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OpenSolaris 2008.11 – Year of the Laptop?
Ahmed Kamal writes "Is Linux getting too old for you? Are you interested to see what other systems such as OpenSolaris have to offer? OpenSolaris has some great features, such as ZFS and dtrace, which make it a great server OS — but how do you think it will fare on a laptop? Let's take an initial look at the most recent OpenSolaris 2008.11 pre-release on recentish laptop hardware."
I would agree with you but for one point: The desktop arena is the general purpose 'swiss army knife' area, while server software has specific issues of speed, security, and robustness. Sure, they have overlap, but there are different generalized criteria for both.
I like what Solaris is becomming, and there are definite advantages to running Solaris in certain environments on certain hardware, especially when speed and robustness are critical factors.
Now I'm not talking about running DukeNukem, I'm talking about when an extra 100 transactions per second makes meaningful differences to your bottom line. This is when server OS software is a critical thing. Typically, desktop software OS is not what you want running a server with such critical issues under the microscope.
Solaris has historically been an OS which can be trusted in the server environment. I look with hope that they will continue and build on such a reputation.
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Uh is it a new SCO meme ? Are you done with enough of FUD already ?
Solaris (and previously SunOS) were Sun's implementation of UNIX. Right, just like Linux and FreeBSD. As such Sun owns the copyright to it. Sun got it UNIX 'certified'. Thats right, just like OSX, Tru64, HPUX and AIX. There is no UNIX. It is a trademark of the Open Group, and they certify various implementations of it. Ever heard of SUS ? SYS V ?
Now onto SCO fiasco. Sun licensed some x86 drivers from SCO for Solaris 8 (yeah that old... Its like 10 years now). SCO's SCO UNIX was x86 based. Those drivers have long since disappeared! They dont even matter!
Whats all this infighting among Open Source group ? What is that makes some fanbois do thing and spread FUD that is most anti-Open Source ?
Guess some people just can never live happily with others!
- mritunjai
A desktop OS will have services and programs enabled that specifically disqualify it from being a server OS. Programs that listen on network ports, dont provide any kind of authentication to access devices or write to files, dont have a thorough firewall. A webserver should listen only on webserver specific ports and those necessary for remote admin. I can think of less than 10. (do a `netstat -a|grep LISTEN` and count the ports your desktop is listening on and then do the same on a server(http,ftp,ssh,rsync,and some specifics for server type like imaps or smb).
Huh? This sounds like a bad idea for both server and desktop alike.
Firstly, it's pretty well-worn knowledge by now that it's a darn good idea to run a firewall in any context, unless you positively, absolutely trust your local network.
Second, any extraneous services should either be disabled by default on a desktop machine, or be able to be disabled quite easily. As you mentioned, it's a trivial task to take a look at what ports are open, and is equally trivial to close those ports and/or kill the underlying processes if necessary.
Microsoft learned this lesson with Windows 2000. By stripping down their "Server" OS, they (possibly inadvertently) produced what was arguably the desktop best operating ever made by the company. Sure, it didn't come bundled with much, although that was a large part of the beauty of it. Most of the "value-added" features that came with XP were crap, and rarely used by anybody. For its time, it was fast, stable, secure, and quite easy to use. The architectural differences between the 'Server' and 'Workstation' versions were virtually nonexistent.
Unfortunately, they forgot whatever lessons they might have learned with Win2k, and came out with XP, which though a step up from 98/Me!, wasn't nearly as fast or secure as 2k, and eventually Vista, which predominantly added bloat, and none of the much touted architectural improvements that were supposed to have been in the pipeline.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I tried it. I installed it on my spare laptop (IBM T-41, ~4 years old). Pros include excellent speed, and easy install. Cons, especially when compared with consumer grade Linux distributions like Ubuntu, include extremely sparse OSS application repository to draw from, and wireless support that I just never could get to work. Having been there and done that, with a tee-shirt, I kept it for a week and reloaded Linux. Not ready yet.