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Sun's Linux Killer Examined
gnaremooz is one of several users to mention Thomas Greene's look at Sun's supposed 'Linux Killer'. From the article: "If Sun gets very serious about Solaris 10 on x86 and the Open Solaris project that it hopes will nourish it, Linux vendors had better get very worried. That's because, in the many areas where Linux is miles ahead of Solaris, Sun stands a good chance of catching up quickly if it has the will, whereas in the many areas where Solaris is miles ahead, the Linux community will be hard pressed to narrow the gap." However, he goes on to describe many more difficulties with an install of Solaris than I seem to remember having with just about any recent Linux install.
You can't kill something that's non-commercial
from TFA: Solaris containers (aka 'zones') are also noteworthy. They're virtual environments a bit like BSD jails, only slicker.
Though not part of the mainline kernel yet, there exists Linux Vservers project. I don't know much about Solaris zones not having any hands-on experience (though I did attend a talk on it), but I can say that Linux VServers beats the hell out of FreeBSD jails, which is sad IMO because in all other respects I prefer FreeBSD to Linux.
So I think it's the other way around - the Linux community will catch up much faster with Solaris, if only to show that they can.
Also this article looks like it could be Sun-sponsored PR - Sun seems to do very well comparing itself to Linux all the time.
Open Solaris is Free Software, yes? So if it becomes a "Linux killer", then the Linux vendors will simply become Open Solaris vendors. It doesn't matter if Linux dies if what is replacing it is just as free. Hell, the user-space applications are 90% the same anyway.
If Linux isn't successful because something else is better at doing the job and just as free, then that's a cause for celebration, not worry. The only people who need worry about this are the zealots and PHBs who have latched onto Linux for its buzzword value and not its merits.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I already posted this on TechNudge.com:
I'm not a big reader of The Register, and having just finished the article, I remember why. The article's premise: Solaris didn't crash *as much* as Linux, so Linux had better look out.
Oh, but he couldn't even detect a NIC without the manual editing of conf files, and wasn't really unique or remarkable in any discernable way.
How tone-deaf is the writer to the PC world, anyway? It doesn't take a Bill O'Brien to see that the OS market is supersaturated, and anything short of the second coming of MacOS X will be greeted with a great big yawn from the collective computing community. (Well, a very small band of users will love it and sing its praises. I mean people are still clinging to Amiga OS, for crying out loud.)
This is aside from Sun's remarkable in its ability to ruin every good technology it creates through corporate nonsense and heavy-handed tactics (read: Java), and really, Solaris wasn't really all that thrilling on Sparc. (I spent my entire undergrad shackled to it.)
Neither the article, nor Sun, answer the most critical question in the OS world today: Why should x86 users switch? Why should I leave my comfortable XP or Debian or Red Hat or SuSE for Solaris?
Wait, let me guess: because Sun is including (insert Java widget here).
Note to Scott McNealy: the magic Java dust has lost its power.
Pomme de Terre!
Ummmm.....will Solaris be free?
If Sun would remove such questionable (presumably licensed from SCO) components and release under the GPL, I'd happily start supporting it. As it stands, it looks like little more than a trojan for intellectual property legal games.
I guess this just seems like a non-issue. Linux Killer? No way. Linux's Friendly Competitor? Welcome to the club!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I was taking the article seriously until I got to this line:
KDE is certainly more popular than Gnome among Linux users, and most would agree that it's by far the better of the two desktops.
We've experienced a number of application crashes since we began playing with Solaris 10, but none capable of pulling the kernel down with it. On the other hand, we've had sloppy JavaScripts immobilize totally, and at times actually re-boot, our Linux box (especially with 2.4.x series kernels); we've seen X oddities do the same, and have experienced several wacky incidents using Microsoft bugware with Wine that required a hard reset. While we haven't taken a systematic approach to blowing up our Solaris 10 installations, one gets the impression of a pretty bulletproof kernel and shell.
That's basically it. The article goes on to basically say driver support sucks and it was kind of a pain to configure, make sure to use the Xorg server and app support is ok. But that kernel, rock solid! Without really mentioning what is happening in 2.6 kernel development or how that argument extends outward toward a better development platform overall.
It's a lost cause, there can only be one. Read all four pages of the article, and ask yourself... would I be interested in creating a disk partition or two and running Open Solaris just to see? I did... and the answer was no... I'd rather spend my time working on my Debian system.
If Linux isn't successful because something else is better at doing the job and just as free, then that's a cause for celebration, not worry.
You're making the mistake by assuming that everything to do with linux is free, open source, and can be ported by a simple recompile.
Do you expect hardware vendors to ever write drivers if the community switches a few times over a few years? What if a commercial vendor says sorry, we don't support that OS, either stick with Linux or lose our product (contrary to some of the opinions here you don't just switch products at the drop of a hat in the real world, a product doesn't just have to be better, it has to be better enough to warrant the pain of migration)
There's a fine balance of amount of choice that's good, and an amount that's counter-productive.
"However, he goes on to describe many more difficulties with an install of Solaris than I seem to remember having with just about any recent Linux install." :)
This is the usual non-sequitur logic from a slashdot story... What does the ease of the install have to do with the overall feature set of the OS? You only have to install once. If you want an easy gui installer just use Windows or Mac.
you insensitive clod
Sun will need to ensure that they understand their target audience - is it:
1) Loyal Sun-based organisations that will follow them to the ends of the earth?
2) People who are fed up paying for M$ stuff and want something 'free' that will do the job?
3) People who want a *nix solution and will pay for it/support.
4) People who need the 'technical excellence' or a special feature that can only be had in Sun's product(s) compared to 'vanilla' Linux?
Number 1s will be a 'small' market sector
Number 2s - hmm, that's a non-starter then.
Number 3s - Sun joins the likes of Red Hat etc fighting for market share.
Number 4s - well, if you want a 'LAMP server' or file/print server you're pretty safe with Linux so why throw money at a solution unless you fall into category 1 or 2. This implies that sales in this categofy will be 'niche'.
I don't think Linux has much to worry about.
AT&ROFLMAO
Yeah, and Solaris x86 has been around since 1992. Hasn't killed Linux yet.
That, and if you read the article it sounded like installing Linux on a computer in 1994. The bios needed upgrading which needed a windows machine to do the update. The sound card did not work or it was a pain to convince it to work. The nic was not supported out of the box. Then they talk about running Gnome or KDE as the "desktop environment" which is better now than it was in 1994, but neither are that great.
I can almost hear the fun in the stockholder boardroom now. "We are going to make more money by providing a free operating system to work on computers we do not sell. Linux will die!"
I hope Sun wouldn't say anything like that, but after providing a _Linux_ computer that was sold at Walmart, anything is possible.
> ...in the many areas where Solaris is miles
> ahead, the Linux community will be hard
> pressed to narrow the gap...
After all, it's not as if Linux had the backing of a major computer company with a three letter name.
Oh. Wait...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
My feelings exactly.
Think of it this way:
Linux is free. That means if you dont like the direction, just fork it and improve it. You can still call it Linux. The better fork will win in the community.
Now Solaris is free (kinda, I have reservations about the license). That means people have Solaris code available to them. If Linux is generally good, except for some solaris features, they'll just port those features to Linux. If Solaris is awesome except for some Linux features, the same will happen. In the end we'll have code that is good, does cool things and is free. Whether you call it Solaris because you think it was 'descended' from Solaris or Linux, is a political matter. Linux wasnt threaded or ran ELF in the beginning. It wasnt SMP. Now its all those. Can we say it is a Solaris with the Linux name?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Meanwhile, Linux has been around since 1991, and it still isn't ready for the desktop. If upstarts like Firefox and OS X can increase their market share so much faster than Linux, why not a revamped/free-as-in-beer Solaris x86?
Probably because almost all of the desktop software available in Solaris x86 is exactly what is used on Linux: Xorg for X11, GNOME (or possibly KDE if you so desire) for a desktop environment. StarOffice (which is to say OpenOffice.org) for office applications, Firefox as a web browser, Evolution as an email client... the list goes on. What does Solaris 10 offer that Linux doesn't? DTrace and excellent developer and server performance tuning tool. Zones, and excellent server security and partitioning system. Really crappy hardware detection and configuration. A severe lack of drivers for standard consumer hardware. A packaging system that's great for updating servers but even worse than what Linux offers for desktop use.
Solaris 10 will be ready for the desktop a sometime after Linux is ready for the desktop and not before. The desktop software stack is the same, and Solaris offers nothing new for desktops at the lower level. It does have nice features for servers, but then so does Linux. I would expect Solaris to gain back some ground in the server space slowly, but I don't forsee how it could manage to somehow shoot up in market share any faster than Linux already is.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Right. That's what they said about Microsoft versus Linux.
Snottiness aside, believe it or not, there are some who will not switch away from Linux. Just as there are those who have worked with Solaris for too long and "trust" Sun, there are those who have worked with Linux for too long and trust it. Not only that, but there is always the last important deciding factor for me: is it Free as in Freedom? Linux is. Solaris ain't.
Nathan's blog
IBM discovered the hard way in the nineties that a hardware manufacturer trying to get competing hardware manufacturers to support their OS is a dead end. Discussions between IBM and the other PC vendors sounded a lot like similar conversations will if Sun tries to get PC manufacturers onboard the Solaris wagon:
Sun: Hi, HP, what do you think about preloading Solaris on your workstations?
HP: Yeah, right! Why would we want to license or support our competitor's operating system for our hardware?
Sure, Sun might be able to get a few PC peripheral vendors on board. But, honestly, what kind of target market can Sun tempt them with? Solaris x86 has a smaller presence than Linux and you've already said that these same vendors aren't getting on the Linux bandwagon.
Market share, sell more "works-best-with-Sun" hardware, service and support contracts. Consulting fees and development projects. Regaining it's image as a leading industry vendor.
Yep, no rational reasons whatsoever...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"Sun offers full support of Solarisx86 for a price"
When RedHat changed its support policy we migrated to Debian.
Since Sun is the only vendor for "open" Solaris, finding another Solaris distribution or support will not be easy if Sun later changes its support terms, goes to closed-source Solaris, etc.
This perhaps explains why many people have little interest in Solaris at this time.
If you by a linux server from Penguin, HP, IBM,
yeah, great OS, once you install the GNU tools on it to make it usable. I've moved back from linux to solaris in the past few weeks, and nothing bloody works anymore. df -h . # doesn't work ls -lh # doesn't work tar czf backup.tgz ./foo # doesn't work - no gzip
its a bag of shite. Once they turn it into Linux, it'll be a real linux killer.
Slashdotters, do yourself a favor. Read this article. If this guy can go through all the SHIT he describes and still put "Linux-killer" in the title with a straight face, *anything* is possible. Un, fucking, real.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Only if you value your time at zero. Which is probably the case. To be honest if an OS saves me an hour at install time, that's worth sixty bucks to me. If an OS is stable and doesn't need re-installing every year, that's sixty bucks every time.
;-)
This argument comes up regularly here, but I have 2 comments. You've just saved 60 bucks initial install and 60 bucks per year. The install fee and the 60 bucks per year per PC, unfortunately don't even hit the radar in terms of money saving on most IT budgets. 60 bucks per user is less than the electricity they use - it won't draw attention.
And to be honest, and probably far more significant, so many applications your users will want will be unsupported by the vendor or the FOSS developers (try getting current versions of most FOSS linux apps running on 8 year old distros....) on your legacy OS that you'll burn far more than 60 bucks having to support your apps yourself. You're more than welcome to run NT4 if you prefer, but if you're doing it for these reasons, I think you have the wrong reasons. Of course on one PC for grandma using apps Grandma knows and knowing she'll never want more recent apps, it works. Anywhere else it's just unrealistic, IMNSHO
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
There's only one flaw with your argument: Your average person has heard of and in all probability has used Windows or OS X. Nobody has heard of Solaris. Most people only know about Java because Windows doesn't include the VM anymore.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
I think you made a few typos there: you typed Sun with Solaris and Java while you obviously meant IBM with Linux and Java. Everyone made the correction automatically anyway.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Too bad they continue to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on a dead-end CPU architecture (i.e. SPARC).
The application stack's all written in Java, right? So who the heck needs expensive SPARC when Opteron does the job faster at a fraction of the price?
Who needs Solaris when Linux is catching up so fast?
Who needs Sun, again?
Stick Men
Dtrace seems kind of like a joke too, that's a killer app? First off, Linux has tools available that may be more powerful, it's a matter of taste but systemtap and the kprobes let's you do just as much if not more. Second, in spite of having these killer tools around it has been my experience that more system guys like to talk about them than actually use them. Very cool tools though, I'm still not aware of anything dtrace can do that can't be done on linux though. I will give that it seems to be harder to wedge the system with dtrace while I've cratered a few live systems just screwing around with systemtap.
My solaris hacker friends were telling me how solaris was "years ahead in terms of VM" how exactly they measured that or what exactly solaris did better they never could say. They've really kind of shut up in the last year about all that too. Then all the ZFS is going to be the second coming, because XFS, ext3, GFS, Rieserfs and JFS don't cut it; then it turns out that they aren't so hot at making filesystems and it missed the cut. Again, what it does over XFS is a mystery other than it's 128bit and what that actually buys us is also a mystery but bigger is sexier and I'll give it that. At the end of the day you've got a pair of unix like kernels that are both full featured and full service and an industry and a smaller and smaller group of people are actually writing software that talks directly to the kernel. You can knit and pick and say solaris this and linux that and come up with lists the benefit either but in this century, I don't see any of that being a huge selling feature of the whole platform; not that the geeks won't care and get excited about it but let's be real, you're going to scuttle your current AIX or Linux deployment because of dtrace?
I am more concerned with seeing an end to the duopoly of Windows and Mac for the consumer desktop. While some may not apply the term I think it fits. We really need a third major player for the desktop to get things moving again. Right now Apple and Microsoft are not moving forward, we are still bound to single processor solutions that are mouse and keyboard driven. We have been there for nearly 20 years now!
Compare the situation to Cable. Since the 80s we have been stuck with a monopoly for delivery of video service. Along came satellite, which while it has made inroads to the tune of nearly 25% of viewers it still hasn't changed the way we use the medium. Now the Bells are coming and with plans of interactive TV. Yes the cable companies are also looking towards this but it took a third major competitor to get the other two out of their comfortable duopoly.
It is going to take a third and major competitor to Microsoft and Apple to get the medium to move forward. Linux has been the poster boy for many years and yet nothing really truly has occured with it. Bluntly put, the Linux front is too disorganized to compete with the two entrenched systems and worse isn't changing the paradigm of what desktop computer is.
I don't see Solaris doing much either but I figure that with enough prodding perhaps Ms or Apple will do something other than make prettier desktops. Hell its like the space program, resting on its laurels until people become bored by it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They're not certified to work with 2003 Server. Only XP. Unless you're an Enterprise customer, if you have those in place, MS won't help you because their use isn't supported with THAT OS.
In this light, there's probably more driver support in most Linux distributions than 2003 Server provides in an officially supported manner.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Sure I agree, but none of that is screaing "massive consumer uptake!" like the original poster was trying to imply. Don't get me wrong, Solaris is great, but a lot of it's stand out features are things that look great on a server are useful on workstation and aren't especially relevant at all on a desktop. I expect Solaris to gain some ground in the server department. I don't expect it to make stunning market share gains that significantly outstrip Linux's growth - it may well grow at rouhgly the same rate, but i don't see how it will be faster.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts