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Open Solaris Derivative Available
tezbobobo writes "Well, Open Solaris has only been available a matter of days and already there are new projects available. SchilliX is an OpenSolaris-based live CD and distribution that is intended to help people discover OpenSolaris. When installed on a hard drive, it also allows developers to develop and compile code in a pure OpenSolaris environment. More details are available on the author's blog."
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Pure OpenSolaris boots on x86
Today, I have been able to boot from a disk that was empty before I did install a self compiled OpenSolaris on it.
So we now reached a certain limit that makes it possible to start with creating a OpenSolaris based x86 distribution at BerliOS.
Perhaps Jörg will leave xcdroast to more Open Standards minded people now that he's got something new on his hands?
Battle of *nix(es) is on!!
ok nice of him to show us he's got a bootloader working with that screenshot..
This was just the thing I needed to convince me to try Open Solaris. Hopefully porting drivers from Linux and the *BSD's to Open Solaris won't prove too difficult.
In case the Open Solaris site goes down or you just don't feel like clicking two links on the page
Torrents!
Technically, can't I change one line of code or some small functionality and call it a derivative? It even sounds like they didn't do much: "When installed on a hard drive, it also allows developers to develop and compile code in a pure OpenSolaris environment."
It seems just a cut-down version (text only) of Solaris, so where's the improvement?
But the article says "Derivative" not "Dervivatives".
No need to jump the gun.
Yes, Linux is such a "mess" that Sun have been _forced_ to copy it !
Enough said.
does it have cdrecord?
They are different operating systems.
What is the *primary* reason anyone would use Open Solaris over Linux, *BSD, and Windows?
When I use Linux, it is because I am hosting/running existing software like Trac/Subversion/PostgreSQL/... which appear most heavily used/tested on Linux than any other platform.
When I use FreeBSD, it is because I am hosting/running/distributing my own software and I don't want to deal with LGPL requirements regarding binaries linked to LGPL C libs (yes, I consultant an IP attorney about differences between GPL and LGPL requirements and also consulted FSF.ORG).
When I use Windows, it is because I am running software that is not available on either FreeBSD or Linux. And also for distributing software on a platform that has the largest marketshare.
When I use Open Solaris, it is because ???
You might know the author from cdrecord. He has a rather low opinion of the ide-scsi/ide-cd component of the kernel in general and Linus in particular. Good to see him where he is happy.
And solaris has a kick-ass kernel, no doubt about that. Debian/SunOS is the ultimate Unix environment in my mind. One day it will become reality, or so I hope...
Yes. Because we have never seen a UNIX OS whose name ends in "X" before Linux.
Honestly i think your Jumping the gun a little. This wont happen to solaris , solaris will always be solaris and compatible with itself . If this distros goes so far as to be incompatible with Solaris main then it will cease to be a solaris.
Solaris is an OS as opposed to linux which is just a kernel
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The pointy-hairs did get it eventually, but they RIF'd us and let external people do it instead. Meanwhile millions of $s of R&D money was wasted on stupid projects that were not needed, ill-concieved, cancelled, etc.
Just wondering is all...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
The ones before Linux weren't named after a person. This one is. The guy's name is Schilling.
You gotta love it. We need more open source desktops, word processors, image editors, code editors, FTPers, news readers, groupware, web browsers, mulimedia players, and so on...
The more parallel libraries that I have to install on my machine...the better. Sure, the libraries perform the same task, and you have to have at least 2 gigs to fit a common distro, but that's how the ball bounces when you're dealing with egos the size of china managing projects.
LET THE FLAMES BEGIN: (i'll help)
- freedom of choice
- competition is good
- projects don't have similar licenses, so if one license fails it won't kill everything
- freedom of choice
- it's difficult to get many programmers working on the same project. (Tell that to Linus)
- I'll do what I want to do
You know, after reading those points again....I've thought about it and I actually like the idea of coding in parallel. HEY LINUS, you have too much control of the kernel and we need more freedom. I say we fork the kernel into 10 different projects. And I'm not talking about the standard forks where the good stuff is added back into the main branch....I'm talking about permanent forks baby. I want each kernel fork to reinvent the same wheels, solve the same problems, deal with the same issues. I mean, you expect me to believe that the hundreds of people can contribute to the same project....THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE. It will surely fail. In addition, if the GPL fails, we're in big big big trouble. LINUS, please, for me, fork the kernel.
Here's the deal: the majority of the OSS community is made up of ego driven men striving to be the alpha. It needs a benelovent dictator (like Linus is with the kernel) to get all this crap cleaned up.
between solaris and linux ?
One sucks, and the other doesn't.
Or it might be the other way around.
They are two different OS and run on different kernels for a start(note that linux is just a kernel anyway)
Linux has a broader compatibility with x86 hardware
Solaris has by default a better permissions system
Linux is under the GNU GPL and thus a little freer than OpenSolaris
Solaris has far better NFS support , not that you would notice unless your running with allot of clients
Solaris is certified POSIX complient and linux is just pretty much POSIX compliant (mainly due to the cost of being declared posix compliant , and the rate the linux kernel evolves)
Those are some of many many many differences.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Try reading the article. This is a very minor modification to OpenSolaris that lets it run as a livecd. I imagine the modifications are purely in the boot code. If anything, this is good for OpenSolaris because it'll let people experiment with it and maybe grow the user/dev base a bit.
ha ha ...that was funny !!
No need to smear the OSS community. That describes the non-OSS community perfectly also.
There are people who hack for the love of it, and there are people who write code because they have a vision of making the world a better place through better technology... you just don't hear about them too much. They don't feel the need to self-promote.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I mean, how much did you pay for Linux? Or OpenSolaris? How much code did you write for either? What's your personal stake in this?
I think it's great - GNU/Linux has been made possible by people writing software that suits their needs. We've got some great software, viable operating systems, and Linux systems are all basically compatible with one another. Your "favorite programs" wouldn't exist without it.
So why don't you stop bitching about what YOU want, and appreciate the work that's been done thus far. Sure, sometimes the dependencies thing is a pain, but it's only because OSS is moving so fast that it can be painfull. And I'll take that trade-off any day.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
It looks like a interesting distro, and I'd be partially interested in downloading it and taking a look at it if wasn't for the whining and complaining about the GPL he makes. I don't like the idea of my contributions potentially being distributed/used in a closed-source project [total value of my code: err.. about 2 cents] if I contribute to an open-source (GPL or Compatible license) project, and the GPL gives me that control [not that I'm concerned about it]. I've not got much code out there [mostly really small bug-fix snippets], but what is out there is covered under the GPL and anyone can use it under the GPL.
Not that I'm saying Solaris is a bad OS, (OOB it's pretty much worthless until you add GNU tools to it) but it's a damn sight better than Xenix or NT 4.51.
Maybe we could start, while we're busying downloading the bzip2'ed iso, a petition for the author of cdrecord to open the source to the DVD-capable version of CDRecord. Now that Sun has (or at least claims to have) released the source to what is its second most-valuable asset, Joerg has less reasons to hold on to his binary-only version of cdrecord. Not that there are no alternatives to cdrecord. But as far as optical media writing on *n*x is concerned, cdrecord is the gold standard.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
But they are both UNIX-like systems right, with everything you could expect from such an operating system? (chown, ls, /, etc.)
Don't forget, though. Sun will regularly be releasing updates of their code. OpenSolaris isn't just a one-time fork from the Solaris code, it's an ongoing concern. In other words, there will be a stable and current base--always--to work from.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
>But they are both UNIX-like systems right, with everything you could /, etc.)
>expect from such an operating system? (chown, ls,
Solaris is full-blooded SysV, Linux is a hodgepodge of SysV and BSD style Unix.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Yes pretty much ,if you want to really simplify things . ,bar of course if you wanted to install some programs then you may run in to trouble (of-course on most my systems installs are purely admin level, so its a moot point)
At the user level they should feel very similar (Depending on your installed Desktop environment or if its pure text mode, your installed shells).
The differences are very much admin level differences, the average Luser would not have to worry
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Actually, Solaris is way more advanced than Linux, and there were fears a lot of the stuff is going to be copied into Linux once Solaris is open sourced.
If you don't want to bother restarting your machine, give it a test drive with qemu @ www.qemu.org
After all the hype and press releases, where's the Gentoo port? You'd think that they'd've had time to put it together, what with all the promises they made and all...
Just to emphasize... According to Eric Boutilier in his blog "under the new Solaris/Opensolaris model, in order for a Sun developer to put code into regular Solaris (the Solaris that Sun ships), he/she will have to put it into Opensolaris first."
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Heh, it should have been called "Scholaris"
Well, it looks like Sun came out with something bootable and runnable. That's nice. Now, users and developers can determine which is the better systems. The next thing after getting it compiled and booting will be to get some unbiased benchmarks and see how much hardware it is compatible with.
Personally, I don't give Solaris much of a chance: I think it scratches itches that few people have. But, hey, in a year or two, we'll know.
" Yes, Linux is such a "mess" that Sun have been _forced_ to copy it !" Actually, it looks like the reverse is already starting to happen. And in the past the linux kernel guys were able to get info from solaris and solaris engineers. here Some comments are negative some are positive but Solaris is mentioned the most by far out of any of the commercial Unixes. I can't find the link right now but I remember someone saying that back in the day Sun was a lot more open with it's technology. Sun engineers would publish info about their hardware and software. Especially when someone was having some sort of trouble. Then they got a little more closed down. Probably when they were making a ton of money. Sounds like Scott McNealy recognizes that and wants Sun to go back to being more open.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Hmmm... Knoppix ring a bell?
They call us sheeple, I wonder why?
Two threads appears on the debian-legal mailing list. One commented on the draft license, and the other on the OSI-approved license. I think the most pertinant entry from the former thread was this one, by Juhapekka Tolvanen which states: It probably fails the Chinese Dissident test, but I don't think that's a problem. The requirement to not modify "descriptive text" that provides attributions /may/ be a problem, but that'll depend on specific code rather than being a general problem...
Andrew Suffield elaborates, saying:
> Is that license free according to DFSG?
Not intrinsically. Individual applications of it may be, with a liberal interpretation, or may not be, with a lawyer one. Notably it's capable of failing the Chinese Dissident test, and of containing a choice-of-venue provision. It also has a number of weasel-worded lawyer clauses that could be used in nasty ways...
Yeah, it's another of those irritating buggers. We'll have to analyse each license declaration that invokes this thing.
Followups in the later thread reinforce that none of the problems debian-legal had with the orignal draft appears to have shifted.
To close out this entry I'd like to bring the sagely words of Stuart Yeates from debian-legal to bear:
The CDDL is almost certainly better from pretty much every point of view (including that of the DFSG) than the current licences for Solaris. If you had ethical no problems with the old licences for Solaris, you're unlikely to have ethical problems with the CDDL.
Wouldn't this be good for hosting? You could sell zones w/ root like linode.com does with UML. Is anyone doing this or planning on it?
He does cdrecord, not xcdroast. And he does use open standards, that's why it works on several unix OSs. Just because linux developers make some random change does not mean its magically an "open standard", its non-standard, linux-specific behaviour. Linux making random stupid changes and not informing people who use the now altered API is entirely the fault of linux developers. If you don't like it, use an OS that doesn't do this, or complain to the linux developers who created the problem.
Allot means to parcel out or assign. I think you meant "a lot". I guess you are to be congratulated for not writing "alot".
-Peter
Yes. You won't notice that Linux NFS is totally, completely broken unless you're running with "a lot" of clients.
In this case, "a lot" actually means "any non-zero number."
IT was ment to be a-lot , shouldn't leave spell checker on auto correct
BSD is an OS as opposed to linux which is just a kernel, and yet look at how fragmented BSD is.
No BSD is the equivalent of system V , its a type of UNIX kernel
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The ASF take ownership of your code when you donate it to them.
difference is, you know that Apache themselves wont run off with your code, though they may change the ASF license to something you dont agree with.
...at least solaris will survive now.
Can anyone dredge a copy of the old NeWS windowing system and release that now too; that could do stuff so much cooler than X11 can do today, even, what, 15 years later. Or is the tar file of the source slowly rotting away in a tape that wont be readable before long.
the 2.6 kernel knows enough about ACPI and laptops to be usable on the move, with a laptop that can switch from network location to location, the WLAN rebinding, power management engaging. It also knows enough about mainstream hardware that I managed to get both ubuntu and Suse 9.3 working on a 2 year old laptop, even the WLAN working. It suspends to disk! and comes back!
I suspect solaris is more server/desk workstation centric. I know sun dont make laptops, and stopped funding powerbook purchases a few years back. I also know that Java (J2SE) lacks any APIs for power management features, and the implementation cannot handle things like IP addresses changing during the lifespan of a process. (e.g. all DNS lookups are cached forever by default, there is no way to turn this off in an app itself, only the command line).
If solaris drivers dont have power management in there, it will take a lot of work to retrofit it.
No, BSD is the variation of UNIX which was put together by the research lab at the university of california. Unlike BSD there never was a single System V release, whereas BSD had several releases from the university of california until 4.4.
After that, it fragmented to NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin, and lastly DragonflyBSD.
Linux NFS is improving dramaticly, but still has some way to go. NFS on 2.4.20 is dog slow, on 2.6.10 using TCP/IP it's just noticably slow.
I use solaris on I/O intensive stuff (in my case the hardware I have is better for it too, which is the major difference) and linux for the CPU intensive stuff (fast intel/amd chips are cheap).
The funny thing is the stuff that really shows the difference in CPU is some badly written java programs, which run tolerably on a fast linux box but take more than 60 seconds to update drop down menus on a 4x400MHz Sun with lots of memory.
When you shift gigabyte of files about you really notice the speed difference.
Is it worth it for a linux desktop home user to switch to OpenSolaria?
Are there visible goodies to have? Better apps? Better fonts/graphics etc? Better stability? Better performance.
Is there a reason for a desktop/end user to bother?
Steve
IT was ment to be a-lot , shouldn't leave spell checker on auto correct
If you meant ment to mean meant, you should leave the spell checker on auto-correct or allot a lot more time to your dictionary.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Ah, yes. I remember the 1991 release of Knoppix. Oh, wait...
I do believe I've heard that it's already running on the sbus-based sun4u's (Ultra 1 and Ultra 2), and there actually is a lot of interest in getting this for the sun4m's (Sparc 4, Sparc 5, Sparc 10, Sparc 20).
It'd be kinda fun to pull my old IPX out of the closet again to try cramming OpenSolaris into it :-)
We apologize for the inconvenience.
What is an OS but a kernel ? Go check up the definition of an OS and a kernel.....
It's his code. He's not obliged to release it, and if his goals in keeping it closed are being met I guess he probably won't.
That said, he did release cdrecord under the GPL, and it has now been extended by others to support device file access and DVD writing. Grab the SRPM of cdrecord / dvdrecord from Fedora Core 4, for example.
It "just works"
The bigotry being displayed here is astonishing. Between whining about cdrecord, making uninformed snipes about how Linux is better, and writing off Solaris because of the CDDL, it's a pretty poor show. I know slashdot can do better than this :S
... come on. The fellow can be abrasive but I don't see how that's important here, and he can do what he wants with his code. He did license it under the GPL in the first place, which I for one appreciate, so we can use it and the extended DVD-supporting derivatives of it available in Linux distros. I don't see why him deciding *not* to give away *more* of his work draws such incredible indignation here. Sure, it'd be nice (FSF zealous would argue "morally required"), but really it's his work and his code.
note: I have concerns about the CDDL too, but it ONLY MATTERS if you want to contribute your code into the core codebase, use Solaris code in your own, or redistribute modified Solaris code. The contributor agreement only matters if you want to have your code merged into Solaris - you can simply maintain an outside patch/dist if you have a problem with it. I'm 99% sure none of the loud complainers here will be doing any of the above anyway.
I also tried Solaris 10 - and got rid of it. It's not much of a desktop yet - old software, and it needs a comprehensive package collection of libs and GNU tools REALLY badly. It does, however, serve some people's needs fantastically, especially in the server space. Let's not write something off entirely because "sun are bad, mmkay" or because it doesn't have the latest GNOME.
As for cdrecord
let the SCO bashing begin! (they do deserve it)
If it wasn't for the recent Open Solaris buzz, i wouldn't have known there is a Unix category on /. :)
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
Yes was , now its a type and a version . People mostly refer to BSD as the kernel type *BSD
Solaris is probably mentioned most because it had the largest user base, and probably also the most software development going on.
HP may have been hot on compilers, but SUN were dealing with dynamic loading of modules, dynamic tuning of kernel parameters and the kind of things that find favour on LKML.
IBM may have done all sorts of things in AIX, but they must have had the hangers on from the OS/2 marketing team doing their PR, because I never heard of any of it till they put it in GNU/Linux.
He, like many people, does not use linux as his primary OS. He is just nice enough to make software that works on linux. He relied on an API that is not supposed to be changed. Do you honestly expect him to spend all his time searching changelogs of various operating systems checking to see if the developers are changing stable APIs on him? If you are going to alter the API, it would be reasonable to email people who write important software that relies on that API. And there is no reason to change the API, linux developers simply do not consider keeping an API stable to be important.
Don't look at the CDDL draft....
The final CDDL looks different as a result
of my interventions. The CDDL draft from
December really was unusable for private
persons, but I did not see any problem
with the final text
If soneone is interested: I did write a long
review on the CDDL on day 2 of the CDDL
draft and I had a 3 hour teleconference
with Suns Legal people a week later
Schily
The last thing that Solaris needs is to be diluted with "distro" fever. Hopefully the CDDL will help to stop that happening.