, which is not mentioned directly that I recall)... Er, where the hell was I? Solaris 9 is not available in a version well-optimized for x86. Because you can only relink the kernel and not recompile it, since source code is not provided, it is doomed to this fate. Redhat 9 is also something of a standard, and it happens to come with (and only support) linux kernel 2.4.20. 2.6 has many optimizations but is new. So he mentioned it because it puts both distributions on somewhat equal footing, and in fact in most benchmarks (which are overly simple, but anyway) the systems came up with similar performance when realistic options were utilized.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Solaris for x86 has always been for training or utility. Cheap or free x86 versions mean people who want to eventually admin Solaris on Sparc equipment can easily get ahold of it to try without having the capital to purchase a Sparc just for learning purposes.
The other common job for it has been as a utility/admin machine. When you have 20 Solaris Sparc servers to admin, it's just easier and more consistant to also run Solaris on the admin's workstation. Why throw on another *nix with it's own individual setup and quirks when you can run something integrated and consistant. It doesn't really matter if the admin's box is 20% slower than an equivalent Linux machine, it still works fine to admin the big iron.
For some jobs, it is the right tool. Except to idiots who don't understand the job.
at least he was lucky there where drivers. Try installing it on real server hardware, then even FreeBSD has more drivers for stuff like RAID controllers etc. Look at the Hardware Compatibility List.
If you are planning on installing Solaris in your enterprise enviroment you have to buy hardware that will work with Solaris x86 rather than the hardware you normally use. But then again, in a enterprise enviroment, I guess one would choose the Sparc platform or buy the Sun Intel hardware.
Ugh, why does everyone assume installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL is so hard on Solaris (or IRIX or AIX for that matter)?
Once you have your GNU environment configured, it's a simple matter of compiling. I haven't run into a snag doing this in over 3 years on three different commerical unices.
Here's a good link for the total newbie:
http://ampubsvc.com/~meljr/AMPS.html
I suppose you could also go to sunfreeware.com (or for IRIX, freeware.sgi.com), but learn to build the stuff yourself and you'll know what's going on, have the latest versions, and have way more flexibility. Isn't this why you're using u*nix anyway? For the flexibility? Don't let the lack of a precompiled ready-to-install package get in your way, you're not stuck in the Windows world anymore.
(end rant)
Most slashdotters won't understand or agree with this, but the large bulk of Sun's customers appreciate the fact that command-line options do not mutate over time, that the default behavior of the -foo switch is now reversed, etc, etc. The GNU coreutils maintainer has been busily ripping out all kinds of traditional functionality in the name of POSIX standardization, which would normally be a good thing if he hadn't gone way too far. (I don't give a fuck if "uniq" and "head -1" aren't full POSIX, they're in my scripts, they're in my head, and they're staying there.)
If Sun tried to make as many incompatible changes to their core utilities as the GNU utils does, somewhere upwards of 80% of the customers would just walk away.
Yes, I install GNU coreutils and all kinds of happy stuff (like a decent shell) as soon as I open up a Sun box. But I leave their versions in place so that old PATHs still get the behavior they expect to find. Everyone here loves the cutting edge, and loves to cut down anyone using version ($latest-1). Sun's primary customers aren't like that. They want stability in the core utilities across years, not new features every few weeks, or even months.
(Yes, the last 3 or 4 versions of Solaris have all shipped with Perl. It's a slightly older, stable version of Perl. There's a bunch of stuff on the freeware companion CD too, as well as sunfreeware.com. Those who want a stable Solaris get it by default. Those who want bleeding-edge tools can easily download the packages.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
> For example, when it comes to debugging threaded applications, and having a reliable debugger, they beat us every single time.
...). Most of the same functionality is available for linux but not in the mainline kernel (for really irritating reasons) so it's never there when you need it :-(
I agree. Also it's great that they ship with kernel debugging stuff (adb -k, kadb, crash,
For userland stuff I usually use gdb even on Solaris, but often times I'm forced to go back to using adb when dealing with threaded apps.
> On Linux plenty of thread-related issues are still flaky (big progress being made there)
Yes, I believe that the 2.6 kernel and the latest libc work effectively fixes this.
The other thing I like about working with Solaris is the nice set of performance monitoring tools (iostat, cputrack, cpustat, mpstat, prstat) available in the stock distribution. In my work I use these almost daily. I really miss having that level of info at my fingertips when I'm working on the linux machines.
But yeah, for most purposes I like developing on and deplying linux far more. All in all I think RH9 is a better OS than Sol9. (And I'm *not* some "linux wanker" - I've been working with Solaris since 2.1 and even SunOS 4 before that)