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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.
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
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