"Google is experimenting with the open-source version of Sun's Solaris operating system as a possible long-term prelude to replacing its massive global network of Linux servers, according to sources. With dozens of data centers worldwide estimated to house hundreds of thousands of Intel servers supporting its flagship search engine, a Google move to OpenSolaris would be another of several recent votes of confidence for the platform."
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Member since:2006-01-03
Yes, just like windows and OSX.
Oh, wait, there is not a terribly big lot of drivers available for OSX, so it is not easy to compare ...
Oh, wait, there is not a terrybly big lot of drivers for Solaris either ... It must be because Solaris has only appeared on the market very recently. However, installation is very, very easy, because they provide a variety of drivers wide enough such that NOBODY is complaining about hardware support.
Oh, wait, I have this boxful of old hardware with shitty old drivers for windows 95 which don't work well with XP. Mmmh, this scanner, this webcam, this graphics card and, this and this network cards, this audio card and this admittedly shitty pressure-sensitive digitizer must definitely all be illusions. Or it is the fact that their drivers are crap and abandoned that is a figment of my imagination.
Edited 2006-09-22 18:52
Member since:
2005-07-06
that Sun would soon have a sackfull of outdated and unmaintained binary drivers with unfixable and untraceable bugs. (e.g. drivers for ATI cards < Radeon 9500 have reached end of road; the last version is final)
Yes, just like Windows and OS X, oh wait, that hasn't happened to the majority of users...
It would also mean Sun'sr hands would be tied if they found they could improve performance and/or add features and/or cure bugs by slightly or not-so-slightly changing the abi. It would make it a lot harder to add in good stuff such as XGL/AIGLX, or FUSE.
Wrong. Read the many discussions from SUN engineers on this on opensolaris.org, like others, they realise that there are still ways to innovate. It's also still possible to have new driver APIs, just like they're doing now.
Finally, it would also mean it would come with no drivers out-of-the-box, and installers would have to endure an XP-like experience of fishing for every different driver in the net, then manually installing them (and forcing a hardware reset every time? ;-)
Also wrong. Solaris has come with binary drivers out of the box for years, hasn't stopped it so far. Same with OS X, Windows, etc. I'd prefer manufacturer supported drivers over the current no-drivers-at-all-for-many-of-them situation.
Then, in the case of Google, think that the hardware they need supported is stuff like raid SCSI controllers and network cards which are very well supported by the current working mode in Linux.
This I can agree with. If Google is thinking about switching, it isn't going to be for hardware support. It's going to be because of Solaris' other features, such as greatly advanced security, DTrace, ZFS, etc.