Illumos Sporks OpenSolaris

suraj.sun sends in this news from The Register. "If you were hoping that someone would fork the OpenSolaris operating system, you are going to have to settle for a spork. You know, half spoon and half fork. That, in essence, is what the Illumos, an alternative open source project to continue development on the core bits of OpenSolaris, is all about. ... Development on OpenSolaris has all but stopped, so Garrett D'Amore, a former Sun and Oracle software engineer who worked on Solaris for many years, decided to do something about it. ... What Illumos is doing is taking the core OpenSolaris kernel and foundation, which is called OS/Net or ON inside of the former Sun, and creating a repository and development community around that. ON includes the kernel, C libraries, shell and shell utilities, file systems, and networking functions of OpenSolaris. 'We are not a distribution in a normal sense,' says D'Amore. 'It is more of a code base.' And one that Nexenta, Belenix, and SchilliX, who do create alternative distros for OpenSolaris, can in theory base their future releases upon if they don't like what is — or isn't — coming out of OpenSolaris."

Comments

should read ...

[Anonymous Coward]

larry sporks OSOL community in the solaris ...

Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they decide to use the FreeBSD userland on top of the OpenSolaris kernel. The FreeBSD userland is the premiere UNIX-like userland environment available today, and is also released under an extremely liberal license that maximizes everybody's freedom.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[betterunixthanunix]

Here I was, thinking that GNU was the premier userland, at least in terms of the number of users who depend on. Oh, wait, I see what you did there, you started a GPL-vs.-BSD license flamewar.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the FreeBSD userland wins in terms of market share too thanks to Apple.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you count premiere? Features? How about code quality? Compare these two for a trivial example:

FreeBSD cp.c: view
Coreutils cp.c: view

The latter is embarrassing and the person should be ashamed to call himself a programmer. And this is, by far, one of the better-written GNU parts. I have long felt that the FreeBSD tools are better suited to being paired with Linux than the GNU tools are, as they both (FreeBSD & Linux) maintain similar coding standards, and the FreeBSD tools are better documented and undeniably more secure & bug-free.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

The BSD userland is far closer to the existing Solaris userland than the GNU userland utilities are, thanks to a shared heritage (both were or are derived from real UNIX, unlike Linux and the GNU utilities). This has serious compatibility implications for people who want to transition existing shell scripts, for instance, from a Solaris system to a system running this new OS.

The BSD userland code is also far, far better than the GNU code. It's better documented, it has far fewer bugs, and it's much nicer to work with from a development perspective. Go check the code yourself, assuming you know C (given your high level of ignorance, you might not).

The BSD license does give much more freedom to more people than the GPL ever could. That's indisputable. The GPL is about limiting what people can do with the source code. It takes away the freedom to not distribute changes.

It's too bad the GP was modded "flamebait". What he says is absolutely true. It's too bad some GNU fanatics just can't accept reality.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

The latter is embarrassing and the person should be ashamed to call himself a programmer.

What are you talking about? This is just awesome!

#define AUTHORS \
    proper_name_utf8 ("Torbjorn Granlund", "Torbj\303\266rn Granlund"), \
    proper_name ("David MacKenzie"), \
    proper_name ("Jim Meyering")

/snark

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, and the BSDs also like to ignore standards like POSIX, e.g. OpenBSD having an nm without the -P option, some other BSD deprecating od in favour of some other tool that is even less standardized and certainly not part of POSIX.
They also since years don't manage to get such simple things like includes in the system headers right, you usually need to sprinkle random #include into code that works on almost all other systems (almost since in that regard they are quite similar to Solaris).
Not that I doubt you can find a lot of faults in GNU stuff, just saying that the BSD tools often are quite a PITA in their very own way.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

The FreeBSD userland is the premiere UNIX-like userland environment available today, and is also released under an extremely liberal license that maximizes everybody's freedom.

Especially the freedom of developers to have companies profit from their hard work while giving nothing back. Hey, who wouldn't want that? That's why I can't understand why Open Source didn't truly take off as a movement until after the GPL was created...

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here I was, thinking that GNU was the premier userland, at least in terms of the number of users who depend on. Oh, wait, I see what you did there, you started a GPL-vs.-BSD license flamewar.

nice try. GP was talking about BSD userland vs CDDL Solaris. His opinion is that BSD is the premier userland. Don't try to pick fights.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies profit daily (or microsecond-ly) from the unconditional research published in academic journals. You don't see the scientists complaining. Probably because all they care about is advancing knowledge and technology.

Re:Use the FreeBSD userland please!

[afabbro]

I hope they decide to use the FreeBSD userland on top of the OpenSolaris kernel. The FreeBSD userland is the premiere UNIX-like userland environment available today, and is also released under an extremely liberal license that maximizes everybody's freedom.

You're aware, of course, that Solaris is based on SysV...sorry, for a moment I overlooked the point that you're just a BSD troll.

Is it worth the effort?

[ClaraBow]

Does Opensolaris have something unique to offer than Linux doesn't?

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

ZFS!

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[betterunixthanunix]

No, but perhaps the codebase is cleaner and has fewer bugs? Clearly, someone is interested in it.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[captrb]

Zones, ZFS, and DTrace don't have equivalents in Linux with feature parity.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[betterunixthanunix]

Unless I am confused, "Zones" are virtual machines. If you think there is no equivalent, I guess you are not familiar with Xen or KVM, or the dozens of other VMs out there. ZFS is available as a FUSE driver, and Linux already has attachable debugging, although perhaps not with "feature parity."

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Junta]

lxc exists in linux as a Zones alternative.
I don't know first hand, but some would say systemtap is on the level of DTrace.
btrfs may eventually provide zfs parity (but not today, even if considered stable the featureset lags in some ways).

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Crossbow.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Zones, ZFS, SMF, dtrace, RBAC, and zero effort porting to Solaris on x86 or sparc. Linux has at best half-assed simulacrums for these features. The first three features alone are enough to justify OpenSolaris over Linux in many situations.

That said, Oracle's ham fisted approach to Solaris is effectively going to kill it. Lack of movement on OpenSolaris and new draconian licensing for Solaris means I'm going to be pushing for Linux to replace Solaris at my sites. I can deal with the reduced features if it means fewer licensing headaches.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean other than API/ABI stability, less bugs and cleaner code base?

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[ToasterMonkey]

Unless I am confused, "Zones" are virtual machines.

This is easy, you clearly are.

If you think there is no equivalent, I guess you are not familiar with Xen or KVM

Yah, we've heard of that too. http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/category/solaris-xen/

although perhaps not with "feature parity."

Exactly.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[betterunixthanunix]

Would you perhaps like to explain to me and people like me how "Zones" are different from "virtual machines?"

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zones are not VMs. FreeBSD jails are probably the closest thing to it. Virtualization technologies are eventually going to render both of those obselete, I think, but it hasn't gotten there yet. And if you think a FUSE driver is any kind of substitute for a full implementation, you have no business running a data center. Even FreeBSD's port of ZFS isn't always up to snuff, and it's leaps and bounds beyond the FUSE driver.

Look, you've obviously picked a "side" and you'll pull out any comparison you need to support it, so stop pretending you can offer any kind of objectivity. I rather doubt you've even got any experience with a Unix OS that isn't Linux.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, as has already been pointed out on LWN: due to its superior handling of the SCSI bus, it's a much better platform for burning CDs :-)

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[berashith]

one kernel shared amongst the zones, not VMs populated with independent OSes. The zones can "loopback" filesystems, so /usr is only created once . Each zone has independent configs for users and such, and is visible as files from the global OS. VMs dont have a global OS, they just sit on a hypervisor.

this is the first 5 seconds of differences. The biggest thing to note is they are nothing alike.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[kg8484]

Wikipedia has a decent article on the subject.

[A] zone does not have its own separate kernel (in contrast to a hardware virtual machine)

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[berashith]

a dtrace script will work when run against a solaris10 server regardless of patch levels. Systemtap has some similarity, but the scripts that work on one are not reliably portable between patch revisions or systems.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[MBGMorden]

I can deal with the reduced features if it means fewer licensing headaches.

Not to mention the fact that most of those features will likely have equivalents with GPL-compatible licensing within a year or two.

Whenever someone asks if Linux supports some cool feature that this niche project does, rather than "No.", a more appropriate answer will typically be "Not yet.".

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Massacrifice]

explain to me and people like me how "Zones" are different from "virtual machines?"

Zones share the same kernel. Much, much less overhead than full-blown VMs, both in setup and resource use. You can flavor your zones to be Linux or BSD compatible. You can give them their own (virtual or physical) network adapters. Think Apache Virtual Hosts, but at the OS layer. Or a midaway cross between a chroot and a VM. It's really nice stuff.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[nathanh]

Unless I am confused, "Zones" are virtual machines. If you think there is no equivalent, I guess you are not familiar with Xen or KVM, or the dozens of other VMs out there.

Yes, you are confused, which probably indicates your lack of familiarity with Solaris Zones.

Xen, KVM, VMware, Sun Logical Domains, and Sun Virtualbox, are all examples of hardware virtualisation. They simulate a hardware platform; a virtual machine. Each VM has its own kernel and scheduler and memory space and device drivers and virtualised storage.

Solaris Zones is an example of operating system virtualisation. There is no direct equivalent on Linux. There is a single kernel for all the zones. A single set of device drivers. A single process tree. Potentially a single storage system. It's extremely lightweight compared to virtual machines.

Thinking of Zones as "virtual machines" is simply wrong. They are more like process groups, or process sets, and in fact on Solaris they are implemented in part by using resource groups. There is virtualisation but it's not at the machine layer; that's why they're not virtual machines.

To illustrate the significant differences, on the same hardware that Xen can run 10 VMs, Solaris can run 100s of zones. Xen can lose 10% or more CPU to overheads, Solaris Zones loses less than 1%. Xen can lose as much as 90% of I/O performance, Solaris Zones loses less than 1%. Xen places restrictions on the resources available to each VM, Solaris Zones can gain access to the full resources of the hardware. Xen requires each VM to be patched and maintained separately, Solaris Zones are patched and maintained through the "host" OS.

These benefits are only possible because Solaris Zones are not VMs.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[nathanh]

LXC will one day be a zones alternative. Right now it's a pre-1.0 alpha with severely reduced functionality. I consider it basically unusable in its current form.

Same deal for BTRFS. One day it will be a ZFS alternative. Right now it's only for BTRFS developers.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

at least you replied politely and without a snarky attitude. >_>

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and almost no hardware drivers, and very limited architecture support. But if that wasn't enough to kill solaris, there is no community of developers, almost everything has been done by Sun employees. Unless they GPL it, this will remain a fringe OS.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[wumpus188]

Ok, so how is this different from OpenVZ or FreeBSD jails?

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[morgan_greywolf]

FreeBSD jails are probably the closest thing to it. Virtualization technologies are eventually going to render both of those obselete

Right. FreeBSD jails, AIX LPARs, and Solaris Zones are all about the same thing, with perhaps AIX LPARs and Solaris Zones being the two most scalable.

And I don't think that full virtualization or even paravirtualization is going to replace these technologies anytime soon. They are far more scalable, far easier to setup, and have had high availability features for years that virtualization technologies only recently have begun adding. For example, an AIX LPAR can run on one machine, and if that machine goes down, another machine with an identical instance can pick it up and run with it -- all without the LPAR's users even knowing about it. I think Zones can do this too.

On the filesystem front, the Linux equivalent that will eventually be on-par feature-wise with ZFS is btrfs. Unfortunately, btrfs isn't ready for prime-time yet. In the meantime, high-end NAS/SAN devices like EMC's Celerra do what ZFS does, only better.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Gerald]

"lsof -o" and SIGINFO come to mind.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[rubycodez]

but none of those are required to do mission critical business computing, which is why Solaris and OpenSolaris have lost (too little too late in both cases) and GNU/Linux has won. Go ahead and flog your dead horse, but the Solari are toast.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[bsDaemon]

no, but FreeBSD jails are basically the same thing as Solaris Zones, and FreeBSD supports ZFS and DTrace, too. Plus, the added benefit of also not being Linux.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[nathanh]

OpenVZ and FreeBSD Jails are equivalent conceptually to Solaris Containers. The difference is the extent to which they've been implemented. Sun went the whole hog and made Solaris Containers "first class citizens". All the user space tools were modified to understand zones. All the documentation was updated. All the application suites were updated. They're not a ill-supported second-rate tack-on so you can tick the "we've got that" feature box.

If you want the analogy, it's like Microsoft saying "don't use Apache, we've got a webserver too" and pointing to IIS. In theory, true. In practise, bullshit.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[jschmitz]

OpenSolaris has DTrace, ZFS, Zones........While Linux' hardware support is wider than that of OpenSolaris, the latter does benefit from having a static driver interface. Where in Linux hardware support might actually break as time goes by, 10 year old Solaris drivers will still work today. There's also a Device Detection Tool which will tell you if your hardware is compatible with OpenSolaris. However the number of applications to choose form is quite limited compared to what Linux distributions generally have to offer. DTrace is really cool you can learn more about it here http://www.brendangregg.com/dtrace.html Cheers - Jeffery

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Kymermosst]

The same tired argument that Solaris does not support sound cards from 1995.

Nobody running high-end modern servers cares whether or not Solaris supports obsolete hardware.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[rubycodez]

I'm glad my Linux doesn't have the FreeBSD feature of seizing up under heavy IPC under SMP load because the locking model is too complex

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle's ham fisted approach to Solaris is effectively going to kill it.

Isn't that what the fork is trying to prevent?

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[mr_da3m0n]

If you want the analogy, it's like Microsoft saying "don't use Apache, we've got a webserver too" and pointing to IIS. In theory, true. In practise, bullshit.

I am annoyed at how I have been 'defending' Microsoft lately -- but you might want to revist that analogy since IIS7 is actually a pretty decent web server now :)

On topic, I think it's worth mentioning that the current OpenSolaris codebase doesn't support sparse root zones, which makes me sad. IPS apparently doesn't account for them at this point. Last I checked, they were still discussing wether to implement them or just scrap them in favor of full root zones with ZFS deduplication.

OpenSolaris is still useful, though.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[mehemiah]

less setup, doesn't require a kernel patch (which i think OpenVZ does) http://cgrouphacking.blogspot.com/

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[sethstorm]

Supporting platforms beyond the commercial viability of them(e.g. sun4m machines and early sun4u machines)?

Oh, wait. That's OpenBSD and Linux.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[fnj]

Incorrect. Linux will "never" have ZFS.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[sethstorm]

Except that Sun (er, Oracle) took obsolete to mean "no longer commercially viable", with much regard to technological capability.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Cyberax]

Zones = OpenVZ / Linux Containers (and they have some features that Solaris lacks)
DTrace = SystemTap (fairly mature)
ZFS = btrfs (not very mature yet)

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Cyberax]

???

LXC now has network/PID/FS virtualization, and is even supported by SELinux. There's also support for live migration of containers.

Its userspace tools are indeed immature, but kernel-level features are OK.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[CAIMLAS]

Feature parity? THat's being generous. Linux has nothing that compares with those features (or containers) in and of itself. (And this coming from someone who loves linux and has used it for almost 15 years.) Particularly, (Open)Solaris ZFS is light years ahead of any other filesystem - and yes, I'm excluding the other ZFS implementations from being awesome, because they really aren't yet.

OpenSolaris has also done some work integrating VirtualBox into Containers; it supposedly works very well.

If nothing else, SOlaris provides (or rather, Sun provided) a single, clean, understandable interfacing tool (or set of tools) for their architectures (ZFS, zones, DTrace, VirtualBox) which is something Linux tends to lack. BSDs do it, too (well, mainly NetBSD), but Solaris's is very nice.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[jonbryce]

ZFS if you want to run a storage server. You can probably get ZFS running in Linux using FUSE, but it won't be so good, or you could port it as a kernel module, but it won't be legal.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[CAIMLAS]

As others have said, you're clearly confused.

Zones ~= BSD jails or Linux jail environment, but better in many ways (security/compartmentalization, independence, implementation, configuration, adaptability). Security can be much more tightly defined as to what the zone can or can not do (more like a host level ACL) as can be in Linux.

Containers ~= virtual machines. It's a zone with the ability to do true VM type stuff. Except better, in that it's able to run pretty much anything (try vbox under a container, for instance). Except unlike VMWare, Xen, XenServer, or the like, it's actually pretty easy to change a bunch of settings like bandwidth, memory allocation, nice, etc. of a container instance, and has been possible for some time - unlike the "real soon now" for many VM implementations.

And surely you're trolling about ZFS. ZFS FUSE is even worse than the FreeBSD implementation in terms of performance and stability.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[JabrTheHut]

That's only the start of the list. There's also:
Dynamic (hardware) reconfiguration, projects, resource management and resource pools, processor sets and binding, investigative tools and fault management.

I like Linux. It has some definite advantages over Solaris. But Solaris is the best server OS I've used, and after 15 years of being a Unix admin I've used most of them - certainly everything currently Unix or Linux and supported today. It's going to be a real shame when Oracle kills it.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[JabrTheHut]

Not to mention the fact that most of those features will likely have equivalents with GPL-compatible licensing within a year or two.

I've been hearing that since DTrace was announced. Before then, I was hearing it when Solaris 8 was new and Linux servers had to be rebooted to see new disk, or a reboot caused them to renumber the disks they had. It takes years to get these features implemented, tested, stable and bug-free. Pretending Linux will magically have something that's taken years for a major OS company to get right is delusional.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

100 percent less Linus! :D

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you perhaps like to explain to me and people like me how "Zones" are different from "virtual machines?"

Zones have 1% overhead:

                http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/virtually_no_overhead_solaris_zones

Virtual machines (specifically VMware) can have 36% overhead:

                http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/sun_x4270_virtualized_for_two

Zones are super-charged FreeBSD jails (they're explicitly mentioned as a source of inspiration). They add the ability to mount /usr and other file systems (and even raw disk devices) as R/O so that you only have to keep one OS image patched (though you can optionally have an independent /usr et al.).

Recent improvements include Project Crossbow:

              http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+crossbow/WebHome
              http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=999

Solaris also runs just fine in VMware and Xen if you want to use that. You can actually have a Solaris VM on ESX, and then create zones in that VM. Zones work the same whether under x86 or SPARC.

Add Solaris Cluster, and you can also have fail over services or even entire zones from one physical machine to another.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[bsDaemon]

Yeah, I can see where I'd be mad about that, too, if I'd ever encountered it using FreeBSD since 2.2.8 in both a hobbyist and professional environment. Luckily, it's never been an issue.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Zones, ZFS, and DTrace don't have equivalents in Linux with feature parity.

The ZFS storage layer for linux is done, you can use it now. The ZFS POSIX layer isn't done, the project needs help.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zones share the same kernel. Much, much less overhead than full-blown VMs, both in setup and resource use.

This used to be true, but thanks to market pressure, VMs are competitive in the resource and overhead areas. For example, with kernel same-page merging it's possible to run multiple VMs and overcommit memory usage with relative transparency. Now that processors have virtualization extensions (and have for several years) the expensive operations (from a CPU standpoint) are now cheap. The benefit of VMs, IMHO, is that no substantive changes are needed on the OS or toolset. Zones are great, no doubt, and some of the technology will get merged or copied into VMs, but it appears that the market is leaning towards virtualization.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[cizoozic]

Something or other is keeping them from allowing sparse roots, I imagine this has something to do with the new packaging system. As I recall, someone has gotten the inherit-pkg-dir properties to be allowed, and the resulting zone worked fine. I became curious when they didn't mention upgrade-ability, but then I became distracted and/or hungry and thought nothing more on the subject. This bug supports the pkg root cause though: http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=2550

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Opensolaris have something unique to offer than Linux doesn't?

I was recently speaking to an ex-Sun buddy (we got laid off many years ago) who just went back to Sun before the takeover by Oracle. He was telling me that the Solaris kernel still has the best scalability on large multiprocessor intel systems of any OS, and as such, intel takes a great interest in it.

Linux may dominate the market now, but for some things, it still has competition.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that it's not GPL infested Linux?

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[beardz]

FreeBSD jails are certainly no longer ill-supported second-rate tack-ons. Care for virtualised network stacks per Zone? ;)

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

To illustrate the significant differences, on the same hardware that Xen can run 10 VMs, Solaris can run 100s of zones. Xen can lose 10% or more CPU to overheads, Solaris Zones loses less than 1%. Xen can lose as much as 90% of I/O performance, Solaris Zones loses less than 1%. Xen places restrictions on the resources available to each VM, Solaris Zones can gain access to the full resources of the hardware. Xen requires each VM to be patched and maintained separately, Solaris Zones are patched and maintained through the "host" OS.

Sun's own documentation states less than 5%, not 1%, for CPU overhead. Xen running in a para-virtualized environment is also under 5% CPU overhead. And it's not true that Zones have full access to the resources of the hardware.

Admittedly, Zones are lighter than full virtualization but your post seems to miss the point of virtualization. Just as you note, Zones share a single kernel image. VMs have the ability to run multiple OS versions. Yes, you can run different libraries and application sets in a Zone, but from an application perspective it's easier to certify a VM than to certify a Zone. This is evident from the number of applications certified to run under a VM environment versus a Zone. And the distinction between a Zone and a native environment must be made, because even though Sun's reps inform that there is no difference running in a Zone or full native, many application vendors will not provide support for Zone deployments..

I am a longtime Solaris admin, btw. Zones are a good tech, but your post is over-enthusiastic about its capabilities.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always found the Linux camp's "Linux has won" mantra to be one of the most telling things about the Linux camp. Whether it has or has not "won" is the least important thing to come out of that observation.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should learn to tune your OS for your needs instead of using whatever settings Shuttleworth thinks you should use. Huh?

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it that you never used AIX then...

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Bing Tsher E]

I run NetBSD on an IPX.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meego uses Btrfs. http://meego.com/downloads/releases/1.0/meego-v1.0-netbooks

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[mrdogi]

Zones, ZFS, and DTrace don't have equivalents in Linux with feature parity.

I am the Unix admin at work (mainly Solaris 10, with some REALLY old linux we haven't gotten around to migrating, FC1 and RH 7.2 for those morbidly curious), and I agree, I love those 3 features in Solaris 10. I just wish I had time to really dig in to the dtrace stuff.

One thing I don't recall anyone mentioning as specific to Solaris is services. Basically they are the init scripts with dependencies and self-restarting built in. I've often wondered, does nobody else appreciate/like services? Or, am I showing inexperience and they have equivalents throughout the unix world? When I first heard of them I wondered why unix folks hadn't done something like that years ago.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[ToasterMonkey]

I'm sorry.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[wwwillem]

From the post it is not completely clear, but I guess this sporked OpenSolaris will still include the possibility of zones. Now I know Linux has similar features, but Containers/Zones have been a hit in the Solaris world from day one. And are widely used, including production environments where it does the segmentation / isolation of Oracle databases.

(I'm former Sun guy, been there, done that.)

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[eknagy]

Linux VServer is very similar (one kernel, multiple contexts, shared memory, optionally shared or dedicated filesystems, optionally shared or dedicated network interfaces, minimal overhead). Debian has vserver enabled kernels in the repository - not sure about other distributions, because I don't really care ;)
I am running a dozen of less important and/or discountinued and/or shitty services in these vservers and I just love them.
The funny thing is that you can run KVM and Vserver on the same server (and maybe even Xen ;), putting other OSes and nasty stuff into full virtualization and performance-hungry tasks to Vservers.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[eknagy]

> Solaris Zones is an example of operating system virtualisation. There is no direct equivalent on Linux.
You should check out VServers before you bet your house on that.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[nathanh]

> Solaris Zones is an example of operating system virtualisation. There is no direct equivalent on Linux.
You should check out VServers before you bet your house on that.

Not a direct equivalent. OpenSolaris has a FAQ on this:

http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+zones/faq#HQArecontainerslikeLinuxvServers

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[eknagy]

Let me quota the FAQ you linked in:

Q: Are containers like Linux vServers?
A: The basic model used to implement the Solaris 10 Containers feature set and the Linux vServers project are fairly similar. However, the implementation is different. (More coming soon!) [Updated August 2005]

So, basically, five years ago they said nothing except that the feature set is similar and they said nothing ever since.
Not much answer for a "in what ways it is better" question, I think.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[nathanh]

Not much answer for a "in what ways it is better" question, I think.

The "in what ways it is better" question was answered 5 posts up. Your question was about direct equivalency. The fact that they have different implementations is all the proof you need that they are not direct equivalents.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[eknagy]

The "in what ways it is better" question was answered 5 posts up.

You, Sir, are full of shit.

You weren't even mentioning VServers 5/6 posts up.

You were talking about hardware virtualization and stating that Linux has no operating system virtualization (like VServer).

And you are trying to pull a strawman on me.

You are a nice fit with Oracle, it seems.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[nathanh]

You, Sir, are full of shit.

You weren't even mentioning VServers 5/6 posts up.

You were talking about hardware virtualization and stating that Linux has no operating system virtualization (like VServer).

I said Linux has no direct equivalent to Solaris Zones. That statement is true, your foul mouth non-withstanding.

And you are trying to pull a strawman on me.

You are a nice fit with Oracle, it seems.

You should re-read the definition of strawman. You aren't using the term correctly.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[eknagy]

I said Linux has no direct equivalent to Solaris Zones. That statement is true, your foul mouth non-withstanding.

No, you said:

Solaris Zones is an example of operating system virtualisation. There is no direct equivalent on Linux. There is a single kernel for all the zones. A single set of device drivers. A single process tree. Potentially a single storage system. It's extremely lightweight compared to virtual machines.

All the above is true to Linux VServers - single kernel, single set of device drivers, single process tree*, potentially a single storage system, and it is extremely lightweight compared to virtual machines.

You should re-read the definition of strawman.

I still beleive that you are trying to pull a strawman. You said that there is no kernel-level virtualization for Linux - I pointed out that there is a kernel-level virtualization for Linux with roughly the same advantages/features you listed in the above quote, and now you are trying to imply that I said the VServer and Zones have exactly the same features. That looks like a nice fat strawman.

You should re-read the definition of strawman. You aren't using the term correctly.

And then you are trying to attack my person instead of trying to counter my statements. You are indeed full of shit.

You are right that I have a foul mouth, on the other hand.

* I think it's a single process tree per context, but it can be viewed as one tree with "vpstree".

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[nathanh]

You said that there is no kernel-level virtualization for Linux

No I didn't. You are a crazy person. Go be crazy elsewhere.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[geekbrad]

but none of those are required to do mission critical business computing

Clearly you don't do much mission critical business computing. Cause if you did you'd probably understand the respect Oracle/Sun gets in the trenches. All this stuff (Zones, ZFS, DTrace) are used heavily where I work, which is a pretty damned large "business critical computing" company... and it's not Oracle. ; )

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[rubycodez]

it started in 5.2 with the move to fine-grained smp, but bugs still being weeded out - like the UFS with QUOTA locking order fix that just was put out for 8.1

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[badkarmadayaccount]

OpenVZ is the Linux equivalent.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Since when does Solaris have a BSD ABI module? Just curious. Can't seem to find it in the documentation. Unless you are referring to SunOS compat?

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Is it possible to create a special loader based on fuse.ko, with appropriately licensed headers (Apache?) to get around this? Or would it suffice to create a general mechanism for statically linking user mode fs's with libfuse and fuse.ko? That would make it very simple to get around the issue, with no more than a plain ELF crunching utility.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[ToasterMonkey]

but none of those are required to do mission critical business computing, which is why Solaris and OpenSolaris have lost (too little too late in both cases) and GNU/Linux has won. Go ahead and flog your dead horse, but the Solari are toast.

Secular, proprietary systems built from or borrowing from BSD projects have "won". Linux has "won" in its reality distortion bubble where the inhabitants are convinced if something free isn't available to them they don't need it.

Re:Is it worth the effort?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have, its crap.

Obligatory

[Monkeedude1212]

http://www.xkcd.com/419/

Missing sources?

[Antony T Curtis]

Didn't the OpenSolaris effort have problems because they were always waiting on Sun to compile certain libc binaries for them?

Is this resolved in Illumos or is there still a binary blob issue?

Re:Missing sources?

[gstoddart]

Didn't the OpenSolaris effort have problems because they were always waiting on Sun to compile certain libc binaries for them?

Is this resolved in Illumos or is there still a binary blob issue?

Apparently, it isn't. From TFA ...

The biggest problem is that an important minority of the code distributed with OpenSolaris is closed source, something that has annoyed the OpenSolaris community for five years. Sun didn't allocate resources to fix this and neither has Oracle.

D'Amore says that a significant percentage of the libc C library (libc_i18n to be precise) is closed, as is the NFS lock manager, portions of the kernel's cryptographic framework and functions, and a bunch of important drives.

So, no, the closed stuff still needs to be written and they don't have it.

Re:Missing sources?

[guruevi]

That was slowly getting resolved with the latest development bits of OpenSolaris. However since the Oracle takeover there haven't been any updates (whereas before the schedule was weekly or bi-weekly 'unstable' releases).

Re:Missing sources?

[FranTaylor]

the NFS lock manager

Linux has needed a proper NFS lock manager for many years. If Linux could duplicate its functionality, it would put a LOT of Solaris NFS servers out to pasture.

Re:Missing sources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I misunderstood, in the Webinar held today, D'Amore mentioned they have recreated libc. They are still working on other closed bits, but they expect great progress in the coming weeks.

Re:Missing sources?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not correct. From the presentation of D'Amore:

Work Done So Far:

• Replaced closed bits of libc (including full locale support)
• Replacements for most critical closed source utilities
• Replacements for some drivers
• It boots!
  • Still needs a few closed bits
  • But those will be replaced very soon with open equivalents

Re:Missing sources?

[anilg]

(I'm in the project leadership team of Illumos)

We've opened the closed bits of libc - specifically the i18n portion of it.

What's still closed (and soon to be opened) is some additional drivers (mpt, etc) that are almost prepared to be released. All of the closed bits would be open in a short timeframe (weeks).

What you've quoted Garrett saying is in reference to OpenSolaris's code. That is followed by the announcement that we've opened it.

~Anil

Re:Missing sources?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Ok, I'm really gdamore, but too lazy to login to a /. acct at the moment.)

But the *libc* problem is solved. There are still other less critical pieces of the problem that need to be fixed. But fixing the libc problem is what we demonstrated today.

Re:Missing sources?

[afabbro]

the NFS lock manager

Linux has needed a proper NFS lock manager for many years. If Linux could duplicate its functionality, it would put a LOT of Solaris NFS servers out to pasture.

Who in 2010 is still using a Solaris box as a NFS server? Netapp (and a thousand cheaper NAS clones) of it have put Solaris out of the "NFS server" market.

Re:Missing sources?

[gstoddart]

(I'm in the project leadership team of Illumos)

Well, then obviously I will defer to someone who actually knows about this. I only had TFA to go by. :-P

Cheers

Re:Missing sources?

[Anonymous Coward]

These hobos are aware FreeBSD has a great i18n library under the BSD license which is basically the same stuff MacOS X uses, right?
It amazes me how in the 21st century there can still be australopithecines even pondering shipping without Unicode support.
Grab your flint tools and just damn port it.
The problem that community has is that it is far too fond of proprietary crap to properly maintain a healthy open source ecosystem.

Re:Missing sources?

[ms139us]

Didn't the OpenSolaris effort have problems because they were always waiting on Sun to compile certain libc binaries for them?

Is this resolved in Illumos or is there still a binary blob issue?

Apparently, it isn't. From TFA ...

The biggest problem is that an important minority of the code distributed with OpenSolaris is closed source, something that has annoyed the OpenSolaris community for five years. Sun didn't allocate resources to fix this and neither has Oracle.

D'Amore says that a significant percentage of the libc C library (libc_i18n to be precise) is closed, as is the NFS lock manager, portions of the kernel's cryptographic framework and functions, and a bunch of important drives.

So, no, the closed stuff still needs to be written and they don't have it.

Or, you could just read their slides. On the page titled, "Work Done So Far" you can see "Replaced closed bits of libc (including full locale support)"

Re:Missing sources?

[Anonymous Coward]

*raises hand*

There is absolutely no reason to drop the money on a NetApp (and mind you, for NetApp, that is an expensive product) when you already have a SAN that simply needs a good front end for sharing files. In that regards, Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris is a great operating system. Built in iSCSI initiator + ZFS + NFS sharing out of the box with very little additional configuration. The hardest part is setting up Samba to serve out CIFS.

And, as someone who cruises the ZFS mailing list every day, Solaris is very much alive and well for this particular type of duty.

Re:Missing sources?

[Anonymous Coward]

NetApp sucks. I speak as someone with several years of experience having to shoehorn our server apps onto these slow, expensive, non-transparent and unreliable pieces of equipment. (In fact we've just had a long weekend implementing application-level mirroring between two sites because, yet again, NetApp SnapMirroring just stopped working and our hosting company has no clue how to fix it).

Trouble is, they're a favorite of PHBs who make technical purchasing based on glossy brochures and the philosophy that "Nobody ever got sacked for buying NetApp".

Is There A Sufficient Community/Demand?

[SlashdotOgre]

While I applaud this effort, I have to wonder if enough folks with the requisite skills to do kernel/driver development will be motivated to assist. It was an excellent product with some cool features (ZFS, Zones, Dtrace, Crossbow, etc.), but it was very clear that the vast majority of the development came from paid Sun engineers. The OpenSolaris community was never anywhere near the size of the Linux community, and even with Linux a significant portion comes from corporations (see "The Myth of the Isolated Kernel Hacker" from last year: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/20/1342223). I really do hope OpenSolaris continues (or Oracle changes the license to be GPL compatible), but at this point I wouldn't be basing any new projects on the platform.

Re:Is There A Sufficient Community/Demand?

[betterunixthanunix]

The way I see it, OpenSolaris should have happened five years earlier, when people might have still cared. By the time Sun announced OpenSolaris, it was already an uphill battle to find open source developers who even cared about Solaris.

Re:Is There A Sufficient Community/Demand?

[Klaruz]

That, and they half-ass open sourced it. A whole bunch essential components are still closed source.

Re:Is There A Sufficient Community/Demand?

[anilg]

The most important bit (libc_i18n) is opened. The rest is in the process, and will be pushed into the repo in very short time.

Re:Is There A Sufficient Community/Demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you're right but I'll believe it when I see it. Years ago we were promised an open source Java (OpenJDK) but to this day it still depends on binary plugs. The only open source Java we have is Redhat's IcedTea but it was always meant to be a stop-gap solution until OpenJDK was fully opened. I thought OpenSolaris already open up until now, mostly because I never got around to have a good look at it, but it doesn't surprise me one bit that it depends on binary blobs given Sun's past with OpenJDK. Is it really that surprising that OpenSolaris never managed to build a strong community? I mean, if it were never fully open the I'd imagine many open source developers feel the same way I do - that it's a black box and waste of time.

Be warned - don't make promises you can't keep, because once you loose the trust of the community it's very, very hard to earn it back.

Oh the humanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the Sporks back? It's being a long time...

Re:Oh the humanity!

[cruff]

Sporks have never left, they still lurk among us if you know where to look.

Re:Oh the humanity!

[SnarfQuest]

And they are still useless for most purposes. It makes a lousy spoon, because liquids spill through the tines. It's like eating soup with a fork. It makes a lousy fork, as the tines are too short.

So, they're saying this OS is built by combining the useful parts together to build one that doesn't fit any real purpose.

Re:Oh the humanity!

[Ironhandx]

On the other hand I find they are great for eating chicken noodle soup as I like to leave the majority of the broth for last and eat it with bread.

Theres a niche-use field for almost everything :)

Re:Oh the humanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet they keep so quiet. What happened to all their hopes and dreams? The great plan...

OpenSolaris isn't dead till Oracle says so

[ToasterMonkey]

Development on OpenSolaris has all but stopped

Except it hasn't?

I mean biweekly, binary development builds haven't been released since 134 in March, but development clearly marches on.
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=125446&tstart=0
http://cr.opensolaris.org/
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/RecentChanges
Think for yourselves..

Community (outside Oracle) development may have been frozen, and it might be worthwhile to have a liberal, free spirited fork to try new things, but if Oracle wanted OpenSolaris dead, there's a very fast an efficient way of doing that, and they have not. Don't call something dead unless you're pretty darned sure it aint going to wake up the next morning.

Re:OpenSolaris isn't dead till Oracle says so

[sethstorm]

I'm not sure it's going to be dead as much as they're going to pick the good fruit and let the rest rot on the vine.

They just want to be able to pick the good parts out over time.

Re:OpenSolaris isn't dead till Oracle says so

[anilg]

The referenced OpenSolaris is not the code, but the distribution OpenSolaris (formerly project Indiana).

Re:OpenSolaris isn't dead till Oracle says so

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. A few weeks ago someone finished an ARM port. Last week it got SATA TRIM support. Things happen all the time, they just never release. Personally I would be fine with one release every 18 months, the only thing I'm really concerned about is Oracle's silence and ambivalence.

Half spoon and half fork

[Bouchmil]

I'd rather call it a foon. It sounds cooler.

Re:Half spoon and half fork

[Phibz]

I always thought a foon was more fork than spoon, and a spork more spoon than fork.

Re:Half spoon and half fork

[Anonymous Coward]

Fosporonk!

Re:Half spoon and half fork

[rickb928]

Foon sounds like it is sitting outside a bar in the parking lot with a bloody nose.

Debian GNU/Illumos?

[JSBiff]

So, we have Debian GNU/Hurd, Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/NetBSD, and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. Does this mean we'll have Debian GNU/Illumos next?

Re:Debian GNU/Illumos?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/Illumos would be Nexenta Core Platform.

Illumos is more like a source code repository.

Re:Debian GNU/Illumos?

[anilg]

I'm one of the NCP guys, and currently at Debconf. I'm hoping to engage the community about this. We'll have updates posted to the project on where NCP4 is headed soon.

Re:Debian GNU/Illumos?

[Anonymous Coward]

They tried Debian GNU/OpenBSD as well, but the kernel examined their PRNG and their modifications to OpenSSH and formatted the drive and covered it with random data three times.

Re:Debian GNU/Illumos?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is pretty much what Nexenta is (and has been for years). It uses the [Open]Solaris kernel and a port of Debian userland. Garret D'Amore, the initiator of Illumos, is a decision maker at Nexenta and prior Oracle/Sun employee.

R.I.P. Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a user of Solaris (formerly known as SunOS) for 20 years now. Most of the time, i have worked for a Sun partner. But now i have said my goodbyes to the company that once was Sun. While i still think that Solaris has the best kernel in respect of networking and multicore usage, i just cannot afford to let my attachment cloud business decisions. I should have cut my ties the moment Oracle anounced the takeover.

While it is well known that being a partner and being treated like a partner are quite different things, Oracle has taken this to new unexpected heights. That someone intentionally breaks the business model of partners (while not profiting oneself from that decision) is still something that puzzles me. I know what they intend, but they are really, really busy making enemies. If it were just me, but i have dozens of once loyal customers profanely swearing now, if the name Oracle/Sun is mentioned. I have seen IT managers, who controll several dozen million $ IT budget, vowing to never purchase a system from them again.

Solaris is dead, no fork or spork will change that. Even if they manage the code side, the well upon they sit is well poisoned. May Solaris rest in peace.

CU, Martin

P.S. Hate to post anonymously, but i don't dare other.

P.P.S. ... and it hurts like hell to write it.

Re:R.I.P. Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Solaris is dead, no fork or spork will change that. Even if they manage the code side, the well upon they sit is well poisoned. May Solaris rest in peace.

Same opinion here. 15 years as a Solaris admin. Solaris is an admirable OS, but Oracle has already started destroying it with their licensing. I've been a Linux admin for 15 years too and I'd rather have fewer features if it means simpler licensing. It's going to hurt to lose ZFS and Zones in particular. But what really scares me is the half assed vendor support for Linux. If I get a Dell or HP or IBM system, they might let me install Linux, but it's never going to be the same as getting Sun hardware running Sun Solaris.

Posting anon because I still sub-contract to Sun/Oracle.

Re:R.I.P. Solaris

[TrevorDoom]

Use FreeBSD. Jails may not be quite to the functionality of Zones, but it's better than what Linux has got...and ZFS v.15 (and v. 25 IIRC in 9.0 when it goes -CURRENT) is better than no ZFS at all.

Re:R.I.P. Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Use FreeBSD.

No thank you. I'd rather use Linux if I wasn't using Solaris. Too much ideological baggage with FreeBSD.

Re:R.I.P. Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe me, despite some of the postings here, I'm sure there are a lot of Linux admins (and just *nix in general) that are standing with hat-in-hand, covering their heart, head bowed in remembrance... It's like loosing a cousin you meet with for twice a year. You didn't know them as well as you wanted to, but you know damn well it's not going to be the same once they're gone for good...and watching them die slowly is just fucking painful.

Now, a parting message for Oracle:

You have just fucked the pooch royally. Yeah, your large bloated government contracts and fortune-50-contacts will carry the day and you'll continue to milk those teets of all they're worth. But for everyone else "below your level", you just royally fucked yourself in the ass, in full Technicolor.

Enjoy your shell-of-a-zombie OS, after everyone has left...

Re:R.I.P. Solaris

[Bing Tsher E]

Ellison has always been a shithead. From day 1. He comes from a Marketing culture.

Nothing about this deal should be a surprise to anybody.

Re:R.I.P. Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Solaris admin for 11 years and sadly agree with you.

There are some things that Solaris can do that Linux cannot (discussed in this thread but including zones, zfs, dtrace etc.) and watching Oracle alienate their supporters and customers is sad. We have customers who won't buy any Sun kit moving forward because of the increase in support costs and a huge increase in shipping costs.

It's almost as if Oracle's view is so narrowly focused on the high end enterprise that is running their database that they have missed the potentially huge market of users who would love to buy Sun kit and run Solaris if they could afford it.

Also writing anonymously because I'm not speaking for my company.

Re:R.I.P. Solaris

[MysteriousPreacher]

No thank you. I'd rather use Linux if I wasn't using Solaris. Too much ideological baggage with FreeBSD.

Isn't that kind of like a homeopath yelling "quacks" at a phrenology convention?

*sound of crickets chirping*

[Anonymous Coward]

And there was much not-caring. Seriously. Does ANYONE really care about OpenSolaris anymore outside Nexenta.com? (the data storage folks, not the distro)
ZFS or not it's just got no ground swell at all.

Re:*sound of crickets chirping*

[kthreadd]

Joyent care very deeply about it.

For ZFS alone it's worth it

[SIGBUS]

When I started trying out OpenSolaris early this year, ZFS actually saved me from losing files to a hard drive that was silently corrupting data. Needless to say, my file server now runs OpenSolaris, even though the rest of my network is a mix of Linux and Windows.

Yes, FreeBSD has ZFS now, but it lags behind the OpenSolaris version - and I don't have the time for the compile-the-world approach for updates that the FreeBSD world prefers.

Re:For ZFS alone it's worth it

[beardz]

Except that not all of the FreeBSD world prefers a compile-the-world approach, which is why there's a freebsd-update utility now in base for binary updates of the base OS.

Re:For ZFS alone it's worth it

[greg1104]

FreeBSD 8.1 is now only a year behind OpenSolaris in terms of its ZFS support; it's compatible with pools created with OpenSolaris 2009.06. If you assume that freely available innovation from Oracle's side is going to stagnate, it shouldn't take long until they've caught up with the latest of the open-source ZFS releases. At that point it will be FreeBSD vs. paid Oracle Solaris as the presumed only way to get advancements. Since I don't actually care about the non-free crap that Oracle peddles, I expect a near future point where the FreeBSD version could be the only interesting ZFS release to me.

Aw man. :(

[CeruleanDragon]

When I read the title and started reading the article for a minute I thought someone had taken a spork and built an OpenSolaris system into it. Now I'm sad and disappointed. :(

What if IBM bought Sun instead of Oracle?

[yuhong]

OT, but I wonder what would have happened if IBM bought Sun instead of Oracle.

correction: without much regard

[sethstorm]

N/T

Spork = bork bork bork?

[theNAM666]

That's the million-dollar question tonight, here in Solaris-land tonight, ladies and gentlemen.

Coming up next-- Yet-Another-Patent-disputed, filed by... tune in at 10 O'Clock to find out who!

Unreasonable licensing in the way?

[sethstorm]

In spite of the licensing issues, has anyone tried to just port ZFS code directly to Linux?

Re:Unreasonable licensing in the way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Upcoming btrfs (aka butterfs) I think has similar snapshot features

Re:Unreasonable licensing in the way?

[Wesley Felter]

Here you go: http://wiki.github.com/behlendorf/zfs/

Re:Unreasonable licensing in the way?

[Rich0]

As the other poster hinted at, btrfs is considered the future zfs-like filesystem for linux. In many ways it is superior to zfs, except for the fact that it isn't really production-ready yet. Its potential feature list is very nice.

ZFS is clearly a superior solution RIGHT NOW. In a year, I'm not so sure.

Re:Unreasonable licensing in the way?

[RocketRabbit]

BTRFS is between alpha and beta. ZFS has been production quality for years.

BTRFS on HURD may not be ready now, but ia year it might be. Right?

Hopefully Debian will do an official port now

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.debian.org/ports/

That may now be possible...

[KonoWatakushi]

If there is a true fork/spork of the OpenSolaris, it may actually provide a better opportunity for community growth. Under Sun's management, the community never had the chance to thrive, since the vast part of control and development remained internal to Sun. If the community now has the opportunity to participate on equal footing, as with *BSD/Linux/etc., the project should have no trouble attracting people and companies.

That, and someone really needs to revamp the build process to make development more fun and less painful. Compared to FreeBSD for example, it is a nightmare...

You don't say...

[zogger]

...so I guess all these uni scientists who create for-profit spinoff companies and patent the living crap out of everything, including patenting life itself, which is rather bogus..that they do all this from altruism, and just want to give everything away for the good of Gaia and stuff and work for a pittance, simply refuse most of their stipends and salaries, etc., and just creative commons license everything for free or..err.how does that work again, which is it? And they publish on those free..er..journal paywall sites that want a month's pay for people in the developing world to read an article...That's certainly altruistic....not...

Too broad, man. Scientists are humans, that's it, with the same wild and varied mix of greed to altruism everyone else has. There just *ain't* too many pure Gandhis** on this planet, never has been, and it will be a really long time until there is.

**well, OK, I suppose some wisenheimer will now link me to the white pages of india phone book to prove me wrong. %^)

Re:You don't say...

[Runaway1956]

"There just *ain't* too many pure Gandhis** on this planet,"

Just a thought here. Maybe you don't understand Ghandi as well as you think you do?

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
Ghandi WANTED arms for India, but because arms were denied, he used alternative forms of resistance.

You should read Ghandi's biography. One possible starting point, http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/gandhi.html

Gandhi, for the major part of his life, worshipped British imperialism and too often proudly proclaimed himself a lover of the Empire. He was Kipling's Gunga Din in flesh and blood.

To understand Gandhi's politics in South Africa, it is essential to note the three fundamental trends which all along persisted underneath all his activities. They were: (1) his loyalty to the British Empire, (2) his apathy with regard to the Indian "lower castes", India's indigenous population, and (3) his virulent anti-African racism.

Re:You don't say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Gandhi gets portrayed as a shaved-headed loincloth-wearing skinny caricature most of the time. He donned the ascetic lifestyle as a show of solidarity, but before and after that stint, he was a thoroughly modern man who wore suits

The article you linked to, however, is absolute garbage, a falsehood-ridden hit job from a political enemy with a clear agenda. The very large Gandhi family as a whole has a checkered political history, but alleging Mohandas to be a Nazi as the author does is ridiculous beyond words.

Re:You don't say...

[Sam the Nemesis]

From net:

Velu Annamalai, the source of this spin on Gandhi is an intellectual heir to Ambedkar and the liberation of Dalits movement. Velu Annamalai was Indian/Tamil but moved to New Orleans. I think their is some truth to what Annamalai said about Gandhi but it is also an exaggeration and takes Gandhi's life out of context. Gandhi was working within the South African dynamic. Gandhi in 1940 was not the same person that Gandhi in 1904 was.

Personally, I have read biographies of Gandhi** by multiple authors and I have read history of India also by multiple authors, and in my opinion, the article is a propaganda for Dalits against Gandhi.

** Gandhi is the correct spelling. Ghandi is plain wrong.

Dumb comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/cp has more options and is more portable than FreeBSDs cp (for obvious reasons).

Note to moron who cannot read:

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't complaining about Linux.

So then, like Linux LXC?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lxc.sourceforge.net/