Sun is keener than ever to port Linux to its new multicore T1 chip, even if it’s not expected to happen for six to nine months. The company has made T1 servers available to Linux developers and is working with unnamed Linux distributors to develop the port. And while a port may be completed this year, it will be a while before Linux on T1 appears in production environments; application certification and support will be needed as well.
Ideally this won’t be a surprise to anyone. They don’t want something as silly as Linux not being ported to the hardware to keep somebody from buying the machines.
Well, I wouldn’t call Linux “silly” – but you have to bear in mind the target audience – web servers.
The vast majority of web servers out there are running Linux or FreeBSD (check netcraft for the actual data) – so it makes sense to port it!
Hopefully the non-commercial OS’s will also follow so that costs will remain low (that’s what Sun wants) – not many people really want to pay more for a web-server just because it’s running Red Hat or Windows 2003.
Well, I wouldn’t call Linux “silly” – but you have to bear in mind the target audience – web servers.
I suggest you re-read the post. He wasn’t calling Linux silly.
If GCC already compiles to Sparc and Linux has already been ported to Sparc why is there an issue?I could see hacking Linux to support some new features or to include a new driver but it doesn’t sound like there is any fundamental work that needs to be done for this.
It might not be all that simple to get maximum performance out of a T1, here are some documents from Sun that illustrate what they are doing:
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/1205/819-5144.pdf
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/cc/articles/options.html
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/d?entry=compiling_for_ultrasparc_t…
The UltraSPARC T1 (sun4v) machines run a hypervisor, while previous SPARCs (sun4u) didn’t, so kernel changes are needed. And in general, each new generation of a processor can benefit from some kernel tweaks.
Linux is a terrible OS compared to Solaris just about any way you slice it. I also highly doubt that the Linux kernel developers would be willing to make the rather major changes needed to the kernel to make it run well on the T1. I suspect that the kernel will boot on the T1, but the port will likely suck, just like the existing sparc64 port does.
Linux is a terrible OS compared to Solaris just about any way you slice it.
It’s free. Yes, I know, that’s probably not very important to people who buy a T1. But it’s definitely one way to slice “it.” So don’t go around saying that Solaris is 100 times better in every possible way.
It’s free. Yes, I know, that’s probably not very important to people who buy a T1. But it’s definitely one way to slice “it.” So don’t go around saying that Solaris is 100 times better in every possible way.
So is Solaris! and your point was…..?
Ouch. Got me. Try this one then. Linux has better (free) support than Solaris does. Much more subjective, though, and might not be true on a T1. But my main point was that not all people feel that Solaris is better than Linux in every way. It’s certainly much worse at driver support on x86 machines than linux is.
But my main point was that not all people feel that Solaris is better than Linux in every way. It’s certainly much worse at driver support on x86 machines than linux is.
Unfortunately your point wasn’t too clear. Arguing semantics is no way to win an argument. For example, you claim linux is better than solaris in terms of hardware support. By that rationale some could argue that windows trumps linux in terms of hardware support. But in the end t the discussion in terms of semantic nitpicking is meaningless.
People have reasons for making choices in Oses. No one OS meets every need and thus a market exists for a variety of OSes. Sun wants to encourage that many choices exist on thier platforms. The same reason IBM and HP support Solaris 10 on thier boxes. Customers like choices and if OS support means they will buy more hardware and support from your company, so be it. That is the fundamental logic behind these kinds of announcements.
I am not agreeing with the OP. I was merely point out that arguing semantics doesn’t make for a productive argument. That’s all.
It’s free. Yes, I know, that’s probably not very important to people who buy a T1. But it’s definitely one way to slice “it.” So don’t go around saying that Solaris is 100 times better in every possible way.
So is Solaris! and your point was…..?
Well, if they are both free then they are equally good in that aspect, cost. In which case Solaris can’t be 100 times better in every possible way since, as pointed out, there is at least 1 way in which Linux is equally as good.
Solaris is free and open source too now. So those arguments are pretty moot.
Here’s an example of major work that’s needed to support the T1. The T1’s cores have very small TLBs (64 entries each). As a comparison, the USIII’s TLB has 512 entries (well, one of its TLBs, anyway). With so few TLB slots, TLB misses will becomes a serious problem. Sun addressed this by adding support for automatic large pages to Solaris. Any memory request that can be fulfilled with a large page, gets a large page, basically. This was a non-trivial amount of work, and was necessary to keep performance acceptable on the T1.
Linux has very limited support for large pages. The last time I looked, it only supported them for System V Shared Memory, and then only if you used Linux-specific flags to shmget(). You also had to reserve a set amount of RAM for large pages as a boot-time argument.
Solaris on the other hand, supports large pages for the heap, stack, shared memory, executable text and kernel memory. And it supports it automatically and transparently.
> Linux is a terrible OS compared to Solaris just
> about any way you slice it.
Drop the crack pipe and step away from the computer. This is further proof that OSNews is being astroturfed by Sun, in my view.
You let us know when Solaris runs on over dozens of architectures and supports anywhere near the amount of functionality that Linux does. Or performs as well, for that matter.
Get real! And what functionality is that? The performance you are talking about is based on what? So Linux runs on a multitude of architectures, so what? How does that make it better than Solaris?
Linux may boot on “dozens” of architectures, but it only supports a handful well: x86, ppc, s390. The latter two (and esp. s390) are due to large help from IBM. It’s sparc32 port is basically unmaintained and full of bugs. It’s sparc64 port is lacking support for a large amount of hardware and has shoddy support for USIII and later chips (hell, just getting Debian booted on my V240 takes too much work b/c Silo is broken on 64-bit processors).
If you’re running on SPARC, you want to be running Solaris. End of story.
This is further proof that OSNews is being astroturfed by Sun, in my view.
Yes, and your view is wrong. A lack of arguments on your end is no reason to bring OSNews.com into discredit. Please stop uttering nonsense.
Edited 2006-01-30 20:40
Yes, and your view is wrong. A lack of arguments on your end is no reason to bring OSNews.com into discredit. Please stop uttering nonsense.
Why are you even taking sides? How do you know whether or not Sun is astroturfing on OSNews? His comment does not discredit OSNews in any way. It only discredits some of the commenters. I think you are getting a little defensive for no reason at all. Why is that? One can only wonder.
Actually, normally I don’t agree with Thom, but I do this time. Shaman has been going out of his way for quite some time to insult Sun, this is just another manifestation of that. If you look at his early comments on OSnews, they are generally just flat out insults/attacks directed at anybody who says anything positive about Sun.
Lately, it has changed into something along the lines of: Sun is astroturfing and OSnews allows it to happen, in fact wants it to happen and encourages it.
It’s one thing to question people’s opinions, or make rebuttles. It’s another to write libel, make accusations, and provide absolutely no proof beyond “this old website solariscentral doesn’t have many people posting in forums therefore OSnews is being astroturfed by Sun because there are lots of positive comments about Sun”. Go look at his previous posts, before you start shaking sticks at Thom.
His comments are purposefully inflamitory, and have been, regarding ANYTHING to do with Sun, for as long as I can remember. He starts flame fests, he derails conversations, and in general wastes a lot of people’s time. Why he hasn’t been banned for it, I have no idea.
He can have his beliefs about Sun and astroturfing, it’s his opinion and he’s entitled to it. He is really NOT in a position to accuse OSnews of being in some kind of alliance with the big bad evil Sun. He’s not bringing any proof to the table worth a salt, and that’s when he actually tries to substanciate his claims (rare). About the only thing he’s doing is writing libel about OSnews, considering his past comment history it’s quite clear. It would probably even hold up in court, due to the obvious display of malice.
So this time, (check my comment history – it’s not often) I agree with Thom, and I disagree with you. Thom had every right to defend OSnews, because as far as I’m concerned, Shaman was attacking it directly, and HAS been. How else do you interpret claims that OSnews is in cahoots with Sun and their evil astroturfing? Back it up with some facts, and it’s not libel. Make claims with malice that have no factual basis, and it is libel. Go ask a lawyer. Defending yourself/your employeer/your site from libel is perfectly justified and warrented. Otherwise you might as well say “the libel isn’t libel, it’s true!”
Cheers
[Edit: fixed some spelling issues, there are probably more but I’m tired]
Edited 2006-01-31 00:14
Yes, and your view is wrong
With a comment like that by Thom and absolutely no way to prove/disprove it I cannot possbiley agree with him. No where in Shaman’s post did he allude to an alliance between SUN and OSNews. Astroturfing does not require the consent of OSNews, and in fact is most likely frowned upon.
Shaman’s views are an opinion, an opinion that is shared by others on OSNews. I don’t beleive I am as outspoken as Shaman but it is obvious that I have similar feelings. There is an over-abundace of commenters that think Solaris and by extension, SUN, is the greatest thing since sliced bread and if you challenge that thought you are shouted down. Linux is demonized on OSNews and SUN supporters seem to be leading the charge against it. I guess it just seems a bit odd that you don’t see nearly as many supporters of other UNIXs on OSNews as compared to Solaris.
Edited 2006-01-31 04:35
I like Solaris and don’t really think anyone is doing anything wrong – Solaris just has some very outspoken fans here. They’re a lot like the people always posting about how great Ubuntu and Gentoo are. They have their opinions and want to convert everyone else. At least they’re better than the Apple/KDE/GNOME fans – they aren’t modding down people they disagree with, only trying to outshout them.
Shaman’s views are an opinion, an opinion that is shared by others on OSNews. I don’t beleive I am as outspoken as Shaman but it is obvious that I have similar feelings. There is an over-abundace of commenters that think Solaris and by extension, SUN, is the greatest thing since sliced bread and if you challenge that thought you are shouted down. Linux is demonized on OSNews and SUN supporters seem to be leading the charge against it. I guess it just seems a bit odd that you don’t see nearly as many supporters of other UNIXs on OSNews as compared to Solaris.
This is different than the comenters who oversell linux, how? May be you haven’t been surfing osnews long enough. But before Solaris 10 and Sun’s turn around, linux zealots would invade and take over every Sun related article, name calling schwartz and sounding the death knell for Sun. They would constantly point out that linux lead or was the reason for Sun’s demise.
Now that Solaris 10 has a lot of mindshare and Sun has takes quite a few steps in the right direction the linux zealots have quietened down considerably, barring shaman and a few. So now that the noise has died down the vocal minority sounds louder than ever on OSnews.
I wouldn’t read too much into Shaman’s conspiracy theory. There is no code that binds OSnews to some standard of impartiality that they need to silence legitimate commenters. OSnews has setup a moderation system for precisely that reason. Let the users speak and moderate the forums. I don’t see anything wrong.
May be you haven’t been surfing osnews long enough.
I think it is the other way around. I’ve been on OSNews for years. Thom and Eugenia both have an anti-linux bias and always have. In the beginning there wasn’t as much Solaris information on OSNews at all. There was mostly Windows zealots railing on Linux. Then all the sudden there seemed to be a flood of SUN commenters that took over the Linux bashing. If you weren’t around before the flood of Solaris news/commenters then you haven’t been here nearly as long as I have.
No I have been on OSnews for a long time. Don’t make linux look like a victim here. That is far from the truth.
Linux commenters bash Sun and Apple. Windows commenters bash Linux and Apple. Sun commenters bash linux pedalling trolls on Sun realated articles. Show me where Sun commenters have purposefully trolled linux articles and posted flames.
Show me where Sun commenters have purposefully trolled linux articles and posted flames.
Check this very thread for instance.
The title and Logo of the article is ” Sun wants linux on a T1″
The subject of the article is Sun and the OS that they want to run on thier product. I fail to see where this is a linux article.
If the article was titled “Linux now supports Sun’s T1” that would be a different story.
Oh I guess it’s ok for the SUN commenters to bash the hell out of Linux then. If anything it is about both SUN and Linux. This is not a SUN only article, so that makes it a Linux article. I guess you didn’t notice that the title is “Sun Wants Linux on a T1″. As far as the logo is concerned OSNews doesn’t have a real strict policy on which logo goes in the little box next to the article. I’ve seen the new FreeBSD logo all over articles that do not concern FreeBSD in the slightest.
No I have been on OSnews for a long time.
How long is that? I was a regular poster well before the SCO lawsuit which was almost three years ago. Not that this is some kind of pissing contest but if you haven’t been here that long you have no idea what I’m talking about. In fact when IP addresses were shown there were a lot coming from SUN. I never once saw one from HP or IBM or even Microsoft.
Don’t make linux look like a victim here. That is far from the truth.
I’m not making Linux look like a victim. How can an operating system be a victim anyway? If you want me to dig up every little story where SUN commenters bashed Linux it isn’t going to happen. It’s not like I bookmark the stories and keep track of them. I know from experience and anyone who has been here long enough knows it is true.
I know that I’m probably not going to be held in high regard by some people for making these kind of comments but I don’t really care. Although I haven’t been very vocal about it in the past but I have noticed it. I have nothing against SUN other than their PR. I’m just tired of all the pro-Solaris bias and the consistent bashing of Linux by SUN supporters on this forum. I’m only standing up and speaking loudly now because once again someone is being shouted down for their views on Linux as compared to Solaris.
Technically, if Sun was astroturfing OSNews, that would bring NO discredit to this fine web site. By its very nature, astroturfing is NOT the responsibility of the medium, only of the party misusing that medium for PR or Marketing purposes.
While I won’t find this rather defensive response on your part as suspicious as others, I do agree that it’s uncalled for, and unprofessionnal. Please stop turning this site into a blog, or you’ll lose readers.
That said, I disagree with those who say that Sun is astroturfing. Astroturfing implies hiding the identity of your employer (for obvious reasons), and Sun employees have been very open about posting on this website. At least, they were back when the web site published the IP adresses of people who posted (even those who had a username) because there was no point in hiding it. BTW, I do think that OSNews should reinstate this policy, but this is off-topic…
Personally, I find it strange that Sun seems to give Linux more credit than most Sun enthusiasts here. Hey, there must be something good with Linux if Sun is spending so much time and money to port it to the T1 chip…
Edited 2006-01-31 02:55
I refer everybody to his comment history yet again. Can we please do something about this guy? He attempts to derail every thread related to Sun at all costs. He talks trash about OSnews constantly. Half the time, he doesn’t even make sense. Yet he keeps coming back for more and more. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s an automated Sun-bashing AI written by the EVIL EMPIRE, running on a win2003 server hence the intermittant responses (for reboots).
>Solaris on the other hand, supports large pages for
>the heap, stack, shared memory, executable text and
>kernel memory. And it supports it automatically and
>transparently.
FYI, that’s a fairly recent (S9/10 maybe?) addition to Solaris. I’ve had to set my shared memory up in the past to run CDE apps and GTK apps over Solaris.
I haven’t looked into the aspect you are discussing re: Linux but it likely is a relatively small problem. I have never had to set the SHM size for Linux at bootup and I’ve been using it for many years (whereas with Solaris I did).
Re: features in the kernel… where to start? Let’s just list a few minor ones – user-space file systems, support for many partitions from other operating systems, CIFS support at the kernel level, NTFS read/write, hundreds of drivers (particularly of interest, laptop drivers) not supported in Solaris, relatively full ACPI support, PowerPC support, Alpha support, VIA CPU support, amateur radio support, infrared controls, Netfilter support, ethernet bridging, IPX, live video support.
These are just kernel (linux) options that as far as I am aware are not in a basic Solaris installation.
And most of that is desktop features which I can care less about. How about fine grained Resource Controls and Containers. In other words features that are important to administrators! the last time I looked, Linux only supported processor sets, which is a far cry from Solaris’ controls.
You misunderstood my comment. I didn’t say that you had to set SHM values at bootup on Linux. You have to reserve large pages as a boot value on Linux (it’s the hugepages option).
As for your list, most of that is largely irrelevant in an enterprise space. Why would I want filesystems in userspace? It would just be slow and have poor integration with the VFS layer (see, for example, the arla userspace AFS client). Why would I want CIFS in the kernel? Etc. Ethernet bridging is coming to Solaris (there’s a project on the OpenSolaris networking community that’s already posted an early driver). Likewise, Sun is working with Intel on ACPI support (check out a current Solaris Express build).
Why would I want filesystems in userspace?
For the same reason people want to put everything into userspace (microkernel).
Bzzzt!
“Why would I want filesystems in userspace?”
vs.
“Why would I want CIFS in the kernel?”
So where do you want it? In the kernel or out of the kernel?
.
Again, crack is bad for your.
Look in any Linux commit and you will find many SPARC commits. silo is not part of Linux, it’s a boot loader. Not that Linux is perfect on SPARC… after all, Sun hasn’t exactly fallen all over themselves making Linux run well with all their hardware.
But Solaris doesn’t run at ALL on PowerPC. So let’s call a spade a shovel here.
But Solaris doesn’t run at ALL on PowerPC. So let’s call a spade a shovel here.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=13222
Remember that Solaris != OpenSolaris.
Not yet, at least.
> I refer everybody to his comment history yet again.
Please do. Anyone with a little sense will question why this is just about the only site on the planet, including most (maybe all) dedicated Sun/Solaris sites, that has as many positive/evangelistic Sun posts as this one.
The resource controls and containers you are talking about have been bandied about to death. Yes similar functionality exists for Linux (either in patchsets or in the kernel) but there is no direct parity there – or in most operating systems for that matter.
As for the list I provided being irrelevant, that’s probably the funniest comment I’ve seen in years!!! Congratulations! No, really. “I don’t want features, why would anyone want features?! Nobody would ever want pluggable file systems, at least until Solaris “invents” the concept, then it will rule! But hey have you hear of Containers and DTrace? Oh yeah, and ACPI is coming some day soon for Solaris…eat that, Linux!!!”
Please. I mean really.
Again, you are (deliberately?) misinterpreting my post. I never said people don’t want features. But I don’t want a bunch of half-completely, buggy features of little use to enterprise deployments. I don’t care if Linux runs on a PowerMac or on an Alpha. I don’t care if Linux supports AX.25. I don’t want slow, poorly integrated userspace filesystems. I don’t want read-only NTFS support. I have absolutely zero use for those on a server. Your arguments are a straw man.
Again, you are (deliberately?) misinterpreting my post. I never said people don’t want features. But I don’t want a bunch of half-completely, buggy features of little use to enterprise deployments. I don’t care if Linux runs on a PowerMac or on an Alpha. I don’t care if Linux supports AX.25. I don’t want slow, poorly integrated userspace filesystems. I don’t want read-only NTFS support. I have absolutely zero use for those on a server. Your arguments are a straw man.
So I guess if you don’t want it then no one does. Linux can be used for things other than servers, and so can Solaris. On the desktop front though, Linux wipes the floor with Solaris.
If I am running a server what does amateur radio give me, absolutely nothing! Does half of the “features” you specified help me with anything I would likely run on Solaris (regardless of platfom) as a server? NO! The T1 is a server so what would I care about ACPI support for a SPARC? If you are going to compare features, at least pick ones that are remotely relevant.
Solaris is definitely not superior to Linux in EVERY aspect. The userland, for example is relatively dated.
A more prominent aspect is that Linux is more broadly supported by hardware vendors that Solaris is. I’m not talking HCL here, but about paid support. If you want to run Solaris, you’ll end up buying a machine from Sun or IBM. With Linux, you just have much more choice. You can go to Sun, IBM AND to many other vendors for certified hardware.
But yes, you are right. Solaris IS in many cases technically superior to Linux (esp more complex and/or larger environments, for a small and simple server almost every OS will suffice).
But mind you, I am talking about server environments here. Linux still beats the crap out of Solaris in the Desktop/laptop/embedded arena. I also have to mention that Solaris is gaining ground here, thanks to more awareness and an improving HCL.
I see the userspace argument a lot, and I don’t understand it. Often, it’s because Solaris tools lack certain flags found in their GNU counterparts. But in Solaris 10, tools like ls, du and df support the “-h” flag.
Have you looked at Solaris’ p-tools (pgrep, pstat, pstack, pmap, pfiles, etc). They’re really useful, far most so than their Linux counterparts (for example, I don’t believe Linux pmap tells you if memory is allocated on large pages). And Solaris’ debuggers, mdb and dbx, are so far ahead of gdb that it’s not even funny.
Solaris is definitely not superior to Linux in EVERY aspect. The userland, for example is relatively dated.
The userland in Solaris is not “dated”. It is UNIX certified. Additionally, almost all the GNU userland tools most people would expect are available in very recent versions.
A more prominent aspect is that Linux is more broadly supported by hardware vendors that Solaris is. I’m not talking HCL here, but about paid support. If you want to run Solaris, you’ll end up buying a machine from Sun or IBM. With Linux, you just have much more choice. You can go to Sun, IBM AND to many other vendors for certified hardware.
That doesn’t even begin to be true. You can run Solaris on more than just a few systems. You may not have *as much* choice in hardware with Solaris but it’s nowhere near the miniscule amount you imply it is.
> But yes, you are right. Solaris IS in many cases
> technically superior to Linux (esp more complex
> and/or larger environments, for a small and simple
> server almost every OS will suffice).
Thing is, it’s not black and white. There are many shades of grey here. Many companies will have no need or interest in Containers/Xen/User-Mode Kernels/chroots while others will consider it mandatory. Solaris is not always the best choice and it’s far from technically superior in every way (it’s demonstrably technically inferior in many ways, too).
That’s why I’m always posting in Solaris threads. There seems to be a VERY vocal and VERY motivated group of people here proclaiming Solaris to be the end-all and be-all of operating systems forever amen, which is not only grating but highly suspect given the general attitude towards Sun and Solaris out there in the wild.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here doing a bootstrap on GCC 4.1 snapshot 0127 on Solaris 9 to test and send results to the GCC group since I have a vertical app which needs both. But please, disregard that, as you can see, I am a complete novice with respect to the subject at hand…
Kernel version: SunOS 5.9 Generic 118558-21 Dec 2005
gcc version 4.1.0 20060127 (prerelease)
“Solaris is not always the best choice and it’s far from technically superior in every way (it’s demonstrably technically inferior in many ways, too). ”
Such as?
> But I don’t want a bunch of half-completely, buggy
> features of little use to enterprise deployments
Damn, you’re entertaining, at least! It’s not Solaris, so it’s buggy and of little use… in your little world…
Really. You’re embarrassing yourself here. Surely you know that you’re embarrassing yourself?
re: programming for Solaris… I don’t suppose you know that those tools are dedicated strictly for one operating system with one vendor… how do you figure mdb would work on a PowerPC running NetBSD? Heaven forbid you actually list why they are better than tools available on Linux, either… I’m guessing it’s because you haven’t a clue about what’s available on Linux, but that’s just my personal hypothesis.
> Such as?
Support for user-mode pluggable file systems.
Overall performance and scalability tests have generally been in favour of Linux. But forget that. Post up some more entertaining B.S. about how Solaris was handed down from God’s hands to yours so that we can all have some more laughs.
Edited 2006-01-30 21:37
point #1 – could you please learn to reply to the correct comment? It’s rather irritating that you keep breaking comment threads.
point #2 – what are you even talking about?! When did I even imply that Solaris ptools or debuggers would work on anything other that Solaris?! In fact, that was my entire point! The Solaris tools are better. The Solaris tools only run on Solaris. Ergo, you should run Solaris. How you interpreted that as “mdb will run on NetBSD/ppc” is utterly beyond me.
Could you actually learn to read before you keep posting?
What scalability and performance tests are you referring to? (I await a link to a MySQL “benchmark” or some meaningless microbenchmark about how many times a second you can call accept() on a socket….).
> How you interpreted that as “mdb will run on
> NetBSD/ppc” is utterly beyond me.
What you really mean to say is that you cannot see cross-platform support as a feature and so therefore you try to minimize the issue that Solaris runs solely on Intel and SPARC architectures.
That means that if wanted to standardize on one OS for the entire enterprise with good support for the legacy OS issues that you will have to deal with during the transition, you won’t be able to choose Solaris. The TCO savings you could realize could well be worth it. You can’t do that with Solaris. I’d call that a killer feature of cross-platform tools like GDB, but your limited view of the world appears not to allow for that.
> The Solaris tools are better.
Debatable. But I can’t use them on anything but Solaris. For me, that makes them unusable.
> could you please learn to reply to the correct
> comment?
Could you please learn to comment on multiple posts so that we don’t have to wade through several of your posts in a row?
You, my friend, have a severe case of tunnel-vision.
And Linux only (effectively) runs on a handful of architectures as well. You’ve failed to make a point. I can run Solaris on Sparc, Xeon and Opteron. I can run Linux on Xeon, Opteron, PowerPC/POWER and S390. That’s hardly a win.
But you’ve totally failed to address any point I’ve made in this entire thread. Linux’s SPARC support is piss-poor. I see absolutely no reason to believe it will improve in the future. Linux may boot on the T1, but it will suck so badly that no one would want to use it for serious work (which basically describes the status of Linux on SPARC for the past several years). If you have something to contribute to this discussion please do so. I have on interest in continuing a pointless flamewar with a troll.
> If I am running a server what does amateur radio
> give me, absolutely nothing!
What if you wanted to run a server over amateur radio? Boy would you have egg on your face after installing Solaris!!
Tunnel vision.
> Does half of the “features” you specified help me
> with anything I would likely run on Solaris
> (regardless of platfom) as a server? NO!
Well, then, we should all stop using other operating systems, since clearly the entire world revolves around your tiny subset of computing applications.
Regarding the T1, interesting chip. Lots of possibilities! And best of all, the rest of the chip market will respond… competition in the hardware industry is grand.
Sorry for breaking the thread, again. There seems to be a bug in the konqueror/osnews combo (fixed in SVN, afaik). Well, I don’t have any objective figures to proove anything. It just ‘feels’ that way. And no, that is not because it’s different from their GNU counterparts. I’ve also used FreeBSD quite a lot, and I felt almost immediately at home. But the userlands things was just an afterthought. My other arguments were much more important.
Edited 2006-01-30 22:06
>I can run Linux on Xeon, Opteron, PowerPC/POWER and
>S390. That’s hardly a win.
You’re killing me. My sides!!! HAHAHAHA!!!
Let me check my Linksys router for a sec. Yep! Still running Linux. Wow, so is my VOIP phone system, wish I knew what hardware was in that.
Please. I mean, PLEASE. Stop before you hurt yourself.
> But you’ve totally failed to address any point I’ve > made in this entire thread.
You’re new to this whole Intarweb thing, aren’t you? C’mon, fess up, you just got your shiny new Solaris box after years of using a VMS dumb terminal, right?
> Linux’s SPARC support is piss-poor.
Linux orion 2.6.15.1 #1 Mon Jan 16 10:29:35 EST 2006 sparc64 GNU/Linux
> Linux may boot on the T1, but it will suck so badly
> that no one would want to use it for serious work
Holy #$@%… you can see the future, too! You amaze me. I’m flat-out in awe of your incredible intellect and amazing powers of perception. Really, I am. Seriously. I’m not being sarcastic here. Do you do palm readings? And to think that I thought you were just an ignorant twit.
> If you have something to contribute to this
> discussion please do so.
I could but only aspire to achieve your incredible level of contribution and of mental dexterity to this thread.
Edited 2006-01-30 22:16
fglrx:Ati Drivers for Linux, for high-end graphic cards FireGL series. Solaris have something like that ?
fglrx:Ati Drivers for Linux, for high-end graphic cards FireGL series. Solaris have something like that ?
Yes, though not free:
http://www.xig.com/
If you want free professional drivers complain to ATi. They’ve been very unhelpful in providing drivers or other information for alternative operating systems for their high end cards.
If DRI drivers are good enough, take heart. Plans are in the works to bring DRI support to Solaris.
If you’re an nVidia fan like me (excellent multi-platform driver support!) then there are excellent fully accelerated drivers available.
So OSNews posts every little thing about Sun and their new hardware… and practically no technical articles linked about OSX or Linux (there are a huge number of them every day all over the web)? I’m on probably 15 news sites a day and this site has less OSX, BSD or Linux news than the least of them, yet a double helping of Sun and a steaming side of evangelist Sun worshippers not seen anywhere else.
KDE 3.5.1 has been out in Debian Sid and Ubuntu Hoary (the two I know) since last week, runs on top of several *nixes with no mention. Scribus 1.3.2, one of OSS’ biggest-news apps hasn’t been mentioned at all, and this version is the first to support Windows. Modular X (7.x) is showing up in several distributions in the last week… nothing. PHP 5.1… nothing. gentoolkit hit 0.2.1… (and is available for OSX, BTW) nothing. Major security glitch found in kjs… nothing. Lobby4Linux is a community-led group trying to get a pr/lobby group off the ground… nothing. TinyERP is really becoming polished with latest releases… nothing. Zimbra hit 3.0 beta… nothing. SCALE is coming up Feb. 12… ah, finally I found a news entry for something… oddly enough it is not about SCALE but ODF, hrm. Notification mechanism for USB events added to kernel 2.6.15… nothing. EATA drivers released for most operating systems… nothing. OpenWRT is on its last RC phase… nothing. Secure Shell (ssh) granted standard status…nothing. All that news to the wayside, yet OSNews has three (four if you count the Grid story) Sun stories on the top page right now.
Meaningless, hrm? Maybe. Maybe it’s all just coincidence. It is a non-profit, volunteer site, after all. Right?
Edited 2006-01-31 01:43
Maybe you didn’t see the few months of solid Ubuntu this Ubuntu that when Hoary came out? There was a rash of OSX articles when OSX 10.4 came out, I suppose you missed that too. When Apple pumps out 10.5, you’ll see technical articles on OSX again. There aren’t enough changes in point releases of OSX to require in-depth analysis. They generally release news even for the point updates, though. I don’t know why you are saying there is no OSX news here, you must be blind. Same goes for linux.
http://osnews.com/topic.php?icon=14 <– 32 Apple topics this month so far
http://osnews.com/topic.php?icon=41 <– 8 OSX topics (what has changed in OSX this month? One point release? )
http://osnews.com/topic.php?icon=9 <– 27 Linux topics this month so far, NOT counting the individual announcements, this is just the GENERAL linux category. There are dozens more spread out between all the different distributions
Ok..ok..here it comes….. the HUGE amount of Sun astroturfing articles!!
http://osnews.com/topic.php?icon=7 <– 7!!! OMG!!
Now now Solaris!!!
http://osnews.com/topic.php?icon=72 <– 5!!!!!! ASTROTURFERS!!!
That’s for the past month, since you claim it’s all RECENT activity. Can you please shut your libel spewing trap and let us all get back to productive discussion? You make arguments that make 0 sense, and you only inspire negativity, not thought. Go run your business or something. Whatever you do, quit making accusations and instigating trouble. I’d like to (for once) read a thread about Sun/Solaris/etc without your “delightful” commentary. It seems you’re “reverse astroturfing” Sun, not that Sun is astroturfing here. Unfortunately you make horrid arguments, cannot substanciate anything you say, and in general make a fool of yourself while disrupting everybody else who wants to endeavour in discussion, not flame-fests and off-topic subjects. PLEASE go away.
[Edit: Spelling again, I give up]
Edited 2006-01-31 01:45
Oh, I thought I’d also point out something to you. This is OSnews. Not freshmeat.net. If you want details on every point release of every application in the Linux world, you better head over to freshmeat. I bet your 15 news sites don’t have the release of “Scribus” 1.3.2. Prove it. Hell, show me 15 news sites showing KDE 3.5.1 came out, and that’s a pretty damn big project with a lot of publicity. Don’t show me 15 different versions of freshmeat either, that is a TOTALLY different type of site. How you can claim OSnews is being astroturfed (and allowing it..willingly) by Sun, because OSnews didn’t announce some who-cares-about-it application Scribus’s point release. One of OSS’s biggest news apps, who cares? If you want every little software change in the OSS world, goto a site MEANT for that, freshmeat. OSnews generally doesn’t release any news items about small changes in Solaris’s software either. I didn’t see items for some of the java _0X releases. I didn’t see 2004QX JES changes mentioned here. I certainly don’t see every patch (or any patches) released for Solaris mentioned here. Some of those are pretty major applications, and underwent fairly extensive changes. Go troll elsewhere, please. You’re arguing cats and dogs to apples and oranges, and it makes no sense.
You’re just spewing more and more horse dung, and it’s starting to really smell foul around here.
[Edit: Spelling and making points more clear]
Edited 2006-01-31 01:56
>Maybe you didn’t see the few months of solid Ubuntu this
>Ubuntu that when Hoary came out?
Actually I’m not terribly interested in individual distributions but yes I did. I wouldn’t call them, by and large, technical articles, which is what I referenced. And actually I made a mistake, it’s Dapper that KDE 3.5.1 came out for… oddly enough I just updated and got a second revision of packages. Nice.
> rash of OSX articles when OSX 10.4
Just did a search. A minute of browsing the list and I see an announcement for OSX 10.4.3, but it’s only a technical article in the sense that it lists technical improvements. But OSX is listed many times in relationship to product announcements, I admit.
> 32 Apple topics this month so far
It’s the end of the month. Care to contrast that with Apple-oriented news sites? A number of these are products not strictly on OS X, and a much larger number are about hardware that can run OSX but also runs something else.
> 27 Linux topics this month so far
Again, a number of these articles are VERY loosely Linux articles. Although on the face of it, this seems like a huge number of articles, you are talking about the OS that is getting more attention and coding than most of the others put together, from many disparate companies. The thing runs on Samsung phones, routers, firewalls, phone systems, handheld personal computers, and on pretty much all the hardware of the others including Apple and Sun. Granted some of the articles are good (and somewhat unique), but it just scratches the surface.
Shen I do a search on “Sun” and “Solaris” I come up with a larger number than you did. So let’s see… there are about 300 Linux distributions running on dozens of hardware platforms and Solaris which runs on two (plus a very alpha PowerPC version of OpenSolaris) gets something like 1/2 the articles as compared to Linux. Lest we forget, every ODF article has more in common with Sun and OpenOffice than it does with Linux, too.
Some Sun sites don’t have as much news listed on them. See anything wrong there?
As far as your preachy and worthless rambling about libel goes, the proof is right here in front of you. Linux certainly has more than 20x the market share of Solaris/Sun right now (it sure as hell has over 20x the related news) and yet it has a much larger share of the news here on this site. You don’t agree with me that it’s fishy that there is so much Sun coverage and so many Sun evangelists here, fine. But you see, opinions are like arseholes, because everyone’s got one and everyone thinks the other guy stinks.
Don’t like what I post? Think my opinion stinks? I don’t mind you telling me so, but as far as going away, I’d shoot you cold in the face before I would give up my free speech. You’d better believe it.
Would it help you to know that I think your arguments make 0 sense and your evangelistic, self-righteous attitude inspire negativity in me?!
“Just did a search. A minute of browsing the list and I see an announcement for OSX 10.4.3, but it’s only a technical article in the sense that it lists technical improvements. But OSX is listed many times in relationship to product announcements, I admit.”
There is also a 10.4.4 release announcement in the list I posted.
“It’s the end of the month. Care to contrast that with Apple-oriented news sites? A number of these are products not strictly on OS X, and a much larger number are about hardware that can run OSX but also runs something else.
”
Actually, sure. Go check out macrumors.com and thinksecret.com.
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/
Roughly 60 articles, some of them BARELY related to apple/osx, and most are non-technical.
“but it’s only a technical article in the sense that it lists technical improvements” <– a lot of the sun articles are not technical, what’s your point?
“Shen I do a search on “Sun” and “Solaris” I come up with a larger number than you did. So let’s see… there are about 300 Linux distributions running on dozens of hardware platforms and Solaris which runs on two (plus a very alpha PowerPC version of OpenSolaris) gets something like 1/2 the articles as compared to Linux. Lest we forget, every ODF article has more in common with Sun and OpenOffice than it does with Linux, too. ”
+
“As far as your preachy and worthless rambling about libel goes, the proof is right here in front of you. Linux certainly has more than 20x the market share of Solaris/Sun right now (it sure as hell has over 20x the related news) and yet it has a much larger share of the news here on this site. You don’t agree with me that it’s fishy that there is so much Sun coverage and so many Sun evangelists here, fine. But you see, opinions are like arseholes, because everyone’s got one and everyone thinks the other guy stinks. ”
When I do a search on Linux, then Ubuntu, then Debian, then Xandros, then etc etc etc, I come up with a HUGE amount. Easily 20x more than the sun/solaris posts. Again, you offer false “evidence” to back up your claims.
“Don’t like what I post? Think my opinion stinks? I don’t mind you telling me so, but as far as going away, I’d shoot you cold in the face before I would give up my free speech. You’d better believe it. ”
Nobody is asking you to give up your free speech, and threatening me (or whatever you meant by “I’d shoot you cold in the face”) is not going to solve anything. Free speech is one thing, libel is another. Insulting people, making derogatory comments about a site somebody runs as a hobby, making false/unsubstanciated claims – this is not “protected” by free speech rights. Not to mention, it really makes you out to be an ass.
I’m not self rightous, but I don’t go around accusing OSnews of a bunch of things, especially lacking any factual information. I state my mind, and I back up my claims. I’ve once AGAIN refuted your “evidence” because you contradict yourself, again.
Regardless, this is my last post here, I hope somebody from OSnews hits you with the ban stick the next time you go to far and throw insults. (Probably the next Sun article)
> This is OSnews. Not freshmeat.net. If you want details
> on every point release of every application in the
> Linux world, you better head over to freshmeat.
No, just the ground-breaking ones would be nice. Especially the ones that are making a huge stir in the world of software, like Scribus.
> Prove it.
Nah. I’d rather you work for it.
> Don’t show me 15 different versions of freshmeat
> either, that is a TOTALLY different type of site.
I didn’t even go to Freshmeat to search for those news-worthy articles. Surprise!!
> OSnews didn’t announce some who-cares-about-it
> application Scribus’s point release
There goes the tunnel-vision again. In the print industry, Scribus is opening some eyes very wide. And it just got support for Windows. Big announcement from a very important ground-breaking OSS project. Last Scribus article on OSNews? 2003.
> One of OSS’s biggest news apps, who cares?
Yeah, who cares? This site is all about operating systems… except for all the hardware and applications news. And ODF news. And software licenses. Oh my. Are you as confused as I am? Do I need to say tunnel vision?
> If you want every little software change in the OSS
> world, goto a site MEANT for that, freshmeat.
Now you’re making me laugh again. You really are in a tight loop.
> OSnews generally doesn’t release any news items about
> small changes in Solaris’s software either.
OSNews is reporting on *pre-release* versions of Solaris. Just do a search. You can’t miss’em.
> I certainly don’t see every patch (or any patches)
> released for Solaris mentioned here.
Rambling.
> Go troll elsewhere, please. You’re arguing cats and
> dogs to apples and oranges, and it makes no sense.
Ranting.
From my perspective, you’re the one arguing black is white here. You’ve really turned up the pompousity, though, I wonder when you’ll hit 11 on the dial. If you’re near a webcam, would you be so kind as to film your forehead vein for our enjoyment?
> Insulting people, making derogatory comments
Rich! Truly, this is rich.
I guess you’re not getting the idea here. This is pretty much the only site posting any Sun/Solaris news at all outside the trickle at Slashdot, and yet it has an inordinately large amount of Sun news (like I said, 4 articles on the front page right now with Sun in them) and a group of Sun evangelists completely out of proportion with the other sites, many of them proclaiming to be bigshot, big-iron technical-director pointy-haired types interested only in massively-parallel enterprise computing not seen anywhere else on the Internet except in Scott McNealy’s mailbox, yet none of this seems fishy to you… I get it!
But I don’t agree with you. Too bad, eh Bunky? Hope you don’t lose too much sleep over it.
Edited 2006-01-31 02:40
I guess you’re not getting the idea here. This is pretty much the only site posting any Sun/Solaris news at all outside the trickle at Slashdot, and yet it has an inordinately large amount of Sun news (like I said, 4 articles on the front page right now with Sun in them) and a group of Sun evangelists completely out of proportion with the other sites, many of them proclaiming to be bigshot, big-iron technical-director pointy-haired types interested only in massively-parallel enterprise computing not seen anywhere else on the Internet except in Scott McNealy’s mailbox, yet none of this seems fishy to you… I get it!
Well I guess you also meant to say that linux companies and linux evangelists are astroturfing on slashdot ( news for nerds and stuff that matters).
Or may be the other sites that don’t mention enough Sun articles are being astroturfed by other vendors and Sun’s competitors.
What you have offered is neither proof nor well informed opinion, it is a misguided rant at best.
ormandj you should ignore shaman’s rants as well all have come to learn. The more you feed the trolls the more they grow.
Edited 2006-01-31 03:49
> Technically, if Sun was astroturfing OSNews, that would
> bring NO discredit to this fine web site. By its very
> nature, astroturfing is NOT the responsibility of the
> medium, only of the party misusing that medium for PR
> or Marketing purposes.
True. I think it may be a little of both. Sympathetic ear and all. But I doubt very much that OSNews is the one astroturfing, that wasn’t my point. It flies in the face of what astroturfing is.
But frankly this is a pretty backwater site, compared to something like eWeek, CNews, etc.. I found it more or less by accident. Why a big group of Sun developers here? Why a big group of proclaimed technical-director big-money types (who actually know some deep kernel internals, I should add) that are usually off on three-martini lunches somewhere or dealing with managing their IT-pawns? Does that not seem odd to you?
> Personally, I find it strange that Sun seems to give
> Linux more credit than most Sun enthusiasts here.
I’ve been pondering that myself, too.
You’re pretty lucky that someone doesn’t just moderate all of your comments here down, because they’re
1. Off-topic
2. Flamebait
3. Occasionally mocking or insulting
4. Make unsubstantiated claims about the credibility unidentified parties for supporting Sun or its products
So instead of tempting fate, why don’t you never do any of this paranoid “prove to me why this is so without it being planned” stuff again and write all such hypotheses into a treatise you can link to in your profile.
> Well I guess you also meant to say that linux companies
> and linux evangelists are astroturfing on slashdot (
> news for nerds and stuff that matters).
Comparing /. to anything is counter-productive, IMHO, and especially so in reference to astroturfing, trolling or other tomfoolery. This is a web site where the same article can appear twice on the front page and regularly does, since the /. admins don’t even read /.
Come on you guys… Settle down a bit!
I personnally don’t understand why you’ll get so aggressive. If you like Solaris then you use it. If you like Linux than use Linux. If you find Solaris better than Linux it’s fine. Otherway around? Fine by me too.
I’m reading this site for NEWS, not for some stupid fight about ‘what’s better’. I did that too when I was twelve 🙂
Have all a nice day!
Can we please stop this pointless discussion? I mean, about 4358339854398 times a day we get accused of being pro or anti something. I don’t really get how we can be pro Sun, pro Apple, pro GNOME, pro KDE, anti Apple, anti Windows, pro Windows all at the same time.
So, Shaman, you either quit uttering nonsense and stop spewing false, unsubstantiated lies and apologize, or I’ll have to take more serious measures.
If you think I’m a Sun employee, then fine, go ahead. Want a black helicopter with that?
Tested it with multithreaded Java application – it performed stupendously. And it really did run very cool, expecially compared to the IBM blades.
> So, Shaman, you either quit uttering nonsense and stop
> spewing false, unsubstantiated lies and apologize, or
> I’ll have to take more serious measures.
A) prove it’s utter nonsense
B) prove what I’ve said is false
C) ram it in your keister
D) get a feeping grip, it’s the Internet
Edited 2006-01-31 12:36
A) prove it’s utter nonsense
I don’t think you are familiar with the cnocept of western Justice systems. The one making the accusations must prove them beyond a reasonable doubt. I am not guilty until proven otherwise.
You have obviously failed to do so. Like many other accusators before you (pro KDE, pro Windows, etc. etc.).
D) don’t make me laugh, it’s the Internet
Exactly. OSNews’s part of it. In other words, again, quit uttering nonsense, or I’ll have to take more drastic measures. I asked twice now; neglecting it means you are nothing but yet another troll that needs to be taken care of.
And we will.
Thom,
Kick him, he’s overdue!
…while I agree that Shaman’s posts are overboard, you still miss the point: saying that Sun is astroturfing is NOT an accusation that OSNews is pro-Sun. If a bunch of Sun employees decided to “invest” these comments section to bolster pro-Sun postings, then there’s nothing that OSNews can do, nor should it be held responsible for it (same thing if it were employees from another company).
You may disagree with Shaman, but there’s a moderation system to take care of this. I would have moderated him down for being off-topic, but I have no moderation points left since last weekend. 🙂
Simply banning him for presenting an opinion you disagree with, well, that goes against the basic principles of freedom of expression.
I would hate to see this site go down to the level of a blog, where the editor ban comments that are critical of the site. There’s a moderation system designed to take care of this, let it do its thing…
In under normal circumstances I would agree with you, but I think the OSNews staff has been more than paitient with him and he continues to post comments that are inflammatory, off-topic, and troll despite being warned not to. His last exchange with Thom is an excellent example of why I would ban him. Some people just don’t get it, and while I would not recommend the practice for all users who troll here, Shaman is “special”.
I have wasted mod points trying to mod down the trolls here and gave up, I now mod posts up so people can filter the signal from the noise. If a few more people get on board and read at 2 instead of -1, most of the fluff can easily be ignored.
I think the OSNews staff has been more than paitient with him and he continues to post comments that are inflammatory, off-topic, and troll despite being warned not to. His last exchange with Thom is an excellent example of why I would ban him.
All right, I haven’t read much Sun news so I wasn’t aware of his past posting history (though his score is still above 0).
That said, if such measures are taken against him, we should expect similar measures against anti-Linux trolls, or anti-Windows ones.
I know that dealing with trolls is always difficult on Web sites, but one of the problems is illustrated by these words in your comment: “His last exchange with Thom…” I think there’s a strong case to be made that trolls go away when ignored, and yet here we have an example of a site editor arguing with one.
I think OSNews made it deliberately harder to mod down inflammatory posts (i.e. there’s no “Modded down for flamebait” option) and while that was a good thing in some respects, it’s going to create these kind of problems.
Anyway, Thom is right, this is off-topic so I’ll stop and ask my on-topic question again: why do so many Sun enthusiasts seem like they have a worse opinion of Linux than Sun itself?
If a bunch of Sun employees decided to “invest” these comments section to bolster pro-Sun postings, then there’s nothing that OSNews can do, nor should it be held responsible for it (same thing if it were employees from another company).
Read his comments more carefully. He is saying that OSNews purpusefully posts more Sun news. That is an accusation I do not tolerate from anyone, let alone a no-name like him.
That‘s the problem. Not his silly astroturfing-buzzword crap. In any case, please get back on topic, there is no need for everyone to chime in on how I’m gonna handle him.
Read his comments more carefully. He is saying that OSNews purpusefully posts more Sun news. That is an accusation I do not tolerate from anyone, let alone a no-name like him.
Fair enough, although if you want to remove all postings that are critical of the web site, you’re preparing to fight a losing battle.
That’s the problem. Not his silly astroturfing-buzzword crap.
I understand…however the astroturfing issue itself is not necessarily crap. Now that we no longer know the domain/IP of posters, it is a legitimate concern that Sun employees may be posting here in larger-than-average numbers.
In any case, please get back on topic, there is no need for everyone to chime in on how I’m gonna handle him.
This is my last post on the subject, but the fact that you’re making this a personal thing is, IMO, another indication that you should refrain (as an editor) from participating in the comments section. It makes this site look like a blog and I personally thinks it takes away from its otherwise considerable professionalism.
Man. Talk about self-important arrogance. I could hardly be less impressed.
Have fun with the banning. I have about 40 class Cs that I can use to log in and free e-mail addresses are a dime a dozen. Eventually you will catch on to this whole thing they call the Internet, and stop wasting your time.
How many “class C” is your penis, anyway?