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While I would also recommend Linux/Freebsd for a desktop,
your terribly lacks accuracy. Please don't post reviews, until you verify facts. You're confusing the readers and damaging repuation of a good product.

Also, don't confuse "cutting edge" Gnome 2.10 distros, which end up using experimental libraries and switch compilers twice a month with rock solid systems, that are designed for long life cycles, not every 6 month releases. Look for patches for Ubuntu Hoary (my favorite Linux ) in 3 years
and you'll know what I mean. There probably won't even be a Ubuntu by then.

Sol 10 makes a very powerful workstation/server. This is the first commerical Unix to officiall support ipf.
The storage management utilities rock. Ever tried mirroring a set of exisiting partitions in Linux / BSD ? Without enough experience, you'll end up without date.
Try in in Solaris. It's as good as Veritas, but free !


gcc ships with Solaris 10 ( along with hundreds of other gnu apps), look under /usr/sfw/

Please be more careful about what you write.

Solaris is NOT a toy.

Sun is in no way interested in having everyone install Solaris as a replacement for a desktop Operating System such as Windows XP or OSX.

You have got to me kidding me.

After you finally got Solaris 10 installed (we're talking ages here), try to configure IP/Gateway/DNS/Subnet-mask. You'll have to search the web endlessly until you find references to the correct configuration files and even then it will be a nightmare to get the right instructions. It took me hours, until I finally gave up and decided to spend my time on better things. Now, if I (an IT professional) can't figure out how to do it in reasonable time, will "the people" manage to?

I didn't have any such problems with Windows, OS X, Linux, BeOS, OS/2 and QNX. Setting the network connectivity in those OSes was a breeze. In Solaris it's a nightmare.

Solaris 10 sure is *not* "for the people". Just move on...

Wow. That eliminates it for me, at least until I get more RAM for my play-around box. It only has 64MB now, which is fine for Win2k, Mandrake 8.2, and DSL 1.1.

I installed Solaris on my home machine too but couldn't figure out why I should keep it. Fedora did everything so much better. The applications were much more up to date, it ran faster, it was easier to use, it detected my hardware, it had a lot more software available. It basically did everything better. Then I got rid of it and reverted back to Fedora. I figured it will be best to focus on one thing and know it really well. I personally don't know whether or not RedHat will survive, but I know RedHat is Linux and Linux has already made it. I know Linux will be around 15 years from now but I am not certain whether Solaris will.

GNOME looks absolutely fantastic in Solaris 10. It sure beats Fisher Price XP and even Aqua-tired OS X. Is this lovely theme/skin availabe for download anywhere?

"Matthias Breiter has been using several computersystems for 16 years now and he has a lot of experience with Windows and MacOS..."

Based on the depth and accuracy of this review, I would suggest the reviewer sticks with Windows or MacOS. That would appear to be his forte and would probably suit his desktop needs more appropriately.

Which means Linux is technically not UNIX.
I don't believe the BSD folks are allowed to call theirs UNIX either.

So technically Sun probably can claim this although it really only means something to lawyers.

Under this context Solaris is definitely far more "for the people" than True64, AIX or SCO.

since sun is delayed with the open sourcing my guess is that no one is spending time drawing new backgrounds for the desktop and so on. they have more important things going on at the moment.

the desktop integration will probably be more prioritised after the release of open solaris.


right now a reviewer should probably focus on more technical aspects of solaris.

Was this article serious or is the article just flamebait in article form?

(back in 1996-1998)
"After you finally got Linux installed (we're talking ages here), try to configure IP/Gateway/DNS/Subnet-mask. You'll have to search the web endlessly until you find references to the correct configuration files and even then it will be a nightmare to get the right instructions. It took me hours, until I finally gave up and decided to spend my time on better things. Now, if I (an IT professional) can't figure out how to do it in reasonable time, will "the people" manage to?

I didn't have any such problems with 3.51 or NT 4.0, OS/2 and Solaris. Setting the network connectivity in those OSes was a breeze. In Linux it's a nightmare.

Linux sure is *not* "for the people". Just move on..."

'nough said.

"In the end, Solaris is an oldschool UNIX for UNIX Geeks like scientists and students."

I'm a scientist who has used SunOS and Solaris for over 15 years. It's great for scientists who want to spend half their time being sysadmins too.

I develop my own computational models. Solaris doesn't come with any scientific packages, unlike Linux or freeBSD. Solaris doesn't even come with a compiler.

gcc is OK if you code in C/C++. But most scientific packages are still in Fortran, and g77 and g95 just don't cut it. So you have to pay for a Solaris Fortran compiler. This is big bucks compared to what's available for Linux and Windows.

All in all, lack of software is a killer for Solaris. That's why I moved my development work to Linux and Windows.

I smell smoke... this guy is definitely looking to push some buttons. Why doesn't he at least check his spelling and grammer before submitting a review?

In addition, what did he expect from Solaris 10? It's a _workstation_ OS not a _desktop_ OS. Go back to your Mac if you're looking for bells and whistles. Jeez...

- j

Are you if Solaris is only as usable as 1996 Linux, if so, why should "the people" bother with it?

We have friendly desktop OSes nowadays, so there's really no need for common desktop users to waste time mining the web looking for arcane instructions on how to do basic stuff like that. With modern OSes, it takes a few seconds to configure these things, and no instructions are actually needed - it's all totally discoverable out of the box.

Above comment should start with "Are you implying that Solaris is only as usable as 1996 Linux?"

Now, if I (an IT professional) can't figure out how to do it in reasonable time, will "the people" manage to?

I know its a troll but i can't help it. Don't blame Solaris for your ignornace of Unix. dns(/etc/resolv.conf), Default gateway(/etc/defaultrouter), netmask etc.. man ifconfig. These are basic Unix skills. As other posters posted Solaris is not for the mainstream computer user. However for those that use Linux especially for server duties they will find that Solaris is a much better platform if implemented properly.

The real question is why you should use x86 instead of a modern processor (SPARC, PowerPC...)

The real answer is because you can get similar and sometimes better performance at a fraction of the price. Backwards compatibility with all that x86 software is a big plus, too.

Exactly, this is nothing more than at best a retread of existing whining about the speed of the installation to the "I don't know why they include CDE" nonsense and at worst another "Linux user discovers that Solaris is for people with a clue".

He doesn't know what the "ls" is and he is writing about Solaris.

The real answer is because you can get similar and sometimes better performance at a fraction of the price. Backwards compatibility with all that x86 software is a big plus, too.

Backward compatibility with what???????? What are you talking about???? To your acknowledgement Solaris had never broken binary compatibility.... Who is backward compatible in the x86 world.

well...i would rather consider pcbsd as a UNIX for the people than solaris...

Solaris, in the right hands, is one of the most powerful
and secure operating systems around. With the advent of
Solaris 10, also the most sophisticated. I'm not the
right hands. I would be lost, just as the reviewer was.

I run linux. Linux is OK, as a UNIX-like operating system
it has SOME of the benefits of a "true" UNIX system. It's
"good enough" and has all of the "fun" stuff for a home
user.

I don't think that Solaris is really the "right" thing for
me, but it could be for some! So, again, it's about choice,
and technology. What do you want? It's out there. You
want a slick system, use linux. You want a cool system,
go BSD. You want technology and security, you go solaris.

At least it isn't Windows!

I, too, installed Solaris 10 a while back, about a month ago. To give you some background, at various points I have been a professional Unix system administrator for Linux, Solaris, Digital Unix, and Windows servers.

That said, I absolutely loathe *having* to use the command line to do things. If you are not familiar with a system, it's much easier to discover how to do things using a GUI. Then, sure, give me a command line to script or do very advanced things, but don't force me to do it!

Solaris 10 has absolutely no GUI integration whatsoever. It's a GUI shell with no functionality. It barely allows you to launch programs, of which there are hardly any.

Leave reviews of more serious stuff like Solaris to more qualified people. It actaully kind of revolts me that garbage like this is being posted on this side, wake the hell up Eugenia!!!

I agree.

Who is backward compatible in the x86 world.

FreeBSD has been really good about backwards compat. I haven't tried with 5.x, but 4.x could run binaries from the 2.x series (or earlier). Windows is pretty good about it too, to be honest...

BTW:
http://sunfreeware.com/

You're kidding, right?

I am afraid i agree with the writer... the commercials on the sun homepage are way too hype for the product, which is an advanved server platform.
I think The writer doesnt complain about Solaris as an OS but more about the commercials. and about the "the people" thing
I also installed solaris and had a bitch of a time setting the net, not anything i am used to from BSD/Linux

You sir, must be a bonified ignoramus...
you don't understand what's behind the hood...
but you don't hesitate to make some really far fetched and ignorant references...
more serious stuff like Solaris to more qualified people...
wake the hell up Eugenia!!!

Hello pot, this is kettle, are you black? You lambaste the man for writing a "bad review" yet you make all sorts of accusatory statements without anything to back them up.

He's an ignoramus? Says you!
He doesn't understand? Says you!
He's making far fetched references? Says you!
Who the hell are you??? From your nickname, I would assume a troll. Your post seems to support the troll theory.

I wouldn't go that far. He isn't saying that Solaris 10 is a bad OS. He is just saying it is not as advertised, and not for the people. It is not an OS that you can show to a Windows System Administrator and Really Wow with. Sure Solaris has a lot of cool stuff that will take Windows, MacOS and Linux years to catch up to. But unfortunatly in usability Windows, MacOS, and even Linux is ahead of Solaris.

It seems the people at Sun are the tradional Unix people and they shrug off advancements espectially made in Windows and MacOS, as just toy features not worthy for Sun. At Sun they dont really comprehend how many people really use .DOC format they figure people are still porting to PostScript.

Sun has a large Blind Eye for their technical problems. And dont seem to do enough to make themselfs uptosnuff. I use to be a big Solaris Fan. But Sience Solaris 9. It just seems to get more and more behind the times for Small to Mid size buisness use. And all the functionality is being put towards the Large over 1k systems.

"Software for Solaris is not widely spread. Of course there are hundreds of terminal applications and of course there are some basic CDE Utilities. And there are those well known applications which are delivered within the JAVADesktop 2. But beyond that Solaris is a lonely system. Of course, if you have a car company and you need an "out-of-the-box" network with mainframe servers, storage farms, clusters, CAD/CAM Workstations and office terminals, SUN+SPARC+Solaris is maybe the right choice. There are some professional and a lot of ultraprofessional applications available. Solaris simply lacks of useful Software for the (home) user. In fact, you get a lot more useful stuff for Linux or even for FreeBSD. "

-----------------------------------------------------------

There are 2 primary sites for software for Solaris:
http://www.sunfreeware.com/
http://www.blastwave.org/
There is additional software but it isn't in a central location. Typically you have to go to various websites to download software.

As for performance, solaris is configured for stability out of the box. I am not 100 percent sure about solaris 10, however, some things to take a look at are (changing):

1) Threading model 1:1 to m:n
2) Write caching on disks
3) Enabling a form of soft updates or journaling of the file system.

This should tremendoulsy increase performance.

Excuse me but I'd like to go as far as saying solaris is anything but innovative at this stage of the game. How anyone but a sun employee can say it's more innovative than linux is beyong me. From someone who does kernel level work in linux in a market traditionally dominated by realtime systems as well as using solaris as a compile machine for some of our older "legacy" software, I can say this is anything but true. You should see all the academic projects floating around just related to lowering latencies in linux. It may not all be the most stable stuff but ideas are floating around. Hell we even have people using genetic algorithms to find the perfect tuning parameters for scheduling. You can't even look at the code for solaris right now and maybe Sun will file for bankrupcy before you ever can. Solaris is too little too late.

There seem to be various claims that Solaris possesses "under the hood" qualities that will take years for other OSes to catch up to. Can you provide a little more detail please? Why should I choose Solaris over Linux or BSD for my server? The only pro-Solaris comment that even hinted at any substance said this:

"Sol 10 makes a very powerful workstation/server. This is the first commerical Unix to officiall support ipf. The storage management utilities rock. Ever tried mirroring a set of exisiting partitions in Linux / BSD ? Without enough experience, you'll end up without date. Try in in Solaris. It's as good as Veritas, but free!"

What is ipf? And can you explain the problem that arose when you tried to "mirror partitions" in Linux (including what program you used?) and how things worked differently in Solaris?

Even if Solaris isn't for everyone, someone should provide *one* example of a project for which Solaris is clearly the right choice, and explain why.

OSX is "Unix for the people".

---------------------------------------------------------------

Some points to consider:

1) Unix is a trademark, controlled by the OpenGroup.org
2) Apple hasn't met their standards for Unix certification. Only certified companies can display the Unix trademark. For quite some time there has been a discussion between Apple and the Opengroup about trademark infringment.

The author doesn't critize that Solaris is a powerful OS. He crities the Hype Sun hs been pushing out the door trying to make people believe that they can replace their Windows and OS X boxes with Solaris.

Let's look at the Features Sun is hyping up.

Dtrace?-- Great for programmers absolutely useless for anyone else. Linux people are working on projects just like it to help themselves develop code better. Good Idea not for most users.

ZFS -- When(?) it ships will be useful, if you have an x86 box with more than a terabyte of storage. A standard x86 box that linux gets installed on though would need a third IDE controller for a cd drive though. 4-250 mb disks aren't that common yet.

Fast ip stack -- Okay this might get tested out as a server big plus.

Java Desktop -- Gnome that's been renamed just to suit Sun's marketing dept.

As the Author said. Corporate workstation. Not General Desktop.

Let's be honest.

The reviewer clearly has no idea what he's doing with Solaris. Solaris is meant for SERIOUS servers, not the 64MB RAM Pentium Pro 133 tripe in your basement. SPARC boxes last seemingly forever and run core systems for places like, oh, the US FRICKIN' NAVY! The very idea that Solaris should be run via a Gnome GUI is kinda funny to me. It's hard core UNIX and arguably the best in its field, along with AIX and HP UX.

However, Sun does get a little blame too. See, they are kind of marketing Solaris and Java Desktop like it's a viable desktop, and it's really not. It's ugly as piss, for one, but also, it's not easy to learn. There's no clear reason to choose it when the standard user isn't going to realize the benefits and is going to have to fight to find binaries. Futhermore, it comes ready to be a server, whereas Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandrake are much better suited out of the box for a desktop replacement. If Sun were targetting the right audience, they wouldn't be the subject of a massacre like this.

My two cents, natch.

this review was hilariousy absurd. Who said Solaris aimed to replace windows xp or osx ? this is a server/workstation OS, meant to be used for very specific tasks and to be managed by people with knowledge of unix. I guess the sun people who read this site must be laughing hard.

ipf (aka IP Filter) is a network packet filter. It is available under FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, and HP-UX, and inspired OpenBSD's PF, which sports very similiar syntax. It is a very, very good packet filter (firewall if you must) with a lot of features, some that are unavailable elsewhere. NetBSD ships with ipf by default, as does FreeBSD. You can try it out there, and find documentation here ( http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~avalon/ip-filter.html ).

That said, I'm installing FreeBSD 5.4 on my workstation since wi(4) supports my wireless card properly, and Linux crashes repeatedly. Solaris isn't an option yet.

The reviewer may not have known what to do with Solaris but then who else does?

I ran Solaris9 for a while back when the free download cost £20 - it was a great retro-computing experience. Almost the only useful software was badly ported from Linux. (And I mean significant things like X windows for my graphics card.)
I was hoping to step back in time again with version 10 which actually didnt cost money to download this time.
But my hardware had moved on and Solaris installer has not.
So I found I could type nothing at the installer prompt as Solaris couldnt even see my USB keyboard.
So I have four new shiny coasters with a famous billion dollar os on them.

I dont doubt it might be worth the effort and is probably the most secure OS etc, but Linux is just too simple to install and Linux just works.

So who can justify the pain these days of using the real thing.

This is my first os news post so if I don't flame well enough forgive me. :-)

When you make a sandwich in your kitchen you use a knife, not a commercial meat slicer from a butcher shop. In the same way, trying to use Solaris for a desktop OS is pointless. It will not meet expectations because it is designed for something completely different.

For the poster who asked what are the "under the hood" things Solaris can do that linux and windows can't - here are a couple simple examples.

First, Zones. A developer calls and says "I need my own server with the root password for critical development work. We have no budget for a new machine. And I need it in an hour." An impossible task, right? Not if you're running Solaris 10. You go to your development server, create a new zone running its own copy of the OS, and give the developer the root password. Done in 5 minutes.

The developer now sees his own hostname, filesystems, IP address - everything. From what he can tell it is just like you built a box for him. But it is running on your development server along with however many other users you gave zones on it. And best of all, nothing he does in his zone can affect any other zone or the box itself making this solution 100% safe. There are products like VMware and Windows Virtual Server which can do some subset of what Solaris Zones can do, but they cost money and require installing extra software. Zones are an inherent feature of Solaris 10.

Second, Domains. You spend a few hundred grand on a production server with 32 processors, 256 gig of ram, and 16 network and HBA cards. You assign 24 of the processors to the database server domain, 4 to the web server domain, and 4 to the app server domain. You split up the memory and I/O cards proportionately. Each domain is 100% independent and running its own OS. You can even have different versions of solaris running in each domain if you wanted to (maybe your database wants to be on Solaris 9 but your app server wants to be on Solaris 10). It is exactly like you purchased 3 servers to implement your 3-tier architecture, but you get it all in one box saving you tons on power, cooling, datacenter space, and administrative overhead.

One day a CPU in your database domain fails. But due to the availability features in Solaris there is no crash. The box alerts you of the failure, you call Sun, and they replace the dead CPU ON THE FLY - no downtime, not even a reboot. For the time your box was down a CPU your performance stats decreased a few percent due to the extra load on the running processors. Otherwise nobody but the admin who called in the service order ever noticed.

The next week you have a major release for a new product and expect very heavy web traffic. You decide to move 4 CPUs, some memory, and one of the I/O cards from the database domain to the web domain. Again you can do this on the fly with no downtime. After the traffic spike passes you move those resources back to the database domain.

That is the kind of functionality running servers on Solaris can give you. Of course, that is completely useless to a desktop computer user. But if you are running mission critical apps where 100% uptime is a must, no other OS is in the same league as Solaris.

People will use open solaris just the same as linux or bsd. The same software will be ported if it's not already to solaris. Solaris will be just as good as a desktop to those who like it as Linux and BSD please the folks who like them. Quit being babies whining about setting up Solaris. It's not hard. And to think some of you who cry about it call yourself IT professionals. What a joke. Sun provides excellent documentation for mentally challenged IT professionals who can't manage to get the networking up.

I believe a bunch of the Solaris functionality listed is available either in user mode linux and/or the new stuff Novell is working on (is it called Zenworks?)

I think the ones who are bashing the article need to go back and reread it cause you all clearly missed its point. And take some anger management classes while your at it.

I wonder why I read this review. "The installaion takes long and it's no alternative to MacOS or Ubuntu." Thanks, I couldn't have tought about that myself.

Thanks for describing those interesting capabilities of Solaris, in reply to my question! O reviewer, does it perform as advertised? Can you set up two "zones" on your new Solaris box, log in as two different root users, see two different filesystems, run two disjoint sets of processes?

That depends on your hardware and how you set up the zones. For root, yes each zone has its own root user. Some of the filesystems are shared and there are specific limitations as to what kind of filesystems can be mounted. And what kind of processes are you talking about?

Filesystems: My guess was that the two roots see different hierarchies under "/". Is that correct? How do the hierarchies relate?

Processes: My guess was that the two roots see different process sets when they run "ps" (whichever variant shows *all* processes). Is that correct? How do the two process sets relate?

Leave reviews of more serious stuff like Solaris to more qualified people. It actaully kind of revolts me that garbage like this is being posted on this side, wake the hell up Eugenia!!!

Umm.. yeah, I think this is fair to say. I really like Eugenia, and I think she got WAY more bad rap than she deserves - better to say, she does a great job and is often unjustly targeted by one group of people or the other - but said all that, sometimes I do see crap like this on osnews.com, and it makes me sad.

The author of the article did a true disservice to osnews, to himself and to people interested in OS matters. I know nothing about him, but here's hoping that, after some maturing and development, he'll realize that his writeup was not worthy of our attention.

"I believe a bunch of the Solaris functionality listed is available either in user mode linux and/or the new stuff Novell is working on (is it called Zenworks?)"

This is a joke right? It has to be.

Read this, it will explain zones and containers in more than sufficient detail:

http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0505/819-2679.pdf

Maybe the reviewer could:
(1) set up two zones
(2) logged in as root to zone 1, type "touch /foo"
(3) logged in as root to zone 2, type "ls /foo" and report back on whether it exists.

Maybe the reviewer could:
(1) set up two zones
(2) logged in as root to zone 1, type "touch /foo"
(3) logged in as root to zone 2, type "ls /foo" and report back on whether it exists.

If the "reviewer" sets up the two zones properly, "/foo" will only be seen in the zone in which it was created.

But as Robert E pointed out, check out the link he provided concerning containers/zones. It should answer all your functionality questions.

As one of the roots, download and run a UNIX game such as "rogue" and leave it running. As the other root, type "ps". Is the other root's command visible?

How user-friendly was the interface for setting up the zones? How was the documentation?

Even a dumb@ss like "me" wouldn't have any problems connecting Solaris to the net. There are many tutorials on how to do this, it just takes some reading!
I use Solaris as a desktop OS everyday and i enjoy it. Maybe i even will learn something useful from using Solaris, or it just might be that there is something wrong with me :-)

Yes I read it and it is similar to a review of Solaris 10 written by a Linux user who obviously did not know how to use Solaris. This is more of the same.

The complaint about CDE is nonsense, AIX has CDE, so does HP-UX. It has to do with the Department of Defense demanding it for the applications that use Common Operating Environment (COE). Even RedHat had to "cave in" and support COE with OpenMotif before DoD would "bless it". And if you are smart, you support what your customers want.

Mattias talks about the lack of applications, obviously he couldn't figure out how to put /usr/sfw/bin in his PATH statement, where he would have found GCC, gmake, and a host of other applications. He also failed to mention that you could mount Windows shares with no configuration changes, and that the Evolution e-mail client with Exchange support ships. At least in the review I wrote for this site I could!

Instead we hear the bitching about Solaris "retro" interfaces not being as good as Linux. I wonder how much time he actually had Solaris installed. "A good thing I have to report is that I experienced no errors or crashes during the hours I've tested the system."

The article is one step above a troll, if the guy was truly serious he would have actually tried to use it instead of his mindless bitching!

First, thanks to you for actually citing a feature rather than simply saying Solaris R0x0rs allelse sux0rs.

But, the features you cited are supported in the other Unix likes as well.

Zones specifically is very much like User Mode Linux(UML) or Xen that recently started shipping with SuSE 9.3 It is a virtualization technology and it can hardly be described as new. Taking the virtualization concept even further, the likes of Qemu, VMWare and others go so far as to allow running entirely different operating systems! Something that Zones and UML can't do.

I started to read Sun's PDF (where's the HTML, guys), but the first sentence is "Today, businesses often design their systems with extra capacity to handle occasional peak loads to maximize revenue during periods of high demand." Blah blah blah. Revenue blah. I skimmed it and saw a lot about multiple processors though. Does this "zones" feature work even if I only have the one processor that I bought at CompUSA?

If I were the "reviewer" setting up two zones, there would be root0, root1 and root2. root0 could see everything on the system, ie. ls, ps, etc. root1 would only see zone1 info and root2 would only see zone2 info. And to keep zone2/root2 from using up too many system resources running "rogue", root0 could also set system/user limits on the various zones it created.

There is only a cli for administrating zones, but the documentation is very good, IMO. Robert E's link is a good start.

So if I'm root1 and I echo "root1 was here" into /foo, and I'm root2 and I echo "root2 was here" into /foo, what does root0 see in /foo? (With default configs.)

Maybe you need to read the PDF I linked for Jeremy, Zones and UML are night and day apart.

Actually, root0 wouldn't see "/foo". But if he went to /export/zones/zone1/foo, he would see "root1 was here" and in /export/zones/zone2/foo, he would see "root2 was here".

That makes sense. And this will work on my home PC if I download and install Solaris?

(...and properly configure...)

Oh, and yes you can use zones with a single CPU computer. But please check the Solaris 10 HCL.

What if all I reveal is that I bought my computer at CompUSA in the last five years. What do you think is the probability that zones will work on it?

If your x86 computer meets the Solaris 10 minimum requirements and is (or its components are) listed on the Solaris 10 HCL, it should work fine. I have tested Solaris 10 on a 2000-era Sony laptop (which wasn't on the Solaris HCL) but it seemed to work fine for server type operations (no sound or USB support). I usually use Solaris on Sun hardware, so I don't have hardware compatibility issues.

Your mileage my vary, check the HCL to make sure!

Zones are something he really forgot to review. This is a MAJOR addition to Solaris 10. It allows you to create another OS install (in as little as 100 megs), very little over-head, automatic package/patch updates to all zones, resource limit controls by zone, etc (heck you can even assign resource limits within the zone itself, and also set which type of process scheduler to use for that zone).
Another major feature not talked about in this thread is the self-healing. Basically this will find faults, and offline that fault (like a memory module). It is even supposed to be as complex as if a memory module fails, it will offline that module, and if a zone was running in that memory space, it will restart that zone. Of course if the main kernel was running in that memory space, you might expect a kernel panic. But at least the system is trying to find faults (and report them), and offline them if possible.
If I am upset about anything with Solaris 10, it is the fact they advertsied ZFS so much for the main release, yet it will come over a year later. They shouldn't of hyped ZFS so much if they had no plans to release it close to the main release. But can't blame them too much, Microsoft is doing the same thing with their new filesystem (WinFS), and filesystems are something you want tested VERY well before a release.
But overall Solaris 10 is a huge release, much better then the 8 or 9 release. I recently moved 5 linux systems into 1 solaris system running 5 zones, and it works wonderful.

Zones will work. The reason why you want to check the HCL is because of the network adapter (and/or onboard NIC), chiefly. Graphics adapters are not a serious problem, as far as I can tell, any will work, one way or the other.

You can set up zones even without network connectivity, of course, but still, check the HCL. Or, if you don't have time to check that, at least be ready to ask questions on comp.unix.solaris and/or sysadmintalk.com - that way you could learn a lot, too, not only get your machine installed and configged.

Here are a few links (took me 12 seconds to browse docs.sun.com to find them):

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1236.1
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/47.16
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/40.10

docs.sun.com is a fabolous resource, well-organized, comprehensive, clear.

Finally, here is a link to the official browsable HCL:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sol/

Finally, a few more links that may help you in finding out how a certain harware will work with Solaris x86:

http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/eng/index.htm
http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/x86-laptops.html
http://solaris-x86.org/software/drivers/

Cool!

Do the competing technologies (VMWare, UML) not offer the ability to limit how many resources are used by the virtual computers?

On another level, Unix provides facilities whereby the "root" user can limit the resources used by non-root users (disk quotas, etc.). How is the root0-root1 relationship fundamentally different from the root-joeuser relationship? Why have two levels of superpower? E.g. why not take those tools for limiting root1's CPU usage and convert them into tools for limiting joeuser's CPU usage?

gcc is OK if you code in C/C++. But most scientific packages are still in Fortran, and g77 and g95 just don't cut it. So you have to pay for a Solaris Fortran compiler. This is big bucks compared to what's available for Linux and Windows.

I'd like to add that under Linux the only reasonable and free (as in beer) alternative to g95 is the non-commercial version of Intel's Fortran compiler, which unfortunately is buggy as hell. If you're tired of internal compiler errors and segmentation faults resulting from perfectly valid Fortran 90 code, you have to pay for the commercial version anyways...

Many people mention Solaris 10's fast IP stack, it may be faster than previous releases of Solaris, but that does not mean its faster than Linux.

I have seen no real world independent bechmarks to prove this.

When I said this, I mean that Solaris 10 is faster than the Linux ipstack.

Cool!
Most Solaris users think so too.

Do the competing technologies (VMWare, UML) not offer the ability to limit how many resources are used by the virtual computers?
AFAIK not to the granularity that Solaris Zones can (but I am not an expert in this matter). I would use VMWare for multiple types of OS virtualization (Windows and *NIX), UML for multiple Linux instances and Zones for multiple Solaris instances.

On another level, Unix provides facilities whereby the "root" user can limit the resources used by non-root users (disk quotas, etc.). How is the root0-root1 relationship fundamentally different from the root-joeuser relationship? Why have two levels of superpower? E.g. why not take those tools for limiting root1's CPU usage and convert them into tools for limiting joeuser's CPU usage?
Fundamentally it *is* the same and in Solaris (and other OSes) you can limit this type of usage. I think it's just easier to do with Solaris, but that is what I'm most familiar with as well.

Good luck with you project/experiment Jeremy. And "yeah reading"'s links should be most helpful.

This is why I recommended that PDF, it discusses processor sets, projects, the Fair Share Scheduler (FSS) and Containers are all discussed in the document. It is far too much information to reply to a post, get past the business stuff, believe me it is a good read.

Here's an idea, lets not constantly hype Solaris 10. Instead merely improve upon it's framework to make as good a product as possible. After this is complete just let it go into the wild and see what comes of it.

Solaris 10 is sweet, but even the new PC-BSD is more easy to install and configure then Solaris. The other thing I hate about Solaris is that if you turn off RPC then solars has all kinds of wacky problems including losing the ability to work in X.

There may not be many or any versions of Linux that are as good as WIndows or OSX but on the desktop versions like Xandros and Linspire KILL solaris on the desktop, and so does Free BSD and PC BSD for sure. Where is takes up to an hour or more to install and configure Solaris, it only takes 15 minutes to do the same in the other OS's I mentioned.

Another PAIN in solaris I hate is the fact that when you are doing the install and you add your DNS settings, if Solaris can not find it's host name on the DNS server, there is a 50-50 chance it may not write your gateway and dns settings to the config files. It's even worse if you do a sys-unconfig and then re add your settings. WHAT A PAIN!

Matter of fact maybe someone can tell me what the easiest way to change your network settings in Solaris 10? In Linspire and or Xandros I just go to the control panel. In PC or Free BSD I just open a terminal I and type /stand/sysinstall (PC-BSD is working on a control panel) What is the easy way to do this in Solaris?

OS X is for the people and has more software. Or does this run windows programs to? The Launch button reminds me of MS Windows Start button. Can anyone get creative like Apple and make a good funtional OS that doesn't look like a MS copy?

Actually Meoff, Jack is right, this guy doesn't have a clue and he wrote what he calls a "review". This (as I have said before) is another "Linux user who tries Solaris and doesn't like it".

I don't read anywhere that he is making a review. What he is doing is giving his opinion of how he feels Solaris works as a desktop OS. That is different then a review.

He says "Read on to see how an average user (me) have experienced Solaris" Not see my review of Solaris.

Here's an idea, lets not constantly hype Solaris 10. Instead merely improve upon it's framework to make as good a product as possible. After this is complete just let it go into the wild and see what comes of it.

I'm not sure I would categorize this review as "hype", nor most of the posts in this thread. And in the next 30-60 days (I hope), we will see what happens when Solaris is released into the "wild". Stay tuned, film on July 1st.

That is why you do not specify DNS during an install, you specify NONE (unless you have already added the machine to your DNS servers).

And what difference does it make if you are doing a DVD install how long it takes (I prepared in advance by replacing my CD drives with DVD's).

To change network settings man ifconfig, to make them permanent ensure that you update the appropriate files.

And a very uninformed one at that, so what's your point?

If I want to get on the internet right away why would I not enter DNS settings? (Unless I am using DHCP) I can do that with any other desktop and even server OS.

And if I have a client that needs a PC say in 30 minutes then what do I do. Tell them "Oh. sorry we use solaris, you will have to wait an extra hour" LOL! Come on.

I know you have got to be kidding, so I need to read my "Man" files. Haven't done that in Linux since the late 90's. If everyone else makes it easy why do I need to go back to the stone age with Solaris?

My point is that it's opinion, if you don't like it then you make up your own mind.

Besides that it's not uninformed because he is telling you what he saw not fact. And you can't say he doesn't know what he saw. He might not be a solaris guy, but that is just the point, if you NEED to be a Solaris guy to get the most out of Solaris then solaris is a waste on the desktop.

(Which is why they also sell Linux)

Well, if you need all the easy to use GUI help then use Linux or Windows! I have never had any problems getiing Internet access in a few seconds after an installation:

1. Create /etc/resolv.conf

2. Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and in the hosts entry add DNS after files.

3. Open Mozilla and go!

I am wondering about all these comments or experience reports about Solaris at OSNews.
This one tries to compare Linux GUI usability with that from Solaris, well, both are GNOME, maybe the Linux staff did a better job, but this is not really relevant.
Shure, a system could be a better experience if the user knows something about it, I mean, without KnowHow there is no good OS, this is the same for Linux as well.
Saying nothing changed during lots of years in Solaris is the same as saying - I have no clue about this OS.
Fortunately installing any OS is a very simple task in these days, but this is where the journey begins.
Solaris still a standard for the industry, thank goodness.

One last thing: You can believe there lots of enhancements in Solaris 10, most of them very exciting.

Cheers

No, this guy did not even attempt to figure out what Solaris had to offer (read my other posts about Evolution, GCC, etc.). Where I have the problem is people who write articles about things they obviously haven't spent any time with, and this guy spent virtually no time with Solaris. His article is simply terrible, regardless of what anyone says to the contrary.

That is why I use Linux, OSX, BSD and Windows. LOL!

And that is why SUN also sells Linux, cause they know what's best for them.

I mean come on, that is some old 80's crap, still having to create files and edit files when in Linux, Windows and OSX that part is part of the install process.

I don't even need a GUI in Linux to do that. I can have X turned off and still configure those settings in most versions of Linux without having to edit files. LOL

Ok so his Article is bad, so write one that is better so we can all be better informed. Then we can see where he is wrong and lear what is right. (Instead of ragging on the guy)

Guys. Reread the article.

Solaris is a top notch UNIX OS. He is not critisizing the OS. He is critisizing Sun's claims that this OS could be used as a desktop replacement. It's funny because in an attempt to critisize him you're actually agreeing with him when you repeatedly state that the OS is not ment to be a desktop OS but a workstation/server OS. THAT'S HIS POINT.

So, I'll say it again. Reread the article, and don't get so defensive.

LOL! I am incompentent. Strang that SUN sells Linux, I don't see Microsoft, Any Linux company or Apple selling or promoting Solaris!

I don't even see other venders promoting Solaris besides sun at this point!

On top of that if it's so professional then why do they give it away now cause it wasn't selling?? Hummmmm.

I will stick to my dumbed down GUI's if you tell Solaris to give Gnome back to the Linux community and go back to CDE. Oh yea CDE sucks so now solaris has to ship with the dumbed down GUI. LOL!

Give me a break.

Solaris is really bad for a desktop machine.

I would use Linux or OS X.

So, in an attempt to steer this in the right direction.

Is Sun taunting Solaris 10 as a viable alternative to desktop Windows, Mac, or Linux?

My thought. I love Solaris, but I could care less about what GUI it's running. CDE was fine, you know why? Cause it did the job, it allowed me to have multiple terminals and run a web browser when I needed it. JDS for Solaris ... pretty much the same thing. I think that, Sun, in an attempt to blend in with the rest of them, thinks that people will care if its running JDS or CDE. I don't think that the ones who use Solaris (me include) do care.

Actually I am a OSX user. I have 3 Macs only one Linux machine, one Windows machine.

Any way there is nothing to argue. The facts are the facts.

Fact is SUN sells Linux
Fact is SUN is using and promoting Gnome which came from Linux
Fact is SUN had to give Solaris away because no one was buying it and RedHat is a more healthy company then SUN.
Fact is that Microsoft looks at Linux as a future problem and as compitition not Solaris

Sorry to say. I mean Sun is trying to open source Solaris? If it's better, then why can't they sell it on that merit? RedHat sells, OSX sells?

Can anyone point to a link that *Sun* specifically names Solaris as a desktop replacement for Windows or Linux or OSX users?

It appears everyone is looking to make Solaris a desktop replacement, except Sun!?!

Just because they make JDS available, doesn't mean Sun is trying to conquer the desktop. My read is they are trying to unify a desktop for their product line, from SunRay users to 15K server administrators. Is that such a bad thing, and what does that have to do with conquering the desktop?

Maybe with the Tarantella deal that may change. I'm sure it will be interesting!

Oh I think Solaris is selling just fine, maybe you and the other Linux zealots who preach "competition is good" only meant it when Linux was "winning". Now that something better is on the horizon, the FUD machine starts.

We are currently trying to set up a web portal using RedHat Enterprise Linux,and needless to say I am not impressed with their long term performance statistic gathering options. No system accounting at all, and I am not sure but we had to install sysstat as a separate rpm. This kind of stuff comes standard with Solaris (from version 8). So if I want to know which process has been using CPU and disk time like no tomorrow it is no problem for me to find out with Solaris. And log this information for long term analysis.

Now try to duplicate this with RedHat Linux and not void the support contract you signed with them (RedHat will not support "custom" kernel configurations. And this is part of the "innovation" of Linux, I'm laughing!

You say you are a OSX user (3 systems), Linux user (1 system) and Windows user (1 system). So what does anything you have to say really mean anything on a Solaris 10 thread???

What, you had problems installing or configing the network address on Solaris too? We (Solaris users) would love to hear of your adventures, but we don't have that much time to waste on uninformed opinions.

Don't forget that sun sells computer hardware unlike Redhat or Microsoft in your example. Because they sell hardware, they like to offer the choice of OS for their hardware. Most of their X86 hardware is certified for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. I think it is good they offer Linux and Windows support as opposed to their systems only offering support for Solaris.
Based on the fact your a OSX user, you should understand this. Apple sells their hardware, and the OS is free with the hardware. Apple and Sun know they make a very good amount of money on the hardware side (they don't sell in Microsoft Windows volumes).
Lastly, they give Solaris away to make money on support. If you look their support is cheaper then Redhat support, and I used used Sun Support in the past, and they are much better then alot of others I have used.
I agree with people on here that Solaris is not a good desktop OS, even with what Sun has done. Solaris real power is as a Unix Server OS. If you want a good desktop OS, consider OSX if you like Unix based OS, or Windows. If you want a X86 server OS, use Solaris if your hardware supports it, otherwise use Linux. But if your hardware supports both Solaris and Linux, Solaris always has my pick (based on the above features added in Solaris 10).

Provides a terminal and X11, what more could you want . You're right, some thing (like vi) have remained back in the stonage. Personally I still don't mind CDE, I find it rather intuitive. I think most people judge quality based on how "cool" it looks; I usually take that as a negative (pretty graphics are distracting).
I see no reason to use Solaris at this point. And JDS is simply a modified Gnome 2.2.

Sun owns Solaris, no one else can sell it.
Duh.

Lemme turn this one around: If OS X isn't a load of crap than why is only Apple selling it? If Windows isn't a registry driven sack of Microgarbage (pronounce that g as a j) than why is Microsoft the only company that sells it? What great logic....

Insulting people while providing no argument yourself is obnoxious. I am curious to hear why Solaris is "miles ahead" of everything else? All I've heard about is fault tolerance for hardware (sounds like they've written some amazing drivers).

Insulting people while providing no argument yourself is obnoxious. I am curious to hear why Solaris is "miles ahead" of everything else? All I've heard about is fault tolerance for hardware (sounds like they've written some amazing drivers).

You apparently have not read the entire thread. And if dynamic reconfiguration is not enough for you (who else provides such capabilities?), what about containers/zones, dtrace, etal. I suppose your OS provides such capabilities today?!

Speaking of "insulting people while providing no argument" applies to someone else as well!

Solaris is a top notch UNIX OS.


GNU/Linux is top notch, so top notch many Solaris administrators install GNU userland tools and Sun is making a GNU/Linux compatibility layer.

GNU/Linux may even be more "top notch" than Solaris, a real UNIX.

Because someone said I was a linux zealot, I was making the point that I use other OS's other then Linux more then I do Linux.

RE: By Robert Escue
Last time I looked Sun was giving away Solaris and trying to make it open source, not selling it. They are selling support Ala Red-Hat. And if you are an enterprise and make a custom kernel I am sure that Red-Hat will give you support if you pay for it just like any other company. (If you pay for it)

Re By Lemmy

Apple does give their OS away on NEW machines but sell millions of copies of OSX stand alone and as an upgrade. If you look at SUN right now they are in the RED big time and have not made a profit in a couple of years. That is why they are giving Solaris away and trying to open source it. Because they are trying to get interest back in it.

RE: By Chris
You didn't read what I said. What I said was that SUN is selling Linux, as in they now have their own version. If Solaris is so good then why don't they keep pushing Solaris on to the desktop instead of Linux???

LOL! You must be kidding?

Last time I looked Solaris was going open source because of Linux comp not the other way around.

Let me go and download this open solaris and check it out. Oops, nothing to download yet.

The license that Sun created will keep countries and orgs from using Solaris anymore then it is now. Besides some people using it because it's free that will be about all the hoopla Open Solaris will get.

It's not a desktop OS, end of story.

> The license that Sun created will keep countries and orgs from using Solaris anymore then it is now. Besides some people using it because it's free that will be about all the hoopla Open Solaris will get.

Nonsense, obviously you either don't use your head when you say this or you're just one of the GPL sheep following the herd and repeating whatever others have said. Fact of the matter is that CDDL gives you more freedom than GPL due to not having a viral clause. You're also free to link to the CDDL licensed libraries without going through the nightmares of GPL. CDDL is actually more conducive to oper-source that GPL for both organizations and especially governments. For instance a third world country can start using CDDL code developed in the USA without subsidizing the USA development effort and keeping the IP in the country if they choose so. The same thing applies to any commercial organization, CDDL makes a lot more commercial sense than GPL, it just gives you more freedom to use the code.

> Let me go and download this open solaris and check it out. Oops, nothing to download yet

OpenSolaris is becoming available in about a month and Sun has already committed to that timeframe. Sun partners already have access to the OpenSolaris source code. Make no mistake, OpenSolaris is coming.

CDDL does not require reciprocity of source code release. You can argue this one both ways. Berkeley-style licenses don't require releasing code modifications, while GPL-style licenses do. The *BSD Unix variants, which utilize Berkeley licenses are losing out to Linux in terms of adoption, so it's hard to argue that CDDL adopting this approach will build community!

Also GPL-incompatible licenses don’t do well when it comes to gaining support from open source developers. For example, the Mozilla Project relicensed due to concerns that the Mozilla Public License (MPL) wasn’t compatible with the GPL and to encourage developers to use and work on the Mozilla codebase.

So we will see. The fact that people can take parts of OpenSolaris and not at all help to make an overall better product I think will been the death nail for Opensolaris. It will be just like the BSD's. Two or 3 versions, none of which will after a while be at all compatable with the original OpenSolaris. Or sun will be doing all the work. Or as also with the BSD's, companies like Microsoft (Which took programs like Telnet, FTP and the IP stack from BSD) might take the good parts they see in OpenSolaris, add it to their applications and never share back. What Sun might help do is make a better OSX and a better Windows, with no benefit for themselves.

There will not be as much code (Like with Linux and other GPL software) to test and put back in the the source tree to help OpenSolaris. But, only time will tell if this is going to go well. At least with GPL I know if I write an application and someone takes some of the code that they have to give me and everyone else back any changes they make. So I can enjoy their hard work just like they are going to enjoy mine!

Solaris is an OS from yesterday

Yes, it feels quite dated in many aspects.

The CDE looks very dated compared to KDE (though you have a choice of Java desktop, but it's not as full-featured as KDE, or you can install Gnome yourself). And there are quite a lot of APIs that don't look like they are being brought up to modern standards. And the documentation looks like circa 1993?

Solaris still has backroom server emphasis. It is, in a sense, still "fighting yesterday's war" -- in the IT deparments. Well, that's it's traditional bread and butter, so can't really blame them for trying to win it back. But Solaris is loosing in modern features, ease of administration and usability (saving administrative time and $), and according to some benchmarks, even loosing in performance to Linux. Linux and Windows are STILL kicking Solaris butt in all those aspects in IT, even against Solaris 10.

Furthermore, it's clearly not a desktop consumer OS by any means. For example, how much multimedia is there? Where is Bluetooth... It's not even close.

However, on the plus side, there are some specialty APIs or applications that still make Solaris the choice for some. Some commercial developers don't like the viral licenses on GNU/Linux platforms, so they stay on Solaris.

> But Solaris is loosing in modern features, ease of administration and usability (saving administrative time and $), and according to some benchmarks, even loosing in performance to Linux. Linux and Windows are STILL kicking Solaris butt in all those aspects in IT, even against Solaris 10.

What the hell do you mean by modern features or you're just talking out of your ass again? Your "feels old" argument is just plain stupid. Solaris has got more modern features that Linux and Windows combined. Lookup Dtrace, ZFS, predictive self-healing, Zones, and host of other pretty groundbreaking technologies. In terms of administration is easier to administer and maintain than either Linux or Windows, I can testify to that as I do it every flipping day. As for manageability repeat after me, Solaris is server OS first and formost and secondarity it is workstation OS, so please don't bitch about pretty GUI utilities -- command line and Sun MC can do a bulk on of administration on the grand scale easier than anything under Windows or Linux. So, if anything it Solaris that will save you $$$ over Linux and most definitely over Windows, especially if you consider that Solaris is cheaper than both Windows and Linux in terms of licensing and support costs. Arguments that Sun/Solaris is expensive is old history, Solaris is the best value game in town now.

> Furthermore, it's clearly not a desktop consumer OS by any means. For example, how much multimedia is there? Where is Bluetooth... It's not even close.


Yeah like how close was Linux to Win2K in 2000 in terms of device support?. How close was linux back in 1995 to Win95 in terms of device support? You can't say the same thing about Solaris because when Open Solaris comes out, it will have more drivers than Linux had in 1991 when it was announced. Given time, Open Solaris will have or exceed Linux in device support.

Time will tell how successful Solaris is - right now all the audio devices are supported by 4Front and all the Graphics + Nvidia are supported by XOrg/XiG/Xsun. All the PCMCIA devices are supported by Lynnsoft. A bunch of USB devices (mostly storage) are supported by Solaris. There's infact BT878 video capture drivers for Solaris somewhere on SF.net

Give it some time. I think Solaris will beat Linux in terms of device support because it has binary/backward/forward compatibility which Linux cannot even manage on a simple change to the Minor version.

I don't know why you guys are so keyed up about linux - obviously you haven't done any kernel programming or developed drivers because it's a fucking train wreck!.

Linus should de-couple drivers from the kernel and only concentrate on the kernel and leave the drivers out of the kernel.....let the distros package drivers.

What's that all about!? The Linux geeks hype Linux, the Solaris geeks hype Solaris. So what.

But _why_ is Linux or Solaris better? Yeah, Zones are cool, but _what_ about it is better compared to, say, Xen? No explanations... Dtrace is better than KProbes (I don't even know what that stuff does exactly, but someone on LKML said they are somewhat similar, not in the way they work, but in what they are used for)? So tell, _why_ is any of the solutions better? ZFS? Cool - what's so great about ZFS compared to Reiser4 (or JFS, XFS)? Reiser4 is the fastest and most secure filesystem, according to Namesys - and ZFS is the greatest invention since sliced bread, according to SUN. So, what's better, and why?

I don't intend to troll, but I think that UNIX will pretty much die, including Solaris (IRIX dies right now, as does AIX - that doesn't mean they cease to exist, but they lose market- and mindshare). Linux is the most popular UNIX-like OS these days, from handhelds to supercomputers and everything inbetween, there's no doubt about it. So tell me, are all the companies supporting Linux just stupid or what? I mean, if the alternatives are that much superior, why are they that tiny??? It's not like back then, when a SunOS, IRIX or DigitalUnix system was extremely expensive - we're talking about common and cheap x86/ amd64 systems these days, and software compatibility is also not really an issue, as ports from Linux to Solaris or vice versa is only a matter of days or weeks, not years...

If the Solaris freaks want to convice anyone what's so great about Solaris, dissing Linux or OSX users wont cut it.

Let's stop hearing about the potentials of Solaris 10 and start seeing them happen, in reality.

> So tell me, are all the companies supporting Linux just stupid or what?


Note that these are the same companies that were supporting Windows and Dos: IBM, HP, Oracle, CA, Novell, Intel, AMD. So back in the 90s Windows/Dos was cheap but not the best solution. In the 2000s, Linux is cheap but not necessarily the best solution.

If Apple makes MacOSX for x86 and allows others to build machines and install MacOSX, they'll dump Linux in a heartbeat.

The corporate backing of Linux is what drove me to FreeBSD and now looking forward to Solaris. Too many agendas will spoil Linux.

Well - the fact is that Sun is trying to 'outsell' Linux, leading Sun staff have been constantly bagging Linux and bagging Redhat. I don't remember seeing Sun themselves directly saying that Solaris 10 makes a great desktop, and in truth it doesn't. It belongs on a server in all honesty, or at least a very minimalist workstation with little or no application requirements.

Several areas where Sun does fall down in:

1. hardware support is poor compared to Windows or Linux on x86

2. Applications - same as point 1, although I feel it does fair better here than in point 1.

3. Horrible and antique installer, very slow, multiple reboots required. On an Athlon XP 3000, 512mb DDR PC4200 ram it took over 90 minutes. I'm sorry, but this is disgraceful for any modern operating system.

4. Does not play well with other operating systems currently installed on your system - in my instance wiped grub completely from the MBR, giving me 5 or so minutes extra hassles fixing it. One shouldn't have to wade thru mountains of documentation to find some obscure way of ensuring that the Solaris installer doesn't screw your existing bootloader. Before the Sun fanboys cry foul with this comment - imagine Linux completely ruining the Windows bootloader - that would be completely unnacceptable. Grub (or Lilo) gracefully handles it.

5. Desktop speed - CDE sluggish. The bastardised Gnome desktop - much faster.

Advantages? Sure.

1. Fast IP stack - doesn't seem any faster than Linux to me though.

2. Zones - not much use to a home workstation, but great in a server environment.

3. Dtrace - same as point 2.

Sun have done a great job of implementing some really cool stuff into Solaris 10, but as a company they leave me cold. Their attitude to OSS, and the GPL leaves me unimpressed. Their constant attacks and ramblings of their CEO etc leave me nonplussed. Their behind the door deals with Microsoft and attempts at manipulation of IP to disadvantage GPL'd software (in order to keep their own pitiful sales market %) is disgraceful. I simply do not, and will not trust such a company as Sun. At least under the current regime.

For the Sun fanboys criticising this article (it wasn't a review if you bother to read it), the guy is totally spot on. Sun has some very dedicated fans, every o/s has them. But, like with Ubuntu zealots, they'll bash anything else that gets in their way. Sometimes rather rudely.

Dave

>> But _why_ is Linux or Solaris better? Yeah, Zones are cool, but _what_ about it is better compared to, say, Xen? No explanations... Dtrace is better than KProbes (I don't even know what that stuff does exactly, but someone on LKML said they are somewhat similar, not in the way they work, but in what they are used for)? So tell, _why_ is any of the solutions better? ZFS? Cool - what's so great about ZFS compared to Reiser4 (or JFS, XFS)? Reiser4 is the fastest and most secure filesystem, according to Namesys - and ZFS is the greatest invention since sliced bread, according to SUN. So, what's better, and why?

It is very simple really. Zones have a definite advantage over Xen for a couple of very important reason. One is manageability, which Xen does not address at all -- you still end up managing a bunch of completely disjoint OS instances not saving you any time with packaging, patching or security. Solaris Zones on the other hand manages all zones in unison making package rollout, patching and maintaing security an absolute breeze even if you've got thousands of zones. That alone can save you some serious megabucks if you have a lot of virtual servers to manage. Secondly, Solaris Zones will always have an advantage in scalability and resource utilization. Xen relies on hypervisor to virtualize the hardware and it is expensive resource-wise. Solaris Zones on the other hand can handle hundreds of virtual servers on a single CPU without breaking a sweat and without taxing the CPU. This also will amount to some serious cost savings. So, as far server virtualization is concerned, Solaris has it in spades.

As for ZFS vs. Reiser, it is not even a contest. There is absolutely nothing special about Reiser, it is just an extent based filesystem implemented as open-source. It still doesn't eleviate the need for a volume manager and you still suffer from the same old storage related head aches. Sun ZFS on the other hand is trully revolutionary, it will remove the need for any volume managers and make managing storage a truly easy affair especially on a large scale. All storage under the control of ZFS becomes one large pool and managing storage becomes as easy as managing memory for instance -- you add additional memory module to the system and you instantly have more memory. Likewise with ZFS you just add more disks to the storage pool and you instantly have more storage -- no partitioning involved or f*cking around volume managers. Add ability to manage potentially infinite storage volumes (128 bit) and exceptional reliability and you have a trully killer storage solution on your hands. ZFS is currently in the category of its own, there are no competitive solutions for competing OS's that can stand up to it. BTW, speaking of reliability and ReiserFS, ReiserFS is not even able to deal with bad blocks in a consistent manner, it is a joke. ReiserFS can be suitable for desktop, but it is a big no-go for managing big storage.

In the 2000s, Linux is cheap but not necessarily the best solution.

But maybe you should realize that Linux has a installation base that goes beyond the simple 1-2 way Mac/Xserve.

If Apple makes MacOSX for x86 and allows others to build machines and install MacOSX, they'll dump Linux in a heartbeat.

1. Apple needs the know-how to make a competitive Server Mac OS X for x86 to begin with.

2. Why would they dump? The Mac OS X GUI is completely irrelevant for the server Dell sells, for example.

3. Maybe Apple should get a decent Oracle-based TPC value on Mac to begin with, before trying this on x86.

What else can you expect from a windows guy?

that thing is just fugly. I dunno why everyone feels the need to follow the start menu-like theme. It's just so unoriginal and non-intuitive.

~Happy mac user

Xen relies on hypervisor to virtualize the hardware and it is expensive resource-wise.

I do not think so. The expense in term of resources going to the hypervisor is really insignificant, as proven by all published values sofar, including third party in peer-reviewed journals.

Solaris Zones on the other hand can handle hundreds of virtual servers on a single CPU without breaking a sweat and without taxing the CPU. This also will amount to some serious cost savings. So, as far server virtualization is concerned, Solaris has it in spades.

It is only an issue of choosing the word, but most people working in the virtualization bussiness would not call Zones "virtualization". You cannot run a different kernel image in Zones to begin with.

or f*cking around volume managers.

Interesting pool of vocabulary...

ZFS is currently in the category of its own, there are no competitive solutions for competing OS's that can stand up to it.

Then obviously you have never seen an AFS or GFS installation.

I ran Solaris9 for a while back when the free download cost £20 - it was a great retro-computing experience. Almost the only useful software was badly ported from Linux. (And I mean significant things like X windows for my graphics card.)

You should be glad that they have now the XFree86 porting kit and now the X.org servers. Back at Solaris 7 x86 (with the plainly ridiculous HCL, and there were no Ebay at that time to get the (already at that time) antique hardware to comply with the HCL), Xsun was just a pain, even with my HCL graphics hardware it crashed ~ every third time, and this issue is marked as "won't fix" by Sun.

> I do not think so. The expense in term of resources going to the hypervisor is really insignificant, as proven by all published values sofar, including third party in peer-reviewed journals.

You don't think so? Hypervisor based style of virtualization will always sap CPU regadless if it is implemented in software of hardware. If you want a hands on example, just check out Power5 micropartitioning, which will chew up almost half of the CPU in hypervisor overhead and resource contention when you have 10 micropartitions on one CPU. Xen will never be able to approach Solaris Zones is either scalability or resource utilization.

> Then obviously you have never seen an AFS or GFS installation.

Err, both AFS and GFS are distributed filesystems and can not even be compared with ZFS, they are just absolutely differnt beasts! I think you need to brush up on the filesystems before you make these kind of comments.

You don't think so?

In contrast to your suggestion, I simply have not experienced any quantitative number that comes close to what you are asserting here:

Hypervisor based style of virtualization will always sap CPU regadless if it is implemented in software of hardware. If you want a hands on example, just check out Power5 micropartitioning,

Xen is not POWER5 Hypervisor.

Err, both AFS and GFS are distributed filesystems and can not even be compared with ZFS

The features you requested are available with AFS/GFS and are used in such a way. What do you want in reality? Names/names of the storage types or what the really deliver? Your words were:

Add ability to manage potentially infinite storage volumes (128 bit) and exceptional reliability and you have a trully killer storage solution on your hands. ZFS is currently in the category of its own, there are no competitive solutions for competing OS's that can stand up to it.

You can get all this with AFS, for example.

You don't think so?

In contrast to your suggestion, I simply have not experienced any quantitative number that comes close to what you are asserting here:

I cannot find those papers so quickly. But from my memories, the typical overhead, e.g. I/O, introduced by Xen is about 5 - 15% depending on configuration, noticably better than entry-level z/Series.

> The features you requested are available with AFS/GFS and are used in such a way. What do you want in reality? Names/names of the storage types or what the really deliver?

Dude, are you just frigging stoned out of your mind or just don't have a clue? AFS is network based filesystem which doesn't manage physical storage and is not even aware of it. For all senses and purposes you can have ZFS volume exported as AFS! As I said ZFS and AFS are absolutely different beasts that address absolutely different requirements. As for GFS, there is absolutely nothing that revolutionary about it, it is my no means an alternative to ZFS.

Good article.
I had exactly the same experience with Solaris 10.
Long, tedious installation with constant, unnecessary prompts so you can't leave otherwise you come back and it's sitting there waiting for you to respond to some idiotic dialog box.
But where it would be helpfull to notify about rebooting or what exactly it's doing, when it seems to have locked up, it does nothing for a long time, keeping the user in the dark.
It's the worst installation routine I've ever seen in my 15 years of computing.
But my install of Solaris ended up even worst than the article authors because on mine got stuck somewhere when using the Gnome desktop and after cold rebooting the stupid Gnome desktop wouldn't work any more. Probably corrupted Gnome "registry", a "great gift" of Gnome developers to the world of OSS, and that was it for me.
If an OS can be broken by cold rebooting it once then how can I trust it.
Even Windows registry doesn't get hosed after cold reboot most of the time.
Solaris 10 is a sad example of dinosaurs still roaming the planet.

But where it would be helpfull to notify about rebooting or what exactly it's doing,

During install you might have noticed the installer asked you wether you want to automagically reboot or not when a particular stage (CDn) has successfully been installed.

Even Windows registry doesn't get hosed after cold reboot most of the time.

Server 2003 x86_64 (latest) is terrible slow and doesn't even give any opportunity to login.At least i have the guts to blame it on a hardware phenomena than on the OS although others might think different.

Sol10 x86_64 runs very stable and is easy to install.As many allready said it's a elite server OS and at last at some point a rock solid workstation OS.I installed it on one of my removable HD's on some workstation to play with it.Although it's now by near not a desktop OS for the masses and probably never will doesn't mean it can't be made to be one.Linux is miles ahead with GUI integration,multimedia,and what not support.SoL10 is a potential heavy weight competitor for *BSD.

Nothing compares to ZFS. All hail ZFS.

Dude, MOST people don't have storage requirements that exceed XFS's capabilities. Who cares if they double that. That's more capacity that I will see in the next 20 years. By then how much do you want to bet GNU won't have a solution..

ZFS is nice, like most of Sun's features, for mainframes and supercomputers or borderline supercomputers since Sun seems to fall just short of the real stuff there. They are a business machine. Redunant, stable, expensive. Designed for large corporations that can afford that crap. But I could never justify the expense for anything I'm working on atm. Not when I can get some PCs and glue a cluster of them together with some cheap cat-6, GigE switches and Perl jam.

SpurtSpurtSpurt

Being prim and proper is nice, but I'd much rather be having sex.

Any large scale SAP implementation in Linux?

> From Jeremy

> Do the competing technologies (VMWare, UML) not
> offer the ability to limit how many resources are
> used by the virtual computers?

Some do but typically not with the same
granularity that you can achive with zones. For
example, on a 1 CPU system (zones run on anything
that Solaris runs on) you can create N zones and
arbitrarily divide that CPU's resources among the
N zones. You can even tell the system that the
processes in a particular zone should only run if
there is absolutely nothing else to work on.

> On another level, Unix provides facilities
> whereby the "root" user can limit the resources
> used by non-root users (disk quotas, etc.). How
> is the root0-root1 relationship fundamentally
> different from the root-joeuser relationship? Why
> have two levels of superpower? E.g. why not take
> those tools for limiting root1's CPU usage and
> convert them into tools for limiting joeuser's
> CPU usage?

The way to think of this is that from what we
call the "global zone" (which is the Solaris or
UNIX-based system you're used to today), you can
create a large number of "non-global zones".
From that global vantage point, you can divide
the CPU between the zones (by default they get an
equal amount).

Then from within each zone, that zone's root user
can further subdivide the CPU share it received
from the global zone. As an example, the global
zone specifies that the "app server" zone should
get 25% of the 1 CPU on the system. From within
that zone, its root user can divide that 25%
along the lines of 15% for the application server
itself and 10% for the database backend.

Look for the USENIX papers linked off of
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/zones for
some shorter papers that describe the
capability.

> How user-friendly was the interface for setting up the
> zones? How was the documentation?

Here's how simple it is to create a zone - in this case,
I want to create a zone and then boot it (obviously
the creation/installation step only needs to be done
once per zone). The zone will have a name of "twilight",
an IP address of 192.9.200.1 with a prefix of 24 bits
(255.255.255.0) What I typed is in bold

# zonecfg -z twilight
twilight: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:twilight> create
zonecfg:twilight> set zonepath=/export/home/twilight
zonecfg:twilight> add net
zonecfg:twilight:net> set address=192.9.200.1/24
zonecfg:twilight:net> set physical=iprb0
zonecfg:twilight:net> end
zonecfg:twilight> commit
zonecfg:twilight> ^D
# zoneadm -z twilight install
(output from install elided)
# zoneadm -z twilight boot

That's it - there are other utilities including the
zlogin(1M) command which can be used to connect to
the zone's console (yes, each zone has a virtualized
/dev/console device)

> At least with GPL I know if I write an
> application and someone takes some of the code
> that they have to give me and everyone else back
> any changes they make. So I can enjoy their hard
> work just like they are going to enjoy mine!

Tyrone, have you actually read the details on the CDDL
license - there is a very readable FAQ at
http://www.opensolaris.org/faq/licensing_faq.html
and it specifies that any source modifications must be
returned to the community under the same terms. There is
also some additional material at
http://www.sun.com/cddl/CDDL_why_summary.html which
explains the motivation for the creation of CDDL.

(a bit off-topic)

the author use the word "JAVADesktop" (exactly in this spelling) consistenly acrros the article, may be there's some misunderstanding.

the actual name should be "Java Desktop System"

http://www.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/

...But I could never justify the expense for anything I'm working on atm. Not when I can get some PCs and glue a cluster of them together with some cheap cat-6, GigE switches and Perl jam.

SpurtSpurtSpurt

Being prim and proper is nice, but I'd much rather be having sex.

That statement alone helps define the difference between most Solaris admins and most other *NIX options (as provided on threads like this). We (Solaris admins and some other enterprise admins...BSD, Linux, Windows, etal. included) *do* believe in "protected computing", and that that your prescribed hedonist attitude towards computing to be alittle sophomoric. Just keep your little "cluster" away from real computing architectures and real world computing solutions and I'm sure we'll all live in a safer world!

> hardware support is poor compared to Windows or Linux
> on x86

This has certainly been an issue in the past but Solaris
10 and upcoming releases have many improvments in this area
including recognizing additional x86 CPU types, a new
ACPI interpreter, integration of GRUN, a larger number of
bundled drivers, etc.

> Horrible and antique installer, very slow, multiple
> reboots required. On an Athlon XP 3000, 512mb DDR PC4200
> ram it took over 90 minutes. I'm sorry, but this is
> disgraceful for any modern operating system.

Again, this is something where we've put a lot of work
in. We're by no means done but with the integration of
GRUB and a new boot architecture (which will appear in
the next Solaris Express release) and by turning on
DMA for the CDROM or DVD, installations are definitely
faster. And there is additional work underway in this
area as well.

> Does not play well with other operating systems
> currently installed on your system...

Again, noted. But as I've said, we're making
improvements (including changing the default partition
ID and using GRUB) so that Solaris can be as good of
a citizen as any of the other OSs you might have on your
hard drive.

> Desktop speed - CDE sluggish. The bastardised Gnome
> desktop - much faster.

No sure what you mean by bastardized - it's true by
default we ship with our JDS theme but that doesn't
prevent one using something else. As for CDE, it's true
we haven't put a lot of work in recent years optimizing
CDE since we rather spend the time on more modern
windowing systems.

Wow, its always a pleasure to see a Sun rep come out. On a side note with respect to your question about:

snip
> Desktop speed - CDE sluggish. The bastardised Gnome
> desktop - much faster.
snip

snip
No sure what you mean by bastardized
snip

I believe that he is trolling, because, it doesn't look like the default version of Gnome by Gnome.org. I guess the same could be said about other operating systems or distros that carry gnome or kde in the default mode from their respective organizations.

Nothing wrong with customizing your product for deleniation in the market. For example look at: Xandros, Ubuntu, Linsphere and who ever else sells a moded version of a desktop environment.

On a side note David. I have seen some great improvments in Solaris over the past several years. I tip my hat to Sun with their hard work. The responsivness from sun with respect to the OS and documentation really shows in products.

Here is a personal experience. I made a recommendation quite some time ago about the HCL. My tip for improvment was to add chipset listings for the South Bridge Controllers. I didn't hear back from Sun in regards to my specific statement. I just kept checking to see if certain hardware made the HCL. I somewhat stopped checking the HCL for several months (2 or 3). I went back just to see what updates were on the site, and low and behold, chipsets for ever piece of hardware was now listed on the site. I think I just about had a stroke!!!

Not sure, if I had anything to do with it. If I did, WOW and even if I didn't, WOW!!!

Keep up the good (hard) work.

It was my intention to write it from a user's perspective. As mentioned in the feature, it is a good system for enterprise usage, but not for the common desktop user. If you have a problem with that, you should contact SUN and ask them to develop something more userfriendly.

SUN offers Solaris for free use and invites everyone to try it. If you do so, you shouldn't be angry if someone who tried it writes a review. Here are some current statements from sun.com advertising Solaris 10:

"A $500-million investment produced the most advanced operating system ever built—now offered FREE to you. Get it today."

"Purely Visionary. Solaris 10. The most advanced operating system on the planet."

(see http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/index.jsp)

Be careful what you wish for, becuase you might get it:

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9865

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5485

Now if you can "enlighten us" please feel free to do so! unlike Matthias, I actually know how to use Solaris. I'm not "ragging on the guy" I'm ragging on the article. And from the quality of your comments after I went to bed it is obvious that you are one of the "Linux fanboys". When you run out of technical arguments, you go right into the FUD about licenses and other mindless crap that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

I have used Linux off and on since 1993, about the same time I started using SunOS (before Solaris). Since that time Solaris hs made major improvements in many areas. Unfortunately, if you are accostomed to using a GUI for everything, well you are not going to find the tools. With Solaris the GUI is for graphical software, try managing machines over a serial connection sometime. In fact many of the Linux fanboys would probably not be using Linux in its 1990's form because of the lack of an "easy to use GUI" and the limited hardware support.

Solaris x86 (a product I have used since Solaris 7) was targeted at PC servers, so of course it is not going to support all of the "latest and greatest" hardware. So the whining about hardware support should be toned down, Sun makes a change in direction and because Solaris x86 does not immediately support their hardware, Solaris sucks!

I prefer Solaris because it gives me the tools I need to get the job done NOW, not when somebody "discovers" process accounting or any number of other features that have been in commercial Unix for years (including AIX and HP-UX) and chooses to include them into Linux. So excuse me if my opinion of Linux is less than "it's the greatest thing since sliced bread", it's not.

Hi,

Firstly, thanks for taking the time to post your opinions.
Although I personally don't agree with a lot of your statements you certainly have provoked some interesting discussion.

In your latest post you quote some statements from Sun as if
to support your points that S10 isn't what Sun claim. The
problem here is you don't actually test any operating system
features at all which may explain some of the vehemence of
certain posts.

The primary purpose of JDS is to introduce a homogenous
application environment across the various systems that
Solaris runs on rather than to 'do what linux does'. It
makes a lot more sense from this perspective and it's not
the only new thing in S10.

This is what is new in S10:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/whats_new.jsp

Please look at the list and maybe try some of these features
before posting that the OS hasn't advanced since the mid 1990's
etc.

Documentation is at:
http://www.docs.sun.com

If you have specific questions then I can try and answer
some of them (I'm a long way from knowing everything though
)

..because solaris in *not* intende for use as a desktop. So, if you try to force it as a desktop os, you will find it disappoining. I installed it on a separate disk on my amd64 3500 and, while performance-wis seems to be acceptable, the GUi is ugly at the best and a s a desktop is light years behind xp or linux (and osx of course)

It was my intention to write it from a user's perspective. As mentioned in the feature, it is a good system for enterprise usage, but not for the common desktop user. If you have a problem with that, you should contact SUN and ask them to develop something more userfriendly.

The question I offered to this thread previously now becomes even more relevant...

Can anyone point to a link that *Sun* specifically names Solaris as a desktop replacement for Windows or Linux or OSX users?

It appears everyone is looking to make Solaris a desktop replacement, except Sun!?!

SUN offers Solaris for free use and invites everyone to try it. If you do so, you shouldn't be angry if someone who tried it writes a review...

So what does that supposed to mean...We only have to endure about another 999,943 lame reviews of Solaris 10? Based on your logic anyone and everyone who has downloaded Solaris should review the product...NOT!

First of all an installation procedure (or irritation) and a 30 minute first look does not equate to a product review. You are the one who never mentioned (or tried for all we know) the advertised enhancements to Solaris 10 in your review.

Second, you state/imply it is only free for private/personal use...wrong (free cost for all, tech support is fee based)!

Third, you state that no compiler is included...wrong!

Forth, you don't even know about or completely breeze by desktop applications like StarOffice (Yes, StarOffice not OpenOffice, only included on *paid for* Linux distros), Evolution and the 175+ other OSS software products installed by default.

Fifth, if you are so compelled by Sun marketing (which I still haven't found to tell you to replace your desktop with Solaris), why did you not review *ANY* marketed advances Sun has been talking about concerning Solaris 10 including: dtrace, zones/containers, enhanced security.

Let's talk fair and balanced reporting here (no plug for FOX network intended:). If you want to review an OS, use the OS. The install procedure is only a beginning (and a one time process for most). If you aren't familiar with Solaris for basic configuration tasks use 'smc' or webmin (one of those default OSS programs) to setup your system. Solaris/UNIX is not *that* different than other *NIXes. Last resort, cli is your friend more times than not in a *NIX environment.

You are correct, Solaris *is not* a good choice for a general desktop environment. Never has, hope it will, but not counting on it for that purpose. With work it will do about 98% of what I need to be done on the desktop. The other 2% is on Windows or Linux. But the server capabilities are some of the best I've seen. Sure, YMMV, but Solaris 10 has some great capabilities that I cannot find in other OSes at this time. This will undoubtably be "leapfrogged" soon, as this industry evolves. But I also believe Sun/Solaris can meet this challenge and provide a technology edge/parity in the long term. They have for the past 20+ years and I see no change in the near future.

First of all, I am amazed that, with 16+ years of computer experience under your belt, you could write such an asinine article. Nowhere does your technical expertise transpire, nor do you mention anything useful or even interesting.

Secondly, Sun never claimed Solaris 10 to be for the masses. Where'd you get that? There is absolutely NO way you can explain your way out of this bullshit you made, by having "Solaris 10 for the masses" the pivotal point of the whole article. This whole writeup is based on the assumption that Solaris 10 had, as one of it's goals, to compete with Windows or OS X on the desktop. You just pulled this assumption straight out of your ass, and now you even try to defend such an absurd starting point? You would have had more honor if you just stayed put and shut up.

Thirdly, the fact that you have the NERVE to call this little editorial a "review" shows how disconnected from reality you are, and your lack of common sense.

As someone before me wrote: "Leave reviews of more serious stuff like Solaris to more qualified people. It actaully kind of revolts me that garbage like this is being posted on this site".

If you were going to actually evaluate Solaris, then maybe you should have actually spent more than what appears to be a few hours with the product. Let's get into specifics:

1. Evaluation of Sun's Hardware Test Suite, of course you have to have Solaris installed. DUH!! How are you supposed to evaluate hardware if you don't install it and attempt to use it with Solaris?

2. I'm not even going to comment about the download.

3. I don't know, the installation for me has always been straightforward.

4. I have already commented about CDE so I won't repeat myself.

5. Obviously you spent precious little time actually using JDS, because if you had, you would have found the following:

a. Evolution e-mail client
b. Configuration tools for Enterprise Desktops (JDS is targeted for the Corporate Desktop)
c. Print Manager, I managed to print both text and PDF files to my networked LaserJet 1200 (not using a JetDirect card) in a few minutes
d. Connected to a Windows share with no configuration

5. Couldn't figure out what sucked up all the disk space? Well haven't you heard of a PATH? Try this (if Solaris 10 is still installed):

PATH=$PATH:/usr/sfw/bin

which gcc
which gmake
which webmin

Within minutes I was compiling software and surfing the net. Solaris, like AIX and HP-UX is not about "making it easy" for someone to use it. It is expected that you already know how! And if nothing else, there is docs.sun.com, comp.unix.solaris, alt.solaris.x86 and blogs.sun.com. If all else fails "read the instructions"!

I have found Sun to be quite accomodating and very serious about Solaris 10. And if I needed assistance all I had to do was ask!

Your article is nothing like a "review", it is unfair, biased, and you have no clue how to use Solaris. Anyone who actually read it and was unfamiliar with Solaris would come away with a really bad impression of the product. Was this be accident or design that it turned out to be a troll piece? This comment cracks me up "If you have a problem with that, you should contact SUN and ask them to develop something more userfriendly. " NO, maybe you should actually learn how to use an OS before you write a "review" of it!

Mr Comay I have read the details of the CDDL.

Even though you say:"it specifies that any source modifications must be returned to the community under the same terms."

In reality it really says " Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License. You must include a copy of this License with every copy of the Source Code form of the Covered Software You distribute or otherwise make available. You must inform recipients of any such Covered Software in Executable form as to how they can obtain such Covered Software in Source Code form in a reasonable manner on or through a medium customarily used for software exchange."

No where in the license does is say that you have to put it back on the internet or in anyway provide this code in easy to use format.

So in reality under the CDDL I could take code from OpenSolaris and under the CDDL if you request a copy of the source code I could make you come to my house in Siberia to get it and as long as it is in a medium used for software exchange (Like on a CD-ROM) And I would still be legal under the license! LOL! It also does not say that I can not charge you for the service of providing the source back to you! While under the GPL I have to provide it in the format that I got it.

Also why are the GPL and CDDL incompatibile? because there are certain extra terms in the CDDL which, while not necessarily bad themselves, conflict with the GPL's "no additional restrictions" terms.

The CDDL licenses the copyrights in the code for use, distribution, and modification - the usual free software rights. It also contains a patent grant, but here the language is a bit more constrained:

(b) under Patent Claims infringed by the making, using or selling of Original Software, to make, have made, use, practice, sell, and offer for sale, and/or otherwise dispose of the Original Software (or portions thereof).

In other words, the CDDL does not license any patents for use in derived products. So if you recompile it and use it as is you are covered the same as if you bought Solaris from Sun. But if you make a derived product it's possible that Sun (If they wanted to) could sue you for the use. ???

This is also odd:

6.4. In the event of termination under Sections 6.1 or 6.2 above, all end user licenses (excluding distributors and resellers) that have been validly granted by You or any distributor hereunder prior to termination (excluding licenses granted to You by any distributor) shall survive termination.

So if you are a software distributor, and you got the code from somebody who later turns around and sues Sun, you can lose your rights to the software under the license.

That sucks!

Firstly - David Comay - thanks for posting a reply to my post. You've acknowledged that there are some issues, which is good. The only way to improve is to acknowledge problems - and then fix them.

OpenSolaris looks interesting, but to me, if it's not GPL'd I cannot simply consider it. I've read bits and pieces on the CDDL, and it doesn't do it for me. For those sun fanboys out there that think the CDDL is the bees knees, good for you. It doesn't work for me, or my social ideals. You can use CDDL software, i'll stick with GPL.

As I said in my earlier post, from a server point of view, Solaris 10 has some very cool features. Personally, I think the likes of Linux and BSD will incorporate similar features in the next 3 or so years (if not sooner). Linux' problem has always been poor administration tools, lack of API compatibility, leading to issues with running applications on different versions of any particular Linux distribution. A lack of a unified packaging system, unified desktop environment/window manager, and of course consistent UI amongst the desktop environments and applications. Improving the code quality of a lot of applications is needed as well. Whilst many are pretty good, there are examples of bad applications as well. If Linux can fix these issues and start to standardise, then we will start to see major 3rd party applications developers porting software to the platform. When that happens other operating systems will start to lose out big time. That's my honest appraisal. As Linux stands though - it will always be a fringe system unless changes are made.

Quote: "I believe that he is trolling"

Umm no, I wasn't. On my system, it felt sluggish. Both on JDS and CDE. I'll clarify further - it subjectively felt sluggish. Good enough for you? Just because you don't like my opinion doesn't mean i'm trolling.

However - from a desktop point of view, Solaris 10 does not cut it. To be fair to it, it was never intended for a home desktop system. It's a heavy duty server orientated operating system. I downloaded and tried it because i'm curious.

Dave

Hello again,

I wrote in the beginning of the text: "Read on to see how an average user (me) have experienced Solaris". And that's what it is. I can say nothing about the benefits Solaris provides for other applications. Cause I am an interested user that wanted to try it and not a Solaris Expert. All I did was writing down my experience with it.

The marketing of Solaris says, that Solaris 10 IS the BEST OS in the World. That anyone get it for FREE. And that you should get your copy NOW. There is no word about to use it only as a server, or only as a workstation and no word about to NOT use it on a desktop. I (mis)understood SUN's advertising in that way, that Solaris is the best OS in general. So I saw no reason why to not review it as an desktop OS.

I fear that many readers got the impression, I would imply that Solaris is an overall outdated system that hasn't been improved since years. That's not what I said. Please remind that I was talking about the value for common home users and nothing else. It was not my intention to mark Solaris as an unattractive OS - I'm sorry if you understood it this way.

Do we need an average user to review Solaris?

It's like asking a guy who just got his driving license to test-drive a Porsche...

Here is where I am confused? If you need to go out and learn how to use Solaris then that doesn't make it too user friendly. Which makes it a BAD candidate for a desktop OS. (Same thing people have been saying about Linux for years)

That is the point of this "Opinion" piece. I am still trying to figure out why people keep saying it's a "review" of solaris when it clearly says it's not a review???

The facts are that no matter how much better Solaris is then everything on God's green earth, SUN as a company is losing market share faster then people can post on the fourm!

SUN is a company that is giving away their software not because they want to be nice but because they are hoping the community will save them money on R&D and make Solaris relivent again!

Linux has out grown and will continue to out grow Solaris because Linux in reality is just a Kernel while Solaris as we know it is a whole OS that will never do more then be used on servers and some workstations. It will never get into the handheld market (Where Linux has just gotten patent protection from companies like Nokia and Palmsource) It will never be a desktop OS, etc.

Yes as a server OS Solaris is prob the best, but as you say "You need to learn Solaris" You know why MS has a HUGE chunk of the office server market? Cause almost anyone can figure it out. No it's not easy but you don't need to learn any command line crap! Same with Linux now. I user Suse Enterprise 9 on server installs all the time and Yast is just as simple as the MMC in Windows. So what people who use GUI's are stupid, they also make up 90% of the people who buy computers, servers etc! They guys who have the money to spend on tech in most companies go with what they know and they know the hot things are Windows and Linux. And that Solaris (like Novell netware) is used for specialised tasks like hosting web sites and that is about it. While most look at Linux distros as something that can do all kinds of tasks including replacing Windows in some cases.

Another thing I have noticed is that people are under the impression (True or not) that the X86 version of Solaris is not the same when it comes to security, patching etc as the Sparc version. I work for the US government and I ran into this problem when I wanted to install a Solaris 10 X86 server on the network. Because they didn't have a security policy for the X86 version of Solaris 10 they shot me down and had me use Linux for which they had a security policy.

Anyway there is no more to really say. Yes SOLARIS 10 is the best thing since the Wheel. Will it ever be a popular again as it was or as Linux? NO. I think that sums it up.

I've spent the last three years of my professional life thinking about OS virtualization. So have a lot of my peers, including Dave Comay, who posted earlier. We were on the team which built Zones. Someone complained about some marketing-esque stuff in the Blueprint article which was earlier referenced. You may prefer to take a look at a paper we published at the LISA 2004 conference; it focuses on how Zones works, and why we architected it in the fashion we did. There's a little bit in the beginning which tries to set up some context, but you can skip it if you like. It's available here: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dp/20041120#lisa_04_solaris_zones_...

To everyone: please do not make the mistake (or buy into anyone telling you) that there is one virtualization solution to rule them all. There is room for a spectrum of technologies. VMware does some great things, but it costs money; and in commercial environments where RHAS is heavily used, you may pay a lot in OS licensing fees. Xen does neat stuff too, and from what I hear, performance is good. But it probably won't get support from Microsoft (As Tim points out, we are investigating Xen as well: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tpm/20050510 ). And it's not easily portable, from what I understand. [vwxyz]PARs from are useful in some situations too. As are Zones; they perform at native speeds, and don't need any special H/W. My Toshiba Tecra laptop has three zones. UML takes an interesting approach too, which really meshes well with the strength of the Linux user base, although from my hazy understanding performance is an ongoing issue, and I've not yet talked to an enterprise which is even considering it (again: my subjective experience). Linux Vservers is cool too, and has really spawned some great research in the form of PlanetLab.

I'd point out that a key difference of Zones vs. other "in OS" technologies (UML, Jails, Vservers) is the level of compatibility and feature support. It's an off-the-shelf approach designed to "just work." As a result, we've rapidly seen uptake and support for Zones from vendors like Oracle, Veritas, and others.

Finally, I have one nit to pick with the article author. Sun is "Sun Microsystems", not SUN. The desktop is JDS3, or "Java Desktop 3", or "Java Desktop." Not JAVADesktop 2. It's impolite to not correctly name the product you are reviewing.

I hope this isn't too redundant. I didn't have time to read all 150 posts

Thanks,
-Dan

I don't know how the Hell you admin systems without learning anything about the OS, the hardware, and the apps? Solaris is no different than Linux "back in the day", it was hard to configure and very unforgiving. I am one of those administrators who does not need "hand holding" in order to get something done. This is not limited to Solaris, AIX, HP-UX all have nice CLI tools because these vendors understand that the typical administrator doesn't spend all day staring at a CDE, KDE, Gnome or other desktop.

As a Government Contractor I have two systems that have a GUI, a Windows XP Professional machine, and a Sun Ray to access the HIGH side network. I use CDE with multiple dtterm windows, that is all I need. The rest of the systems are mandated no X, and that is fine by me, more memory for apps.

Oh by the way, Matthias said his article was in fact a review "So I saw no reason why to not review it as an desktop OS."

OK, so whoever is responsible for security has no documentation for Solaris 10, well write it for them! If you wait for somebody else to do it Solaris 15 will be on the street! The only thing I am waiting for here is a new version of NetBackup that supports Solaris 10 (NB 5.1 SP2 or better). Some of the security people I have come across are as dumb as a box of rocks. All I have to do is demonstrate that I can have a machine that is even more secure and meets the auditing requirements of an EAL4 install and we should be "good to go".

And why should Sun even bother with the handheld market? I think that is an example of what is WRONG with Linux, I would much rather see development efforts being used to make it a better OS for servers and workstations, not watches, PDA's and other crap.

Well maybe Linux will be more popular for you, right now I have about had it with RedHat and their nonsense (just search on NetBackup and you will see what I am talking about). For the small time user, yeah Linux works. At the Enterprise level, the jury is still out!

I am an SAP Basis Consultant, and I trust only Solaris and Sun.

I'm very sorry for all of solaris users but the OS was made free only because they can;t and they won;t support it anymore becouse there are so many free avalible OSes that beat the hell out of solaris. Same as HP-UX and other decent old Unix systems. They need to put alot of cash into develop or just make them free OS. This solaris eye candy was made only to get some attention from developers.
It was a decent OS but it;s not number 1 anymore. Administration without GUI on it and CDE tools is waste of time if you compare it to *BSD and linux.
P.S. i'm working everyday with solaris and hp-ux, sometimes it is realy pain in the ass!!!

You are right Solaris is no different then Linux "Back in the day" Well back in the day was back then and not now! The future is now and there are things people exspect that Solaris does not offer (Just the same as you say about Red hat)

And if you read the ARTICLE you will see there is nothing in there about it being a review, not that I can speak for Matthias but I take it that in the process of DEFENDING him self for all the attacks he made a slip in saying that he was reviewing it because in the same post he said ""Read on to see how an average user (me) have experienced Solaris". And that's what it is. I can say nothing about the benefits Solaris provides for other applications. Cause I am an interested user that wanted to try it and not a Solaris Expert. All I did was writing down my experience with it."

I don't know about other security people but I work for USAID and if you check the dept of homeland security's web site or anywhere else on the web that posts info on government security that USAID got an "A" on their last security assesment (The only US government agency that did) so I think the people here know a little about security! There is MUCH more to security then just meeting the requirments of EAL4.

The job of making it a better OS for Servers and Workstations is up to the companies who sell it as a server and or workstation OS. Not the people who use the kernel for other tasks. The good thing about Linux being used for so many different things is that all types of people develop for and on it. The more it's used the more it will be used. The more it's used the more people will learn it and it will grow and more of the features you want will be added.

I am sorry to hear your problems with Red Hat, the good thing about Linux is that there are 100's of versions of Linux and you can try out and find one that will suit your needs, if not Red Hat then maybe Suse or maybe Mandrake etc. You are not stuck with Red Hat and you don't have to pay for any versions till you try them out first. You can download any version of Suse for example and try it. That is why I use Suse Enterprise server and not Red Hat.

Linux is not going to be popular with everyone, but Linux is what has created things (Like this website) And caused companies like Google to grow so fast (And as we know 2 of the 3 biggest companies on the net and in the country use linux Google and Amazon. Yahoo uses BSD and e-bay uses Linux and Solaris)

Do we need an average user to review Solaris?

It's like asking a guy who just got his driving license to test-drive a Porsche...

Regards,
SunOS SysAdmin running SunOS 5.10 sparc

"There is MUCH more to security then just meeting the requirments of EAL4. " Then enlighten us, I'm dying to hear it!

You are correct, Solaris *is not* a good choice for a general desktop environment. Never has, hope it will, but not counting on it for that purpose.

I strongly disagree with this. I use Solaris 10 x86 with JDS as a desktop OS. I can read MS Office documents with StarOffice. I can print to Windows printers and browse Windows shares. Evolution hooks up to my company's Exchange servers with no problems. As JDS is a customized version of Gnome, it provides the same friendly desktop environment as other Gnome-based Linux distros. Solaris is rock solid, virus free, and a superb Java development environment. Plus, you get all of the neat new Solaris features like Dtrace.

Solaris is definitely not for newbies but if you know what you're doing, it's an outstanding workstation OS.

It's ironic to find Linux fanboys dissing Solaris for not having pretty GUI apps for configuration. I mean, that's what the Windows users used to say about Linux: "It looks ugly, you need to deal with text files". And the Linux fanboys used to say "The OS is fine. YOU are too stupid to RTFM".

I swear that sometimes I hate to think that I could be associated with these Linux zealots. Because I do use Linux on my workstation. Pity about the community these days.

Sorry for going off topic. I got frustrated reading the nonsense that Tyrone & his ilk spew out.

I wish the Open Solaris project well. I am looking forward to trying it out soon. Don't stress about the "review" that got posted here. People who actually have a use for Solaris are be clued enough to see how shalow the "review" was.

Somewhat off topic but...

With all the talk about virtualization, not just in this thread but in the past three years, one little detail is consistently ignored. That detail is that with virtualization you expose yourself to a higher level of risk due to the single point of failure that your hardware becomes.

It's great to be able to run hundreds of virtual servers on your box but, it's also very unfortunate to have to reboot hundreds of virtual servers because the server and the SCSI tape drive have gone out of synch and a cold start is the only way to get them talking again. Even with highly redundant systems and hot pluggable hardware, even CPUs on highend systems, sooner or later something fails or requires a power cycle and at that point you aren't taking down a server, you're taking down lots of servers. For me this is a major argument against virtualization and even some clusters. But, Sparcs never fail, right?

------

BTW, thanks to Dan Price for an informed and balanced post that was completely absent of the vitriol of the other pro Solaris posts.

That is easy Robert:

You can go to NIST or the NSA for information on how to lock down and secure your system over and above ELA4.

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-7/node2.html

That is just one link (For POSIX systems)

Just because your machine by definition meets the ELA4 standard (Windows 2000 SP3 made ELA4 and we know how insecure that is even locked down) does not make it secure in practice because one new patch could change that.

Also ELA4 really just covers the OS which also means that an application as simple as Microsoft Word (If it has any security problems) would cause you to fail ELA4.

That is why almost every agency in the government (Including the Dept of Homeland security) failed the last IG security audit. Because people think if they have an OS that meets ELA4 or above all is well, not taking into account that you have to install software and patches from time to time etc.

It's ironic to find Linux fanboys dissing Solaris for not having pretty GUI apps for configuration. I mean, that's what the Windows users used to say about Linux: "It looks ugly, you need to deal with text files". And the Linux fanboys used to say "The OS is fine. YOU are too stupid to RTFM".

he he - that is sooo true. I am also a GNU/Linux and I did RTFM. I learned how to do things "back in the days" and I have never had to use any of the fancy schmnzy GUI config stuff.
Do it right the first time, and you're good to go on all linuces, not to say all unices ;-)

It's ironic to find Linux fanboys dissing Solaris for not having pretty GUI apps for configuration. I mean, that's what the Windows users used to say about Linux: "It looks ugly, you need to deal with text files". And the Linux fanboys used to say "The OS is fine. YOU are too stupid to RTFM".

Ummm DUH although we would laugh when windows users put us down we were smart enough to see that they were right in some respects and so we worked to make better GUI's cause that is what was holding us back!

That is what the general user wants and that is why Windows killed the likes of Netware, Banyan, and Unix! And the reason why the most popular version of Unix is produced by Apple! Because it's easy to USE!

It's like asking a guy who just got his driving license to test-drive a Porsche...

No, that would be nice, if it were a porche. But its more like asking a guy who just got his driving license to test-drive a semi. Solaris is a workhorse, not a race car. Its very difficult to drive, having 15 gears and 80k of towing capacity. Much harder to drive than a porche and much slower.

Ummm DUH although we would laugh when windows users put us down we were smart enough to see that they were right in some respects and so we worked to make better GUI's cause that is what was holding us back!

That is what the general user wants and that is why Windows killed the likes of Netware, Banyan, and Unix! And the reason why the most popular version of Unix is produced by Apple! Because it's easy to USE!

I would venture that Solaris has never before been targeted towards the general user. It is only now that they are starting to look into doing that. Give them some time and you may yet get pretty GUIs in spades. Stuff like zones, dtrace take much more time to develop than pretty GUIs. Anybody can code a pretty GUI.

misspelled Porsche, doh!

I think Sun systems are very well designed and great for what they are designed for. But overkill for most corporate and desktop workloads these days.

If you have money coming out your ears, then yes, by all means, pay the luxury of having the Apple of UNIX. Actually that would be SGI. But anyway, Sun is fixing all the problems I had with Solaris, years after I noticed them. But its better late than never.

Its not like we can expect their execs to understand the GPL. Software licenses are very difficult to understand. First you have to read them, and God knows nobody in exec land has time to read. Then you have to think about what it says. Thinking is a luxury when you're an exec, I guess.

Ah I just love bagging on Sun. But I love their hardware. What a weird love/love relationship this is. And don't even get me talking about sex. Sex with Sun hardware is almost painful. I cut myself on an Ultra 5 once.

They don't have much time left, the company is bleeding red all over. But that is cool.

Oh yea I forgot Solaris has a pretty GUI that they borrowed from the Linux world.

And yes things like Zones and Dtrace are great! Who is using that fancy stuff?? I don't know because the Solaris market share is strinking while Apple, Microsoft and the big linux companies seem to be growing market share and cash flow hand over fist!

(And you can argue that Apple is growing because of the IPod, that is true but the Mac OS is selling pretty good! Tiger is selling just as fast as people are downloading Solaris 10)

The problem with applications not meeting the expected EAL based on the environment you run in goes without saying. Especially if you are using Oracle! And I am "patch crazy", so my idea is "if in doubt patch".

right tool for the job...

If you have lots of space and a little cash and good admins who know your business then for most services a Linux cluster is the optimal solution because you can form fit it to your needs and its cheap.

If you're limited on space and need a single redundant system then a Sun server is a perfect fit.

But if you're really limited on space you might consider you can get the performance of a SunFire 2*k system in a deskside SGI Altix, and it will scale. Did I mention its a Linux cluster? Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

@ Meoff, Jack
Fist of all your experience with GNOME has absolutely nothing to do with Solaris per se, you could have experienced the same running GNOME on Linux or *BSD. Secondly, you're judging an OS without even having touched it by the outcome of an installation on some random piece of crap PC hardware? How dumb, arrogant and ignorant are you? You're jumping to conclusions about something you have absolutely no clue about and to add insult to the injury you have the balls to post your inbecilic "opinion" on this forum?! WTF!? You're indeed a very disgraceful example of ignorance and errogance at its worst.
Well Jack, since Gnome is the GUI interface in Solaris then it has everything to do with it.
It's true I have not given Solaris enough chance, and gave up on it after that bad experience, but I blame mostly Solaris for it, because this kind of breakage should not happen on an OS that's supposed to be industrial strength server and workstation.
And the hardware was not some random piece of crap.
It was a quality Intel chipset mainboard (I think Intel 845 chipset, standard ATA drive and Nvidia video card, nothing extraordinary) that ran super stable under Windows and Linux.
And it wasn't that new either, that chipset is about 2-3 years old now.
The fact is Solaris locked up for no reason at all, and that should not have happened.
If I get a misbehaving program on Linux, all it takes is to open terminal, ps -A to see the process number and then "kill -s 9 <pid # here> and that's it.
Couldn't do it on Solaris since I lost all keyboard response.
Pretty sad for OS that's supposed to be so great.
I don't blame Solaris 100% though, Gnome is know for corrupting its registry, happened to me before on Linux when I was still willing to give Gnome a chance. It's off my sytems now, and never coming back.
Maybe for a backend server running from a CLI Solaris might be ok, but why bother when we have Linux and it handles both server and desktop roles equaly well.
Let the dinosaur die, it's time have long passed.

Yes you should always patch, but as Microsoft shows on a regular, you could patch and the patch could make a new problem or make the exsisting problem worse. So you have to test each patch for security issues also.

As you know EAL levels run from 1 to 7. EAL1 basically means that the vendor showed up for the meeting. EAL7 means that key parts of the system have been rigorously verified in a mathematical way. EAL4 means that the design documents were reviewed using non-challenging criteria. This is sort of like having an accounting audit where the auditor checks that all of your paperwork is there and your business practice standards are appropriate, but never actually checks that any of your numbers are correct. An EAL4 evaluation is not required to examine the software at all.

An EAL4 rating means that you did a lot of paperwork related to the software process, but says absolutely nothing about the quality of the software itself. There are no quantifiable measurements made of the software, and essentially none of the code is inspected. Buying software with an EAL4 rating is kind of like buying a home without a home inspection, only more risky.

Most important security problems in Windows and UNIX are design problems rather than implementation problems. (Even though people will try to lead you to believe that it's always the end users fault)

These so called reviews of Solaris are really a joke. Solaris is a operating system for running servers, enterprise systems, mission critical databases etc and not for running office applications at home.

The person reviewing should stop equating operating system with "something that grandmother can use". Solaris is a serious workhorse of an operating system.

Trust me, I've used it for years!

Hmm..based on these sorts of reviews, I think I'm going to upgrade by Mainframe to Windows "because it has a nice UI"

hahahahahahahaha

"Let the dinosaur die, it's time have long passed"

I am just wondering...since when did linux zealots become so arrogant? Since they got the backing of IBM?

In life, people who are arrogant will always be humbled.
Unexpected things always happen...SCO may win the lawsuit, and you have to pay license fee for using linux...

"In life, people who are arrogant will always be humbled.
Unexpected things always happen...SCO may win the lawsuit, and you have to pay license fee for using linux..."

Ummmmm, last time I looked if you buy Red Hat, Novell, Linspire etc all charge license fees and all also indemnify you just as much as Apple and Microsoft do.

So what is your point?

"Ummmmm, last time I looked if you buy Red Hat, Novell, Linspire etc all charge license fees and all also indemnify you just as much as Apple and Microsoft do."

errr...what about all the other popular distros like slackware, debian, fedora etc...

Even if there's indemnification, there will definitely be mass exodus from linux...the linux landscape will totally change.

Even if there's indemnification, there will definitely be mass exodus from linux...the linux landscape will totally change.

Please, what is SCO going to do sue everyone in the world for using free copies of Linux?? Give me a break. That won't happen.

On top of that the lawsuit is not against Linux it is against IBM for using Unix know how to help the Linux kernel. If the Linux Kernel does not it self include any offending code (Which SCO will have to prove) then how will that affect anyone. On top of that if it does then the Linux vendors will quickly replace it. (You must think that no one is watching this and preparing for it!)

Also if you know ANYTHING about the law here in the US you would know that this thing will be appealed and repealed till we are old and grey! LOL! Last time I looked IBM was pretty darn flush with cash!

Last but not least if IBM was really worried about this they would have bought SCO out a LONG time ago. They make more money in a month then SCO has ever been worth in the short history of the company!

Shoot Microsoft has about 40 lawsuits pending against them right now for patent violations! Anyone of those companies could do like SCO and start to sue users of Windows! But that has not happened.

(Also there is a multi million dollar Open Source fund that is there to indemnify users of GPL software, not just Linux)

You are just spreading FUD. There is TOOO much support for Linux. With companies like Nokia and Palmsource also getting on board to offer patent protection to Linux! SCO will be lucky to make it through this year!

I think that you are entitled to your opinion. I also think that the reviewer is JUST as entitled to his opinion and that neither opinion is more valid.

However, I do find it interesting that in 170 posts approximately half of which are in support of Solaris, only one person offered any evidence to support their assertion that Solaris is great and the review is bad.

Even you state that the reviewer is clueless and that Solaris is vastly superior as a matter of course. In support of your assertion you state "Trust me, I've used it for years!". You are kidding, right? What if I countered your argument with:

$OS is a operating system for running servers, enterprise systems, mission critical databases etc and not for running office applications at home. Trust me I've worked with it for years!

Where $OS ==
DOS
Windows
Netware
Linux
*BSD
AIX

>You may use the text based installer, which requires only 128 MB of RAM.

I like the "only" 128 MB of RAM

Some of those things you mention would be very nice, but I have the feeling most of them are pretty useless on cheap PC hardware anyway (some of us don't have $10,000US for a server). For those who do it's very nice, and had you read the whole thread you'd notice I hadn't advocated against Solaris yet (you're arguing with the wrong person).
The only person I insulted was the person who doesn't understand why only Sun sells Solaris. And I was nice about it!

While Solaris 10 is not a very simple (dumb?) OS like Windows, it is certainly no more difficult to handle than any Linux. My suspicion is that the author's lack of experience with the OS in question makes him rather biased against it.

>The partitioning tool didn't looked that friendly.

Why? What did he want to do with the partition tool that he could not do - especially since he says that he had allocated an entire hard disk to Solaris? An assertion without any mention of what he felt was difficult.

>But, after the long installation and another long take to >boot the whole thing, I was sadly disappointed

I am currently booting into Solaris 10 *far far* faster than FC3 boots. FC3, Mandrake, SuSE -all take an aeon to boot, while Solaris 10 actually boots much faster than most Linux distros (except perhaps, Slackware, and its clones).

>Providing a Terminalwindow within an X11 Environment. Like >we used vi at school at the end of the Nineties in a >Terminalwindow, this Solaris 10 is made for the same >purpose

Is the author aware how many of Sysadmins and coders still use vi and its clones? And they do it for very good reasons - it works excellently for those who know how to use it. Regardless, exactly what did the author expect? Another dumbed down terminal that is present in WinXP - something that is aimed at users aged 1-4 and comes close to being insulting to the intelligence of the users?

>It is hard to understand why more than 4 GB are occupied on >the harddisk

I seem to be an exception - my entire installation took 2.2GB - with quite a few packages downloaded from blastwave. What did he install that took 4 GB? Everything that comes in the CD set? Is the author aware that if he installs everything that comes in FC3, it takes around 7GB?

>The system doesn't even have any compiler installed

He should have looked harder before writing that - gcc is present under /usr/sfw/.

>Solaris simply lacks of useful Software for the (home) user.
The author should have checked on blastwave, or sunfreeware, where there are a fairly large number of packages (most of the popular packages have been compiled for Solaris 10). I assume he could not be bothered to check thoese sites before writing that.

>From my point of view it's easier to set up, understand and >use FreeBSD if you are just a user wanting to try a "real" >UNIX

Has the author tried to configure things under *BSD, Gentoo or Slackware, that he can say that it is 'easier' there? And how do you define 'easy'? From his article, I am not sure he even *used* Solaris seriously before, let alone trying to configure it. Solaris, like all other OSs, has its own way of doing things and one must put in some effort to understand how it works to be able to give an opinion on the OS.

>why you should use Solaris instead of a modern operating >system

Indeed! Solaris has a number of features that are not there anywhere else. And how did he come to the conclusion that it is not a 'modern system'? What, may I ask, is his view of how a modern system should be like?

In the end, it appears to me to be another user who made up his mind that it was 'too difficult to use' before he properly worked on it to learn its basics.

It's probably the typical view that "mundane" tasks like setting up your system should be fully automated.

Sheesh! Solaris was never intended for your Joe twelve pack. You should only use Solaris on Sun hardware to get rock stable 64 bit performance. I use Solaris all the time, I have it installed on a Ultra 2 and a "old" Sparcserver 5. If I need packages I just download them from Sunfreeware.com. I also prefer the old school GUI of Solaris and Open Windows, they're thin and fast. For x86 stuff I still prefer Linux (insert favorite disro here) and Windows 2000. I have tried Solaris on x86 hardware and had the usual problem with limited hardware support.

If you don't like being a sysadmin run XP, if you like UNIX run Solaris or IRIX, and for everything else OSX and Linux are great choices.

"The fact is Solaris locked up for no reason at all, and that should not have happened.
If I get a misbehaving program on Linux, all it takes is to open terminal, ps -A to see the process number and then "kill -s 9 <pid # here> and that's it."

WTF?!! WTF are you people doing that you manage to lock up Solaris? I have administered Red Hat, Solaris, Netware, OS/2 and Winders boxes since 95, and in that time, I have only had Red Hat (ahhh the good old days of RH/Caldera) lock up on me twice, Solaris (from the horrible 2.5 to blissful 2.9) locked on me once, Netware once, Winders 5 times, and OS/2 5 times. In the case of Red Hat, Solaris and Netware the system lock ups were due to hardware failures. Winders and OS/2 issues were driver related. Every time I hear some l337 fool whining about a systems lockup, I always think of a neighbor that blew his foot off cleaning his loaded rifle. Yep, he did not check to see of the gun had a chambered round before he started cleaning it.

Don't know if the link below has anything to do with the problem you're seeing. If it helps, great - if not, I guess you're no worse off than before.

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-February/msg03654.h...

JDS3 (not JDS2) is part of Solaris 10 and it wasn't submitted by a "freelancer." A compiler, smc (sun management console), webmin, the Java Desktop System Configuration Manager client, dtrace, and many other utilities are included with Solaris 10. But most of these aren't in the menus or the default path.

Solaris traditionally was targetted for a different market space. Installing one unique desktop machine might be difficult for the average PC user, but replicating an installation to hundreds or thousands of machines is (man flar). (If only we could have our O.S. preinstalled on 90% of all desktop hardware!) Your latest tar or vi might not be in your default path, but the enterprise user won't have to rewrite their scripts every few months.

I hope that the installer, packaging, documentation and hardware support continue to improve so that users such as yourself have a better out of the box experience. Also, if you don't find enough native Solaris applications on blastwave, sunfreeware or drydog, look for a Java application. Good luck!

The problem with NetBackup and RedHat Linux has to do with how you patch NetBackup. If you patch NB with Maintenance Packs (MP), you do not get the code that is included in Feature Packs, as a result of this if you use NetBackup patched with MP's, a Linux client backup fails with Status 174. So what I am going to do is set up another NetBackup server with a LTO drive to backup our portal machines until we get NB 5.1 or 6 (depending on when 6 ships).

Thanks for the link.

Some guy made a point about solaris not being easy to administer..... what a load of sh*t...

want to start or stop a service with dependency checking using a one line command? say hello to svcadm

for example I want to shut down ssh access to my machine.

root@home:/# svcadm disable ssh

simple and easy.

Please try out the product before being a harsh critic

I think the one thing that strikes me is the commentary about how long it takes to install an OS. I only do this several times a year: I spend most of my time using the computer - not installing it.

I've used "open source" software since 386BSD. It has generally always been dificult to install, and frustrating to setup a working workstation. While experience remediates this to some degree, the constant change of compilers, libraries, version 0.01.03 pre alpha garbage, and the religeon like dogmatic attitudes of many "users" has always annoyed me. Or how about the hand wringing over the 2 minute boot process? I use Unix for the specific reason that I do not plan to boot the machine very often.

I use computers to make money. It is my profession, I don't care about religeous arguments or subjective comments about how it is hard to install (metric?) or runs slower (metric ?) or it is ancient (bad why? metric?) mean nothing to me as a professional. Any one with a real scientific education knows that without a metric and an apples to apples comparison you are doing nothing more than stating a potentialy unsound opinion.

After reading through this discussion (I skipped braindead drivel) as part of my research prior to making a decision to test drive Solaris (as in buy a box with the right hardware and buy the CDs and spend time learning how to run it.) I have concluded that the same idiots carry on about the same silly things, and real professionals that actually impelement systems for serious purposes seem to like Solaris.

Note: IT professionals make good money and can afford something newer than a Celeron. Right? Why all the attempts on 5 year old junk hardware? What does that say? Yes I have bills and kids too.

I've been using FreeBSD since 2.2.5. The turmoil and changes surrounding 4.x to 5.x have simply been ridiculous. I'm sick of the constant experimental nature of every GD peice of software in the OSS world. I demand consistency and stability, and I need serious systems security. I'm going to give Solaris a shot and I suspect it is spot on what I am looking for.

Desktop OS? I use Unix because I like the CLI. X Windows is a great way to manage terminals, I don't give a damn what it looks like. I don't hate windows, I'm indifferent to it's very existance, To the clueless I recommend you give serious consideration to getting a college education in IS or CS or something. Science without metrics is called witchcraft, or magic or voodoo or just religeon. If you don't know how to run quantitative tests and analyze the results you are out of your league.

I give special thanks to the technically literate and the Sun Microsystems employees who took the time to write informative posts... You know who you are. To the original author of the "review": Nice hatchet job, it forced me to read the posts, I will be giving Solaris a real shot and I know Unix so I'm sure I won't be stumped.