Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the sunshine-lollipops-and-rainbows dept.
ptolemu writes "The Register has the scoop on Sun's latest iteration of Solaris. The article includes some details of the new and improved features that will be included in the OS. The OS is scheduled to be released in the second half of 2004."
I've wondered for a while now, is one Unix like another Unix? I've used Linux in the past and am trying out FreeBSD now. Frankly, I don't notice the difference from an end-user perspective.
Well, from a basic end-users perspective, there isn't much different at all. Especially if you install a bash shell on solaris, or whatever unix you're using.
From the administrators perspective, there can be a world of difference. Many admin tasks can be very similar, but many are also pretty different.
As for why you'd want to use Solaris over Linux, nobody does NFS better than Sun. I'm not sure what the current status of NFS is under Linux, but I've heard some stories that don't look favourably on Linux and NFS.
Also, Solaris performs and scales very well on multi-cpu machines, compared to Linux (although with Linux 2.6, this may not be such an advantage anymore).
Then you've got the added advantages of Solaris being a full 64 bit OS (ignoring the Intel version), with large max file sizes and RAM without any special hacks (again, Linux 2.6 has gone some way to fixing this, with 64 bit file support).
Basically, for the enterprise, Linux wasn't really an option until 2.6. With 2.6 only in its infancy, Linux still isn't an option. Solaris is though, 'cause it's got the features, the performance, the reliability, and it has been thoroughly tested on the anvil of time.
> If you care at all about programmer's jobs, you would support closed-source Unix.
This does not seem very logical. It almost seems like you are "scared" of OSS. You, as a programmer can now harness all this free software to create some amazing products. With skill you can add value and sell it. Imagine working from scratch on everything, reinventing the wheel at every step, buggy beta code OR you can build on a well written, free, BSD licensed piece of software AND not share your source while making money. You can be even more revolutionary and picking GPL licensed software and sharing your value added source with everyone while making money (support + modest price of software).
I am more a customer, and I cant imagine not having source to compile from now days. I am way to used to it, it is assumed.
there's an old saying...
by
SuperBanana
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There's an old legal saying- never ask a question you don't already know the answer to.
The company is so confident about Solaris' speed that officials repeatedly offered to challenge Linux on benchmarks in the coming months.
Now, usually companies don't make such bets unless they're well hedged. So, perhaps running some benchmarks against the preview versions of 10(the article mentions most of 10 is available already to update subscribers) might be a nice idea, to see what's got Sun so cocky, instead of just saying "oh. Solaris is crap"(which is at least partially wrong anyway).
Re:there's an old saying...
by
jrockway
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Umm, microsoft claims that XP/2003 is more secure than Linux. In the wake of the last eight virus attacks and source code leak, I think M$ is wrong. Maybe I'm wrong, though?:)
Interesting... Everyone has the debate of Linux GPL vs putting Linux out there with a BSD license. Would would be the problem of letting an older linux kernel tree off and call it something else and go with a BSD license? If it dies a horrible death, so be it, the main GPL linux tree will continue... But that way it could give the debate a run for it's money.
Re:Is Unix Unix?
by
whereiswaldo
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
in the solaris shop we had a dramatic failure of a storedge sena array. i called the sun support line and a guy in tweed jacket was at my door in 40 minutes...
in the linux shop i made a web support request for a very simple question... i logged that request twelve days ago and it's still listed as "awaiting technician".
You must admit that these two issues are *very* different in severity. Try logging a failure of a similar magnitude with Red Hat and report your results back for an apples to apples comparison.
Re:Is Unix Unix?
by
stevens
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Also consider yourself lucky that you have not experienced Sun at their worst yet: yes, they, too, sometimes have less than stellar service even though you pay them a bundle.
Like diagnosing a memory card failure, replacing it to have the OS panic in a few hours? And then they changed out all the RAM again. And did it again three days later.
After a few calls the replaced everything but the chassis. But that was several failures in a week!
Or when our CPUs started blowing, but they wouldn't give a new batch for all the identical severs we bought. They told us to call them as the blew. We ended up getting about 60% replaced, as they blew and caused downtime.
But they're always there in an hour to be unhelpful.
Re:So is this version going to
by
javiercero
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Yes I realize that at least part of this is that apps are targetted for Linux, so of course it isn't Sun's fault when shit doesn't compile. "
That is the understatement of the year. Us BSD users have feel the pain of shitty code for years, as well as most other non Linux/GNU userland dependant Nixes out there.
I guess you have to take the good with the bad of OSS, the bad being the amount of shitty coders outthere that do not have a clue. And I have had my love/hate relationship with gcc for over a decade, sometimes I wonder why they still try to pretend to be a C-compiler:) and at least be honest enough and call it "new and improved C" or whatever but not C. And yes even with the strict ansi c flags I have had trouble with gcc. But I do not complain too much because I have gotten good things out of gcc too.
I just wish portability was real sometimes:(.
Re:Sub roots
by
Imperator
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It would be more than that, at least from what the description suggests. The problem with sudo is that you're often giving suid access to programs that aren't designed to be suid, so someone who was the right entries in the sudoers file can root the machine with ease. Proper privilege separation in the admin tools would mean being able to give someone access to run apt-get dist-upgrade (or whatever it is) without his being able to install his own packages. It would mean letting someone add non-root users but not root users, or resetting passwords but only for users in a certain group. It requires planning when creating admin tools, not a "slap it on" solution like sudo.
Of course, given that it's Solaris, it may end up just being sudo after all.
--
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Re:N1 Grid Containers Look Interesting
by
Imperator
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Posix has had resource limits for a long time now. See setrlimit(2), for example. PAM has had a module to support this for quite a while. I'm sure Solaris has resource limits. Virtualization (what the N1 system seems to be) is a whole different beast, with different uses. If all you want is to stop a script from eating all the CPU, any Unix will do that for you.
--
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
advocatus diaboli
by
Imperator
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Isn't this the sort of thing that we'd be up in arms about if it were MS compiler quirks other compilers were emulating? The GCC compilers should make strict conformance to modern standards the default, and make you turn on the extensions manually.
Why, for example, does GNU C++ include binary <? and >? operators for min and max? I could see the attraction in C, where preprocessor macros and their issues with side effects are a pain in the ass. But in C++, inline templated functions can do it just as well and are much more portable. This is the sort of irresponsible "extend the language by default" approach that the GCC compilers are full of.
Don't get me wrong; I love the GCC suite and for all the supposed performance issues, I wouldn't trade GCC for any other toolchain I've ever used. But free software should set an example by encouraging portable code.
</rant>
--
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris?
by
shin0r
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
>Support? I dont need no stinkin support. You telling me your head admins cannot troubleshoot hardware? >You dont have a backup system ready so a hardware failure just is an inconvienence? Software is a whole different issue.
We aren't talking about a few PC's in the basement, or your home ftp server here. For those of us that admin hundreds of machines in production environments, support is absolutely essential - and Sun do it well.
all my replies in one go
by
chegosaurus
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Wow some of the comments on here are uninformed. Especially those modded informative or interesting.
"Hey, Solaris sucks! Linux is way better and it's free as in speech!" +5 interesting
"Hey Linux does everything Solaris does and it's free as in beer" +5 informative
"Hey there was a film called Solaris! OMG LOL!!!" +5 funny
Do you *never* get bored of pointing out that x86 chips have higher clock speeds than SPARCs?
Don't you think we *know* by now that Linux is free?
If you know how to handle Solaris, you will know that: it has some features that linux does not. It's no harder to build software for than linux. Trusted Solaris privileges are not the same as sudo. dtrace is not the same as cat/proc/whatever. Solaris is not so slow it's unusable on 32 CPUs. Version 5.8 is not four versions older than 9. There are smarter ways of patching than downloading the recommended cluster every day. But hey, post uninformed crap and up your karma. That's what matters.
If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up and leave the discussion to people with some interest and background in the subject. And stop complaining that "no one uses Solaris, so who cares there's a new major release", when you've probably been up all night bitching on IRC that the mods here rejected the 2.6.3-rc3 release story you submitted.
The main answer is three simple letters.
by
devphil
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
And they are: R. M. S.
This is the sort of irresponsible "extend the language by default" approach that the GCC compilers are full of.
So, you'll be submitting a patch, then. What's that? You say you haven't tried it? Ah.
We've tried getting rid of some of the extensions that were not well thought out. He's just dead-set on keeping them.
Also -- unfortunately -- many of them are actually being used. Pulling the rug out from under your users is not a keen move.
It's a slow battle. Many were removed for 3.4. More are being removed for 3.5.
But free software should set an example by encouraging portable code.
Heh. The FSF view on this is that GCC is far more portable than any of your code is likely to be, so just install GCC instead and make use of its features. Not a position that I agree with necessarily, but it is the same argument that I make when installing bash on all the non-GNU systems I use.:-)
-- You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Re:So is this version going to
by
dglo
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
So is this version going to include the feature of it not being *fricking painful* to compile nearly anything not specifically targetted at Solaris?
I'm old enough to remember back when Sun was the top dog and all non-SunOS users complained about Unix software being written specifically for Suns.
And before that, the problem was people writing Unix software specifically for the VAX.
This says more about the quality of the people writing OSS than it does about the quality of Solaris. Actually quality is the wrong word, because it's likely that many of these programmers only know or have access to Linux.
Making an effort to port your software to non-Linux dialects of Unix is a really good thing, because other OSes will expose bugs in your software which would not otherwise turn up until, for example, a bug in the current glibc is fixed.
I've been in both the Solaris and Linux environments as well, and I'm telling you now that the Achilles' heel of Linux is that it lacks the software/hardware integration and support that Sun (as well as IBM, HP, etc) can provide. Right now I'm being given the "Mom said, Dad said" routine between Dell and Redhat with a RAID issue. With Sun, they are mom, dad, your uncle, and your brother too. (and all that other recursive gene pool stuff)
The point: if you are balls to the walls mission critical (i.e. being down for an hour costs you 100k worth of business), Linux (and for that matter Microsoft) aren't even in the ballpark. You just take your lumps, pay for the support and get the appropriate support contract.
Re:So is this version going to
by
Wolf+Eyelash
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
People need to be aware that Sun tries very, very hard to keep their ABI's stable. Certainly they are going to be careful with the libc ABI. Note, to help folks out Sun provides a Freeware CD with most of the tools (gcc, gnu libc, etc...) needed to build freeware source. So you really have the best of both worlds (a stable ABI and a evolving ABI).
Slashdot Mirror
Linux runs a 512 CPU supercomputer at NASA
Are you talking here 512 CPU SMP or more a Beowulf or similar. Two rather different animals....
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
sure, some people are running solaris 8 still, by the cs dept here is running five .8
How do you pronounce 'solar'? 'So-lah'? If so, then wouldn't 'Solaris' be pronounced 'So-lah-riss'?
If the OS is to be pronounced 'So-lare-iss', shouldn't it be spelt 'Solairis'?
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Well, from a basic end-users perspective, there isn't much different at all. Especially if you install a bash shell on solaris, or whatever unix you're using.
From the administrators perspective, there can be a world of difference. Many admin tasks can be very similar, but many are also pretty different.
As for why you'd want to use Solaris over Linux, nobody does NFS better than Sun. I'm not sure what the current status of NFS is under Linux, but I've heard some stories that don't look favourably on Linux and NFS.
Also, Solaris performs and scales very well on multi-cpu machines, compared to Linux (although with Linux 2.6, this may not be such an advantage anymore).
Then you've got the added advantages of Solaris being a full 64 bit OS (ignoring the Intel version), with large max file sizes and RAM without any special hacks (again, Linux 2.6 has gone some way to fixing this, with 64 bit file support).
Basically, for the enterprise, Linux wasn't really an option until 2.6. With 2.6 only in its infancy, Linux still isn't an option. Solaris is though, 'cause it's got the features, the performance, the reliability, and it has been thoroughly tested on the anvil of time.
I will bite.
> If you care at all about programmer's jobs, you would support closed-source Unix.
This does not seem very logical. It almost seems like you are "scared" of OSS. You, as a programmer can now harness all this free software to create some amazing products. With skill you can add value and sell it. Imagine working from scratch on everything, reinventing the wheel at every step, buggy beta code OR you can build on a well written, free, BSD licensed piece of software AND not share your source while making money. You can be even more revolutionary and picking GPL licensed software and sharing your value added source with everyone while making money (support + modest price of software).
I am more a customer, and I cant imagine not having source to compile from now days. I am way to used to it, it is assumed.
There's an old legal saying- never ask a question you don't already know the answer to.
The company is so confident about Solaris' speed that officials repeatedly offered to challenge Linux on benchmarks in the coming months.
Now, usually companies don't make such bets unless they're well hedged. So, perhaps running some benchmarks against the preview versions of 10(the article mentions most of 10 is available already to update subscribers) might be a nice idea, to see what's got Sun so cocky, instead of just saying "oh. Solaris is crap"(which is at least partially wrong anyway).
Please help metamoderate.
Interesting... Everyone has the debate of Linux GPL vs putting Linux out there with a BSD license. Would would be the problem of letting an older linux kernel tree off and call it something else and go with a BSD license? If it dies a horrible death, so be it, the main GPL linux tree will continue... But that way it could give the debate a run for it's money.
in the solaris shop we had a dramatic failure of a storedge sena array. i called the sun support line and a guy in tweed jacket was at my door in 40 minutes ...
... i logged that request twelve days ago and it's still listed as "awaiting technician".
in the linux shop i made a web support request for a very simple question
You must admit that these two issues are *very* different in severity. Try logging a failure of a similar magnitude with Red Hat and report your results back for an apples to apples comparison.
Like diagnosing a memory card failure, replacing it to have the OS panic in a few hours? And then they changed out all the RAM again. And did it again three days later.
After a few calls the replaced everything but the chassis. But that was several failures in a week!
Or when our CPUs started blowing, but they wouldn't give a new batch for all the identical severs we bought. They told us to call them as the blew. We ended up getting about 60% replaced, as they blew and caused downtime.
But they're always there in an hour to be unhelpful.
"Yes I realize that at least part of this is that apps are targetted for Linux, so of course it isn't Sun's fault when shit doesn't compile. "
:) and at least be honest enough and call it "new and improved C" or whatever but not C. And yes even with the strict ansi c flags I have had trouble with gcc. But I do not complain too much because I have gotten good things out of gcc too.
:(.
That is the understatement of the year. Us BSD users have feel the pain of shitty code for years, as well as most other non Linux/GNU userland dependant Nixes out there.
I guess you have to take the good with the bad of OSS, the bad being the amount of shitty coders outthere that do not have a clue. And I have had my love/hate relationship with gcc for over a decade, sometimes I wonder why they still try to pretend to be a C-compiler
I just wish portability was real sometimes
It would be more than that, at least from what the description suggests. The problem with sudo is that you're often giving suid access to programs that aren't designed to be suid, so someone who was the right entries in the sudoers file can root the machine with ease. Proper privilege separation in the admin tools would mean being able to give someone access to run apt-get dist-upgrade (or whatever it is) without his being able to install his own packages. It would mean letting someone add non-root users but not root users, or resetting passwords but only for users in a certain group. It requires planning when creating admin tools, not a "slap it on" solution like sudo.
Of course, given that it's Solaris, it may end up just being sudo after all.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Posix has had resource limits for a long time now. See setrlimit(2), for example. PAM has had a module to support this for quite a while. I'm sure Solaris has resource limits. Virtualization (what the N1 system seems to be) is a whole different beast, with different uses. If all you want is to stop a script from eating all the CPU, any Unix will do that for you.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Isn't this the sort of thing that we'd be up in arms about if it were MS compiler quirks other compilers were emulating? The GCC compilers should make strict conformance to modern standards the default, and make you turn on the extensions manually.
Why, for example, does GNU C++ include binary <? and >? operators for min and max? I could see the attraction in C, where preprocessor macros and their issues with side effects are a pain in the ass. But in C++, inline templated functions can do it just as well and are much more portable. This is the sort of irresponsible "extend the language by default" approach that the GCC compilers are full of.
Don't get me wrong; I love the GCC suite and for all the supposed performance issues, I wouldn't trade GCC for any other toolchain I've ever used. But free software should set an example by encouraging portable code.
</rant>
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
>Support? I dont need no stinkin support. You telling me your head admins cannot troubleshoot hardware?
>You dont have a backup system ready so a hardware failure just is an inconvienence? Software is a whole different issue.
We aren't talking about a few PC's in the basement, or your home ftp server here. For those of us that admin hundreds of machines in production environments, support is absolutely essential - and Sun do it well.
Super Awesome Broadband
Wow some of the comments on here are uninformed. Especially those modded informative or interesting.
/proc/whatever. Solaris is not so slow it's unusable on 32 CPUs. Version 5.8 is not four versions older than 9. There are smarter ways of patching than downloading the recommended cluster every day. But hey, post uninformed crap and up your karma. That's what matters.
"Hey, Solaris sucks! Linux is way better and it's free as in speech!" +5 interesting
"Hey Linux does everything Solaris does and it's free as in beer" +5 informative
"Hey there was a film called Solaris! OMG LOL!!!" +5 funny
Do you *never* get bored of pointing out that x86 chips have higher clock speeds than SPARCs?
Don't you think we *know* by now that Linux is free?
If you know how to handle Solaris, you will know that: it has some features that linux does not. It's no harder to build software for than linux. Trusted Solaris privileges are not the same as sudo. dtrace is not the same as cat
If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up and leave the discussion to people with some interest and background in the subject. And stop complaining that "no one uses Solaris, so who cares there's a new major release", when you've probably been up all night bitching on IRC that the mods here rejected the 2.6.3-rc3 release story you submitted.
And they are: R. M. S.
So, you'll be submitting a patch, then. What's that? You say you haven't tried it? Ah.
We've tried getting rid of some of the extensions that were not well thought out. He's just dead-set on keeping them.
Also -- unfortunately -- many of them are actually being used. Pulling the rug out from under your users is not a keen move.
It's a slow battle. Many were removed for 3.4. More are being removed for 3.5.
Heh. The FSF view on this is that GCC is far more portable than any of your code is likely to be, so just install GCC instead and make use of its features. Not a position that I agree with necessarily, but it is the same argument that I make when installing bash on all the non-GNU systems I use. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
So is this version going to include the feature of it not being *fricking painful* to compile nearly anything not specifically targetted at Solaris?
I'm old enough to remember back when Sun was the top dog and all non-SunOS users complained about Unix software being written specifically for Suns.
And before that, the problem was people writing Unix software specifically for the VAX.
This says more about the quality of the people writing OSS than it does about the quality of Solaris. Actually quality is the wrong word, because it's likely that many of these programmers only know or have access to Linux.
Making an effort to port your software to non-Linux dialects of Unix is a really good thing, because other OSes will expose bugs in your software which would not otherwise turn up until, for example, a bug in the current glibc is fixed.
I've been in both the Solaris and Linux environments as well, and I'm telling you now that the Achilles' heel of Linux is that it lacks the software/hardware integration and support that Sun (as well as IBM, HP, etc) can provide. Right now I'm being given the "Mom said, Dad said" routine between Dell and Redhat with a RAID issue. With Sun, they are mom, dad, your uncle, and your brother too. (and all that other recursive gene pool stuff)
The point: if you are balls to the walls mission critical (i.e. being down for an hour costs you 100k worth of business), Linux (and for that matter Microsoft) aren't even in the ballpark. You just take your lumps, pay for the support and get the appropriate support contract.
People need to be aware that Sun tries very, very hard to keep their ABI's stable. Certainly they are going to be careful with the libc ABI. Note, to help folks out Sun provides a Freeware CD with most of the tools (gcc, gnu libc, etc...) needed to build freeware source. So you really have the best of both worlds (a stable ABI and a evolving ABI).