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

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.

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.

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.

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?

[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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

[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...

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.

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!'

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: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.

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.

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: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...

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: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.