OSNews

Well someone could use some of the solaris specific features, for example. Others might want it on the desktop, because they have administered it as a server and loved it, etc.

Indeed, there are many advantages of Solaris over GNU/Linux, but most are server oriented features that the average desktop Linux Joe may not notice since most applications on both systems are the same. However, OpenSolaris (base of NexentaOS) contains many great new innovative technologies to boost security, performance, administration, and reliability (to name a few).

here is a copy of a comment I made a week or so ago, it should help you see some of the technology in OpenSolaris/Solaris, not all of it is availible in neenta OS yet, but its coming.

What makes Solaris Express the best....

Zones - chroot/jails on steroids more secure and flexible
http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2005/03/zones-links.html

ZFS - state of the art, stable expandable filesystem chksumed from ram to disk, raidz (think raid5 with fast writes) 128bits, basicly limitless, and does snapshots
http://www.google.com/custom?domains=uadmin.blogspot.com&q=zfs&...

fireengine - brand new ultra fast written from the ground up network engine, this system will handle networking better than most other OSes on the same hardware

dtrace - the ultimate enterprise/production ready debug tool http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2005/03/dtrace-links.html

SMF - replaces ancient sysV start up scripts, and it monitors the apps as well restarting if necessary, one command to see the status of all daemons running on the system.

Predictive Self healing -- interface to cope with and protect from hardware failure, a bad block of ram can be locked out and the system still keeps running, bad cpus are offlined, and will stay off lined untill the cpu is replaced.

brandz -- run native linux apps in a zone

RBAC -- role based access control, allows you to assign a role to a user, and he is given the power to do his task, without complete root level access, user admin can create accounts. etc. individual apps can be given only the prevledges it needs, no longer must an app begiven root to open a socket lower that 1024

All of the above are very stable and close to being production ready, in fact many companies have been running them on production systems without problems for months.

This would make an excellent Workstation!
Now lets get KDE working.

kde is allready working on solaris/opensolaris you can get it at www.sunfreeware.com, www.blastwave.com, or solaris.kde.org nexenta probably will have it shortly i beleve.

Thanks, after I burn the iso AND learn the inner workings of this OS. I will try to install KDE.

Actually Nexenta already provides the option of KDE or Gnome. It did so since the last release...

Zones, ZFS, dtrace, those are the features I see as must have. SMF is far better than init. Other than that, it's the same, just the kernel differs. All the rest is going to be the same as ubuntu-debian as I understand it -- a very smart move. Since with brandz you can run Linux binaries, everything just works.

The right way to look at it is to compare GNU/Linux vs GNU/Solaris. Linux is open source, but open source is not Linux.

Zones, ZFS, dtrace, those are the features I see as must have. SMF is far better than init. Other than that, it's the same, just the kernel differs. All the rest is going to be the same as ubuntu-debian as I understand it -- a very smart move. Since with brandz you can run Linux binaries, everything just works.

Yes, if you talk about server or development setup. And linux has its own solutions to the same problems too.
No, if you talk about desktop. In the end, Nexenta is derived from Ubuntu, meaning it is end-user centric.

While I preffer Xen over zones (Xen does work on Solaris too), ZFS rocks, but features of ZFS are the least important to desktop user.

Personally, I don't find dtrace really special.

Linux has far better coverage of hardware. While I can plug things in Solaris up to infinity with no result sometimes, Linux just works.
Solaris has better mainframe coverage.

SMF and init comparission? Not relevant for desktop user, but relevant for server admin. SMF is indeed better, but administration of services is not really hard anywhere.

Well, I don't really get enthusiasm about brandz. Which software? It is almost all OSS. Better to port things, than run trough the "should work solution". Your "everything should work" can be tested fairly good. Run Domino in brandz, then talk. You can't port Domino, can't you?

The right way to look at it is to compare GNU/Linux vs GNU/Solaris. Linux is open source, but open source is not Linux.

Nah, this is wrong way of looking at it. Choose the best tool for your needs and choose carefully.

But if your needs are the ones of end user, you'll be using the same interface and software anyway. All that matters for you is better HW support.

p.s. Now to be moded down from a fashionable Solaris perspective, since I just said that Solaris is not best everywhere

As I will show below you can't just look at each technology on its own, its how they work together that really makes Solaris/OpenSolaris so powerful.

While I preffer Xen over zones (Xen does work on Solaris too), ZFS rocks, but features of ZFS are the least important to desktop user.

as you say Solaris gives you a choice of both, each has there own place. Solaris zones are much lighter than Xen, with Xen you deploy the whole OS, using over a GB for an average install of each OS, a Solaris zone can be as small as 50MB when you store them on a ZFS filesystem (compression enabled). ZFS also gives you to ability to deploy a new zone in 5 seconds or less. Using its snapshot ability. http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jclingan?entry=zone_creation_with_...

With Xen have you the headaches of patching each one as patches and software upgrades happen Solaris makes it apply once used everywhere. But if you need it Xen is there.

ZFS does have a place on the desktop, its snapshot features give it the ability to take a static picture of the data before you make a large change. If you don't like the new version revert to an old image. want to tryout new software package, take a snapshot of your data, install new package, you don't like it? its buggy? simply revert to the previous version.

Personally, I don't find dtrace really special.

currently dtrace isn't that interesting for a normal desktop user, but as a developer or sysadmin it is a powerful tool to have availible. It has allready solved problems in numerous opensource packages, even those that run on linux.

Linux has far better coverage of hardware. While I can plug things in Solaris up to infinity with no result sometimes, Linux just works.

Yes linux has better hardware support currently. but that is slowly changing. Hardware makers are seeing the stability in Solaris ABI and love how they can do a driver once, and have it remain working even as it progresses towards the next release. How many people have been bitten by install a driver for hardware in linux then 3 to 6 months later you upgrade your kernel, and the driver is broken. This doesn't happen in Solaris and hardware makers really appreciate that fact.

Solaris has better mainframe coverage.
Solaris doesn't run on mainframes, it runs on large servers but they aren't considered mainframes.

SMF and init comparission? Not relevant for desktop user, but relevant for server admin. SMF is indeed better, but administration of services is not really hard anywhere.

SMF is totally relavent to the desktop, especially when you have many desktops. Ever tried debugging a desktop where the user says my machine can't reach google. In linux this can be multiple steps. In solaris 10 its a single step gets you info you need to solve the problem. Because its not just about services, its interlinked with Predictive self healing.

svcs -x tells you what hardware and/or software services are not availible. If you have a bad nic or a unplugged network cable, or any of the other services that may be running.

Well, I don't really get enthusiasm about brandz. Which software? It is almost all OSS. Better to port things, than run trough the "should work solution". Your "everything should work" can be tested fairly good. Run Domino in brandz, then talk. You can't port Domino, can't you?

brandz by it self is pretty boring, untill you are in a corprate setting and your boss requires you to run a commercial software package that is only availible on Linux.

When you mix brandz with other special features of Solaris 10 it becomes more interesting as well. You can use dtrace to debug a problem in a linux executable no recompile, no grabbing pre-alpha solutions recompiling the kernel its ready to go. Or add brandz on top of ZFS, and you can take instant snapshots of your data for backups.

ZFS rocks, but features of ZFS are the least important to desktop user.

In addition to the snapshot feature jamesd mentioned, desktop users would benefit from checksumming so they'd know when their cheap ATA hard drive is about to die.

big deal, like checksumming for desktops is needed...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools

The problem for the *nix desktop is multimedia support. Until that is fixed ... and I doubt it will be with the MS formats and DRM being slowly woven into the Windows desktop, the *nix desktop is not going to be able to play. Most users are simply not going to be able to get through the steps needed to get the multimedia stuff installed and working.

The latest nexenta alpha has greatly improved hardware support.

While I like XEN, having the feature basically built into nexenta, ie zones, simplifies use.

I do agree that most *nix uses are best for servers, which is where I am coming from.

basically its just another platform im going to hafta learn how to operate at some time...

90% of the time Unix is just Unix. Maybe RC vs SysV init and libraries in different places but that's mostly hidden from you. I could throw you down in front of BASH and you could be wokring happily away in XEMACS and g++ and never know the difference.

If you are a sys admin, well, that might be a different story.