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."
Sun has also added a new security tool with Solaris Privileges. This lets the root user create sub roots that can have permission, for example, to patch applications but not to touch hardware components.
> For example if you have a Apache webserver and it gets comprimised, a hacker can't use Apache's security level to give him elevated permissions to control another part of the OS. In a regular OS you have to allow the Apache some root control over the computer to have it work properly and a hacker can use this to violate your computer.
If one hacks apache remotely the permits you will gain is uid nobody. I am not quite sure how you leaped to uid 0 access from that alone. No one i knows run apache as root except irix admins.:P
> In SELinux even if a hacker gained root access their is a limited amount of damage he can do, depending on how you set it up.
Reminds me of FreeBSD jails I have been using. FreeBSD's killer app, one of many.
> You could if you wanted to use this to set up roles for users, like a apache admin or a sendmail admin, or a filesystem admin or a/dev/ file admin.
Last time i checked in the/etc/passwd file, we have users such as bin, operator, smmsp, man, etc... Some of them are used, some have gone the way of a green pasture.. but just because they are out of style with some people does not mean they never existed. I know you get fine grained controls from SEL, but one can do a lot without it.
> SeLinux is brought to us by our freinds and future government overloads: the NSA.
**** them and use trustedbsd. their mascot is cooler anyways. http://www.trustedbsd.org/beastie.html
It should be interesting to see how the N1 Grid Containers work. It would be great to setup a shared server with this so scripts can't eat all the CPU and crash the entire server.
--
"But I'm still right here, giving blood and keeping faith. And I'm still right here."
If N1 Grid Containers work well it will be a major improvement on the competition. In HP-UX if you want to set up V-Pars you need to dedicate at least one CPU, physical disks and a network interface to every partition, and resource allocation is at the whole CPU level. With an 8 CPU machine that doesn't give you much leeway if you want to have 3 or 4 test environments.
With N1 Grid Containers OS instances sit on top of a "master" OS, so resources can be divided at a much finer level. You could presumably have a production partition with 80% of the cpu power allocated to it, and a bunch of test partitions sharing the rest, and dynamically increase the CPU power of the test partitions when it was prudent to do so.
Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris?
by
0xfc
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
> i always wondered why nobody ever writes articles that include solaris.
1. not open source 2. costs money 3. runs on overpriced hardware 4. bsd and linux can do everything it can cept maybe scale to extremes 5. solaris is not the only stable OS anymore 6. way too many people were burned by sun back in the day and said enough is enough, they never went back
Is Unix Unix?
by
ObviousGuy
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· Score: 3, Interesting
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.
Linux has SMP support, so does FreeBSD, and so does Solaris. They all have process management functionality (which is what Solaris is introducing with N1 Containers in this release). What would possess me to use Solaris (which costs) instead of Linux or FreeBSD (which are free)?
Is any one of them more robust than another?
-- I have been pwned because my/. password was too easy to guess.
What are you daft? Without even getting in to the many companies, like IBM, that hire people to work on OSS projects, let me just state the provably obvious: Closed source companies are outsourcing their programming jobs overseas.
You really need to pick a better place to spread such FUD. I'd recommend MSN or AOL.
Re:Is Unix Unix?
by
Veridium
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I have to agree with you. Sun support kicks butt, second to none. At the one company I worked at as a Solaris admin, the few times I did call Sun, I was never on hold more than a few minutes, and whatever parts were needed were delivered to us within hours.
Though I always saw that as one of the advantages of having the OS & hardware coming from the same vendor. It seems to keep them from playing the "it must be your hardware" game that so many software vendor support people play whenever the answer isn't easy. Though that doesn't explain your experience with RH.
Anyone out there have experience with their X86 support?
-- Think for yourself, destroy your television.
Re:Is Unix Unix?
by
silence535
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· Score: 2, Interesting
one word: support.
Hmm, I vaguely remember ideling around for a couple of days with a bunch of other expensive developers because Sun Gold(!) support was not able to quickly fix a hardware failure.
And worse, it turned out that the failure was due to a combination of a hardware raid controller and a mainboard that was known to fail under circumstances and was forbidden for (from|to) sale by a Sun directive and no one knew why the f*ck they had sold us this combo.
And this fine machine came with a big bucks (tm) 3d OpenGL accelerator card and a 21" Monitor to sit in the server cabinet and watch the console on. Stupid. But then again this might have been the mistake of our materials buying department.
-silence
-- Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Re:Is Unix Unix?
by
TheLink
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Nonono, you'd support Windows. There's always PLENTY of work to go around if you use windows.
I personally like OSS because 1) life is too short to keep rewriting code, 2) it's free - life is too short to have to keep saving up to not do everything yourself. Why rewrite code that a whole bunch of people have spent many many years of their life writing and have managed to do a decent job of it. The worst is having to rewrite your OWN code, just coz the license belongs to someone else.
Might as well spend years of your life doing something that hasn't already been done 10 times already.
Sure GNU/Linux is basically a reimplementation of Unix, however the difference is, if this OSS stuff continues, you don't have to do all that shit again.
People can keep moving forwards without having to ask for permission/licenses from hundreds or thousands of other people at each step.
Re:Is Unix Unix?
by
__past__
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· Score: 1, Interesting
This is true today, but I think it will become less so in the future.
Using clusters of redundant, inexpensive servers has some really nice advantages (for example, not only can you "hot swap" complete servers in case of failure without downtime, it is also easier to throw some new boxes in if you need more power than it would be to upgrade a single big-ass server). The problem is that it is hard to design apps to support such a setting nicely, but I predict that more and more will be extended to support clustering (or replaced with alternatives that do).
Of course, that does not mean that big iron unix servers will completely go away, just like the mainframe refuses to die.
A simple question
by
SoIosoft
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Can we expect Solaris 10 to be released to run on the x86 as well as Sparc hardware?
It's nice to have a real UNIX (Linux and BSD aren't really UNIX) that is relatively cheap will run on inexpensive x86 hardware.
-- Help me. I've been modbombed by a few people with entirely too much time on their hands.
Re:A simple question
by
Brandybuck
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Linux and BSD aren't really UNIX
In all but name, BSD is every bit as much UNIX as Solaris. In fact, Solaris's precessor, SunOS, was directly derived from BSD. If you're hung up on names and trademarks, than BSD is not UNIX. But in every other sense it is.
-- Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Only in the strictest sense of not being able to use the trademark.
Linux and BSD both do a pretty good job of being standards compliant despite not having been put through certification to use the trademark.
Some real (trademark using) Unixes are (or at least were) based on the BSD code base more than the SysV code base.
And if you look too much into standards...well, I'd say that in many cases, it's sad that POSIX chose the SysV rather than BSD ways of doing things (e.g. times is standard rather than getrusage; in practice all modern systems provide both interfaces, but SysV derivatives don't provide as accurate information as BSD derivatives).
Re:A simple question
by
MosesJones
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Can we expect Solaris 10 to be released to run on the x86 as well as Sparc hardware?
Quick answer: yes Long answer: YES
NB The above only works in proportional fonts.
But to add more. Sun are supporting Solaris x86 as standard going forwards and they have a strong alliance with AMD. Probably the best way to thing of Solaris x86 is as Solaris AMD, sure it might work on the old stuff... but it will fly on the AMD stuff.
One interesting enterprise question about N1, Solaris 10 etc is this.... right now all of the software vendors charge per-CPU. With N1/Solaris 10 you can move to capacity based SLAs.
How will Oracle charge for the DB when you can't say how many CPUs its running on ?
-- An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Sun has also added a new security tool with Solaris Privileges. This lets the root user create sub roots that can have permission, for example, to patch applications but not to touch hardware components.
This is a very interesting feature. Except for using sudo, does anyone know of any effort going on in linux to provide a similar feature ? Maybe Sun can port it to linux just to prove how OSS friendly they are;)
-- My mom never taught me to sign.
Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris?
by
BiggerIsBetter
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· Score: 4, Interesting
1. Yup. 2. Yup, but it's cheaper than RedHat/SuSE Linux for a single CPU *professional* version. 3. There's an x86 version (Sun harware fanboys can STFU about how crappy it is on non-SPARC hardware), and low-end Sun hardware starts at around 1000 USD. 4. Yup. 5. Fair enough.
-- Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Will they charge for x86 Solaris 10
by
rueben
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· Score: 3, Interesting
And then change their minds a few months later, like Solaris 9?
So is this version going to
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Interesting
So is this version going to include the feature of it not being *fricking painful* to compile nearly anything not specifically targetted at Solaris?
No, I'm not trolling. Anyone who's worked with previous Solaris versions knows what I'm talking about. Anyone who's tried to compile GNOME as a non-root user on Solaris 9 is rolling on the floor crying from the memories right now. It seems like Solaris has everything just *barely* different enough that absolutely everything is a slightly different kind of complete pain to compile.
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 yes, I'm exaggerating, the compilation problems only happen occationally, it's just that when they do happen it's really bad. But through the shit-colored glasses of memory, it seems like every time you try to compile some large free software package in solaris you uncover some new and painful oddity about the OS.
Re:So is this version going to
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
I've never had more trouble compiling for Solaris than I've had compiling stuff for BSD. The basic fact is that unless software is tested on other platforms regularly, it gets very linux specific.
Re:So is this version going to
by
plankers
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Re:So is this version going to
by
aanantha
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, the thing that always pissed me of is the gettext incompatibility. Unless I disable internationalization most GNOME packages will fail in configure. GNU added extra functions to their own gettext with GNOME requires. I wasn't able to upgrade to Solaris 8 when I did this so I couldn't try out Sun's new gettext library. I heard that the GNOME programs will still demand the GNU one installed.
The other thing is I can never get the Jade stuff to work. The Openjade people didn't bother to mention that trying to build openjade as a shared C++ library causes core dumps on linkage. And even after getting that stuff installed it still doesn't work.
I'm amazed that you managed to zip past those without "any problems".
Re:So is this version going to
by
aanantha
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm still trying to compile GNOME on Solaris *as* a root user. It's been a year now. Not done yet. Seriously. I wasted a lot of time trying to get that OpenJade crap working. I couldn't figure out why OpenJade would crash every time I ran it. It was only months later that I found out that a shared library version of OpenSP doesn't work on Solaris. The Openjade people didn't think it important enough to mention. But even after getting that stuff built and figuring out how to install DTDs by looking at my Linux system, it still wouldn't work. So then there was no choice but to disable all gnome doc building.
And then there's that goddamn gettext/libintl stuff. I don't have the option of overriding the Sun version of libintl across the board by placing the GNU libintl in/usr/local. Our Solaris software that uses Sun's libintl will break. You think the GNU people could have at least made it possible to use a different library name (libgintl maybe) for their incompatible version of libintl and have their configure scripts search for that.
Now all my stuff is out of date so I have to start over from the beginning again. Building GNOME has just become a great way to procrastinate. I wonder if I'll ever get to KDE.
Sun tries to solve this problem by giving you a prepackaged version of GNOME. But 2 problems with their approach: 1) it's never up to date, and 2) it's only good if you have Sun's C compiler. I don't know how, but somehow Sun's GTK+ C library is incompatible with GCC's. Same with their Zlib. So I can't use Sun's GNOME distribution to write software. I though that kind of stuff was only supposed to happen with C++. I'd much rather like Sun to promote a/usr/ports like thing for Solaris. Whatever they did to get GNOME to compile they need to stick those patches in a/usr/ports. The community would help out. Then eventually we can have full "distributions" that we can install onto a Solaris system. Life would be a lot easier if there was something like "fink" in place for Solaris.
And while they're at it, Sun needs to stop ignoring GCC. Make the C and C++ ABI compatible. There are a lot of Solaris software houses that only use GCC because they need to build their code on other unices. They're not going to be able to use Sun's GNOME environment if it's not GCC compatible.
never do anything with the odd release of solaris.
by
Desmoden
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· Score: 4, Interesting
think of it like odd linux kernels.
5.6 stable we all used it. 5.7 we played with, tested 5.8 we all upgraded to, used, liked. 5.9 play with and test 5.10 upgrade and enjoy.
most oracle products for example will never be certified on 5.9. It's too much work to requalify and upgrade to a new solaris version. So the odds introduce new features and work out the bugs, and the evens is what we use.
Re:Solaris vs. Linux - mod parent up
by
javiercero
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Not really, actually I have had the opposite experience with Solaris running much better on desktop sparc machines than linux.
Also most of the software out there that can be compiled in linux can also be ported over Solaris with minimal grief.
And I do not particularly feel like spending 2 days compiling in order to have a stable machine. A solaris install with the extra software CD provides most of the functionality than a linux install. But if you like linux by all means go and use it. Saying that linux is somehow better or makes more sense than solaris just because is just plain dumb.
Why all the bad comments?
by
KidSock
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Excuse me but this actually sounds pretty good. This "containers" thing permits running hundreds of virtual machines on one host (and not a moment too late as that idea is becoming a very popular -- I have a VPS runing UML and it's very snappy). The DTrace utility sounds nice although I probably shouldn't say that considering I've never tried it. And they're going to run Opteron and claim that they can beat the Linux benchmarks. I don't know about you but I wouldn't mind having an Opteron box running Solaris 10.
[disclaimer: I have 50 shares of SUNW]
Re:Not just Solaris
by
Bastian
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I've run into the same problem on Mac OS X. Usually you're fine, but when you aren't, you're in a world of pain. I think this is a lot of why fink just creates a separate file tree rather than trying to merge itself in with the main one.
I've actually been considering dual-booting GNU/Linux on my mac for just this reason.
Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris?
by
0xfc
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· Score: 4, Interesting
> 1. You can get the source to Solaris.
google showed this link for seach "solaris source". From this link it reads:
The Solaris 8 Foundation Source Program has concluded. Source code for the Solaris Operating System is available for qualified educational institutions and partners; please contact your Sun sales team for details. Maybe this info is old...
> 2. You can download Solaris for free.
I just tried, it seemed you were right, they made me jump through hoops. I ended up at a page that appeared to allow me to download solaris, but the link was not a link and they wanted me to register. could have told me that at the start... i am too lazy to do it, i will assume you are right.
> 3. Solaris runs on good hardware which is a good thing if you are trying to get serious work done. (Not everyone working with *nix is building web servers, internet hosting, or using samba to replace a few Windows PCs.) If you are only trying to recycle crap hardware, any OS will do. FreeDOS or DR DOS will recycle hardware that Linux is too fat to run on.
You make it sound like ibm,hp,compaq did not make high end x86 servers. Himilaya non stop servers come to mind. Heck even proliants are nice.
> 4. BSD and Linux lack the thousands of mature, commerical applications Solaris has, but they are catching up.
I agree.
> 5. Solaris is not only stable, it is one of the best. Linux is still in catch up mode in terms of standards and features. Linux still has a tendency to cheat, or only partially implement a standard. It is getting better. Standards are a good thing if you are trying to get equipment from multiple vendors to work together.
FreeBSD is amazingly stable. Uptimes of a year are taken for granted. I dont know enough to comment on the rest of your statement.
> 6. Sun's support has been plenty good for the companies I've worked for, and PCs won't be getting the work done that we do anytime soon. Maybe if the Opterons work out well we could use them in a couple of years.
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.
> 7. A standard Sun keyboard has the control key where it should be....
> 8. Documentation. Solaris has it. The documentation is good, and correct. Linux, ha.
I agree. Sun probably employs a crap load of technical writers. Its a good thing. I often find answers to problems from sun docs...
> 9. Solaris can have a System V Unix personality, a BSD personality, a GNU personality, or traditional Sun personality, depending upon your path.
I guess.
> 10. Linux pretty much provides a subset of what Solaris can do.
I wont argue that. Solaris is time tested and powerful.
Re:there's an old saying...
by
jcupitt65
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I found this other article linked on the reg, talking about the new TCP/IP stack:
We worked hard on efficiency, and we now measure, at a given network workload on identical x86 hardware, we use 30 percent less CPU than Linux.
So I guess that should give them a fair performance advantage under very heavy static loads. Although he doesn't say which linux.
Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris?
by
hdparm
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· Score: 2, Interesting
4. BSD and Linux lack the thousands of mature, commerical applications Solaris has, but they are catching up.
Care to explain this bit, please? I am not arguing the number since I don't know Solaris too well but 'thousands' makes me really curious.
Re:ibm,hp,compaq *don't* make high end x86 servers
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You make it sound like ibm,hp,compaq did not make high end x86 servers. Himilaya non stop servers come to mind. Heck even proliants are nice.
They don't.
Not when compared to this beast. Each of those 72 UltraSPARC IV CPU chips is actually two 64-bit CPUs on die.
144 CPUs, 1/2 a terabyte of RAM, near linear scalability.
In fact, the Intel architecture pretty much can't scale well beyond 4-6 CPUs because of problems like cache coherency - i.e., when CPU a modifies a memory value any CPU that has the memory value in cache needs to know that cached value is now invalid.
a bit of detail, and what they dont tell you
by
RouterSlayer
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· Score: 2, Interesting
first a correction. the numbering scheme, what people here have said is a bit off.
from SunOS 4, it went to 5, 6, 7, 8 and finally 9, but these are not actually v8, v9, etc as such. You see, v8 is actually 2.8, and v9 is actually 2.9 so the old question still begs, will it be 2.10 or will it be 3 ? inquiring minds want to know. (just a bit of fun here really).
and on other news, the stuff that Sun isn't saying (at least, not publically), and this is just somewhat rumor based on what I know from the inside...
Supposedly Solaris10 will be using a totally new kernel, which will be (as far as I've been told by very high ups at Sun) something of a mish-mash of Linux kernel, BSD, and Solaris.
Sun thinks it can finally "level" the playing field, and make "Unix" a standard, one flavor. All for one and Sun for all! (heh)
Many admins I've talked to say this is a great idea. Finally one standardized "flavor" of Unix, one set that consolidates everything. It could work, but is Sun the one to pull it off, and is the timing right?
We all know Sparc is dead, Sun said so themselves. So, now that they are going AMD, their direct "competitor" (I don't like using that word, because it's really not true) is Linux (and BSD of course). And we all have been hearing that BSD is dead. From a CLI point of view Solaris most resembles BSD, but from an actual operations point of view, kernel, threading, etc Solaris most resemebles Linux, after all, it already uses Linux's threading model (and much, much more!).
Word on the street from inside Sun VPs is that Solaris 10 will have (primarily) the Linux kernel. This could be amusing. I sure hope it works out, I actually like Solaris as an OS an aweful lot, it doesn't have the zealot, uptight, holier-than-thou BSD attitude... which is a good thing...
Slashdot Mirror
When will I see it in Debian stable? =b
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
It should be interesting to see how the N1 Grid Containers work. It would be great to setup a shared server with this so scripts can't eat all the CPU and crash the entire server.
"But I'm still right here, giving blood and keeping faith. And I'm still right here."
> i always wondered why nobody ever writes articles that include solaris.
1. not open source
2. costs money
3. runs on overpriced hardware
4. bsd and linux can do everything it can cept maybe scale to extremes
5. solaris is not the only stable OS anymore
6. way too many people were burned by sun back in the day and said enough is enough, they never went back
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.
Linux has SMP support, so does FreeBSD, and so does Solaris. They all have process management functionality (which is what Solaris is introducing with N1 Containers in this release). What would possess me to use Solaris (which costs) instead of Linux or FreeBSD (which are free)?
Is any one of them more robust than another?
I have been pwned because my
Can we expect Solaris 10 to be released to run on the x86 as well as Sparc hardware?
It's nice to have a real UNIX (Linux and BSD aren't really UNIX) that is relatively cheap will run on inexpensive x86 hardware.
Help me. I've been modbombed by a few people with entirely too much time on their hands.
Sun has also added a new security tool with Solaris Privileges. This lets the root user create sub roots that can have permission, for example, to patch applications but not to touch hardware components.
;)
This is a very interesting feature. Except for using sudo, does anyone know of any effort going on in linux to provide a similar feature ? Maybe Sun can port it to linux just to prove how OSS friendly they are
My mom never taught me to sign.
1. Yup.
2. Yup, but it's cheaper than RedHat/SuSE Linux for a single CPU *professional* version.
3. There's an x86 version (Sun harware fanboys can STFU about how crappy it is on non-SPARC hardware), and low-end Sun hardware starts at around 1000 USD.
4. Yup.
5. Fair enough.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
And then change their minds a few months later, like Solaris 9?
So is this version going to include the feature of it not being *fricking painful* to compile nearly anything not specifically targetted at Solaris?
No, I'm not trolling. Anyone who's worked with previous Solaris versions knows what I'm talking about. Anyone who's tried to compile GNOME as a non-root user on Solaris 9 is rolling on the floor crying from the memories right now. It seems like Solaris has everything just *barely* different enough that absolutely everything is a slightly different kind of complete pain to compile.
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 yes, I'm exaggerating, the compilation problems only happen occationally, it's just that when they do happen it's really bad. But through the shit-colored glasses of memory, it seems like every time you try to compile some large free software package in solaris you uncover some new and painful oddity about the OS.
think of it like odd linux kernels.
5.6 stable we all used it.
5.7 we played with, tested
5.8 we all upgraded to, used, liked.
5.9 play with and test
5.10 upgrade and enjoy.
most oracle products for example will never be certified on 5.9. It's too much work to requalify and upgrade to a new solaris version. So the odds introduce new features and work out the bugs, and the evens is what we use.
Not really, actually I have had the opposite experience with Solaris running much better on desktop sparc machines than linux.
Also most of the software out there that can be compiled in linux can also be ported over Solaris with minimal grief.
And I do not particularly feel like spending 2 days compiling in order to have a stable machine. A solaris install with the extra software CD provides most of the functionality than a linux install. But if you like linux by all means go and use it. Saying that linux is somehow better or makes more sense than solaris just because is just plain dumb.
Excuse me but this actually sounds pretty good. This "containers" thing permits running hundreds of virtual machines on one host (and not a moment too late as that idea is becoming a very popular -- I have a VPS runing UML and it's very snappy). The DTrace utility sounds nice although I probably shouldn't say that considering I've never tried it. And they're going to run Opteron and claim that they can beat the Linux benchmarks. I don't know about you but I wouldn't mind having an Opteron box running Solaris 10.
[disclaimer: I have 50 shares of SUNW]
I've run into the same problem on Mac OS X. Usually you're fine, but when you aren't, you're in a world of pain. I think this is a lot of why fink just creates a separate file tree rather than trying to merge itself in with the main one.
I've actually been considering dual-booting GNU/Linux on my mac for just this reason.
> 1. You can get the source to Solaris.
...
google showed this link for seach "solaris source". From this link it reads:
The Solaris 8 Foundation Source Program has concluded. Source code for the Solaris Operating System is available for qualified educational institutions and partners; please contact your Sun sales team for details. Maybe this info is old...
> 2. You can download Solaris for free.
I just tried, it seemed you were right, they made me jump through hoops. I ended up at a page that appeared to allow me to download solaris, but the link was not a link and they wanted me to register. could have told me that at the start... i am too lazy to do it, i will assume you are right.
> 3. Solaris runs on good hardware which is a good thing if you are trying to get serious work done. (Not everyone working with *nix is building web servers, internet hosting, or using samba to replace a few Windows PCs.) If you are only trying to recycle crap hardware, any OS will do. FreeDOS or DR DOS will recycle hardware that Linux is too fat to run on.
You make it sound like ibm,hp,compaq did not make high end x86 servers. Himilaya non stop servers come to mind. Heck even proliants are nice.
> 4. BSD and Linux lack the thousands of mature, commerical applications Solaris has, but they are catching up.
I agree.
> 5. Solaris is not only stable, it is one of the best. Linux is still in catch up mode in terms of standards and features. Linux still has a tendency to cheat, or only partially implement a standard. It is getting better. Standards are a good thing if you are trying to get equipment from multiple vendors to work together.
FreeBSD is amazingly stable. Uptimes of a year are taken for granted. I dont know enough to comment on the rest of your statement.
> 6. Sun's support has been plenty good for the companies I've worked for, and PCs won't be getting the work done that we do anytime soon. Maybe if the Opterons work out well we could use them in a couple of years.
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.
> 7. A standard Sun keyboard has the control key where it should be.
> 8. Documentation. Solaris has it. The documentation is good, and correct. Linux, ha.
I agree. Sun probably employs a crap load of technical writers. Its a good thing. I often find answers to problems from sun docs...
> 9. Solaris can have a System V Unix personality, a BSD personality, a GNU personality, or traditional Sun personality, depending upon your path.
I guess.
> 10. Linux pretty much provides a subset of what Solaris can do.
I wont argue that. Solaris is time tested and powerful.
I found this other article linked on the reg, talking about the new TCP/IP stack:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/33440.html
The relevant quote is (near the bottom):
We worked hard on efficiency, and we now measure, at a given network workload on identical x86 hardware, we use 30 percent less CPU than Linux.
So I guess that should give them a fair performance advantage under very heavy static loads. Although he doesn't say which linux.
Care to explain this bit, please? I am not arguing the number since I don't know Solaris too well but 'thousands' makes me really curious.
They don't.
Not when compared to this beast. Each of those 72 UltraSPARC IV CPU chips is actually two 64-bit CPUs on die.
144 CPUs, 1/2 a terabyte of RAM, near linear scalability.
In fact, the Intel architecture pretty much can't scale well beyond 4-6 CPUs because of problems like cache coherency - i.e., when CPU a modifies a memory value any CPU that has the memory value in cache needs to know that cached value is now invalid.
first a correction.
the numbering scheme, what people here have said is a bit off.
from SunOS 4, it went to 5, 6, 7, 8 and finally 9, but these are not actually v8, v9, etc as such. You see, v8 is actually 2.8, and v9 is actually 2.9
so the old question still begs, will it be 2.10 or will it be 3 ? inquiring minds want to know. (just a bit of fun here really).
and on other news, the stuff that Sun isn't saying (at least, not publically), and this is just somewhat rumor based on what I know from the inside...
Supposedly Solaris10 will be using a totally new kernel, which will be (as far as I've been told by very high ups at Sun) something of a mish-mash of Linux kernel, BSD, and Solaris.
Sun thinks it can finally "level" the playing field, and make "Unix" a standard, one flavor. All for one and Sun for all! (heh)
Many admins I've talked to say this is a great idea. Finally one standardized "flavor" of Unix, one set that consolidates everything. It could work, but is Sun the one to pull it off, and is the timing right?
We all know Sparc is dead, Sun said so themselves. So, now that they are going AMD, their direct "competitor" (I don't like using that word, because it's really not true) is Linux (and BSD of course). And we all have been hearing that BSD is dead. From a CLI point of view Solaris most resembles BSD, but from an actual operations point of view, kernel, threading, etc Solaris most resemebles Linux, after all, it already uses Linux's threading model (and much, much more!).
Word on the street from inside Sun VPs is that Solaris 10 will have (primarily) the Linux kernel. This could be amusing. I sure hope it works out, I actually like Solaris as an OS an aweful lot, it doesn't have the zealot, uptight, holier-than-thou BSD attitude... which is a good thing...