Slashdot Mirror
Gentoo Announces OpenSolaris Port
A reader writes:"According to this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, Gentoo is planning a port to Sun's partially-announced OpenSolaris. Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a developer often criticized even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?"
Isn't it all about being free and open anyhow? Solaris will be a great addition and we can try out yet another *nix. Some people cry that solaris is nothing good at all but I'd say its a step up from freebsd on the server side of things. It was the "best" commericial unix anyhow. Idea swapping will be the best thing about the 2 platforms. If only we did the same with bsd's.
GNU's not UNIX. Solaris is.
I don't need a signature.
You can always run `emerge depclean` to remove packages that aren't in your world file and aren't required by any packages that are. And there's `revdep-rebuild` in the gentoolkit which will rebuild any packages that might end up broken after a depclean. With those two commands, I've never had any problems keeping only the packages I want and need on the system with no extra cruft.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a developer often criticized even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?
No, I don't think so. There's been a installer for Solaris avalible from this self same developer for some time. As this is just an incremental update rather than inventing a whole new wheel I don't think anyone can be seriously worried about him pulling this off.
I sympathise, but I can think of a couple of reasons:
Another good thing to come from Portaris and Gentoo on Sparc is that Jonathon Schwarz will evenetually have to acknowledge the contribution Linux has made to Solaris... ;)
This is where the serious fun begins.
revdep-rebuild -pv is what you want. Run it before you go uninstalling packages.
(and for the record, I don't see portage as being a large benefit to Solaris over pkgadd for the typical server, either)
I prefer pkg-get, which seemed to be quite like Gentoo's "emerge". I last deployed a Solaris box before I first installed Gentoo, so I can't recall how similar they are. Does pkg-get resolve dependencies? Reason I ask is, I'm gradually falling in love with "emerge" - it's a superb tool.
Then again, I had no end of trouble convincing the owners of the last Solaris box I touched that I should be allowed to install various GNU tools, so I don't know how much of an advantage Portaris will really bring - unless it becomes accepted as "part" of Solaris.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Well, if it's been running for months on Sol 9 and 10, it's more than vaporware. Whether anyone uses it remains to be seen. If it replaces/augments the pre-built packages at Sunfreeware, it'll be a great addition to the OpenSolaris community.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
" Gentoo's not the kind of thing you run on production servers, Solaris is."
Why not? Or is this yet another empty "marketting-statement?"
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You knew such a statement would be countered with real life people. Allow me to be the first (if I post this fast enough).
Our company runs Gentoo on our domain controllers, which handle everything from Directory Services to Email. For a while our file servers ran Gentoo kernels, until Marcello added XFS and a few other items to the main 2.4 kernel.
In that example you have a very crafted and complex server, running some of the latest features Open Source has materialized. I go to a promotional lunch at a Sun vendor occasionaly, and the fellow moochers are constantly amazed at not only what services we provide, but the volume we provide them at.
If that is not enough big iron experience with Solaris, I happen to know that Sony's online game division does not run Solaris -- they run RedHat. Even compared to deep-pocket heavy hardware, they get better Oracle performance on Linux with Dell servers.
While there are many things I like about Solaris, (I still administer our legacy Solaris *workstations*) I have to say that the "Solaris is for production" mantra is not something this decade will say very much at all. Though I admit pkg-add is good, it is only as good as a binary package manager can be.
Some will always be above others. Destroy the equality today, and it will appear again tomorrow. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can Sun run 'emerge from debt'?
Perhaps even cron 'profitability'??
Okay, for a second, pretend you are a PHB (I know, it is hard). Do you want Gentoo (Huh? What's that? It is free you say? What?), or do you want Solaris (The incredibly stable, highly secure, Unix made by our good friends and reputable Internet Citizens Sun Microsystems, the genius creators of Java, the best programming langauge ever).
It is hard to step into the PHB shoes isn't it? But anyway that's your answer. If you don't have a PHB then maybe gentoo could be a viable server platform, but IMO that would still be pushing it. I use gentoo for a desktop and server at home, but I know that I wouldn't entertain the idea of such at work. Compiling from source is something I have the luxury to wait for at home, but work is a different story. I suppose there are those nifty new binary package servers, but I haven't investigated how they fit in with the rest of portage (mainly because I am satisfied with compiling from source at this point).
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a [developer] often [criticized] even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?"
Both the above links are irrelevant. The "developer" link is currently redirected to the Gentoo distribution, while the "criticized" to a web interface to the gentoo-dev mailing list. I've scanned said mailing list and it looks like a normal discussion to me, the so-called "criticism" is just a difference of viewpoints. I am unwilling to read the whole gentoo-dev and/or learn about the finer points of gentoo's portage just to validate the poster's point of view.
IMHO, only the first sentence looks like news; second is just fingerpointing.
Just
11. First shalt thou try the Knoppix, for verily, it is a piece of cake to install, yea, even that thou intalleth it not.
12. Then shall thou try the RedHat, for it is eay to install, and it is said "In the site of the Amazon, in the city of Linux, are there books without end, and they mostly covereth the Redhat."
13. Or the SuSe, though it is the Devil's very own bugger to get the isos, but that thou payest.
14. Or Mandrake, if thou art French.
16: And the LORD spoke more saying: what happened to 15? Oh, never mind.
17. And when thou hast three score days uptime upone thine Redhat
18. Or SuSE.
19. Or Mandrake, if thou art French
20. Then canst thou try the Gentoo.
21. Or Debian.
Here endeth the lesson.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Please, you could at least try to add some substance to your trollish post. Sun has a pretty good record with opening their products overall. Look at nfs, openoffice.org, netbeans, gridengine, plus the work they do with other projects like gnome, mozilla, various apache projects.
They're the first company taking their commercial unix os and making it opensource.
The only problem they've had opening up their products has been with java. And most real java developers don't wannt an open source java.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
I've been willing to forgive a lot of editorial inconsistencies on the part of the /. editors (dupes, etc)... Overall they've done a good job, it's hard to manage such a large site with so much traffic.
But please, stop posting all this unsubstantiated slander and bashing in the stories. First there was the bashing of Six Apart when they were purchasing LiveJournal, without ANY evidence WHY Six Apart was bad or even why the author didn't like them. (Which directly conflicts with everything I've heard from personal friends on LJ's staff, who were all extremely happy about the buyout - Many of them who were contractors with LJ were promoted to full time when SA purchased LJ.)
Now there is a story directly bashing a person, not just a company, with no real evidence as to why that person would deserve such bashing. The mailing list looks to ME like the developer in question politely handling complaints from a rather whiny user.
Really, it's getting out of hand...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I wrote a response to this article in my blog