OpenSolaris vs. Linux, For Linux Users

An anonymous reader writes "With Sun busy being swallowed up by Oracle, should Linux geeks pay any interest to OpenSolaris? TuxRadar put together a guide to OpenSolaris's most interesting features from a Linux user's perspective, covering how to get started with ZFS and virtualisation alongside more consumer-friendly topics such as hardware and Flash support."

Comments

Re:OpenSolaris

[larry bagina]

how long did it take you to copy a 17 meg file from one folder to another?

I really like OpenSolaris

[hilather]

At home I love to use Ubuntu, I've long given up on Windows. I've tried out OpenSolaris a few times, mainly to get use to the subtle differences between Linux and Solaris. As part of my job heavily involves using Solaris its nice to use the OpenSolaris system to learn what I can in my spare time. I know there are many differences between Solaris and OpenSolaris, but the gap isn't as large as from Linux. That said, personally I think the icon theme in Gnome for OpenSolaris is pretty nice looking. Gnome has a very polished look in OpenSolaris. It would be a shame to see Oracle kill this project, I think OpenSolaris has a lot of potential. If anything, they should invest more in OpenSolaris. If I had a home server, I would definitely consider using it.

Re:I really like OpenSolaris

[Anonymous Coward]

* Solaris only includes Unix versions of system tools.
* OpenSolaris includes a mishmash of crappy Unix tools and crappy GNU tools.
* Linux only includes GNU tools.
In other words, if you thought the Linux ecosystem was a mess, Solaris will not surprise you - pleasantly, that is.
The only selling point for OpenSolaris is SUN's ZFS that seems to give some geeks a hard-on.
If you are looking for a consistent system any BSD will beat OpenSolaris and FreeBSD has also better performance.
Hardware support is also a lot better for BSDs.

Re:I really like OpenSolaris

[agnosticnixie]

I'm not particularly devoted to the GNU tools, but... sadist.

Re:OpenSolaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Using JFS:

$ time cp data test2

real 0m0.062s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.040s

Nexenta

[Korin43]

Anyone who likes Linux and wants to try OpenSolaris should give Nexenta a look. It's basically Ubuntu using the OpenSolaris kernel instead of Linux (so GNU/Solaris?). All the fun of Solaris, all the ease of apt. I can't find builds for anything except x86 though.

My Hope for OpenSolaris

[Agent ME]

OpenSolaris looks polished in many areas, but I see Linux as ahead of it as a Desktop OS. I hope that Desktop Linux distributions (and Linux kernel hackers) take note of what OpenSolaris does right (easy snapshot support - sure Linux doesn't have ZFS, but it has LVM which appears to be able to do snapshots) and play a bit of catch-up. And who knows, maybe OpenSolaris will do the same and try to catch up to Linux.

Re:Its a Server OS...

[moosesocks]

You could say the same about Linux. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea to try it.

In fact, I quite like the fact that there are enterprise-grade features lying around my system, just in case I ever happen to need them. As long as they don't get in the way of day-to-day tasks, what's the harm?

(A good current example of this is ZFS. Although casual users won't have a use for this, I find ZFS's awesome filesystem-creation and pooling features to be a godsend for managing my central backup repository and media store. If I need more space, I add another drive, type a short line into the console, and the space is available instantly to use with my existing filesystems with full-redundancy built in. Removing an old/small/broken drive from the pool is just as easy.)

Re:Its a Server OS...

[andersenep]

Why try to hack it on to a desktop?

Who said anything about using it for a desktop?? I use OpenSolaris at home to run my NAS for one reason: ZFS. I strongly considered using BSD, but figured OpenSolaris was a better choice for my needs. So far I have had zero issues with it. It just sits in a room and quietly does what it was supposed to do. I am sure I would never try to use it for a desktop OS, but then again I'd never use Linux, BSD or Windows either. For that matter, why try and hack Linux on to a desktop??

Re:Where are the forks?

[Vardamir]

OSOL's own site lists several different distributions. There's also auroraux, which aims to have its own kernel source repository and freedom from any remaining binary bits: http://www.auroraux.org/index.php/Main_Page

ZFS

[zorkmid]

Having had a few EXT3 filesystems go tits up because they've been quietly borking themselves on a 24/7/365 server being able to do a weekly "zpool scrub" in a 4TB array without the downtime is a beautiful thing. Kernel CIFS with proper ACLs and integration with ZFS snapshots is pretty great as well. When btrfs is released and gets a few miles on it I may switch back. But for now my file server stays OpenSolaris.

Re:Its a Server OS...

[Brian Gordon]

the only Open Source OS thats even nearly practical for typical day-to-day desktop use is Linux

This is not true. Most applications that run on Linux compile just as well on a variety of platforms. Gnome and KDE4 both have packages for FreeBSD for example. If you really want something simple and portable run Fluxbox or Openbox.

A lot of things are written in Java as well, which means you even have binary compatibility. Things written in Python and other scripting languages are also portable.

/tmp and /var/tmp

[foorilious]

There's a lot of little things you'll notice over the years about Solaris / OpenSolaris that are unique, cool, neat, or useful -- too many to list in an article like this, of course. One example I was reminded of by the "differences" table -- the authors note that the Solaris equivalent of Linux's "/tmp" is "/var/tmp" -- but they failed to point out that Solaris also has a /tmp, and that, by default /tmp is actually partially backed by RAM, which is extremely convenient and useful from time to time, when you want a little piece of lightning-fast filesystem space, or want to eliminate disk as a variable in some sort of timing test. Of course, linux also has ramdisks, but this is generally far more convenient.

$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/tmp/foo bs=1024k count=128
128+0 records in
128+0 records out
dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/tmp/foo bs=1024k count=128 0.00s user 0.71s system 24% cpu 2.910 total

$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/foo bs=1024k count=128
128+0 records in
128+0 records out
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/foo bs=1024k count=128 0.00s user 0.43s system 98% cpu 0.438 total

Re:/tmp and /var/tmp

[dserpell]

-- but they failed to point out that Solaris also has a /tmp, and that, by default /tmp is actually partially backed by RAM, which is extremely convenient and useful from time to time, when you want a little piece of lightning-fast filesystem space, or want to eliminate disk as a variable in some sort of timing test.

In any new Linux distribution, /dev/shm is also backed by ram, so you can do:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/tmp/foo bs=1024k count=512
512+0 records in
512+0 records out
536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 1.12253 s, 478 MB/s

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/shm/foo bs=1024k count=512
512+0 records in
512+0 records out
536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 0.754747 s, 711 MB/s

Obviously, I had to copy four times the data to reach the slowness of Solaris :-)

Re:/tmp and /var/tmp

[nabsltd]

One example I was reminded of by the "differences" table -- the authors note that the Solaris equivalent of Linux's "/tmp" is "/var/tmp" -- but they failed to point out that Solaris also has a /tmp, and that, by default /tmp is actually partially backed by RAM, which is extremely convenient and useful from time to time, when you want a little piece of lightning-fast filesystem space, or want to eliminate disk as a variable in some sort of timing test. Of course, linux also has ramdisks, but this is generally far more convenient.

Is the way Solaris handles /tmp really all that different from the Linux tmpfs implementation?

solaris-box:$ mount
/tmp on swap read/write/setuid/xattr/dev=2

linux-box:$ mount
none on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nodev,noatime,size=256m,uid=0,gid=0,mode=1777)

Other than picking the maximum size at mount time, tmpfs seems to be the same thing. If you pick a size equal to swap space, I think it is the same thing:

• Both use RAM if available but are backed by swap (just like any other memory allocation).
• Both use essentially no RAM or swap until you write files to the mount point.
• Both can set various permissions and features on the mount point.

Linux Wins

[rainmaestro]

I was recently tasked with doing an inventory and repurposing of a stack of older Sun machines (Sunfire, Netra, etc).

What I discovered is that OpenSolaris won't even install on some of the models. Install from CD? Nope. Install remotely via a network install? Nope, and let me go on record as saying that the network install process is *absurdly* complex.

On the other hand, I popped a Debian CD in, and it installed beautifully once I booted into expert mode and loaded fdisk (parted blows when dealing with Sun tables).

That's right, Linux was easier to work with on these Sun servers than OpenSolaris. OSOL has some really cool features (ZFS and DTrace, for example), and I've mucked around in it on my x86 boxes before, but overall Linux is still easier to work with in my experience, even on Sun servers.

I always keep an OSOL VM in VirtualBox, but it doesn't see much use. I'd rather use Linux or BSD.

Re:Linux Wins

[evilviper]

OSOL has some really cool features (ZFS and DTrace, for example), and I've mucked around in it on my x86 boxes before, but overall Linux is still easier to work with in my experience, even on Sun servers.

If you want the best of the Solaris and Linux world, install FreeBSD. Stable ZFS support, DTrace, etc. Plus ports and packages, and Linux binary compatibility if you need it.

It still heavily favors the BSD side of things, rather than SysV style... in fact, much more than any Linux distro I've seen... but it still definitely has far more of the nice features of the old commercial Unix systems than Linux.

Re:Its a Server OS...

[WaywardGeek]

I'll throw in that Open Solaris has the best accessibility software for the blind, in Sun's Orca project. It works in Linux, but not as well as where it's developed... in Solaris. This is a key indicator of just how ready an OS is for the desktop, IMO.

Anyway, the whole Windows vs Linux flame war is pointless. Linux is the best OS ever developed for hackers, period. I couldn't be happier with it (unless it ran cool software like Orca stably). Windows is for Joe Sixpack who needs games and porn. Joe will always outnumber the hackers. It's ok. Just learn to live with it.

Re:I'll weigh in...

[Ash-Fox]

One thing I thing the Linux community could take from OpenSolaris is its concentration on the approval and standardization of applications, so long as you stay on the OpenSolaris repositories. There is pretty much one tool for each job. That's it -- generally speaking of course.

As a quick example off the top of my head, I'll take GNU's tar, cron (Solaris' doesn't even have */5 or @reboot), grep over Solaris' default equivalents. From my own experience, I don't find this "standardization" allowing much room for any kind of innovation.

It may not have all the bells/whistles of Ubuntu

The utilities don't even have the past decade of enhancements we've seen on BSDs and Linux, never mind Ubuntu.

Re:Where are the forks?

[An dochasac]

I'll take a look at OpenSolaris when there's at minimum 3 variants of it being developed.

Here is a list of 13 OpenSolaris distros as of March 2009:

1. Solaris Express Community Edition DVD (b110, GNOME 2.24.2,SPARC/x86)
2. OpenSolaris 2008.11 'preview' Live CD (b109, GNOME 2.24.2, SPARC/x86)
3. BeleniX 0.7.1 (b93, KDE 3.5.9)
4. Milax 0.3.3 (b105, JWM 2.0.1, SPARC/x86)
5. Pulsar 0.3a (b104)
6. MartUX Natamar 0.4 (b96, IceWM 1.2.35, SPARC)
7. SchilliX 0.6.7 (b92)
8. NexentaCore 1.0.1/2.0b2 (b85+/b104+)
9. NexentaStor 1.1.4 (b85+)
10. EON 0.58.9 (embeddable NAS, b104)
11. OpenSolaris for System z (release 20081023)
12. Polaris (OpenSolaris on PowerPC project, b104+)
13. AuroraUX (b101, Xorg 7.2)

Re:Its not just a server OS anymore

[TheRaven64]

TimeSlider which is similar to Apples Time Capsule

I think you mean Time Machine (Time Capsule is Apple's NAS product). Saying TimeSlider is similar to Time Machine is doing TimeSlider a gross injustice. Time Slider works how Time Machine should. It uses the ZFS O(1) snapshot feature, making it very cheap to use and very robust. Time Machine creates a tree of hard links, which are not created atomically. The fact that it works at all is impressive, but it's very fragile. From an end-user perspective they are similar, but TimeSlider is a much cleaner implementation.

I'm not sure if it made it into the main OpenSolaris tree, but Nexenta also uses ZFS snapshots for package management with a wrapper around apt. When you do an update, it snapshots the system first, so if something went wrong (e.g. one package didn't update cleanly, or had regressions) you can revert trivially. Once you're happy, you can discard the snapshot. This is really great for testing experimental code; you can install the development version and revert it trivially if it broke anything.

Re:OpenSolaris

[fak3r]

how long did it take you to copy a 17 meg file from one folder to another?

this is one of my all time favorites, the fact that people below responded with timing makes it ever sweeter. I am in your debt.