Linux Apps On Solaris

querencia writes "Sun has announced that Solaris 10 will comply with the Linux Standard Base specification, thus allowing Linux apps to run unchanged on Solaris. This isn't emulation -- they claim that it is 'kernel-integrated and supported as an operating system feature.' While I appreciate the benefits of the Solaris OS, I've considered them on the losing end of the battle until now. Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?" Update: 08/04 15:50 GMT by J : At OSCON, Sun reaffirmed that Solaris 10 will be open-sourced. They said it would be one of the OSI licenses, not sure which yet; that this was approved at the highest levels of the company; and (with the expected "we're just guessing" language), it could happen as soon as year's end.

Comments

No

[IceFox]

Just like with MS and OS/2 people will now make apps for Linux that oh yah work on Solaris not the other way around. As a developer it is a pretty easy choice to make and as we all know it is all about developers developers developers...

-Benjamin Meyer

Much like the way Wine works

[isolation]

You can think of this support for Linux apps on Solaris as the same way Wine works. It provides a layer of support by implementing the needed APIs without having to deal with a total emulation enviroment.

Re:Much like the way Wine works

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

You can think of this support for Linux apps on Solaris as the same way Wine works. It provides a layer of support by implementing the needed APIs without having to deal with a total emulation enviroment.

Score 1: informative? No you can not think of that as the way Wine works. The technical explanation was given they are complying with the LSB which is much like the POSIX. This is an inherent change to the Solaris Kernel not just an emulator or a set of libraries.

Re:Much like the way Wine works

[isolation]

The LSB defines a set of APIs and libraries along with the locations in the filesystem. This project adds a layer to intercept the Linux Syscalls and either redirect them or implement them as Solaris Native. This is the same thing the Wine does except that Wine exists only in userspace.

A better example would be Linux emulation on FreeBSD. Solaris is doing the same thing the FreeBSD people have been doing for years.

Interesting, but what about the other way round?

[hcdejong]

There's at least one Solaris application I'd like to run on Linux: Adobe FrameMaker.

Could this be

[Druss.the.legend]

The initial move of SUN towards an OpenSource OS, or even towards a linux based business model.

Re:Could this be

[exi1ed0ne]

No, It's the "Me Too" syndrome.

Just LSB or ABI/API too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Solaris simply comply with the LSB in a similiar manner as they supplied SunOS BSD tools with Solaris, or will it also be capable of running Linux ELF binaries unchanged? What about Linux-specific things such as clone()? That's not something you can emulate so easily.

It seems a bit of desperate measure. There was a time when Solaris was the leading UNIX on any platform. Now Sun seem resigned to play second fiddle..

Re:Just LSB or ABI/API too?

[aphor]

Look at the FreeBSD Linux support: a kernel module and an ELF loader that support all the Linux syscalls and can decide at load time which flavor of syscall to implement. The runtime linker/loader knows to go to a certain directory tree to get Linux shared libraries, and Solaris will probably work much as the sparc 32/64 bit stuff works now.

Linux APIs

[Sebby]

"Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?"

I guess it can't hurt. Apple is also rumored to be integrating Linux API to future versions of OS X to help bring developers to the Mac side.

Re:you mean like...

[vuvewux]

The problem is that this does the opposite - WINE takes Linux out of the running because there is now less of an incentive to write OPEN applications. The Doom 3 Linux port should be out soon if I have my way.

I doubt it

[metalac]

It seems that Solaris is having a real hard time getting trough no matter what. With the availability of so many BSDs and Linux distros Solaris is a lone wolf in the whole story. Also I don't think that people who are currently running Linux will be very eager to just jump up and switch since all of a sudden Solaris supports Linux binaries.

Re:I doubt it

[hachete]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17627

and

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/0 4/ 1233241&tid=163&tid=155&tid=218

If you join the dots, you might see a survival strategy if the Big Bad Wolf comes a hunting.

h.

Re:I doubt it

[Neil Watson]

You've hit the nail on the head. The days of commercial Unix are numbered. It's sad and tragic. The big commercial Unix vendors have no one to blame but themselves. Unix was powering workstations and servers when Windows was still in its 3.1 days. That was a large lead that they petered away. Instead of spending that time improving their procduct (e.g. making their tools more functional like the GNU tools have become) big Unix sat back and did very little.

• Why didn't Sun fix their tar utility to properly strip '/'?
• Why didn't Sun fix their tar utility to add on the fly compression (-j -z anyone?)?
• Why didn't Sun ever develop a useful packet filtering application instead of relying on the ipfilter whose releases can often be worse than beta quality?
• Why are there so many different bin directories that the environment never pointed to (e.g. /usr/ucb/bin)?
• Sed, Awk, and Vi all had room for improvement. Why did they do nothing?

Re:I doubt it

[njcoder]

"Why didn't Sun fix their tar utility to properly strip '/'? "

A lot of the times, sun doesn't fix stuff so that they can maintain compatability between different versions which is one of their strong selling points. If you don't need that kind of compatability you can use the GNU version.

"Why didn't Sun fix their tar utility to add on the fly compression (-j -z anyone?)?"

I wouldn't call that a "fix" that's a feature that they chose not to implement. Why put it in when people are happy to pipe the compression tools in themselves. It gives them more flexibility to choose the versions they want and it makes it easier for tar by not having to worry about those things. Each utility serves it's purpose and you can use them together. That doesn't mean they should be integrated. So I wouldn't call it broken.

"Why didn't Sun ever develop a useful packet filtering application instead of relying on the ipfilter whose releases can often be worse than beta quality?"

What about SunScreen? In Solaris 10, they're going to have Solaris IP Filter which they claim to be enterprise class. From what I've read there is some shared code between SunScreen and ipfilter. Not sure which way it goes. I read the ipfilter guy licensed code from sun but couldn't confirm it. Also, Sun's main deployment areas are corporate data centers, telco's and isp's. These people use seperate firewalls to secure all their servers. Looks like sun has been coming around to smaller deployment users since at least Solaris 9.

"Why are there so many different bin directories that the environment never pointed to (e.g. /usr/ucb/bin)?"

Again, this is for compatability reasons. /usr/bin is the Sun versions, /usr/bin is the berkley tools, /usr/local/bin is usually where the gnu tools go. One of the best things about sun is their commitment to binary compatability. You can develop on your workstation and deploy on a e25k without making any changes. You can also deploy most applications written for prior versions on new os versions. To facilitate that and still allow people to use other tools, they set up different directories. They're not pointed to because you should only point to them if you need to.

"Sed, Awk, and Vi all had room for improvement. Why did they do nothing?"

Beats me. But you can download the gnu versions of them if you need them. Those three things have never been a bother to me in any work I've done on sun servers.

Re:I doubt it

[njcoder]

"The fact that Sun is abandoning it for IPfilter indicates that don't think SunScreen is very good either."

I've only used SunScreen to play with and I don't have any real opinions. I'm still of the mindset that packets should be filtered before they get to the host. Also just because it didn't come with ipfilter doesn't mean you couldn't put it on there afterwards. Remember, you always had the choice, everything doesn't have to come bundled. What's good is that now Sun is making improvements to IP Filter in their Solaris IP Filter.

"How well has that worked for them?"

You'd have to ask someone at sun. The type of development I do doesn't really make that an issue for me. Though I've seen reports of where it has paid off for the customers. Especially in regards to compatability between workstations and their refridgerator sized servers. One account I read said that he took the drives out of his workstation and put them in an e15k i believe and everything worked perfectly. A lot of the big apps that run on solaris cost many thousands of dollars. Solaris then becomes a good investment for customers. You start out on solaris x, you buy some massive app for 25k, when solaris x+1 comes out and has much better performance you can upgrade the os and still have the app you spent 25k for running. Just like by default the root shell is the bourne shell. scripts written a long time ago will still work in an upgrade.

It's not for people that need to be on the cutting edge. When you look at most corporate development though, they care about stability. They spend millions of dollars building their application. They want a reliable platform to run their apps. The platform doesn't make them money, it's just a place to put what does. It should get better without out requiring them to to change their code.

"How about improving the pager (more)?

I don't care, I like less better. "How about making sure the backspace key works?"

When does it not? I have some sparc boxes and one that runs solaris x86. I haven't had a problem with backspace. It might be the terminal software you're using. Or maybe it's the bourne shell. I like bash. It's been part of the supplemental software cd for a while, as have other shells. Since solaris 9 i beleive it's been installed though it may not be the default.

Re:I doubt it

[ZeekWatson]

I had backspace key issues with Sol 9, x86, out of the box, while sitting at the console.

This is true for HP-UX also. Plug in a HP-UX serial console to one of their "Enterprise" servers (they have no videocard or keyboard port) login and hit backspace. It doesn't work!!!

Sure you can install GNU utilities to get around this but I'll install my GNU utilities with linux, thanks!

Also, Solaris tar is busted in that paths longer than 255 characters are truncated. Solaris tar is a POS.

Re:I doubt it

[0x0d0a]

Btw, when will Linux finally get tools like

I haven't used any of these, but I think that you can get similar functionality for at least some of them (keep in mind I'm going off a quick Google for a description of each Solaris utility). Not familiar with how completely a replacement each is:

pmap

Linux pmap. If, for some reason, your system doesn't have it (can't imagine why; it's part of procps on Fedora Core 2), I imagine that you can get similar data from: /proc/<pid/maps

trapstat

oprofile

lockstat

SGI lockstat

ppgsz

I don't think that the functionality (variable page sizes) that this provides can be provided on x86 hardware, though I reckon if you're running Linux on SPARC, it's a pain.

libumem

There are a *ton* of Linux malloc() replacements and memory debugging tools. I generally use valgrind, but I've used ef, debauch, memprof, and a ton of other similar tools in the past. The standard glibc() malloc provides some basic debugging features as well.

So what has Solaris got?

[Chemisor]

So what does Solaris have that Linux doesn't, except for the hefty price tag? It sure isn't multiprocessing anymore.

Re:So what has Solaris got?

[chegosaurus]

dtrace, zones, zfs, Sun support, source compatibility with Solaris SPARC, better stability (IMHO), and some people just prefer it. And it's not very expenive, if you pay at all.

Re:So what has Solaris got?

[linsys]

What hefty price tag are you talking about??

Soalris 10:
$99 (One-year subscription) - Commercial Use
FREE - NON Commercial

Soalris 9: New Sun Computer Systems. The end user is authorized to use the latest version of the Solaris Operating System (or any other version still commercially offered by Sun) with the new Sun computer system and system board purchased from Sun or an authorized reseller."

And if it's for development, or educational use it's FREE as well.
"

Re:So what has Solaris got?

[ArbitraryConstant]

How about a stable branch? Solaris actually has one.

The only up to date versions of Linux that can touch Solaris in scalability terms are now development versions. It's up to the distros to figure out how to make it stable.

Re:So what has Solaris got?

[stor]

Solaris is still a more stable platform that responds to load very well.

If I was asked what OS to run Oracle on in a large enterprise where rock-solid stability under load is the number one criteria, such as in a financial institution, I'd feel safer with Solaris but wouldn't see Linux as a particularly dangerous choice.

Solaris has had superior (in terms of stability) LVM and VM for instance. This stuff can be important in certain situations.

I have been very impressed thus far with Linux 2.6: it's the most stable and "polished" Linux Kernel series I've experienced. I haven't thrown it in production yet but plan to roll it out on a couple of the least business-critical machines in a few months time.

I think it's inevitable that Linux will surpass Solaris (and all other Operating Systems, for that matter) in almost every way but it's not there yet: Linux has evolved at a fast pace and often features have been merged that didn't turn out well at all, requiring band-aids, re-writes, bug fixes, etc. and causing unknown bugs, regressions and unmaintained code. This seems to have slowed down a lot though. Maybe it's just me but some of the Kernel devs seem a lot more quality-focused and critical now. Praise Andrew Morton.

If over the next year 2.6 keeps impressing me with it's stability, performance and responsiveness under load when I place it in production we could have a winner. Big time.

Cheers
Stor

Re:So what has Solaris got?

[pajs]

Thats certainly not my experience. Dell's service is awful in comparision to sun. We paid for gold sun support (4 hour call out), and a dell's 4 hour contract. Sun turned up with a replacement CPU within 3 hours when the sun system failed. Dell took 2 weeks to even accept that the motherboard was dead. And then took another 2 days before an engineer even turned up. They refused to send an engineeer to diagnose the problem. They also refused our own diagnosis.

(For those intrested, the machine locked solid whenever you tried to use the onboard network card. Dell gave us a program to run on the server that found no faults, but this program didn't even test the networking.)

Re:So what has Solaris got?

[linsys]

I'm sorry but let's do some numbers because I am missing the boat:

MS Environment:
MS XP 2002 - $270.99 x 4,200 PCs = $1,138,158
Norton Anti-Virus 2004 - $36.99 x 4,200 = $155,358
Norton Internet Security - $49.99 x 4,200 = $209,958
Support - $39 x 1 = $39.00 (I figured 2 support tickets web based)

Solaris 10:
Retail price - $99 x 4,200 PCs = $415,800
AntiVirus - None Needed
Internet Security - It's called ipf and it's free
Support - FREE 90 Days

TOTALS:
MS = $1,503,513
Solaris = $415,800

Now this doesn't take into account group discounts, I know volume discounts are available for all products but still we are looking at 1/3 the cost to implement Solaris.

This also doesn't take into account problems like CodeRed, Slapper, or Blaster. I know I was NEVER affected by any of these using Solaris or Linux and my NT team was hammered by calls and problems from inside the company.

This doesn't take into account uptime vs. downtime. I know from EXPERIENCE that Solaris Servers have a much higher availability then Windows Servers, how much money is lost due to downtime is something which has to be handled on a customer by customer basis. We had a billing environment which cost us $1,600 a minute every time it was down.

There is NO comparison here...

I can't wait...

[halivar]

It's just Solaris with glibc.

I can't wait for RMS to start demanding people call it GNU/Solaris.

Re:I can't wait...

[mslinux]

I can't wait for RMS to start demanding people call it GNU/Solaris.

RMS died of a massive heart attack when he discovered that GNU had been certified Unix... He kept mumbling, "How can 'GNU's not Unix' be 'Unix'," while drool ran down his chin.

Re:IOW...

[tekunokurato]

It's a good point, though. Linux will never have any application competitive advantage; only that of its core operating system's reliability, functionality, etc. Any application that will ever be developed for linux will be snatched up by anyone willing to implement a few relatively simple APIs in their OS.

Cheap way to develop for both?

[grunt107]

Although it seems a doomed strategy, Sun could be allowing for an internal Linux development path which they could then back-port' to Solaris, allowing Solaris to expand its portfolio.

This would, IMO, backfire since a potential customer would see Linux as the more influential and therefore desirable IT tool.

Note this is only for Solaris x86

[MojoRilla]

This only works on Solaris x86 machines, which has always been the ugly Solaris step-child.

This seems to me to be a little desperate. Sun seems to be saying that Linux has won, at least in terms of software support.

Re:Note this is only for Solaris x86

[jgardner100]

Well, Solaris has actually allowed this for a long time via lxrun (all that's needed is to translate the linux system calls to Solaris, Xwindows etc remain the same) so all as they are doing is moving it into the kernel. It's a logical step as far as I can see. Does Wine mean that linux lost to Windows, of course not.

Re:Note this is only for Solaris x86

[illumin8]

This only works on Solaris x86 machines, which has always been the ugly Solaris step-child.

Your point is taken, but with the release of full 64-bit Solaris 10 for X86-64 and Sun's new 2-way AMD Opteron workstations, 2 and 4-way Opteron servers, and soon to be released 8-way Opteron servers, Sun is betting the farm on X86-64. The plain and simple truth of the matter is that Opteron offers two to three times the performance of current UltraSparc chips, and I predict that Sun will replace their entire product line, except for the extreme high-end, with Opteron, in the next 5 years.

The other thing you should consider is that more Sysadmins know Solaris than any other flavor of Unix, so giving them the capability of running 64-bit Solaris with 32 or 64-bit Linux applications side-by-side is clearly a winning move on Sun's part. Now, if only they can execute properly. Some of the benchmarks on the new Java Workstations (I don't know why they call them that when they're really just AMD Opteron workstations) have them running the BLAST benchmark on Solaris 10 x86 up to 61 percent faster than a Dell Precision Workstation running Linux.

Given the choice between a 32-bit Dell Xeon workstation with no console port, running Redhat, and a real 64-bit Sun workstation with a console port and everything, running Solaris 10, with full Linux compatibility (or dual-booting to Redhat if I so desire), at a lower price, guess which one I'm going to choose?

Re:Note this is only for Solaris x86

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison with Dell is misleading at best.

Lets make a reality check.

Sun's cash-cow has been the SPARC/Solaris combination. Lately this cash-cow has been doing less and less good and that is why Sun has been in trouble. Making profit on x86 servers is very hard, IBM and HP have very low profit on their x86 business, Dell is doing OK. There is no reason to believe that Sun will be saved with the x86 servers and will not become their next cash-cow.

Add to this the reputation that Sun has as a x86 server vendor. They have a decade of history of downtalking x86.

They need to do something else and they seem to go to a more software and services company route now. That may go OK, but who knows...

Re:Note this is only for Solaris x86

[Cajal]

Well, it's about a year old, but you might want to take a look at this story on osnews that compared RedHat 9 and Solaris 9.

The more *nix Software the better

[njcoder]

When linux first came out they had a Solaris emulation to be able to run apps made for Solaris. These days that are a lot more apps written for linux than there were back when linux first came out (not sure on the ration of software for linux vs solaris just linux then and now).

Open Source Software isn't just Linux and the GNU userland software. It covers a wide range of different software including software that runs on Linux. In the whole sea of OSS, Linux is just a one small part. This is good for OSS projects because they now have the potential for being run on a wider range of platforms without porting issues.

Solaris has always been a good operating system. You can tell the kernel devs know this as well because searching the mailing list you'll see that solaris is referenced more than any other commercial unix. There are comparisons of how the current kernel compares to the solaris kernel as well as trying to figure out how solaris does things.

Solaris 10 is going to have a lot of improvements to it as well. There are a lot of sun hardware out there and still a lot of sun hardware being sold so it helps OSS projects reach further with less work.

For the people that see open source software as only being about Linux, I don't think they'll respond as favorably.

Short Answer

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?

No.

The long answer, Linux adaptation is slow because the FUD says that Linux is too hard, so IT managers avoid it. Linux is only now gaining ground as linux devotees have waged a constant war against that FUD. The FUD sources also say that Sun is too expensive and only caters to those who can afford their proprietary hardware. Sun has not yet begun to fight the PR campaign which it will take to overcome that. My thought is that by the time Sun gains that acceptance Linux will have near equal penetration into the corporate environment as MS.

Community Software (blastwave.org)

[sudohnim]

You've never heard of CSW?

What is blastwave.org?
blastwave.org is a collective effort to create a set of binary packages of free software, that can be automatically installed to a Solaris computer (sparc or x86 based) over the network.

We (CSW) don't provide "Linux apps", but we natively compile and package software for Solaris.

Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?

The power of free software compiled natively for my SPARC has returned Solaris to being my primary desktop. (Now if only I could afford a Blade 2500....)

Re:you mean like...

[zz99]

The Doom 3 Linux port should be out soon if I have my way.

According to the .plan of the ID software CEO there will be a Linux version soon:

Mac and Linux: Unfortunately I don't have dates for either of these. However, Linux binaries will be available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games. More remains to be done for the OSX version of DOOM 3 and that will take some time. We won't release the OSX version until it's just as polished as the PC version. The date for OSX DOOM 3 remains "when it's done", but I can confirm that it's definitely coming.

News of the Weird

[Onimaru]

I find myself wondering what Sun's strategy is. I mean, they go to battle with MS, enter a closed room, and come out best buds. Then they rail against FOSS in favor of open standards and threaten to do a hostile takeover on a leading Linux company. So then you think they've gotten a big check and become a patsy, right?

And throughout this blustering, they put forward the idea that through buying Novell they can somehow "own" the OS IBM is married to, which is kind of missing the point of Linux, but right in line with SCO's claims

Then they come out with news like this. As far as I can tell, their reasoning goes like this:

1. Microsoft's business practices are bad
2. But Microsoft is good
3. Open source is bad, you should run software implementing open standards instead
4. Especially since someone could buy your open source and yank it out from under you (but not your open standard)
5. But hey, if you want to run FOSS, we'll support your doing that.

Has anyone checked for schizophrenia?

Re:News of the Weird

[Stinking Pig]

Their strategy is to be the Unix king again. They're slowly building up resources to make themselves an amenable home for all the FOSS geeks. Then when Microsoft comes out with all guns blazing in the patent litigation war, they'll be a safe haven because of the agreements signed.

Re:News of the Weird

[Cajal]

Sun never threatened to buy Novell. It was essentially a random musing in a blog post by Schwartz that got blown way out of proportion.

Finally

[Nailer]

Solaris can be considered a real Linux ;^)

Application/OS Security?

[akaiONE]

The thing I quite don't get a grip on here is how Sun can claim that Solaris is so much safer when it now can run Linux-applications. For years Sun have been preaching that applications they have are better and more secure. When they now comply with the LSB, wouldn't that make their OS just as "insecure" as Linux supposedly are in their views?

Their webpage says:
"You can safely run Solaris and Linux applications side by side in the same container, or you can configure separate containers that isolate Solaris and Linux applications from each other and from system faults. If an application fault occurs and the application needs to be restarted, other applications continue to run without interruption. ".

Okay, let's look at this. You can now run Solaris and Linux-applications side by side - This would mean a security breach in their previous views then? Or, you can choose to lock the Linux-applications away in their own container - This seem much more in line with previous statements from Sun.

"Unlike technology previously available for running Linux in other non-Linux environments, Project Janus functionality is kernel-integrated and supported as an operating system feature."

So, this LSB-compliance are kernel-integrated, and yet they claim Solaris is more secure than Linux? Can someone please help me out on this? I'll try to investigate myself, but I am not sure what I will find, as Solaris for now, still are, closed source.

Re:IOW...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. However, why would this be a bad thing? The whole reason I moved to Linux was to avoid lock-in. If they port apps from Linux to Windows/Solaris/etc, yes, it's one less reason to move to Linux but it's also one less reason to stay on Windows/Solaris/etc.

Which apps, exactly?

[YellowBook]

Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?

Which apps would those be, exactly? Just about everything significant that's available for Linux is available as source, and most of those build with autoconf and GNU tools for portability, so installation on Solaris is just a 'configure; make; make install' away.

There are a handful of proprietary applications for Linux that might be relevant, but I'd guess most of these are back-office type things that probably already have Solaris versions. That just leaves things like the Flash plugin, and I simply can't see that sort of thing as being very important.

Re:Which apps, exactly?

[JamesKPolk]

You'd be amazed at how much non-portable garbage GNU-using developers cram into applications. Gratuitous GNUisms all over the place...

Just browse through the patches in a BSD ports collection sometime if you want to see what I mean.

Re:Which apps, exactly?

[chegosaurus]

Absolutely. A couple of years ago Sun made a big song and dance about lxrun, which I guess is somewhere at the base of this thing, and in all my travels as a Solaris consultant I never happened across *anyone* who had used it.

I think maybe linux has a more up-to-date Acrobat reader than Solaris, so I might use it for that. Nothing else springs to mind though.

BTW,there's already a port of the flash plugin for Sol x86, and it works just fine.

Re:Which apps, exactly?

[upsidedown_duck]

The ultimage gnutastic gnuventure: compiling GNUCash under Solaris. Not only is GNUCash a GNOME app, it's a GNOME 1.4 app, and libtool just barfs all over the place with doubly-listed libraries and unfound libraries. Bleh. There's a reason why pre-compiled GNUCash versions for Solaris seem to be stuck at 1.6. I did finally manage to get version 1.6.x compiled, but even then the graphing features segfaulted.

OS/2 and Unixware anyone?

[M1FCJ]

Oh well, it didn't help OS/2 around 1995, it didn't hel Unixware around 2000. Why would such a move help Solaris in 2004/5? People never learn from other's mistakes and have to experience failure themselves all the time.

If you want your applications to run anywhere, use something truly portable. Java? PHP? Perl? ANSI C? Yes...

Darl Will Sue

[Perl-Pusher]

Isn't this just a "Linux Personality Kit" for Solaris? Is Sun infringing on SCO's IP? I can hear attack dog Darl growling in the distance. And the voice of his master Bill Gates saying 'Down Boy! We already own them!'

All Propriety Solutions Welcome?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?

No.

What does Slashdot have with this fallacy about something saving Sun? Sun's hardware is expensive - why should I buy another piece of proprietary hardware? Sun's OS isn't GPL'd (insert your favorite license) - why should I buy yet another piece of proprietary Software? Some say Sun has Java - yet another piece of proprietary software. No Sun has to compete in the open market - sink or swim.

For the curious

[Sebby]

I tried to find the original article mentioning it but could only find this, which indicates it was originally mentioned on MacOSRumors (wow! they're actually back!).

Re:Apache

[chegosaurus]

How about getting someone who knows what they're doing to come in to compile it for you? Apache, PHP and all their dependencies shouldn't take more than half a day for any decent admin to build from source. And they can use Sun's great compilers (soon to be available for Linux) instead of gcc.

Re:There was a beta version once !

[zz99]

Until Adobe started killing Framemaker, it was widely used as a word processor in multi os environments.

It didn't look great. It wasn't the most intuitive program. It wasn't the fastest. But it worked on all platforms, and the documents could be opened, edited, printed and saved on all platforms.

We put all our project documentation in it, due to our various OSes.

Now that Adobe no longer seems interested in supporting multiple platforms, we are migrating away.

Re:There was a beta version once !

[hcdejong]

There was a demand, just not at the price point Adobe wanted (FrameMaker is about $800 for the Windows version, $ 1400 for Solaris). IIRC the user survey showed Linux users expected it to be free.
It's a pity, FrameMaker still is one of the best tools around (and the most accessible) for long-document publishing, even if Adobe has been neglecting it forever.

Re:No

[mccalli]

As a developer it is a pretty easy choice to make...

Yes, it's the easy choice for these developers to make. It's not the correct one though - the correct one would be to figure out your environment and build accordingly.

For example, thanks to the wonders of "./configure ; make" I now build similar software for the three Unix environments I regularly use - SPARC Solaric, x86 Debian and OS X (PPC). Never have to worry about 'personalities', it just gets compiled and run.

It certainly is about developers, but it's about those developers becoming less sloppy and making fewer assumptions about environment. In many cases the sloppiness I refer to is entirely understandable: it was a pet project, only had to run in one environment, they only had access to x86 Lionux to test under etc.. All good arguments, but they don't really apply to the kind of applications you're likely to be running on your Solaris servers. These will be mostly custom-ordered vendor jobs, and the vendors should know better.

Cheers,
Ian
(Oh, and hi Ben - fancy running into you here. I'm the person who helped you out with your old Mac format floppies).

Re:What about Fink?

[Sebby]

Right, but there might be some stuff that isn't - not all software is open source, though I really don't know of any Linux-only software not available on other platforms too, but I guess it could happen...

Just think of it as Wine for Linux apps.

useless

[wobblie]

Of course, Sun is not talking about free software here ... it's easy enough to get any of that running on solaris.

They're talking about the software - proprietary - from vendors of theirs that are switching to linux because it's a cheaper (and better) platform for most apps. So, I really must ask, what is the point?

Solaris will - for the forseeable future - still be king on the mid to high end server end. They're talking here about workstation apps in the scientific and engineering realms which are moving wholesale to linux. So in essence Sun is saying here "you can run your linux apps on your legacy Sun workstations", and not much else. It's a nice gesture, but it is no earth shaker.

Re:useless

[Cajal]

Not really, Sun was a major workstation company in the mid and late '80s, long before the .bomb days. Sun made a lot of many during the .com craze, but they were a major player before that as well.

As for Solaris/x86, I'm sorry, but the facts just don't back you up. When Sun most recently tried to kill Solaris/x86, it was the user community who compalined to Sun to get it back. See the thread here for more info. Further, if you look at Blastwave's main mirror stats, you'll see that the x86 packages are downloaded quite a lot (granted, not as much as the sparc packages). See here and here.

As for Linux on SPARC, I have tried it. Over the years, I've had about a dozen SPARC machines, both 32- and 64-bit. Some versions of Linux were slightly faster on older 32-bit machines, but even on something as old as an Ultra 2, Solaris is a faster, especially the newer versions.

This may be a new SUNrise.... or maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a presentation from SUN yesterday on Solaris 10.

Essentially Solaris 10 is going to be a huge change. SUN states they are aiming to be the best UNIX solution out there. With the amount of money they are spending/investing in developing Solaris 10 I believe they are making a very good attempt.

1. Linux apps will run on Solaris 10 on Intel/Sparc. Someone said this is just for X86.
2. DTrace a developer's sweetheart.
3. A new filesystem that will be much better than UFS
4. N1 Grid Containers. Making that purchase of the big iron more attractive. Equivalent to LPAR on mainframe.
5. Even better Multi-Processor efficiency. Linux is making good ground here but Solaris still is years ahead on many cpu's.
6. Of course, more efficient OS, better tcp/ip stack, security, etc. etc. The things you expect to improve with a new OS.

In my opinion, Solaris 10 if it meets what they
are marketing will prove itself. If not, watch
the SUN set.....

Re:Apache

[linsys]

What complexity of getting php to work??

If you can't run:

rpm -Uvh php-4.3.8-2.1.i386.rpm then it's hard?

and

rpm -Uvh apache2-2.0.47-1.7.2.i386.rpm

then it's HARD???

Try this:

1) Visit Apache's Web Site

2) Download httpd-2.0.50.tar.gz

3) Build Apache:

1. gzip -d httpd-2_0_NN.tar.gz
2. tar xvf httpd-2_0_NN.tar
3. gunzip php-NN.tar.gz
4. tar -xvf php-NN.tar
5. cd httpd-2_0_NN
6. ./configure --enable-so
7. make
8. make install

4) Visit the PHP Web Site
5) Download php-4.3.8.tar.gz

1. gtar zxvf php-4.3.8.tar.gz
2. ./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --with-mysql
3. make
4. make install
5. cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini

6) Configure httpd.conf

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml

7) Start Apache /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

Re:you mean like...

[Tony Hoyle]

If you really want developers to consider Linux as a viable to Windows, then the first thing that should be done is to make it easy to port projects designed for MFC/Visual Studio into KDdevelop projects.

Uhh Why?

MFC is dead. It hasn't been updated since version 4.2 and even MS don't use it any more. It was a hideous abortion to start with anyway.

Porting a project that's written properly is trivial - I write multiplatform stuff all the time . If your code is correctly written then it'll run anywhere with minor tweaks (it's no coincidence that doom3 can reach Linux so fast... it's because ID have programmers that are actually half decent).

Conspiracy Theorist

[ylon]

I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but this seems a little interesting.

First the SCO/Microsoft connections, then the Microsoft/Sun settlement... Now this? It seems odd to me that they are running in this direction in light of all of the Linux hoopla that's going around. Just look at "City of Munich Freezes Its Linux Migration" posted a little bit ago here. It almost seems like they are trying to put themselves into the position of snatching up those who are wavering on the Linux/licensing front.

Errr...

[Ayanami Rei]

I think the point of the linux compatibility layer is to run COTS linux binaries, not stuff you can ./configure; make; make install. Because I think that'd be sort of dumb... don't you? Why not run native...

Re:IOW...

[oldmanmtn]

You're an idiot.

Just as a simple, grade A, introductory issue: How does a Linux application issue a system call? Using int80. How does a Solaris application issue a system call? Using syscall, sysenter, or lcall depending on the application and the version of the OS.

The two OSes don't even agree on the basic mechanism by which applications can communicate with the kernel. And you think it's just a matter of putting glibc on the CD. Put down the keyboard and go back to CS101 until you learn something.

OS Diversity

[akinsgre]

The negative, among most posters, makes me wonder if OS diversity is good as long as all OSes are Linux:')

Sun has lost ground because their OS/Hardware solution is comparatively expensive; not necessarily because Solaris is not a capable OS.

It just amuses me that Windows homogeneity is bad; but Linux everywhere is good.

The "GNU" part of GNU/Linux

[shatfield]

This is why the "GNU" part of "GNU/Linux" should NOT be forgotten. People in the Microsoft mind-set immediately think that "Linux" is what they see when they look at a screenshot of X11 running KDE. The situation really sinks in when you realize that Linux is just the kernel, and they could be looking at *BSD, or even Darwin (Mac OS X's base), running X11 and KDE. Why not Solaris? Solaris is going one further though -- how about not having to recompile those apps that have been compiled to run on Linux? Very cool stuff indeed... especially if/when they open source Solaris! If they do it right (meaning - GPL compatible), then we'll see "GNU/Solaris", and Stallman will have a whole new name to complain about...

Re:The "GNU" part of GNU/Linux

[Perl-Pusher]

This is why the "GNU" part of "GNU/Linux" should NOT be forgotten. People in the Microsoft mind-set immediately think that "Linux" is what they see when they look at a screenshot of X11 running KDE

So is it GNU/KDE now? Since when did the GNU foundation claim ownership of KDE? If Stallman wants to call it GNU linux fine, but really shouldn't it be "KDE/GNOME/GNU/X.org/And a whole shitload of university students & profs/Many other bright people/Nasa ethernet drivers/NSA Security Enhancements/Linux"?

Re:IOW...

[jonabbey]

Mmmm.. but the vast majority of syscalls made on a Linux system are made by glibc. They'd have to tweak the syscall interface in glibc for Solaris, but an adapted glibc would still be one of the defining features for Linux API compatibility.

WHAT Linux apps?

[JessLeah]

This is not a troll; I'm a Linux user and have been since 1995, and I run Debian (so you know I'm a true blue old-skool dork, not some MS shill). But really-- WHAT apps? All the Linux apps worth running, with probably under a dozen exceptions, are either:

1) Already available for Solaris
...or...
2) Open-source and thus available for immediate porting

Come on. Think of the commercial closed-source stuff that's available for Linux, but not Solaris.

1) VMWare.
2) Uhh... VMWare.
3) Umm ..... VMWare?
4) Ohyeah. VMWare Server.

Oh, and *laugh*Accelerated-X*laugh*. Seriously. Who the heck uses that?

Oh, and maybe some random assorted browser plug-ins. Anything else? Anybody? Hello? ... didn't think so.

Seriously, why is this even worth Sun's time?! If I were a Sun shareholder (which I would never do, now that they have a "technology sharing" agreement with MS and are all buddy-buddy after accepting a settlement bribe from MS... well, I'd be frothing at the mouth even more than I am now. ;)

Actually...

[devphil]

I've used both Linux and Solaris for development for years. Was a sysadmin for both types of systems as well. And my dream operating system is something along the lines of GNU/Solaris.

Meaning it the same way that wackjob RMS means it: the GNU userspace utilities, with the Solaris kernel. I /really/ like some of the things that Solaris offers, but I vastly prefer the GNU command-line utils. Putting them together would make a nice, nice system.

Re:Actually...

[oldmanmtn]

Done (or at least getting there). Next time you're on a Solaris box, look in /usr/sfw/bin. Solaris now ships with bash (in /usr/bin) and GNU tar, grep, wget, texinfo, gs, ncftp (OK, not GNU but still usefull), and mozilla.

Re:No

[jonadab]

> the correct one would be to figure out your environment and build accordingly

No, the correct way is to build your software so that it makes no significant
difference what platform it's running on. With modern languages and libraries
and toolkits this is getting closer and closer to actually being possible.
(Think: Parrot and wxWindows.)

Re:What about Fink?

[walt-sjc]

Easy porting misses the point. One of the HUGE advantages of Linux is that it runs just about everywhere from watches, PDA's, desktop, servers, mainframes, to massive clusters. IBM realizes this, just as they realized the same concept with Java (which is why they do more with java than Sun does.) Getting somthing written on Intel linux to run on PowerPC Linux is trivial compared to porting from Linux to OSX.

Re:What about Fink?

[walt-sjc]

While it's fairly trivial to get stuff to run on OSX, getting it to run as a native OSX app is a whole different ballgame. OpenOffice is a great example of this.

just a few days ago

[Knights who say 'INT]

Someone wondered if Linux would ever get certified as an UNIX.

Well, this is a true Unix getting certified as a Linux!

We are actually winning. Amazing.

Multiprocessor efficiency

[vlad_petric]

The reason Solaris does so well on many processors is because Sun's strategy regarding "big iron" was "ultraslows, but many". It's very true that their target workloads (server-based) can exploit multiprocessing easily. Having good support for multiprocessors was simply crucial for the platform.

In the x86 world things are quite different. Having been a desktop-oriented architecture for a long time, the main x86 chips (Opteron/Pentium IV) are pretty much the best these days at executing single-threaded stuff (see spec.org if you don't believe me). Multiprocessing was more of an "after-thought" than an initial requirement. Consequently, you can easily get 4-way SMPs for x86s, but not more than that (Sun AFAIK scales considerably better).

This reflects on x86 OSes as well. There's not that much need to do well on more than 8 execution contexts (4way SMP x2 - hyperthreading), and consequently having an operating system that scales better won't have that much of an impact on x86. Sure, in the "big iron" category things will be different, but not for the dominant architecture

This is the issue they're already facing

[Xtifr]

One word: Oracle. The database giant says, "Sun is our primary and recommended platform," and Sun enjoys a decade of dominance in the server market. Then Oracle says, "Linux is now our primary and recommended platform," and suddenly Sun is struggling to make ends meet. Coincidence? I think not.

Go to www.oracle.com and click on "technologies". What do you see? You see Linux (and, to be fair, Windows). What don't you see? You don't see Solaris. Hmmm....

Re:SCO, Phase II

[swordgeek]

You're missing a key point here, I believe.

There are cases where people need Sun, and Sun apps. Lots of Geophysical apps run only on Solaris/Sparc right now. However, people might also want Linux apps, so making them available on the already mandatory Sun gear will keep some people gruntled.

Ultimately, you're right--if Linux compatibility is wanted, Linux is generally going to be the best solution in a vacuum. However if Linux compatibility is wanted on top of other requirements, then a compromise like this is better than having two machines on your desk.

Re:No

[addaon]

Unless your software is one of those 'modern languages and libraries and toolkits'.