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OpenSolaris-based OSes a Threat to Linux?
sunBoy asks: "A number of OpenSolaris-based Operating Systems are popping up on the map. BeleniX (screenshots), SchilliX and Nexenta (screenshots) are a few OSes which have hit the headlines in the past couple of weeks. Some say OpenSolaris has a leg up on Linux - 'For Linux, we're trying to push many distributions through to compress them into a standard. With OpenSolaris, we are already at the small end of standardization. What will follow is more OpenSolaris distributions spreading out from that core.' Is OpenSolaris really a threat to Linux?" Less of a threat and more of an alternative. Would more Unix-based alternatives on the market really be a bad thing?
Companies can do the competing over money.
--dave (who works for a conpany and definitely likes money (:-)) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
You must be new here. Sun is evil, don'tcha know.
BTW, for any CLUELESS MODS yes, I know who Cliff is.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Look SunBoy, even Solaris incorporated GNOME so that Sun wouldn't have to build out their own desktop software. You can't be serious about the GNU-Free-World all of a sudden capitulating after more than a decade to just decide that for a few minor improvements that they would rather work on top of an OS by Sun, open or not.
Totally appropriate that the fortune cookie that came up on the bottom of that story's page is:
"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Is there anyone who honestly believes that OSDir.com provides any service of any use whatsoever? Christ, it's the same set of 60-80 screenshots of the same window managers and office apps, just using different themes.
They could just make up the names of the themes and distros used and no one would notice the frigging difference...
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
The fitness race has already picked a winner, IMHO: Solaris kernel with Debian user-space
and a mixed KDE/Gnome desktop. It's just a question of how long it will take for the market
to find this global optimum, via stochastic walk.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I know every distribution wants to be unique and innovative, but why do we need so many different package managers, for example. I don't want 20 different text editors in my accessories menu; I want one that does the job really well. The same thing goes for distributions. I want one that does everything well. It would make users' lives easier and much less confusing. Hell, there isn't even a standard windows manager in use today. Come on people, if we ever hope to make Linux popular, it has to be standard, in every way possible. It needs a standard look and feel. It needs standard applications and protocols for installing programs. The way things look now, it won't be standard anytime soon. I know this article is about UNIX, but I think the same idea applies.
-William Brendel
Well Hurd has RMS(and a fair few others) and he is a one man Army of fanatics in and of himself , will have to wait and see how HURD comes along (eventually) .
As for Darwin well I am sure Apple and OS X users may disagree there
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Lets just wait till there's a major distributor (besides Sun) that offers support for OpenSolaris...
What you say? Sun won't even offer commercial support for OpenSolaris?
So, you can't get support for any OpenSolaris distro from a major vendor...yea, I can see how it may have the upper hand here...
Till I can find at least 2 major distributors that offer commercial support for OpenSolaris, I wouldn't count on it being anymore than an interesting project.
You can bet that Sun is gonna make sure that any commecrial support from other companies comes through Solaris and not OpenSolaris...
OpenSolaris will be more like the *BSDs, since the core is controlled by one organization and will dictate architectural things. (And avoid the bickering and bullshit that often hinders Linux development)
Competition is a good thing. If OpenSolaris takes marketshare from Linux, the end result will be a better Solaris and a better Linux.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
The immediate problem is a sad lack of drivers for very common hardware that Sun has never shipped, like wireless networking (an Atheros driver just went into their tree a few weeks back; I believe that's the only one so far), ACPI power management, etc... Solaris has always been an OS for servers and managed workstations, so there are big holes in the coverage for "consumer" devices and laptop hardware.
Note that Sun itself has no "OpenSolaris" distribution you can download, only a source tree. The void has been filled heretofore by hand-cooked distros like SchilliX and BeleniX, which are roughly analagous to early linux distros like SLS and Slackware -- no (or minimal) package management, no exhaustive software selection, etc... Just a bare machine with a userspace into which you can compile your own stuff.
Nexenta looks promising, being an attempt to port the Debian (i.e. GNU, not Solaris) userspace onto the OpenSolaris kernel. I haven't tried it so I'll withhold judgement. But honestly, it's got a long way to go. Note that the existing linux desktops tend to rely on the hotplug/udev/hal/dbus architecture for much of their hardware interface, and none of this exists on Solaris to my knowlege. Someone will have to port it.
Honestly, at the moment OpenSolaris advocates would be better advised to spend time writing drivers and packaging a distro than submitting flame wars to slashdot. The world has lots of space for another free unix, but it needs to catch up before puffing about itself as "Linux killer".
Why would I go for OpenSolaris? What benefits do I get as an end user? (Lets just run with this as a theory for a second)
I don't have the packages that are developed for Linux, there isn't any major "killer app" out there to make me want to switch. Really at the end of the day, what's the REALLY big bonus to running OpenSolaris now?
This is the question that I pose to you all here, this is the same question that a lot of IT Managers ask about Linux when comparing it to Microsoft Windows, but we have a few answers to that question.
Admittedly if you are a 100% Solaris shop (Solaris SysAdmin for example who wants to run Solaris on his 3Ghz P4 that sits under his desk) then you might consider it. There isn't a community around this to support it yet either.
One thing that could turn up would be application support from vendors that currently don't support Linux. If that turns up, then things could heat up.
I know it's early days, and choices are great, but Linux I think has filled that void. There are how many Linux distributions out there now? Do we really need 400 Solaris kerneled distributions out there?
I know this sounds like a FUD session, but I don't want it to be. Just trying to encourage some comments.
Anyway enough ranting, what do you guys think?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Um, you might want to check out www.blastwave.org
I have yet to see benchmarks comparing Linux2.6, Solaris10 with BSD variants. Anyone have any links?
Most Oracle installations aren't run on Solaris..
a) Granted larger Oracle installations (8Processors or more) are on SPARC/Solaris.
b) Many small to medium sized installations are run on x86/Linux. Has been this way for a few years now, ever since Oracle started supporting Linux really aggressively.
Solaris's major advantage is standardized kernel, kernel APIs and system libraries.
It allows application developers to better target the platform they want to develop on and support and for how long. In the commercial space this is a big advantage for Solaris.
Where Solaris fails compared to say Redhat (note I am talking about commercial version) is how easy it is to manage the system.
Want to apply the latest patches that have been approved by Redhat?
up2date
For Solaris?
go to sun's site hunt for the right page that will list the latest patch cluster.
verify this patch cluster doesn't break any of your Sun applications (e.g. SunOne messaging 5.2 sp2 has problems with the latest patch cluster for solaris 9).
Why should a user have to hunt for this information?
Why should I have to phone support and have them hunt for it?
Why isn't this information on the patch cluster's download page?
Why doesn't Solaris have a patch management system that covers all Sun products installed on a server?
0.02c
This sig space tolet, reasonable rate.
It has poor driver support.
It has System V intellectual property in it, meaning it's legitimately at risk from SCO.
Its license isn't GPL-compatible.
There's no commercial support available for it.
I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume the bugginess has improved drastically since Solaris 2.6 days. Still, it doesn't seem compelling to me.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak