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Will Open Source Solaris Kill Linux?
Scott_Blayney writes "This guy contends that now that Sun is releasing Solaris 10 under an open source license, Linux will begin to wane in popularity. To quote, "Linux will probably not grow much beyond its current market share of about 10 % leaving Red Hat and especially Novell with a big problem."
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And, you know Sun still hasn't open-sourced the thing. And, Sun still don't have said what license they'll use or explained how they'll get around SCO /Novell's IP claims on the Unix core of Solaris.
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I, for one, have gotten as tired of hearing about wonderful open source Solaris will be as I have about how wonderful Longhorn will be.
Until, I've got the open-source code in my hands, I really don't want to hear more about open source Solaris.
For more of my ranting on the subject, see:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1645508,00
Steven
This is what Netcraft has to say about his site:
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for www.yeald.com
http://www.yeald.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 17-Nov-2004 18:00:38 GMT - refresh now FAQ
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Linux Apache/1.3.27 (Linux/SuSE) mod_jk/1.2.2-dev mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6i mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a 17-Nov-2004 213.95.11.10 YEALD AG
John
Their server is slow as all hell right now (big suprise), so here's the text of the article:
Let me start by saying that I'm not a technical expert. Although this might be a handicap it could very well be a positive in looking at the issue of Sun versus Linux in the server business from a decision maker's point of view.
Until today, the discussion around Linux pushed by Red Hat and recently by Novell after it took over Suse has been around the risks and opportunitites of the open source model versus the costs and slow adaptation of the proprietary model.
Opponents of open source software always argued that due to its nature there is a risk that version control, compatibility, future development and support is not guaranteed and could leave companies who use it at some point with a free but outdated system that is difficult to maintain.
Companies like Red Hat and Novell and on occasion other big players have tried to take away these arguments by committing to the open source model and vowed to make it work. Despite their efforts and some success, there still is a lot of skepticism within corporate IT departments and as a result Linux is not taking the market by storm.
With the decision by Sun to give away their latest version of their software, Solaris 10 for free all of these concerns have evaporated in one blow in favor of the now open source and compatible Solaris 10 supported by Sun.
Looking at the advantage of going the Sun route versus the Linux route it is hard to see why any IT executive would chose to switch to Linux.
- The Solaris software is of proven quality and at least equal or better then Linux and the open source model will assure that it stays up there.
- By making it work with competing hardware platforms, there is no reason anymore to switch software to facilitate lower hardware costs.
- Sun with Solaris has already a large installed base and by becoming free and open source there is no reason for existing Solaris users to switch to Linux.
- Sun has a proven reputation in terms of quality of support. This should be at least as good or better then that of the Linux supporters.
- Because Sun by default is the only designated party managing the open source software, there will be no risk of a version bonanza with multiple incompatible versions.
Again as a non technical person, the decision for me would be simple, I would go with Solaris unless I was already using Linux; Why take risks when I can choose a proven, high quality solution at comparable costs?
As a result Linux will probably not grow much beyond its current market share of about 10 % leaving Red Hat and especially Novell with a big problem
Of course I might very well be overlooking something here, if so, please let me and other readers know by posting your opinion in a reaction (see below).
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/lib and /usr/lib are separate for similar reasons. /lib holds system libraries, while /usr/lib holds user-installed libraries. It makes threat containment easier.
This is the sort of stuff Schwartz is talking about when he mentions military-grade security. Linux has stressed usability over this sort of security (which I don't mind), and, interestingly enough, linking sh to ksh and linking /lib to /usr/lib makes Solaris more Linux-ish. Also, many hardcore Solaris admins would regard it as a security hole and, if you're running the servers for the NSA or Wall Street, it probably is.
Another one bites the dust
Sun's main strength is that many commercial users (Ford, Boeing, ...) want a single vendor to support all the hardware and software used by projects that are scheduled to last three years or more.
As commercial CAD users, they will only consider hardware that is officially certified by the 3D CAD application developers. That usually requires a strict combination of memory chips, CPU's, motherboard, and graphics accelerator. They're not concerned about legacy hardware being supported, so long as E-mail, video conferencing and the required applications run on competitively priced systems with 24/7 support.
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FWIW, maybe /bin/sh is ksh on Solaris 10, but for 8 and 9 its the same as 'jsh' and 'pfsh'.
/bin/*sh |sort /bin/jsh /bin/pfsh /bin/sh /bin/hash /bin/csh /bin/pfcsh /bin/zsh /bin/tcsh /bin/remsh /bin/rsh /bin/bash /bin/ksh /bin/pfksh /bin/rksh
/bin/*sh | sort /bin/ksh /bin/pfksh /bin/rksh /bin/zsh /bin/hash /bin/csh /bin/pfcsh /bin/tcsh /bin/ssh /bin/bash /bin/remsh /bin/rsh /bin/jsh /bin/pfsh /bin/sh
Solaris 8~% md5sum
0aa519c150a641a2f0866f7ec2a81c79
0aa519c150a641a2f0866f7ec2a81c79
0aa519c150a641a2f0866f7ec2a81c79
26da69be334032474540bd7fba23922d
3978b31fe3b6f4fbdc7acd945b9a7423
3978b31fe3b6f4fbdc7acd945b9a7423
643c4ec5daffb9338ffa68f85929645c
8c4e65a677d13878aac992f27e5351c4
b6ee7579f76c5a1ed52d6f37b4295832
b6ee7579f76c5a1ed52d6f37b4295832
c784b19d0034235fbf6de2accc6e86b6
f2c98edc629467f3c345ee3509c7a156
f2c98edc629467f3c345ee3509c7a156
f2c98edc629467f3c345ee3509c7a156
Solaris 9:%~ md5sum
10433da819587b7fa048aa9def39b830
10433da819587b7fa048aa9def39b830
10433da819587b7fa048aa9def39b830
2c85535533d77c5757fc142576c5b620
2fb1c3bc52d8dcc697ed739dc199887a
311eca11e7b1db0268627154021253f9
311eca11e7b1db0268627154021253f9
d0b3a22ce2d1a0fd121ca638e28c3193
d19fcb5721f174c04452e2f745ca444b
d4addcaa023939d52b642ae188f91a3d
eee4155f2b21587a8b6313eabcbcf00d
eee4155f2b21587a8b6313eabcbcf00d
fccecdca8a2543f7b8f7b306a9365f9a
fccecdca8a2543f7b8f7b306a9365f9a
fccecdca8a2543f7b8f7b306a9365f9a
Also, I believe that ksh is significantly different enough from what is expected from sh that this is unlikely in any Solaris release. Unless there is some argv[0] checking and compatability mode enabled, but what is the point of that?
/lib and /usr/lib are separate for similar reasons. /lib holds system libraries, while /usr/lib holds user-installed libraries. It makes threat containment easier.
The "usr" in "/usr" stands for Unix System Resources, it's not short for "user". User-installed binaries and libraries belong in "/usr/local/".
"/" should contain only the binaries and libraries that are needed to boot the system, and "/usr" should contain all other vendor-supplied binaries and libraries.
Actually /bin/sh is *not* stripped down - there wasn't anything to begin with! The shell is so bare-bones because it is the original Bourne shell (+- some fixes). There was no readline, not tab completion, not even proper line editting at the time when the shell was created.
\No, "usr" stands for "user". In fact, the three letters came around because K&R couldn't stand to type "user", "source", "binaries", "shell", "list", "copy", "move", or a billion other little things. I submit to you, sir, that someone has royally yanked your chain.
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The "usr" in "/usr" stands for Unix System Resources
Sorry, but no.
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