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Ian Murdock Joins Sun

Posted by kdawson on from the long-time-admirer dept.

RLiegh sends us the second piece of news today featuring Debian founder Ian Murdock. In an entry on his blog, Murdock announced that he is joining Sun Microsystems as their chief operating platforms officer. As he put it in his opensolaris post, this "...basically means I'll be in charge of Sun's operating system strategy, spanning Solaris and Linux." In all likelihood one of his first priorities will be "closing the usability gap" between Solaris and Linux.

28 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. What usability gap? by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Im not sure where Murdoch is coming from here.

    GNU tools are on one of the CS's that Sun ships, and I install gnu tools anyways. It's there and easy to use. Sun supports its SunOS well.

    Unless Murdoch is reffering to the wonderful "usability" of old and haphazardly done Debian packages, well erm.. let Sun take care of themselves. I like relatively new user-based programs (like, not from the early 90's).

    Typed on a Debian Testing machine. Debating to go with Ubuntu..

    --
    1. Re:What usability gap? by good+soldier+svejk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I presume he is talking about package management. Do the current SunOS/Solaris versions ship with modern package management? Because the stuff that came with 2.8 and was crap.

      --
      It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man

      -James Baldwin
    2. Re:What usability gap? by McFadden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe I'm just a cynic, but when I read "In all likelihood one of his first priorities will be "closing the usability gap" between Solaris and Linux." - I genuinely wasn't sure which one was supposed to be ahead of the other,

    3. Re:What usability gap? by Tiro · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's exactly what I was thinking. I downloaded Solaris last summer and set it up for fun on a quad boot machine. Solaris systems administration definitely has a steep learning curve for nonprofessional Linux users like me. Murdock should try to catch up with OpenBSD. In oBSD the user isn't coddled as much as with say Ubuntu's gui admin tools, but the answers are always on hand with the great documentation. I'm sure Solaris is nearly well-documented, but not in an easily accessible form like OpenBSD. Just visit Solaris.com and see how many things are in PDF.

    4. Re:What usability gap? by cheshire_cqx · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nexenta.

    5. Re:What usability gap? by cmdr_tofu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know too much about solaris 10 (although I don't think it's improved much), but whenever I
      get stuck on a solaris 8 machine, I get annoyed by some of the commands. tar xvzf does not work,
      I have to gunzip -c | tar xvf -. Why can't I "du -sh", or "df -sh", and what is wrong with bash?

      Bash is a great shell and it should certainly be the default over csh! Well I guess Solaris is rock
      solid and has a lot going over Linux (like easy ACL support over NFS), and certainly bash and other free
      software can be installed on Solaris machines, but I do recall having to compile LOTS of software by hand
      and recompiling it all when certain zlib vulnerabilities were made known.

      However, from my limited experience after using an easy-to-use distro like Debian GNU/Linux, working on a
      Solaris system can be incredibly frustrating and maddening. If Debian/openSolaris solved all these problems
      would I switch to Solaris x86? Maybe. It would certainly occupy a virtual machine image!

    6. Re:What usability gap? by AaronW · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I am running KDE 3.5.6 on Solaris at work. It was painful to compile due to all the missing libraries, but I have most stuff working, including sound (video doesn't work well since the Ultrasparc system is way too slow). There are binary versions available for download for Solaris which are actively maintained.

      The Solaris kernel needs a *lot* of work. It has some cool features like D-trace, but don't expect anybody to be able to jump in and write stuff for it since it is very poorly documented. I don't think most Sun engineers know what comments are for. Also, device driver support is poor at best. Opensolaris kernel development looks like it is moving very slowly, with little traffic on their mailing lists. ZFS also sounds like it needs work and may be a bit overhyped. The ZFS code is rather difficult to follow, again due to the lack of any comments or meaningful variable or function names.

      With the Linux kernel, I can easily jump in and find what I'm looking for and can easily make changes. The code is fairly well organized and generally well documented.

      The command-line tools often are missing many of the features one finds in the Linux tools, like decent help. Manytimes very useful features are just plain missing.

      Sun's X Windows also leaves a lot to be desired. At least on Sparc, Xorg is not supported and Sun doesn't have proper working render support as far as I can tell, let alone font support. Also, any open source libraries that Sun does provide are often years out of date, and they don't make it easy to download various source packages. If you want just the kernel code, good luck. Everything is in one huge repository.

      For servers, Solaris is generally rock solid. For a desktop system, it sucks badly. Linux generally works, unless you're stuck, like I am, with a POS ATI card on a POS HP desktop computer. The desktop computer only has PCI-e 1x and the only cards that will fit it and drive two monitors are ATI and Matrox. I'd throw it off a cliff if I could and replace it with a computer half the speed with an nVidia card any day. This is better than Solaris, though, which has much worse driver support than Linux.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
    7. Re:What usability gap? by Curtman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I really hope Sun takes advantage of the work Nexenta has done. It's Ubuntu on OpenSolaris. Hopefully Ian will do something very similar with Solaris.

  2. Re:Shooting too low, again. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He probably forgot that Apple still makes computers and operating systems.

    Like 97 percent of the rest of the computing world.

  3. Re:Shooting too low, again. by kad77 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They "rest of the computing world" would sure wake up to a cold shower if Apple Computer licensed a few reference designs and developed an "Office Suite" as high quality as OS X.

  4. Well that sucks by 0racle · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was hoping for a Solaris 11 release in my lifetime.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  5. Re:Shooting too low, again. by Ilgaz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He wants to make Solaris as useable as Linux? Um, what about shooting for the best usability in the industry, champ?

    -jcr Does Solaris userbase (real ones, the ones paying millions to Sun hardware or running mission critical) want "Usability enhancements" or do they want to race with Ubuntu or OS X? I know a genetic engineer who spends her life on Solaris, I didn't see her complaining about usability at all. In fact she lives actual problems on Windows XP desktop since she is not used to it.

    Same went for Debian, some actual admins spoke their mind saying they want peace of mind and a stable OS instead of Ubuntu racing, Digg headlining Desktop.
  6. Re:Shooting too low, again. by cheshire_cqx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Real apt-get with dist-upgrade for Solaris would be great. Blastwave seems like a stop-gap in comparison. Reinstalling from the DVD every time is a pain, and BFU isn't as comprehensive. In this respect OpenSolaris can learn usability from Debian, and I'd love to see it.

  7. Re:Replacement Gap by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Informative

    You people are really confused. Solaris actual userbase are happy with their stable/established workstations and servers. An OS not installed at your geek neighbour doesn't mean it is "dead" or "eclipsed".

    You speak like Solaris Desktop was considered an alternative home desktop OS and Linux took all userbase.

    Solaris is alive and well doing number crunching/CAD/Medical/Military work around the World. It is just not too easy to see it running in neighbourhood.

  8. Re:Replacement Gap by Kymermosst · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, except I'd pick Solaris to run a mission-critical app over Linux any day.

    I started off as a Linux admin. Today I am a Solaris admin and I like it that way. Yeah, some of the user-land utilities could be improved, but overall Solaris is a solid operating system that handles some of our hefty applications admirably. Sun also has the best support money can buy. Our x86 vendor is a pain in the ass and there is nothing quite like your Linux vendor and your hardware vendor blaming each other while you wait to get your problem sorted out.

    --
    "Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
  9. Shoot for the stars by Graham+J+-+XVI · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about closing the usability gap between Solaris and OSX instead? ;)

  10. Debian on Solaris? by Dara+Hazeghi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project has shown, it is possible to port the Debian userland (including the excellent apt-get package management system) to other kernels besides Linux. I would like to see Debian/Solaris project come out of Ian's endeavors. If not that, then at least an upgrade of the current Solaris userland to make it more Linux-like.

    --
    Left 404: Why the RIGHT is WRONG
    1. Re:Debian on Solaris? by kindbud · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If not that, then at least an upgrade of the current Solaris userland to make it more Linux-like.

      You mean it would have all the inconsistencies and inscrutability of the System V and BSD userland inherited from SunOS, PLUS all the additional inconsistencies Linux has contributed? I can hardly wait.

      Do I use a dash or a double-dash? Will the man page refer me to the info docs? Or will it refer me to the command line help? Or was that --help?

      One of the things I dislike about Linux userland is that it is such a bastard of every other userland out there. Cacophony cannot be emulated, it can only be shouted down.

      --
      Edith Keeler Must Die
  11. Re:Ian Murdock doesn't like democracy by Valar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In other words, democracy has given people exactly what they want. Oh no, boo hoo, the largest portion of the population is comfortable and happy.

    Who are you to say a football player is less important than a programmer? Typical geek chauvinism. Only our kind of talent counts. The world should bow to OUR agenda (witness the "you shouldn't be licensed to use a PC until you understand how one works crowd). And DAMN IT, Dr. Who is better than other TV, even if everyone else says otherwise. I say so, and I am so smart that I must be right.

    You know what though? History has shown that dictatorships and eugenics don't advance the best and brightest, they advance the middle and average. Why? Because every dictator needs the support of a mob. Mobs only support people like them. And by definition, every mob member is on average,well, average.

    --

    ====
    Crudely Drawn Games
  12. Already is one. by Penguin+Programmer · · Score: 2, Informative

    There already is one. It's called Nexenta and it's a melding of Solaris with the Ubuntu userland. They have a LiveCD you can try out and everything. Worked pretty nicely when I tried it back in September.

  13. Debian isn't the best model for usability by nicolaiplum · · Score: 2, Funny

    Debian isn't the best model for usability for non-technical users; glacial release schedules and lack of desktop environment coherence to offset your stability is, well, what you get with Solaris already.
    Sun should poach Mark Shuttleworth if they want someone who can make a solid OS into one that you can give to random people to use without it blowing their minds.

    --
    "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
  14. Re:Shooting too low, again. by nicolaiplum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I'm going to run my company's mission-critical code on Solaris, I need to have the developers running Solaris too, which means I have to have a nice desktop environment they will want to use. If Solaris gives me that, my life is much easier. If I have to spend a lot of time making gnome-whatever, all the Java tools they love, etc, run on Solaris, then my life is much harder. If the tools aren't shipped for Solaris, I'm SOL.

    --
    "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
  15. Re:Shooting too low, again. by caseih · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think Sun should buy Apple and rename themselves as Apple. Then Mac OS X gets a much better kernel, and Sun gets all of Apple's nice unix userspace (Solaris 10's userspace is awful). Mac OS X server becomes Solaris 11 and all of apple's good ideas like OpenDirectory, their management GUIs for open source apps, etc become a part of solaris. Already technology transfer is happening. My local Apple rep said a lot of core technologies are being licensed from Sun including ZFS.

    It would be a clear win for both companies. Apple gets instant access to the enterprise, and Sun will make sure the acquisition means that Apple's technologies will get the enterprise-level support they deserve. Currently Apple's so-called enterprise offerings are really not very serious, although they have improved their support with Tiger. Sun can finally sell desktop machines sporting an amazing OS and desktop (under the Apple Macintosh brand) and have a server OS that's powerful and easy to setup and administer and with the better BSD userspace that Apple has.

  16. Re:Offtopic by caffeine_high · · Score: 2, Funny

    I did about 5 or 6 years ago. I was running it on an old pentium pro machine.

    The server was stolen on Christmas eve, including an old keyboard and 14" monitor. The thief was so dumb, he did not notice the 2 new IBM desktop machines still in their boxes, or the 17" monitors also in their boxes in the same room and climbed back out the broken window next to the door that was not deadlocked.

    Must have been an exciting Christmas morning for some kid, getting a solaris server.

    --
    The smarter home exchange, http://switchhomes.net
  17. Re:Replacement Gap by geniusj · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As an experienced admin with both OSes, I'll sum up what I think the biggest abstract difference is between the two.

    Solaris assumes you know what you're doing. Linux, to a much lesser degree.

    Linux has been open source since its inception, but as an admin on a Solaris box, the system definitely feels more 'open' to you. More is possible, more data is gatherable, more settings are tunable. A Solaris admin generally has more power over the system without digging into source code than the Linux counterpart. That's the major difference I've always seen. If you want both flexibility and stability, it's hard to beat.

    I will say though that Solaris' defaults are generally less reasonable than the enterprise linux distributions' are. There is more tuning and such to do before you'll have your Solaris system running the way you want it to. At least there's Jumpstart.

  18. Re:Shooting too low, again. by Coryoth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What other Sun tech are they licensing? I don't know about licensing, so much as just using since it is open source now, but Leopard apparently has DTrace and Apple is providing a GUI tool to visualise data from DTrace instrmented code called Xray (scroll down to find info on XRay).
    --
    Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
  19. Re:Shooting too low, again. by kripkenstein · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nexenta may be of interest to you, then.

  20. Re:Shooting too low, again. by jcr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think Sun should buy Apple and rename themselves as Apple.

    You're a couple of years late with that idea. Sun's worth $22.4 billion Apple's worth 78.54 billion.

    It would be a clear win for both companies.

    Nope. Sun's not what it used to be. If they have anything left that Apple wants, Apple can buy it for a lot less than 22 billion dollars.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."