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Torvalds on Opening Solaris
An anonymous reader sent in a link to this interview with Linus Torvalds, where the questions center on Sun's movement toward the open source world (and Linus' dismissive view of the threat posed by Solaris), as well as a few questions about 2.7 and the future of Linux.
That's just the perfect reply. If you've accomplished something great, don't be humble - that's fake - but state the facts and stay grounded.
What I don't understand is how this guy keeps himself grounded...
The owls are not what they seem
I wouldn't be suprised if Sun came out with a responce to this article. I mean Linus essentially just called thier operating system a joke. I wonder what kind of responce Sun will have to that.
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!
In my past life I was an SCO engineer (yeah hate me for it, but it was waaaay back)... and the more Linux evolved--disassociated from UNIX--the more I loved it. Posix/SUS was meant to be a basis for a manufacturer-neutral standard system interface. Linux kernel/gblic internals have been extraordinarily creative in working toward that rationale.
Sigs cause cancer.
Does anyone have a digitally signed copy of this article? How else can I trust this Tovald's guy with my computer?
I think Linus is being a bit too dismissive towards Solaris. Sure it's not going to completely crush Linux like McNealy wants to believe, but if it ends up being good enough it could slow down the growth of Linux and become a major competitor on x86.
Exactly
I mean, I thought everything going open-source was something people would love, especially a popular OS like Solaris(dont give me garbage about Solaris dying, It is still a rather popular OS in many segments(for example my school's CS program uses Sun computers with Solaris))
This kind of attitude is rather how should I say, Arrogant.
You raise a good point, and I agree wholeheartedly. I think that seeing how other people are doing things and getting exposure to new ideas is important in all walks of life, including programming. I definately understand the reason of not having enough time, but just not wanting to check it out doesn't sit with me well.
> Linux has never been about "others"
By "others" he means Unix, and by "has never" he means "has always"
Surely if you like the idea of standing on the shoulders of giants, there might be some handy ideas in Solaris. Why ignore it?
Because I personally don't think they have anything left worth taking after I've applied the general Unix principles. I really do think Linux is the better system by now, in all the ways that matter.
But more importantly, if I'm wrong, that's OK. People who know Solaris better than I do will tell me and other people about the great things they offer. To try to figure it out on my own would be a waste of time.
Just a paragraph below your quote. And it's not like he dictates every move for Linux. If there are (and on Solaris/SPARC there sure are) better things in Solaris than Linux, I'm sure he'd welcome any improvement suggestions.
I have recently attended a talk at our local NOVA (Northern Virginia) LUG by Harry Foxwell focused on Solaris 10. And while Harry is a respected scientist and a great presenter, I couldn't help noticing some things that were not exactly in the Open Source spirit if you will. The talk was 90% about Solaris Containers (aka Zones or N1 Grid Containers), and being a believer of giving credit where credit is due, I was somewhat disheartened not to hear ony mention of FreeBSD jails and several statements about how Solaris Zones are primarily based not on any OSS work, but rather prior Sun work on Trusted Solaris. While I believe the Trusted Solaris stuff was partly true (in Linux this is called capabilities, BTW (POSIX 1003.1e/1003.2c)), it wouldn't hurt to briefly mention the origins of the concept of separation, FreeBSD jails, and the fact the Linux Vserver provides the same functionality for Linux (Linux Vserver was mentioned, followed by some condescending analogy of Linux and transformer robots and how Linux developers can "transform" Linux into supporting anything.) The truth of the matter is that FreeBSD jails appeared in 1999, Linux Vserver in September of 2001 and Solaris Zones in 2002. The talk could also use less of "Solaris is for real, Linux is not" comments, especially considering this is a talk at a Linux User Group.
The bottom line is - I salute Sun open sourcing Solaris, but they still need to work on improving the attitude towards other open source OS's, particularly Linux and FreeBSD. The strategy of insisting that Solaris is just better, isn't going to get Sun very far, simply because it isn't true in many respects.
Just a paragraph below your quote. And it's not like he dictates every move for Linux. If there are (and on Solaris/SPARC there sure are) better things in Solaris than Linux, I'm sure he'd welcome any improvement suggestions.
That doesn't take away it's downright arrogant to say you don't need anything the competitors might offer, and really, any other commercial-software spokesman would be modded +5 Ignorant.
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
I would recommend other Slashdot members to read this article, probably one of the best interviews I've had the pleasure of reading about Linus. The comments he made would benefit any open source project leader and stress once again that a successful open source project is one where "People need to feel involved...If anybody feels like somebody is just a passenger, that's bad for everybody." Other comments about incremental improvements and Not Invented Here (NIH) Syndrome are worth reading too. Don't let the title about Solaris confuse you, and its nice to know Linus didn't resort to mud slinging, which is very common from the Sun camp...
We received a Sun Blade 2500 running Solaris 9 with an NMR that our company bought. I thought it would be cool to learn some Solaris. I was very disappointed. The software seems to make no sense, the provided applications are old ( it comes with Netscape 4.7x as the only provided browser). I was surprised to have been so under whelmed. Sun seems to be SO conservative in regards to their software that they seem to be paralyzed. I fired up Netscape 4.7x to find some answers on questions I had about the OS and when I hit a site that used JAVA the browser told me that the version of Netscape I was running didn't support the version of JAVA the Webpage was using!! This is what came with a standard install of Solaris? I am much more comfortable with Linux and so understand I am a bit biased, but I just don't see SUN and Solaris being a threat to Linux unless they really put out a better product bundled with more current software.
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This attitude is perfectly fine for any Solaris release prior to 10. However, Sun has made massive strides both in performance and hardware support, especially on the AMD64 platform.
Furthermore, he completely dodged the questions about containers, DTrace, and ZFS. While these are all fancy names for things which are also available in Linux, the truth of the matter is the Linux counterparts cannot hold a candle to any of these features in Solaris. Here's a quick run down:
Containers: Solaris's new virtualization mechanism. Containers have a special kernel image which is able to communicate with the main system kernel entirely in kernel space. This is somewhat similar to the approach taken by the Xen virtual machine, except that Xen does it at a much lower level. Solaris containers may be thought of as somewhere between a Linux kernel instance running in Xen on top of another Linux kernel and BSD jails. It certainly is nothing like UML, where the UML kernel is running in process context and thus performs rather pathetically.
ZFS: This integrates all the features of a high end filesystem and high end volume manager into a single package. Unfortunately, this will only be available a few months after Solaris 10 General Availability, but once it hits expect tools like VxFS and the Veritas Volume Manager to be rendered thoroughly obsolete on the Solaris side. Linux certainly has many interesting filesystems with cool whiz-bang features, many of which aren't implemented in ZFS, but on the flip side ZFS has many features tuned towards the enterprise market which are seen in very few Linux filesystems, most notably XFS.
DTrace: While a bit obtuse for the time being, a simple demonstration of its power must be seen. The main advantage DTrace has over Linux alternatives such as KProbes, besides being massively more powerful, is that there is no performance impact on the system when they are not in use. DTrace probes are inserted into the kernel when needed and removed when not, whereas KProbes require they statically be built into the kernel.
Conclusion: There is a considerable amount of feature parity between Linux and Solaris 10, but the Solaris features all have an edge over the Linux ones. Linus should not let his hubris cloud his judgement... I expect Solaris 10 to be a major competator to Linux in the low end SMP server market.
Right now running Linux (or FreeBSD) on AMD64 has you flying by the seat of your pants a bit... it's certainly not polished and there are a number of caveats and gotchas to watch out for. Contrarily Solaris 10/AMD64, especially on Sun's own hardware, runs like a dream. I expect Solaris 10 to thoroughly decimate Linux in the Opteron server market.
There are still a number of areas where Linux is still playing catch up to Solaris as well, most notably in the realm of schedulers. While Linux 2.6 now sports a constant time scheduler like Solaris has had for a half decade, Solaris still supports modular schedulers which can be swapped in and out, can be active simultaneously, and processes can be moved between them. One of the most notable ones fo
This, and some replies here seem to act like Solaris enters the OSS world as an enemy that we can now more fully pick apart and find the flaws of to mock them. Kinda disheartening, if that's the angle people are going to take on it.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Why does Solaris have to be seen as a "threat"? A threat to whom, exactly?
I don't understand. It still baffles me whenever this kind of mentality gurgles up, like when Jimmy Wales said that Britannica would be "crushed out of existence" as if that should be one of Wikipedia's goals. What, is Britannica somehow a net negative on the world?
Come on, get a grip.
Another one bites the dust
So is making stupid judgement calls without reading the article.
From the article
People who know Solaris better than I do will tell me and other people about the great things they offer. To try to figure it out on my own would be a waste of time.
Linus doesn't know the OS or the codebase and plans to leave the analysis in the hands of the experts.
He's busy. There's nothing arrogant about that.
Agile Artisans
That doesn't take away it's downright arrogant to say you don't need anything the competitors might offer, and really, any other commercial-software spokesman would be modded +5 Ignorant.
He doesn't say he doesn't need anything from Sun Solaris. Instead, he says that he doesn't think Solaris has anything left worth taking. He goes on to say, from the article, "But more importantly, if I'm wrong, that's OK. People who know Solaris better than I do will tell me and other people about the great things they offer. To try to figure it out on my own would be a waste of time." Yeah, a lot of arrogance there.
REDMOND, WASHINGTON: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stated today that he has a rather dismal view of competing operating systems, Linux and Sun Microsystem's Solaris.
"If Torvalds is dismissive of Solaris, then I'm dismissive of Solaris and Linux. We're all emperors, of sorts, you know, it's just that we all have different styles of government," Mr. Gates said.
He continued, "My rule of Microsoft is oligarchical, obviously. I just work to prop up the share value enough so that the peasantry doesn't get uppity. I secretly have better things to do than play with my peons, if you know what I mean."
When pressed to further his analogy for Solaris and Linux, Mr. Gates stated, "Sun Microsystems is like Russia is now, or maybe China. They see that it's beneficial to appeal to...certain kinds of people in order to maintain solvency and growth. It's still autocratic at its root, but there is this illusion of free-market gallantry and an embrace of hitherto unembraced principles that appeals to certain kinds of people. Sort of like, 'do whatever you want, but we still own it and you.'"
Sun Microsystems is open-sourcing its Solaris operating system in a similar manner to Linux.
About Linux, Mr. Gates said, "Linux is like the United States with a small federal government that still retains enough power to break the whole thing up, but usually just stands back and helps the children play. Linux guides its adherents in a Jeffersonian grand experiment in freedom and it will be interesting to see if the ideological descendants continue to steer the ship in the same direction, so to speak."
When asked why he wanted to comment today, Gates said, "I personify my company, so, doesn't it make sense that I don't think too kindly of upstart Linux and grandma Solaris -- operating systems that are little more than pale blue dots in a galaxy of Windows?"
C'mon, of course Torvalds is a Solaris skeptic!:)
Solaris/x86 is a joke, last I heard. (It has) very little support for any kind of strange hardware. If you thought Linux had issues with driver availability for some things, let's see you try Solaris/x86. (Editors' note: Drivers enable an operating system to communicate with specific hardware such as a video card or network adapter.)
Oh really? I guess Linux was a joke for the longest time, then, considering its lack of hardware support. In fact, I guess it's still a joke compared to windows, if driver support is all that (apparently) matters. Why is Linus ripping on the new kind on the block for the exact problem his OS has had since its inception? This is disgusting hypocrisy.
He should be proud of what he's accomplished, and I'm grateful for his and other's work--but to take this snide attitude when another OS comes along, because it has some of the same problems his OS did originally, is pretty sad.
-Dan
For Linus its actually very dangerous for him to 'ever' look at another operating system code again. What happens if tomorrow Sun sues, cause we violated a patent on an implementation in Linux, its going to look very stupid if Linus was quoted "yeah I'm going to rip any technology i can out of it" - all he should know is just concepts and high level features, that are thrown out on the kernel mailing lists, and then the kernel team devises a a way of implementing them. Its a sad legal environment that we live in, but Linus will constantly need to worry about getting 'tainted' with other code, all he should be seeing is GPL submitted code, that the submitter authenticates that it came from him and is in a legal position to let others use it.
Linus shows one more time that he's an intelligent and well spoken individual. A good spokesperson for open source, that's for sure.
Anybody can imagine Ballmer or Gates giving honest answers like that to an interviewer?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
You can relax now.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Solaris/SPARC and Solaris/x86 are, last I was told, 99% percent idential.
/. knock Solaris just because his holiness Linus said that Linux was better. A lot of people here rip on Solaris and have clearly never actually used it, and even more declare it "the sucks" because it didn't recognize their crappy AC97 sound card. Truly infuriating sometimes... though I can see how it all starts when Linus goes on the record saying that he doesn't even think that the Solaris source code is worth even peeking at.
That said, the only problem with Solaris/Intel is it's driver support. If you have supported hardware, Solaris/Intel is the definition of production-ready.
At any rate, It still really bothers me whenever I see people on
Then again, Linus, though brilliant, is also rash, reactionary, highly defensive and an out-and-out ego-maniac sometimes... but like so many "rock-star" like figures, his fans don't ever notice this.
Solaris has been saving my (and a lot of other peoples) bacon for years and as much as I like Linux, Solaris is still my go-to operating system because it's just more reliable, regardless of what his majesty wants to think.
How much more reliable? We're talking, like, 99.9% reliable versus, say 99.1% percent... something so miniscule; irrelevant to most people, but paramount to me and the thousands of people who still prefer to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on Solaris licenses for a very good reason.
Linux is improving steadily and someday I'll have no reason to buy Solaris... but it surprises me it's come this far sometimes when I see ignorant things like this from Linus.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Disclaimer: I am against patents.
From the article:
Surely if you like the idea of standing on the shoulders of giants, there might be some handy ideas in Solaris. Why ignore it?
Because I personally don't think they have anything left worth taking after I've applied the general Unix principles. I really do think Linux is the better system by now, in all the ways that matter.
But more importantly, if I'm wrong, that's OK. People who know Solaris better than I do will tell me and other people about the great things they offer. To try to figure it out on my own would be a waste of time. (emphasis mine)
In our patent driven world, isn't it dangerous to say such things? Since Linux was attacked with patent infrigement claims, Linus should be more careful about saying things which make the reader think about IP theft.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
"Solaris/x86 is a joke, last I heard. (It has) very little support for any kind of strange hardware. If you thought Linux had issues with driver availability for some things, let's see you try Solaris/x86."
I'm sure the comment will be taken all out of context...can't wait to see the mud slinging that ensues. Check Schwartz's blog/marketing tool for the comebacks in the next few days. Torvalds comments are mostly true for the non-server market, and Sun first and foremost is going after the server market with Solaris x86 although they are actively porting JDS to Solaris x86 which I think will run into problems that Linus mentions above.
To personally counter some of Mr. Torvalds other claims, historically Solaris x86 was a non-starter, but with a company like Sun pushing it now fully (especially on x86-64), it shouldn't be hard to find proper driver support for the majority of server installs from IBM, HP, Sun (of course), and Dell going forward. Where they're going to have to work hard is getting all the ISV's to port apps to another Unix with very small marketshare. Money always helps in that department and Sun is not shy about the fact that they have billions in the bank...so it could happen.
As for Linus' comments about Linux being superior to Solaris, I'm not so sure about that. Perhaps from a licensing perspective, and some aspect of the kernel might be as tight...but...
Solaris 10 has some neat features that don't fully exist in Linux or lack the polish that is found in Solaris.
Zones, fair share schedulers, zfs looks neat..., dtrace is amazing,
If Linux can polish up some the projects that do similar things as the above mentionned items than I think there isn't much reason to consider Solaris anymore.
Did you miss: ...the myth of how a single person or even a single company makes a huge difference in the market. It's the belief that things happen because somebody was visionary and "planned" it that way.
He is simply stating that his interest lay elsewhere. If his personal goals were to clone solaris, then checking out solaris would be important. But that's not his goal and he has more effective things to do with his time. If the project lead for solaris was checking out linux to come up with ideas for solaris, he's wasting his time and talents if he had no experience with linux.
Also understand that Linus is in no way a commercial spokesman. he does not make a "product" in any sense. He doesn't charge anyone for his labor nor charges people for the results. He is not competing against anything except for his previous releases.
Moreover, Solaris wasn't hidden in a cave before. Hiding the source doesn't hide useful features, just an implementation of them.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Linus once in a while says something definitive that makes people rush out to do hard work and prove him wrong. In this case he'll probably be drowned in detailed studies of what Solaris does better, and perhaps even code for Linux with some of the improvements. Assuming that Solaris does anything better of course.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I think that a lot of commentators have misunderstood Linus' answers. When Linus blandly said that he's not even going to bother studying Solaris/x86 in detail, he meant that he's not a Solaris expert. The Linux development model, by its very nature, means that any new technology of sufficient value would be easily incorporated in Linux. Linus simply meant that because he has created a dynamic atmosphere that encourages the adoption of ideas, he really doesn't need to inspect a competitive OS with a fine-toothed comb himself. If Solaris 10 does have features that get widely adopted by it's customers and proves itself over time, it would be a trivial issue to incorporate the feature in Linux (if it makes sense).
He's not dismissive of Solaris; he simply has a lot of confidence in his development model.
IMHO, of course.
its `teh suck' and solaris/x86 did recognize my crappy ac97 soundcard.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
You must be new here. All Linux (and Unix) distributions are rated solely by how easy the installer is to use. This goes for pretty much all review sites as well.
Never mind what happens should you ever change any settings on the system, it gets five stars if it comes with OpenOffice preinstalled.
Trollish, I know, but it's true. It's mostly attributed to reviewers' unwillingness to run the OS for more than ten minutes.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
The problem Solaris x86 has is where to find supported hardware. I've tried Solaris 10 on a Dell PowerEdge 2650 and IBM xServer 206 -- both of which it refused to play nice with. I even tried it on a PC clone that was about as far to generic that I could find - still no dice.
So, while I would love to try out Solaris, I can't find to seem a reasonable hardware option to experiment with it on.
It seems that the only *supported* systems are built by Sun (surprise, surprise). So, I think it is totally valid to view Solaris x86 as a non-starter until they get more hardware support. Until then, most people in the x86 arena are going to continue to run Linux -- Solaris x86 in its present form is just another form of vendor lock-in.
One thing you can, uh, "admire" about Linus is his complete lack of fear about sounding like a complete ass when he goes off about things he knows nothing about. His comments on /dev/poll and Solaris's implementation of it (years before this open solaris thing) were really instructive. Then there's his initial attitude toward SMP. And of course, his really choice bits on microkernels. Those are just off the top of my head.
I guess what works is that he's surrounded (on lkml) by folks who do gladly tell him when he's full of shit.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I dunno man... I recently installed Solaris 9 on a dual opteron, 2GB of DDR 400, Adaptec AIC-7XXX SCSI. No messing around, worked fine.
This is brand new hardware, and although Solaris 9 was indeed running in 32-bit mode (and not the 64-bit Solaris 10 would enjoy on the same hardware), it worked and worked very well.
I've never had much of a problem getting Solaris to run on a wide variety of Intel hardware. The key, if you want to build a Solaris/Intel box, is to consult the HCL. Sun is pretty specific about what Solaris will and will not work with, though I've never found it to be as restrictive as most people imply.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Solaris and Linux, for that matter, are based on the Posix operating system standard - which means for all basic services and interfaces in-scope they are basically identical.
The real question for Linux isn't so much 'what will we implement', as 'how will we implement this standard feature better'. Threads, drivers, signals, interprocess communication, and a host of other Posix features are nothing new under the sun.
Finally, you can not discount the impact SCO's lawsuit has had on FOSS; developers are much less likely to view questionable source code for fear of including infringing material inadvertently. In the case of SUN's x86 release - what are the terms and conditions of the use of the code? I am betting they won't GPL the code - instead using a much more restrictive license.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I happen to be very receptive to this argument, because my biggest problem with Linux is hardware support.
Most of the Linux kernel code is drivers. It's relatively easy to provide stability and integration for only a small base of hardware.
Sun hardware support should be better than Linux, not worse, since closed source and and stable api take away two of the biggest reasons vendors won't support linux.
That's also the only Solaris/Intel problem specificially mentioned by Linus in the interview, and the precise reason he called Solaris/Intel a joke.
Oh, I read that... and it's statements like this that really piss me off about Linus.
Yes, the whole operating system, with it's superior threading, source compatibility with the most popular commercial UNIX going, and unrivaled stability is a "joke" because it doesn't have as much driver support as the trendiest OS going.
That's just such a stupid thing to say it makes my head spin. Linus really does live on his own planet sometimes.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
From TFA:
It seems to me that they have taken some action besides just grandstanding. They have resurrected the x86 version and added several interesting features--containers, DTrace, and ZFS, for example--that are available today in beta versions of Solaris 10.
Did I miss something ? I thought that ZFS wasn't available in the beta stuff yet ?
Sun are in a hole. At the moment, they're writing to their enterprise customers asking that they (their customers) contact their ISV's and request software for Solaris x86. This is a bloody dangerous thing to do and could cost a lot of people in a lot of companies their jobs in the medium term.
Think about it - 10 of your customers (and you only have 20 or 30) phone and ask for your app on Solaris x86. They may be doing this because they genuinely want it, or more likely because they want to keep in Sun's good books and use this favour for improved discounts down the road. So you hire some new developers, move some existing developers from your Linux / Solaris on SPARC port and get going on the x86 port. You bring it to market and NO-ONE buys! So you lay off the extra people you hired, you lay off a couple more people because your profits are in the shitter because of the development commitment you made, and you hire off some more people just because redundancies always spawn more redundancies. And all this because Sun are trying to make a grassroots movement where there isn't one!
> Solaris/x86 is a joke, last I heard.
Last I heard? Come on Linus, please don't let what could be a healthy discussion degenerate into childish name calling. Such comments are usually the preserve of those that don't have anything constructive to add.
Why did no one tell him that with the cd burning business then?
I am trolling
given he's apparently paid all the Solaris trolls to come out of the woodwork and diss Linus for a one-paragraph comment.
Sun is history. Period. Forget about them.
If they had been smart five years ago, they (and HP and IBM) would have ditched their proprietary Unix platforms and handed over the enterprise features to Linux (like SGI did with their file system) and concentrate on adding value with system management tools. They would have had a prayer of competing with Microsoft then.
Now, they're going to end up doing that anyway - after they've lost to Microsoft and Linux.
I have no sympathy for Solaris users. You backed the wrong horse. Tough. Deal with it.
In ten years, the only people running any other Unix OS except Linux will be the same sort of people who still run IBM System/3 minicomputers.
In other words, morons.
Linus is right. He doesn't have to care about Solaris - he's going to get all of Solaris's useful features in Linux sooner or later anyway - one way or the other.
Like the saying goes, "If you aren't part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." Or as Linus quipped about Gates' book, "Anybody standing in the road looks like roadkill to me."
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yeah, but the point you (and Linus) so quickly miss is that Solaris does indeed support a wide variety of Intel hardware, just not as wide as Linux. That said, everyone is hopping on the Linux bandwagon so it'll obviously have more extensive driver support, You're effectively criticizing Solaris for not being as popular, and how stupid is that?
I've had just as many hassles re-compiling Linux kernels to make hardware work as I have had trying to find drivers for hardware under Solaris Intel. That said, most servers have pretty standard hardware and Solaris/Intel does a reasonably good job recognizing the hardware. I suppose the fact that I recognize this and play within the spectrum of the HCL, rather then setting myself up for failure, is where you I take different paths.
I mean, sheesh.. Linus admits (though he obviously didn't notice) that he's talking out of his ass when he says "Solaris/Intel is a joke (so I've heard)".
That said, Solaris does indeed work with non-proprietary hardware, as well big iron SPARC systems (which aren't, as yo say, proprietary. The SPARC architecture is awfully open; it may not be commodity, but the opposite of commodity isn't proprietary).
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
It looked to me like this article paints Torvalds as somewhat full of himself.
I really do think Linux is the better system by now, in all the ways that matter.
Ever tried to set up multipath io for a clustered san with Linux? Ever try to spin down a drive in linux?
There are plenty of things that Linux could gain from a look at Solaris, and I hope it does.