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A Comprehensive Look at Solaris 10

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the kicking-the-tires dept.

sebFlyte writes "After linking to Mad Penguin's first look all seems to have gone quiet on the Solaris 10 front. ZDNet now has a comprehensive review up, and are cautiously positive about the OS, though, as they say: 'as an alternative to Linux, it doesn't yet deliver.'"

18 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Comprehensive? by Anonymous+Conrad · · Score: 5, Informative

    'tis but a few paragraphs long and summarised thus:

    - it's not open source
    - it's picky about its hardware
    - Linux compatibility limited to i686 RHEL3 compatibility
    - good docs, pay-for support, bundled stuff
    - it's proprietry, stick to Linux

    1. Re:Comprehensive? by blastwave · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, personally I'd rather have an OS that has about a billion dollars in research and development behind it as well as support that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. A license of SUSE with support can cost about $900 a year. More or less. I can put in Solaris 10 dirt cheap on server grade hardware and sleep at night. No, it does not have support for the latest USP coffee cup warmer and I don't care for that anyways.

      I want excellent support for the components that matter in the server room; fibre, network, Opteron processors and big Sparc. Multi-core is just iceing on the cake.

      If I want a snazzy looking workstation also then I'll put in pkg-get from Blastwave and then install everything that I'd want in one shot.

      Oh, and unless you have been living under a rock on mars for the last year then you would know that Solaris 10 is open source and the pilot group is well entrenched. We will roll out the source when we have all our ducks lined up and ready.

      Dennis at Blastwave
      http://www.blastwave.org/
      An OpenSolaris Community Site

      ps: we can write our own drivers for the USB coffee cup warmer if we really want that. :)

    2. Re:Comprehensive? by blastwave · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't work for Sun.

      In fact, most of the people in the pilot project don't work for Sun. They are in universities and open source projects ( like Blastwave ) and in their basements with old PC hardware or a used Sun Ultra 2 or a Genesi ODW PowerPC machine ( http://www.genesi.lu/ ).

      So when I say that "we will roll out the source when we have all our ducks in a row" I mean that the pilot project people will have a community advisory board selected as well as a "social contract" and a plan. A plan driven by the current community members and not just big corporate. Although they are our partners in this and to a large degree our mentors.

      What did you think was going to happen? Did you think that Sun would take the Solaris 10 source code and "toss it over the wall" without any infrastructure in place?

      No.

      The existing Solaris community as well as a large number of open source people were invited in to help the process along and to ensure that the open source people were driving the bus. This means that a transition is required.

      This isn't just a kernel. It's not the GNU tools and the Linux kernel and a Linux From Scratch process. This is a really really large full and complete operating system and it would be a good idea that new people would be able to work with it easily.

      Did you think that Sun would throw millions of lines of source code at you and say "good luck!"

      So, as an outside person in the basement with a pile of hardware all around me I can safely say that I am an open source person with the Solaris 10 source code in front of me and I don't work for Sun. I have people that help me with the process and I have documentation in progress and a ton of other people ( in the pilot ) that are working together with Sun management to ensure that people like _you_ will be able to enjoy OpenSolaris.

      That feels "open" to me.

      Dennis Clarke @ Blastwave.org
      http://www.blastwave.org/
      An OpenSolaris Community Site

  2. Leave it to a PC mag to not know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Solaris 10 on an ultrasparc is the best thing cince sliced bread. It is the best solaris yet and makes older sun hardware very useable. YES I have gentoo running on ultrasparcs and a sparcstation 5 and those have their place. But if you really need to run sun specific software on sun hardware solaris 10 is certianly a step foreward.

    Maybe if a PC mag would stick to their intel and windurs operating systems they might continue to be somewhat knowlegeable...

    what's next? SCO magazine going to comment on OSX?

    1. Re:Leave it to a PC mag to not know... by Ubergrendle · · Score: 4, Informative

      To my (limited) knowledge, Linux does not have anything that is comparable to:
      1. dtrace
      2. zones/containers (e.g. kernel isolation)
      3. 128-bit file systems (ZFS)

      Also, there is no longer a 'secure' Solaris version, which was typically used by the US government. Solaris 10 is (apparently) secure enough 'out of the box' to be natively deployed in the CIA, NSA, etc...

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
    2. Re:Leave it to a PC mag to not know... by MrMickS · · Score: 3, Informative
      I don't agree with the parent at old. I suspect that they have knowledge of the benefits of them. I'll try and educate a little.

      ZFS. The 128 bit nature is the thing that is touted most of all, however this is a headline figure that can be latched onto by journalists and PHBs. The real advantages of ZFS are to do with the elimination of complex volume management systems to handle mirroring and data integrity. Volume management could be called a high end feature so ignore that an move onto data integrity. ZFS uses a copy on write approach when writing blocks a opposed to overwriting existing blocks. The net result is should the system fail during operation the file system will not be corrupt. The last write may be lost but the filesystem will be okay. No more fsck. Another feature is when mirroring ZFS stores a checksum of each block in a parent block. If one of the mirrors has bad blocks ZFS can determine not only that there is an error but which of the two alternative blocks to use.

      Zones. What amazes me is how many people just don't see the potential of zones from a security standpoint. Using zones you can make the base system secure, to the point of only allowing SSH access from specific networks/hosts. Zones can then be created for each application running on the host and resources allocated appropriately. This allows a real separation between administration and user access. Even for a server at home running say a web server and email running each of those in a separate zone with no need for general user accounts is safer than running all services on a traditional system.

      --
      You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
    3. Re:Leave it to a PC mag to not know... by ravee · · Score: 2, Informative
      To my (limited) knowledge, Linux does not have anything that is comparable to:
      2. zones/containers (e.g. kernel isolation)

      That is not true. Linux can have zones too. See UserMode Linux

      --
      Linux Help
      for all things on Linux
  3. Linux compatibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    It's only i686 RHEL3 compatible since that's the environment provided by default. It wouldn't be hard to put Debian or SuSE or whatever else you want that uses a 2.4.x kernel.

    Anyway, the Linux compatibility isn't in the mainstream Solaris distribution yet. That's planned for later this year.

    Unfortunately the team that wrote the Linux emlation system got laid off earlier this year...

  4. Zones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The real power of Solaris 10 is the creation of zones. You can basically setup a VMWare-type environment on the same server.

    Think: giving you programmer full root access to program and muck up what he wants on the development zone or giving a Web designer a place to test run a new interation/dev web site without going live. You can basically let your devs play and play without worry to the production side of the system; saving costs for a development environment.

    The zone is a fully function Solaris/Unix environment with it's own network connectivity and services. All packages that you want to have installed in that environment derive from the main install.

  5. Solaris 10 JDS 3 Screenshots by linuxbeta · · Score: 3, Informative

    -> screenshots

  6. Solaris 10 article and comments by nemaispuke · · Score: 5, Informative
    There is another article out there where Solaris 10 was reviewed by an actual Solaris administrator and not some Linux user:

    http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9865

    If you need a GUI to set up a network interface, maybe you need to go back to Windows, because you aren't going to be doing it over a serial link! Solaris was built with Enterprise computing in mind, not "making it easy" for people who don't want to type.

    And if that is the quality of articles from PC Magazine nowadays, I'm glad I don't read it anymore! Because I thought "yet another whiny Linux zealot bitching about Solaris" article, what bullshit. If PC Magazine is going to review Solaris, do it right or don't do it at all!

  7. Re:Lo, How The Mighty Have Fallen... by Lussarn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not so, they are very much directly competing in the same market for the same customers.

  8. Re:GPL incompatible by turgid · · Score: 4, Informative
    Much of Solaris' source code (under the CDDL) is GPL incompatible.It will be hard for them to build a community.

    Tell that to the *BSD folks :-)

    --
    Stick Men
  9. You want a comprehensive look at Solaris? by sjvn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try this one on for size:

    http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1774989,00. as p

    It, along with the MadPenguin review, are the best third-party reviews out there on Sun's newest OS.

    Steven

  10. Re:Sun, where is your leadership? by Decaff · · Score: 2, Informative

    3. Java. I don't think Sun has made much money from Java, and it's been a huge distraction.

    It has been one of the best things they have ever done. They have made a considerable amount of money from J2EE licensing and J2ME.

    Sun should have made Java an open specification like, err, EVERY OTHER FRIGGING LANGUAGE EVER MADE,

    Java is an open specification. Anyone can implement it, and many do. Your 'every other language' can't possibly include Visual Basic - highly popular, and totally closed.

    instead of fighting idiotic lawsuits with MS (who were in the right for a change).

    When their clear intention was to kill Java by removing its portability?

  11. Re:Linux Alternative? by Paul+Jakma · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sun will never able to withdraw any OpenSolaris code which is released, read the CDDL.

    Once it's out there, it's out there for good. Sun will not have any specific right to terminate OpenSolaris licences.

    --
    I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
  12. Re:Live CD for Solaris? by kenh · · Score: 2, Informative

    No live CD - it doesn't make sense to offer one... Solaris is a Business OS, not a neat way to re-purpose older PCs with outdated version of Windows - invest in a Harddrive - 80+ gig HDs are less than $50 after rebate at many big box retailers (CompUSA, BestBuy, etc.).

    If you want to see how your hardware will work, you could download the first CD image and run that - no fear of clobbering your present OS install, but you will see if your video card is supported, etc.

    --
    Ken
  13. Re:Wonky refresh rates by Mancat · · Score: 2, Informative

    You mean Sun hardware uses strange refresh rates, which was really only true in regards to Sun's in-house designs. Unless you're using some of their really high-end visualisation hardware, most Sun graphics chipsets are standard PC fare, and you can get almost any "standard" refresh rate by setting it in OFW.

    Remember that on most Sun workstations, the default resolution and refresh rate is 1152x864@60hz. If your flat panel doesn't support that resolution, sorry. Consult the Sun Framebuffer FAQ to see what resolutions your workstation supports, and how to set them.

    As for the older framebuffers, I haven't found a PC monitor that hasn't worked with my old SBus machines with cg6 and tcx framebuffers.

    --
    hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?