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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.'"

23 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Lo, How The Mighty Have Fallen... by spoonboy42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seems like just yesterday people were saying Linux doesn't yet deliver as an alternative to Solaris.

    --
    Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
    Andy Grove: "Not Much."
    1. Re:Lo, How The Mighty Have Fallen... by Saint+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I was just thinking that. Other deja-vu provoking lines:

      We...experienced lots of basic compatibility problems. These ranged from a clash between the install program and the CD-ROM drive to -- where we could get that to work -- a failure to recognise the network or storage adapters being used.

      Sun has a long way to go before it can claim to provide the same wide platform support that's available from the top Linux vendors.

      Man, remember when everyone was saying that about Linux?

      --
      Carousel is a lie!
    2. Re:Lo, How The Mighty Have Fallen... by Paul+Jakma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Plain and simple, because they fear competition. By being GPL, it allows others to benefit from their work (and work that they received from others). By going with CDDL, only they become the all inclusive taker. It is similar to the MS shared source. But unlike MS, when SUN's shares start sinking (and they will), Sun will move over to the GPL, still have a losing market and then state that GPL does not work.

      Rubbish. As already described several times on the blogs of important Sun people, they considered the GPL quite seriously, but found it wasn't suitable. One obvious reason is that the GPL is slightly too restrictive for OpenSolaris - not all hardware vendors want to have to release source, which coding to a GPL'd driver interface would almost certainly require. The CDDL allows ISVs to decide for themselves whether to open their code or not. Sun wrote and/or own Solaris, Sun wanted to allow others to be able to use it without having to release their modifications (remember, Sun has strong BSD roots), so Sun fixed the problems in the MPL to create the CDDL. Further, the GPL does not deal with the problem of patent litigation in any meaningful way (one of the goals for GPLv3 apparently is to do that - hopefully they'll draw from the CDDL approach to patents, which is quite nice.).

      I fail to see how working towards releasing Solaris under a liberal licence such as the CDDL qualifies as trying to "hold on to a monopoly".

      If you think this is bogus, consider that many many Linux users who are happy to bash the CDDL are using proprietary kernel drivers, particularly for graphics cards, which are in possibly in a grey legal area wrt GPL status of Linux - particularly the ATi drivers, which are (IIRC) based on DRI in some way (the NVidia drivers arent).

      Note that Sun do not have a problem with the GPL. There are lots of GPL and LGPL projects out there whose ChangeLogs contain @sun.com addresses, eg GNOME and OpenOffice to name just two (Indeed, Sun bought out and then LGPL'd OpenOffice). And I'm very involved in a GPL project myself..

      It's a real shame there is such anti-Sun hysteria on /. and other "open source" community sites. If the Sun-haters were to have their way and see Sun fail then a good[1] number of open-source hackers would be out of work (including myself).

      Thanks.

      1. And I dont include OpenSolaris hackers in that. Once OpenSolaris is out there, virtually every Sun engineer working on Solaris will be an open-source hacker too.

      --
      I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
  2. 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 fistfullast33l · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm going to agree with the parent. The entire article pretty much says that it's proprietary and that's a bad thing. One can argue that this is true, but should that really be a total knock against the operating system?

      I'm not exactly in favor of this new version of Solaris, but let's see if their review of Longhorn, whenever that may be, stresses that the OS is proprietary and therefore, not the best option.

      Personally, I think the technical merits that an OS offers far outweighs its licensing model. The article does stress hardware and software problems, but I was put off by the whole "Solaris isn't Open Source so wait until it is" argument.

    2. 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. :)

  3. Linux Alternative? by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    'as an alternative to Linux, it doesn't yet deliver

    Does anyone actually think it will? It looks like a fine upgrade for shops that are already heavily invested in Solaris, but I highly doubt that Solaris 10 (or 11 or 12 or 25 for that matter) will ever really be a 'Linux alternative'. Why would anyone using Linux go for a closed, proprietary Unix flavor? They cattle are stampeding in the other direction and will continue to do so.

    1. Re:Linux Alternative? by rpozz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Solaris isn't going to be closed for long. When it is opened up, I'd imagine that the hardware incompatiblity problem will go away very, very quickly as people start to write drivers for it.

      Anyone who's used Solaris will know it's a really, really good OS which is arguably more stable and secure than Linux (flame-proof suit on), and has good backwards compatibility.

      Competition is always a good thing. In the long run this will be good for both Linux and Solaris.

  4. 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?"
  5. How times change... by ender- · · Score: 5, Interesting

    as an alternative to Linux, it doesn't yet deliver.

    Am I the only person who finds this statement insanely hilarious? Maybe it's just my time spent as a sysadmin, but it seems to me that just a few/several years ago Linux was said to not deliver as an alternative to Solaris. A statement like that has got to really sting Sun.

    My, my how times change.

    Ender-

    --
    Nothing to see here
    1. Re:How times change... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ummm.... I never considered Solaris and Linux to be in the same league. I mean, Solaris is what I run on big iron, Linux is something I run on little x86 servers. I know that each OS can run perfectly fine on the other, but really, Solaris with less than 4 processors has never been any good. And Linux with 4 or more is getting better, but the entire software base is lacking there.

      Things you expect from Solaris software :
      - Lots of threads (good for multiple CPU's)
      - Built-in clustering options, use of message passing
      - Efficient use of large memory
      - A small collection of extensively developed applications that communicate with one another

      Things you expect from Linux software :
      - Optimization for one or two processors
      - Tight loops at the GUI event handler
      - A large selection of non-integrated packages

      They serve different markets. You can spend a lot more time setting up your servers and such, but Solaris is a lot simpler overall.

    2. Re:How times change... by FidelCatsro · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I find it hilarious for other reasons , Having worked as a sys-admin on solaris and linux I know that each system has their strengths.
      Such a blanket statment is totaly useless and the review was entierly to vauge .
      I am rather dispondant that things like this pass for journalism nowadays .
      It is grand that Linux is getting such recognition , but i would rather have it from a fair review as opposed to this

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  6. Where is the comprehensive review ? by gorim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All they did was test out installing on sundry hardware platforms. Thats no real life test because people who use Solaris will match the hardware to the OS, and not the other way around.

    They briefly mentioned Janus, ZFS, zones (maybe) and the improved tcp/ip stack.

    They said it was faster than previous versions.

    Thats it ?

    Oh, and its not a good alternative for linux ? On the sole basis that you can't install it on any hardware ? Utter BS! Yes, its a true statement, but probably the worst basis for comparison.

    Having worked side-by-side with thousands of CPUs of Linux and Solaris, its still Linux that isn't a good alternative to Solaris.

  7. Sun, where is your leadership? by DaGoodBoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember cutting my teeth on SunOS and Solaris starting back in 93/94. They were amazing innovators and almost single-handedly brought Unix into the enterprise. Here is a short list of technologies that were developed largely by Sun:

    o The name service switch (nsswitch)
    o Network Information Service (NIS/NIS+)
    o Network File System (NFS)
    o Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM)

    I know we make fun of NIS and NFS today as being old and insecure, but in 1993 it was the only way to provide single-sign-on and meet other enterprise requirements for scalability.

    I ask Sun, where are you innovating now? Are you providing leadership in LDAP / Directory Services? Nope. Are you providing leadership in distributed computing? Nope, that would be Linux and Open Source. Are you providing leadership in software development? Well, you developed Java, but it took the Free / Open Source guys to make Ant, Junit, Jmeter and other tools to make it really usable.

    If Sun wants to drive, it needs to stop complaining from the back seat. It needs to start acting like it did back in the 1990's by developing solutions to enterprise problems and then showing the rest of the market how its done. Leaders lead and right now Sun is like some crotchity old man complaining about "the damn kids". Well, "the damn kids" are too busy driving right now to care about your CDDL and Solaris 10.

    DaGoodBoy

    --
    My God! It's full of Voids!
    1. Re:Sun, where is your leadership? by Jon+Peterson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sun made a few huge mistakes:

      0. Not ditching the workstation market soon enough. Sun used to make lots of workstations. Anyone on the outside could see Intel/NT was going to eat these up in seconds. Sun held on far too long, although this didn't wipe them out like it did SGI.

      1. Profiteering from the demise of HP/IBM/SGI. For a period of about 10 years, Solaris on Sparc was pretty much the only safe solution for many large organisations. Sun realised this and gouged customers pretty heavily. This made senior IT people hate them, and accelerated the move to NT.

      2. Ditching Solaris on Intel. Sun used to make a free as in beer distro of Solaris to run on Intel. It had limited hardware support, but it was easy enough to get going on the machines from the big vendors. This was an excellent way of getting Solaris used for things that might have been shifted to NT or Linux, but for some stupid reason they just cut support for it on day. Pissed off huge numbers of customers. I think the idea was they were introducing new low-end sparc machines that were going to be 'as cheap as Intel servers'. Yeah, right - let's compete with Dell, that's work.

      3. Java. I don't think Sun has made much money from Java, and it's been a huge distraction. Are Sun the solid trusted makers of server hardware and server OSes, or are they funky cool bleeding edge software guys changing the face of the internet? Rather obviously the former, but disasterous crap like JavaStations and so on took up a huge amount of time and effort.

      Sun should have made Java an open specification like, err, EVERY OTHER FRIGGING LANGUAGE EVER MADE, instead of fighting idiotic lawsuits with MS (who were in the right for a change).

      --
      ----- .sig: file not found
  8. Oh great, another one of THOSE articles... by Octorian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, we've been getting a slew of articles these days on Solaris 10 that "review" the product by simply reading the marketing materials. Also, yet another article on Solaris 10 that tries to only look at the x86 version, and then complains when it doesn't measure up. Well guess what? The x86 version of Solaris has NEVER measured up. Sol 10 is Sun's first attempt at changing that, and it truely won't go anywhere (beyond their approved-compatable hardware) until 3rd parties get more invested in development.

    Solaris 10 is first and foremost an UltraSPARC-based OS. That's where it runs best, supports almost all the hardware, and is all around a good thing. (Though the x86-64 version should be interesting down the line, as I hear Sun is now working on Opteron servers entirely of their own motherboard design.)

    I just wish, for once, someone would review the OS by actually USING IT on the proper hardware, and talk about new and interesting features that aren't blabbed about on the shiney sheets thrown around by marketing.

    For example, one of the biggest and most obvious new features of Solaris 10 (that doesn't make the list of "Zones! Self-healing! ZFS, when we finish it!" would have to be the Service Management Facility. They've completely redone the entire framework of how services are managed (i.e. "init.d", "inetd", etc.), to even include service dependency tracking and allow non-dependent services to start in parallel (making big systems boot a lot faster).

    At least all of the MacOS X articles by journals like this were the result of actually trying to use and explore the OS itself. (Even if they were formulaic, and pretty much involved saying "this is cool", "hey, the /etc files don't do anything," "oh, they use something called NetInfo," "back to babbling")

  9. Utter and absolute tosh... by victorhooi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I think I'd have to agree with the guy above that this is an utter load of tosh...


    "Doesn't yet deliver?".


    On the basis that *gasp* it's proprietary? When was the last time you saw a ZDNet reviewer lambast Windows because it's proprietary? The reviewer sounds like some childish linux fanboy attempting to take cheap potshots at a sturdy, well-featured, commercial OS with a heck of a lot of new *useful* features (Dtrace, Janus, ZFS, all of which he either fails to mention, or writes some bogus statement showing he doesn't understand them).


    Here's a quote from a osnews comment on the story:

    Very Funny
    By Smartpatrol (IP: ---.galileo.com) - Posted on 2005-04-21 22:34:38
    I almost choked when he mentioned Solaris as a Linux alternative....What?

    To begin with, it's important to understand that you're still dealing with a proprietary OS here.

    So what! spoken like a true Linux zealot! Its a question of usability and picking the best tool to enable business. Not whether or not the product you choose supports the OSS religion or not...what a wanker this guy is.


    Speaking of features, his comments are supreficial at best, and show a profound lack of knowledge. He never mentions what this magical hardware that doesn't work with the OS is, he is assumedly too lazy to see the DVD image download on the page he links to, and he whines childishly about the download - can ZDNet somehow not afford cable internet?


    Also, last time I checked, many linux distros came on quite a few cds...let's see, Fedora comes on how many discs again? How about Suse? Mandrake? Even my beloved Slackware is two...


    How about judging an OS on useability, features, stability, and how it fits the purposes it was designed for? Not some blatant rant on your own fanatical adherence to your pet ideology, and some idiotic statements on a product you probably haven't even actually tested...and reading comments on alt.linux doesn't count as testing it...


    cya,
    victor

  10. 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.

  11. 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!

  12. 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
  13. A "comprehensive" review, my ass by oldmanmtn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The review is one page long. There are two paragraphs that list new features, with damn close to zero explanation of what they actually are, and absolutely no indication that the author even tried them. There is no discussion of the benefits of those features, how well they work, how easy/hard they are to use, what the performance implications are, what applications the reviewer tried, or anything.

    The review states:

    Unfortunately it's at this point that the Solaris proposition starts to lose some of it lustre. Yes, you can download and install it just like Red Hat or SuSE Linux, but there the similarities end, making Solaris 10 far less of an obvious choice for companies looking for a Linux alternative.

    What does that even mean? What "similarities" between Solaris and Linux is he looking for and what benefits do those similarities deliver to the customer? How does the absence of these unspecified similarities reduce the "lustre" on Solaris "proposition"? This may be the single dumbest sentence I've ever seen in a review of any product.

    To begin with, it's important to understand that you're still dealing with a proprietary OS here.

    And?

    He then goes on to complain about the Linux compatibility feature's poor emulation. It's not clear how he is able to test this, since he admits that it's not even shipped as part of the product yet.

    Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he isn't just making shit up, and that he actually does have super-special access to software that Sun hasn't shipped. Maybe there is a reason Sun chose not to ship that code yet? Why is the shipping product being criticized for the quality of code that was deliberately left out of it?

    This review is just a shoddy piece of work. ZDnet should be embarrassed to have their name on it and Slashdot should be embarrassed that one of their editors believes that this is a "comprehensive" review.

    --
    - Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
  14. Unix != closed, proprietary by Decaff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would anyone using Linux go for a closed, proprietary Unix flavor?

    Because most of what is done on such systems uses the open, non-proprietary features.

    Unix (and similar systems such as Linux) has been such a success over the years because they implement open standards: TCP/IP networking, POSIX, X-Windows etc. This use of open standards and APIs explains why it is so much easier to port programs between different versions of Unix than to other OSes.

    To say that Solaris is a 'closed, proprietary Unix flavor' is self-contradictory. Unix is a set of open standards. What is proprietary is the implementation. If you use GNU tools on Solaris, you can even avoid most of that. Commercial Unix users usually don't care about whether or not the kernel source is available; all they care about is the quality of implementations and price.