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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
Unix has been around since Linus Torvalds was in short pants.
Yeah, and Solaris x86 has been around since 1992. Hasn't killed Linux yet.
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.
Not all the keys on the keyboard worked after (or during an install). For what you pay, all the keys should work from the get-go! Linux does! ANd I'm talking basis keys - home, end, I think backspace/delet to some degree and the like.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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
Linux is to Solaris/sparc what the Mac platform is to the Intel platform. (At least before the whole Intel/Apple deal)
You have Solaris/sparc which is rock-solid on its Sparc platform, with integration using the OpenBoot PROM to 100% compatibility with its Sun arrays, Sun NICs, Sun hard drives, Sun video cards (rebadged, but still labeled as Sun)
Then you have Linux doesn't have a specific hardware platform so it is made to be as compatible as possible, and while a lot of hardware is known to work great with Linux, the QA team at Sun who is able to directly interact with Brocade, QLogic, and other vendors to address one-off issues provides a value-add that CIOs like which Linux does not offer, yet.
> ...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
And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
You don't seem to understand the basic point: we use Linux/Solaris/HP-UX/AIX because we don't develop for Windows.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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
We're about to see a major war between three very large computing firms: Microsoft with Windows and .NET, Sun with Solaris and Java, and Apple with Mac OS X and Cocoa.
.NET and the marketshare of Windows.
Frankly, I think this desktop/workstation market conflict will make the UNIX Wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s look petty in comparison. In one corner there's Apple, offering extreme multimedia and usability via Mac OS X and Cocoa. Then there's Sun, with the extreme stability of Solaris and Java. And finally Microsoft, with
It isn't just a battle over which operating system is better. It also involves three competing development environments involving three separate (yet similar in many ways) languages. I'd like to consider it more of a Systems Stack war. The vendors are competing on their ability to provide a coherent operating system/programming platform composition.
I believe we will really see things heating up in the near future as each system attempts to draw the best features from the other. Windows will obtain the stability and security of Solaris; Mac OS X will obtain the enterprise connectivity of Solaris; Solaris will obtain the multimedia mastery of Mac OS X. We're living in very interesting times, folks!
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
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.
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.
They claim this to be a Linux-killer, yet they go on to list almost a whole page of installation woes, including trying two different third-party drivers just to get the NIC (an unpopular but "hardly exotic" Linksys piece) to work! Fucking hell, give this guy a Knoppix or Ubuntu disc and he'll shit himself. Linux users haven't often had to struggle like this in years.
/etc that you will have to edit, and even create, to get your NIC to work, once you've got it installed and recognized. If you're comfortable with ifconfig, you'll want to use it. Personally, I find ifconfig to be clunky, and prefer to do the setup manually." I can tell you one thing--it ain't fucking ready!!!!!
Note to the author: if you write a review that says "There are a number of configuration files in
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
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.
I agree, Solaris is clearly the desktop operating system of tomorrow!
And it always will be.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Meanwhile, Linux has been around since 1991, and it still isn't ready for the desktop.
It's close enough, and I'm formerly a member of the "not ready for the desktop" camp.
I installed Ubuntu on a laptop last weekend. It configured everything automatically except the sound, which I had to tweak some config files for (no worse than when I've had sound problems in Windows).
The only reason I had to do cliched Linux stuff like recompiling the kernel was to get my Orinoco card working in monitor mode. Desktop users don't care about that, only people who want to run WiFi hacking utilities.
Keeping the system up to date is actually easier than Windows, since I can run a single apt-get and upgrade everything (OS components + apps) to the current version.
There are definitely some gaps in terms of things like no Photoshop on Linux, but the OS itself is fine for desktop use now IMO.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
If that were true we wouldn't have MS Windows on 90%+ of the desktops. Windows XP/2003 is vastly improved over the original Windows product line but other products such as OS/2 were technologically superior at the time but didn't make it. A few products and companies with great technology and poor execution come to mind.
BeOS
Cray
Silicon Graphics
Next DEC Alpha Chip (DEC)
Bell Labs (in more recent years)
Xerox PARC
Borland (Delphi, C++ Builder, OWL)
Just because SUN has great technology doesn't mean they will be successful with it. Unfortunately, the market place not purely driven by technology. And, a market place moves slowly and builds up momentum. Linux fought and clawed its way into the UNIX data centers. People forget the "Linux is only good enough to run a print server" comments we heard just a few years ago. Oracle is the next open source target IMHO. High prices, arrogant licensing, huge savings going Open source. Just like UNIX. Once comments like "mySQL is only good enough for a reporting application" are gone and the perception changes Oracle will be just like SUN. A company with great technology and no market.
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.
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
- Solaris 10 and Open Solaris (which you build and install on Solaris Express) are both very nice, Linux-like operating systems.
Linux is no longer "Unix-like", people. It's Unix that is "Linux-like".Many/most Linux devices are not x86-based servers and desktops. They're embedded devices like Wifi routers, phones and set top boxes. These are very seldom x86-based, so unless we see Solaris for ARM, MIPS, PowerPC etc then Linux is far from dead.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Its closing the gap argument missed some really important issues; for example, developers. There are some things that Linux doesn't do, and will never do because the benevolent dictator doesn't believe in them.
For one, POSIX compliance. OpenSolaris IS compliant, so as a real-time junkie who loves his shared-memory mapped files, I'm bouncing up and down. Linux shared memory stubs some calls, doesn't implement the POSIX suite, while barely implementing older shm. How many MAN pages can you find that tell you "This isn't implemented." in OpenSolaris?
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Oddly enough, while I like Linux and can do "mundane" stereotypical things like recompile my kernal and what not, I still can't get linux to work on my desktop OOTB. My Orinoco? Not a single distro or live CD I've tried has figured out its there and needs to be configured. Ubuntu, Knoppix, FreeSBIE (I know, not Linux), you name it. I don't know what the problem is (Windows 2000/XP sees it just fine and configures it on install), but I have to do some serious finangling to get it to work. Nor does any Linux distro/live CD handle dual monitors well at all. In fact, I'd say one of the most frustrating things about X is the braindead configuration. Having to edit a file to enable dual monitors, resolutions, etc is a pain in the ass.
:P
Now, having said that, everything else is pretty nice.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
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.
I expect hardware vendors to tell me how the device works so I can write and maintain my own free software drivers or hire someone to write them for me. I'm not against hiring the hardware manufacturer to do the job, but I don't want to be pushed into a monopoly for support. I think the OpenBSD hackers are of the same mindset, given their requests to Adaptec and other vendors for technical specifications, not code. Having others write proprietary software for you just puts you in the position of begging the proprietor for updates and leaves you vulnerable to being left behind (precisely what you spelled out).
Software freedom is not an argument for more "choice", although if one has free software one certainly has choices on how to improve a program. Choice is actually a poor surrogate for software freedom because it's so easy to railroad someone out of their freedom and supply choices at the same time. Consider web browsers; at one time, the most popular web browsers were Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Opera. There are three choices right there (one more than one needs to have a choice), and yet all are proprietary. Thus, with these browsers, software freedom is unavailable and one is relegated to choosing their master.
Digital Citizen
Linux is free. That means if you dont like the direction, just fork it and improve it. You can still call it Linux.
Only if Linus says you can call it Linux... Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds, after all....
Same with Solaris and Sun.
Now you can have a lot of cross polination of ideas. But that is about where it ends. And I think that Linux esp. with IBM's involvement will end up surpassing OpenSolaris on every level.
FWIW I have never had any of those kernel instability problems mentioned re: Linux except in two cases and both were related to failing hardware....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Thomas C Greene's article highlights his lack of understanding regarding a number of key strategic issues.
For example, the OSDL Carrier Grade Linux group is already well along the way towards Linux running with 6 9s (99.9999%) uptime. This strikes to the very heart of Sun's core business and is perhaps one of the key reasons Sun has gone into panic mode about Linux.
OSDL is itself another example of the reason Sun will not succeed against Linux. Sun is incapable of replicating OSDL because its CDDL license does not leverage the community in the way the GPL does.
And clearly Thomas C Greene needs to recover from his Linux Desktop time warp - modern desktop Linux distros have already arrived. Any recent distro such as Ubuntu, Xandros, Linspire, Fedora Core 4 and SUSE LINUX 9.3 has excellent hardware detection out of the box.
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
Redhat can just distribute and support Red-hat Solaris as well as Linux, if Solaris looks like being better to some segment of their customers.
Everyone ensure they remember that Sun is a hardware company, first and foremost. Solaris is a mechanism for Sun to sell more hardware and service contracts.
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