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Sun to Make Solaris More Linux Like
ramboando writes "In an effort to spur adoption of Solaris, Sun Microsystems has begun a project code-named Indiana to try to give its operating system some of Linux's success.
Sun has been trying for years to restore the luster of Solaris, but that since has faced a strong challenge chiefly from Linux. Sun wants to embrace some Linux elements so "we make Solaris a better Linux than Linux," said Ian Murdock, Sun's chief operating systems officer, quoting Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, whose latest start-up, Ning, uses Solaris.
But it's a tricky balance to adopt elements of Linux while preserving Solaris technology and advantages such as the promise of backward compatibility. "As we make Solaris more familiar to Linux users, we don't [want to] lose what makes it more compelling and competitive.""
Not to say that some of the Solaris tools couldn't use a good sprucing up with newer and fresher versions, but I tend to get nervous whenever Sun codenames something. It usually means that they're about to start on something that isn't a bad idea per se, but will be guaranteed to be aborted prior to any real commitment or follow-through. What state that will leave Solaris in is anyone's guess.
*shudder* I still remember Mad Hatter. Such promise. Such failure to follow up,
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I've liked many aspects of Solaris for a long time, but the #1 thing that turns me off it is the userland tools.
Yes, I know they ship a DVD with lots of GNU tools, but the fact that the built-in make, vi, grep, etc. are still basically unmodified from the early 1990s (if not longer) is not, to me, a feature. Those hoary old versions should be the ones on a supplementary DVD for those who need perfect backward compatibility with 15-year-old shell scripts and so forth.
It sounds like that's a focus of this project, so I say fabulous. If I can get ZFS and DTrace plus a modern toolset out of the box, Solaris will start to look much more attractive.
Or you could just run Linux on Sun hardware?
Sun is hemmoraging cash. Their hardware is fairly standard (in an enterprise way) and all the functionality of Linux has jumped ahead of Solaris... So what do they have to offer? Nothing. I can't see what they can do in this regard to gain back market share. making a "better linux" than Linux is not it.
There are probably other paths that they can take that would be more effective than this one. But I don't know what they are.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Sun is a for-profit entity. How do they expect to make money off of their OS? They should GPL Solaris, let the code monkeys snatch the best bits for Linux, and forget about wasting their money developing Solaris. They can write a "shim layer" on Linux for people needing backward compatibility so they don't alienate long-time customers. They need to figure out where they plan on making money, and scrap the parts that lose money. Open sourcing Java was an indication of desperation; we saw plenty of companies open source their product during the dot-com bust, either because they didn't want their work to die, or because they thought it would magically boost market share and generate revenue. It doesn't.
Yeah, and OS/2 was a better Windows than Windows. Anyone remember how that worked out?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
But what exactly makes Solaris worth using to begin with? What open source or commercial software makes it worth having? What makes it more than just a fringe system? Linux is finally approaching the point where it stands a chance at competing against Windows in the consumer market, does it really need competition from a fairly mainstream corporation?
For that matter, sure, the machines look cool on the outside, but why do so many people consider them worth buying (even models up to 10 years old) today, and for that matter, what makes them worth switching over to? Is it sheer geek chic, or do they actually provide some form of useful function, as opposed to Windows/Mac/Linux's growing trend towards multipurpose multimedia machines?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
that's all we want... the current list of supported x86 hardware is ridiculously small... oh and put some effort into Gnu/Solaris... that project has effectively stagnated for ages now and nothing appears to be happening...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Nexenta seems to be doing things the right way for Solaris to proceed as a viable operating system. A debian-like package system and a choice of easy installable GUIs, but still without the hardware support that linux has,
I am also curious about Solaris's desire to go GPL. If that ever happened, Solaris will most likely be cannibalized into Linux - and Solaris will die a slow death. Even as we speak, the most valuable assets for Solaris (Dtrace and ZFS) are being usurped by FreeBSD (thanks to a more permissive BSD license) - which means that some people may choose it over Solaris.
Sun really has to work hard to sell us on the benefits of Solaris, and why we would choose it over other things available at the moment.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
No baby, it's just because of JavaOne 2007 - Java Developers Conference which makes successive new product and technology announcements.
Oh please. Lay off the bash fanboyism already. I personally get sick and tired of scripts that assume bash to have been installed under /bin. At least use a more portable hash-bang sequence like #!/usr/bin/env bash to make them semi-portable. Make the default shell a normal bourne again shell and allow users to switch to their own preferred one.
Also if the bash manual page says this:
BUGS
It's too big and too slow.
Then you just know it is a bad choice beyond even other considerations.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
Caseih" is correct when he says "This certainly isn't quite the same Sun as in the olden days", in regard to support and how it is delivered. It certainly isn't the same Sun for those of us who are tasked with delivering support. Management has implemented all sorts of programs to improve customer "sat" and bring down call hold times, programs that INTERFERE with the day to day support work; effective and seasoned TSEs are bailing out right and left and ARE NOT BEING REPLACED in many cases; the EDS "partners" have a large turnover rate (what do you want for $9 an hour?); more time on the phone taking live calls, meaning the TSE have less (or no) time to do followups, research, spend time in the lab . .
The "Dell-ization" of tech support is spreading like a virus; support is a commodity now. Even enterprise level tech support. Sold to the lowest bidder. Who cares if the person on the phone can't spell "LDAP", as long as the call is picked up in X minutes and keeps the manager's pager from going off? THAT is where Sun support is today.
I'm a full time Solaris admin, and getting paid well for it. If supply and demand changes to get idiots like you out of the field, then I'd be happy.
Good, professional admins will always command a premium. There are very VERY few good, professional Linux or Windows admins, but they're paid roughly as well as Solaris (or HP-UX, etc.) admins.
"any monkey thats run linux for a bit has the same skills?"
I suggest you upgrade your skills beyond those of a monkey. And your attitude, while you're at it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
And so, the wheel turns full circle. As summer fades into autumn, then winter gives way to spring and summer returns again; so doth GNU depart from Unix, only to return again to Unix.
The GNU project was originally meant to be an alternative to the closed-source Unix implementations of the day. Like a heroin dealer relying on the twin pillars of illegality and addictive potential, closed-source Unix vendors had little incentive to improve their products; they just had to be different enough from the competition that you couldn't switch easily.
It really took for Linux to come on the scene to get GNU into a usable state; the BSD kernel (which had been favoured by the GNU developers prior to the advent Linux) already came with well-matched userland tools. And you've got to be serious about something to buy a whole car that already works just to rip out the engine and use it in a different chassis that looks identical to the first one from a distance. The GNU/Linux combination sparked interest in GNU. In turn, the BSDs diversified; today FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD all have their own respective market niches.
Closed-source Unix continues to stagnate and ultimately will grow irrelevant. The elephant in the room is that neither hardware nor software make up the bulk of the intrinsic value of a computer system; that value comes mainly from users' saved data.
Open Source pretty much forces you to implement Open Standards for saved files, which leads to transparent interoperability between programs that do the same sort of thing. In the end, AbiWord on GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org on Solaris and KWord on FreeBSD will all be able to open the same documents. The brand of tools used to shape the data is becoming less important than the result of using them. That's already how it is in other industries. After all, who ever asked what brand of cooking equipment a restaurant uses, or what make of tools a cabinet maker uses? The important thing is that chopping food with one make of knife doesn't block you from cooking it in a different manufacturer's pans, and rough-cutting a piece of wood with one make of power saw doesn't prevent you finishing it with a different manufacturer's chisel. Using one OS and application stack on your computer shouldn't preclude you from working with data manipulated using a different OS and stack. That's already the way it's heading, slowly but surely.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
That's pretty neat, thanks! I'd never heard of Nexenta before. So basically it's the kernel+libc from Solaris, with the Debian userland...
But, uhm, is there any real evidence that the Solaris kernel is actually *better* than the Linux kernel? The Linux kernel definitely supports a LOT more hardware. Although Solaris is seen as more heavy duty by a lot of IT folks, I'm not sure if there's a good reason for this besides long-time familiarity.
My bicyles
If you're as hardcore as I am, you realize that Sun OS hasn't been a true operating system since the day they unbundled the compiler. An OS without a compiler? What do they expect me to use? Stone Knives and bear skins?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!