Today we host an interview with Andy Tucker, Distinguished Engineer of the Solaris kernel. We talk about the internals of Solaris, the competition and the future of the Solaris OE. The 9th question was answered by Robert O'Dea, Director of Engineering at Sun Microsystems.
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...and wants Linux developers to feel the same about Solaris, how come his company is buying int SCO?
Chuck, I would doubt very seriously that Andy Tucker as any influence on the investement disisions of the Sun Board. I though his interview was well ballenced and showed none of the hostility to linux that you have showed to Sun.
And yes, he does seem real balanced as regards Linux.
So he admits that Sun has borrowed the O(1) scheduler GPL code from Linux and put it into Solaris? Forget SCO. Solaris has lots of goodies that should be GPL'd for Linux's use.
Is this supposed to be flamebait or are you being serious? He said Solaris has had an O(1) schedular for a long time already. Linux only has one in it's development kernel. Sun's schedular is not GPL nor is it from Linux. Why must everything be GPL'd for Linux's use? Why not BSD license Linux code for BSD use? Please don't start with silly license wars again.
When Andy Tucker was still at Stanford, he published a number of influential papers on the theme of Scheduling on Shared-Memory Multiprocessors...
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tucker/home.html
His work was cited in the ALS 2001 Scheduler Paper, "CPU Pooling and Load Balancing for Linux MultiQueue Scheduling" aka "PMQS: Scalable Linux Scheduling for Highend Servers".
http://lse.sourceforge.net/scheduling/
Andy infuenced the development of Linux SMP Scheduling
In their most recent press releases and in their lawsuit against IBM, The SCO Group is effectively make the claim that:
The SCO Group, and only The SCO Group, has *sole* right to sub-license any and all source code from all of the folowing UNIXs; SCO UnixWare and SCO OpenServer, Sun's Solaris, IBM's AIX, SGI's IRIX, HP's UX, Fujitsu's ICL DRS/NX, Siemens' SINIX, Data General's DG-UX, and Sequent's DYNIX/Ptx.( SCO's CEO expanded that list to include the Free BSDs, Mach and therefore Mac OSX, and even Microsoft's windows )
The SCO Group is also effectively claiming that The SCO Group, and only The SCO Group, has *sole* right to dictate what can be disclosed about any and all internals of any of the above operating systems, or any derivative operating systems.
According to SCO way of thinking, Andy Tucker is also effectively guilty of revealing such details to people who have not signed an AT&T/USL Unix NDA license aggreement.
I wonder how Andy feels about SCO's attempts to limit future OS development and about Sun's recent attempts to capitalize on The SCO Group's FUD?
BTW, The line of argument that Darl MCBride and The SCO Group is using to claim these rights was quashed by the outcome of the USL vs. BSDI lawsuit
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/bsdisuit.html
The SCO Group cannot have any effective claim to the UNIX source it did not directly write or directly purchase.
The SCO Group also cannot back out of the GPL license that it has knowingly sold and distributed binaries and source under.
The SCO Group is pulling the same trick as that company that is selling plots of land on the moon, a lunatic scam that it appears both Microsoft and now Sun has fallen for.
> So he admits that Sun has borrowed the O(1) scheduler GPL code from
> Linux and put it into Solaris? Forget SCO. Solaris has lots of goodies >that should be GPL'd for Linux's use.
Umm no, I think what he said was 'Solaris has had a O(1) scheduler for a while that we developed, we just haven't made a big deal about it'. Not 'we stole linux's O(1) scheduler'. The low level solaris threading code is quite a bit different from linux's anyway, it'd be sort of hard to cram one codebase into another.
He said Sun has had an 0(1) scheduler for years - not that they borrowed Linux's. What he meant was that Sun wrote a scheduler that's in the same league as Linux's 0(1) years ago.
why does sun have so many r&d people but no one figuring out what to sell? this is why sun is doomed, they spend billions of dollars on things like slowaris and spark then just dump them for linux and x86. but who will buy linux and x86 from sun when it's so expensive and you can build a machine for less? or buy one from dell
sun needs to get rid of r&d and work on marketing BADLY. at least dumping solaris and spark is a move in the right direction so I am glad someone there has some sence
WHY SHOULD THEY DUMP SOLARIS FOR LINUX???
Sun isn't after the commodity market, they're leaving that to companies like Dell and Red Hat
A refresh of Sparc may be in order if they find themselves unable to keep up on the Hardware scene. However, Solaris is an EXTREMELY competitive operating system, and still holds numerous advantages over Linux. In fact, there was so much outcry over initial decisions to dump the x86 version of Solaris that Sun was forced to bring it back, and even released some x86 hardware of their own for it.
Solaris and Sun are not going away anytime soon.
Quote:
"at least dumping solaris and spark is a move in the right direction so I am glad someone there has some sence"
Are you kidding? I love linux and use it at home, but x86 hardware isn't even comparable with what you can buy from SUN or HP, SGI & IBM for that matter. Linux is Great, and I love it but please. If you've ever worked with Sun (I don't know if you have) hardware, you would be amazed with it. No it's not the best desktop, but we use it on MISION CRITICAL enviroments.
SGI has recently released a SGI Altix 3000 series w/ true scaling 64-processor's for Linux (the first of it's kind). But SUN is tried and true. I don't see them going away anytime soon.
rowel is clearly a tool. do not feed the monkey by replying.. he has a strict diet of BS in which he thrives.
That's what I call an interesting interview. I am quite happy that Sun still has some of the smartest people in the I.T. field working for them.
Also Andy Tucker is pretty much open-minded about Linux, which is great.
I don't think Sun is borrowing as much from linux as linux is from solaris.
The o(1) scheduler and per cpu run queues have existed in solaris for many years. Andy tucker said it in the interview and it is also public knowledge read Solaris internals by Jim Mauro and Richard McDougall.
The kernel slab allocator in linux is also borrowed from Solaris read the comment in slab.c. It is borrowed from Unix internals by Uresh Vahllia who describes the Solaris allocator in his book and it also credits Jeff Bonwick's paper presented at USENIX in 1994 Jeff Bonwick is also a Distinguished Engineer at Sun.
The 1:1 thread library is the one Andy is describing as the second thread library in Solaris 8 and the default in Solaris 9. The 1:1 library is in development for linux 2.6 kernel.
The O(1) scheduler and the 1:1 thread library are being touted very much by the linux community but Sun just does things quitely.
I've always thought Solaris to be the most roubst UNIX out there.
What a great interview. You can easily tell Andy Tucker is educated and enlightened. It's one thing to Wizard(highest order of coding or a coding genius), it's another to be well mannered and cultured. I really enjoined his objective views on operating systems in general. I learned a thing or two. This a welcome relief from the Free BSD interview posted days ago. *rolleye*
Regards,
Mystilleef
Lately I have been wondering about HP-UX and the direction that HP is taking with it - it seems like HP is not serious about HP-UX being a desktop workstation or even a mid-sized server. HP dropped GNOME and the tools available through official channels are pretty bad (this does not include the Porting Archives, which are not officially supported).
It is nice that Sun is providing an alternative Unix workstation. I love Linux, but commercial Unix is still more scalable and more reliable - at least for now.
What a classic guy! Nice interview. I think Sun should continue developing Solaris on Sparc for specialised high end computing, but I don't think Solaris on Intel makes much sense. Are they going to make money on the OS? Or selling Intel hardware? Its much better for them to use Linux on on Intel, but beyond that, Sun needs to do something huge and radical to remain in the long-term business. I don't know what they could possibly do on the hardware end, Intel is already set to win that battle. But they are a great software engineering firm, so maybe they could plan something along those lines. Too bad they don't make money from java.
i liked it a lot, Slaris = high end, linux = cheap low end that's the way I see it anyway.
Nice interview.
But looking at the screenshots makes me remember why I'm running Mac OS X. BTW, too bad they dropped all their work on the NEO (OpenStep based) desktop environment and object-oriented kit... Now they seem stuck in the late 80's, GUI wise.
Gnome 2 for Solaris 9 is available as a download package. Solaris 10 will switch to Gnome completely, Sun has said.
> Now they seem stuck in the late 80's, GUI wise.
i remember reading that Solaris 10 will be the default desktop. i'm not saying that it will be better than OS X tho 
I like this guys attitude. Was polite and gave credit to Linux and its achievments. It would be nice if all the Linux zealots took note.
I'd think about picking up a SPARC processor, if the next versions of Linux ran on it without a hitch. I want kernel 2.6!
Also, it is true that current platforms have evolved by taking on object oriented features such as micro kernels and a layered design. The C language can take on object based functionality (classes) and some object oriented functionality (inheritance). What I don't like about current platforms though is that they are inflexible. I want no more than one, two, or three developers to be able to write their own platform, or work with distributed objects and quickly assemble a platform from those distributed components. I think that comilers with A.I. the ability of write code, and analyse architecture, recognize architectural designs and patterns, the ability to reconstruct patterns out of binary digits, those are the tools that humans need in order to be able to take on such large development projects as individuals. We need architecture readers and than through understanding design, the human can guide those machines to create new code, and maybe to collaborate with other machines.
RE: linux_baby (IP: ---.library.utoronto.ca)
Read The Friendly F*cking Site ( http://www.sun.com )
One doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to see that the majority of the efforts appeart to be directed towards getting the SUN One Software stack online. That is where the money is made. Money isn't made selling something as boring and rudamentry as an operating system.
RE: Chris Parker (IP: ---.mpan.com)
Are you surprised about HP ignoring HP-UX? I've said it again and again, HP like Compaq and Dell are just Microsoft sycophants that simply mass produce Intel servers running Windows for the unwashed masses. Just look at the intellectual property Compaq squandered when they bought Digital and Tandem. Look at the lack of any innovation on the part of HP in terms of their software line up.
RE: Anonymous (IP: ---.cg.shawcable.net)
What is wrong with Solaris on UltraSparc and no, Swolaris is nothing more than troll bait.
... that put real effort into the whole med-upper range of the computing market... Sol9 on US3 is beautiful, but alas out of the price range of most of us, but then again Sun isn't a commodity PC seller...
Sun is the Apple of the high-end market...
That was one of the best interviews I've read in a while. Also, Andy seems like a real great guy, a credit to Sun for sure.
Great interview, well thought out and balanced. This guy knows his stuff! On a side note, those screenshots remind me of just how ugly CDE is :-)
It seems as if everyone is just jumping on to the Linux bandwagon. I for one would love to see Solaris developed on x86-64, Power4, and Itanium 2. If they could accomplish that then a company could roll out any hardware and have the same OS interoperate throughout. I know Linux is getting close to this and NetBSD can pretty much already do this, but I would like to have the choice. I am very fond of Solaris and I think it is currently the best OS out there. I just wish sun would seperate the hardware from the software. I can't forsee the engineers suddenly deciding to stop making a SPARC version! Other OSs run on the SPARC as is, so they shouldn't worry about the adoption of the SPARC, it seems to me that it would survive on its own merits (or lack thereof)
Just a thought...
If Sun or Microsoft was smart, than they would join IBM and support Linux. Incorporate any good features of Solaris into Linux and help Linux run on Ultra Sparc. They would make a fortune.
I guess you haven't seen Tru64 yet ;-) the ugliness is almost unbearable.
When I was at Sun in the 90's a PowerPC version of
Solaris actually got into Beta around the 2.5 days.
It would have been interesting to see Solaris get
out on other platforms.
They should combine Solaris and Linux and than make a ton of money and do it now before it's too late, because Linux will bury Solaris.
that trolls and broadband go together like fanboys and PC's?
OK, I can't help but say this. I am very tired of all of Linux sycophants preaching about how Linux ownz and rulz all other Operating Systems cuz its "Open Source"... or its the one true OS. It is like a religious statement, they have so much of their self-esteem tied to their OS it is beyond pathetic.
I like Operating Systems for their own merits, not because every magazine and "guru" I know spouts of about its perfection. I love the fact that BSD is developing their KSEs and fine-locking on their threads, I like the fact that we have Linux developers concerened about I/O scheduling. But the point is Solaris has very few flaws and a great deal of Merit. I don't want to see all of these UNIX branches come back into a single entity. It would totally thwart the idea of many advances occuring in parallel, we would be stuck with one source branch and we would have no choice over what we want to use. Choice and competition in technology is ALWAYS a good thing.
<The following is supposed to be a joke>
If linux had every had Windows success it would have exterminated all other OS-s just because of its unparalleled users zealotry
This was a nice and interesting article.
Not that I actually use Solaris, I do not have a Sparc or a x86 which is supported... but the article was nice.
I read this, don't think much of it, and then realize I raced bicycles with this guy at Stanford. Hehe... cool. He's a good guy.
Try it - Solaris/x86 is waycool. Just wish it were qual'd on more boxes. And had better RAID support.
But let's face it - Linux == RedHat. And their new pricing sucks (as does their quality, but they always seem to sidestep that by saying "it's a community product." - if it's a community product, please send me my checks for fixing the freakin' bugs).
At the end of the day, HP/UX is dead, and we're moving to Solaris. I'm a happy campah...
Great article. Enjoyed reading it.
I've been using Solaris since the bad old days when it was really flakey. Now, I like it as a solid platform to get real mission critical work done, but I have two small whinges:
1) It seems to be accumulating too much crap. I know I should install the minimum system and add packages I need, but when time is short, I don't.
2) When something is added to Solaris (apart from features designed for workstations) can somebody in Sun please make sure that it is easy to administer through the serial port connected by some method to a terminal of unknown type.
I don't know how much Sun hardware sold as workstations vs. as servers but I would think that the future of Solaris is much surer in the server market.
I not suggesting the Sun abandon Solaris workstation customers (I use one myself) but the change of emphasis would be appreciated. I'm cheerfully willing to be shouted down over this, but what do you people think?