Linked by Robert Escue on Wed 4th Jun 2008 05:06 UTC
Let's take a closer look at OpenSolaris, particularly its use of ZFS, network problems that people have reported, the use of bash, and differences between OpenSolaris and Solaris and Solaris Express. Note: This is the latest article in our OSNews Article Contest.
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RE[2]: Review of the Review
by segedunum on Wed 4th Jun 2008 14:33
in reply to "RE: Review of the Review"
Member since:2005-07-06
It doesn't ship with the latest and great applications because OpenSolaris is FCS all the time.
Wow.
Meaning, the goal of the engineers is to be production ready all the time.
If you'd read what I'd written, using software that is several versions behind the current version does not make you 'production ready' and does not give you any less bugs unless you're willing to backport vigorously as Debian do. You also end up having a diverged codebase that produces bugs not seen upstream. 'Production ready' means absolute jack and is generally just used as cover for this development model.
Sun, unlike most GNU/Linux distributors doesn't simply throw a bunch of packages into a distribution and "call it good."
Well, they obviously have with this release because networking is a bit of a fundamental ;-). I had the same issue, and I was slightly astonished at what I had to do. I've never seen a system not just get an IP address from DHCP when asked. If that was a non-production ready Linux distro being reviewed it would be given a big thumbs down all round. I don't know what the article adds to that fact.
Engineering and documentation evaluation is done for every single component shipped and that means things move somewhat slower.
I'll come to you when I want to find some information on Sun's site then ;-).
Then, it should be fine, as Sun does backport many fixes and adds many fixes of their own.
Then what happens there is that you've effectively forked the software, as Debian does. This means that you're responsible for maintaining the software yourself, and in a project such as OpenSolaris that is trying to get more contributors and use more open source software and share resources for its own sake, that just seems a bit.......daft. At this point in time it isn't what Solaris needs.
RE[3]: Review of the Review
by binarycrusader on Wed 4th Jun 2008 14:43
in reply to "RE[2]: Review of the Review"
Member since:2005-07-06
"Meaning, the goal of the engineers is to be production ready all the time.
If you'd read what I'd written, using software that is several versions behind the current version does not make you 'production ready' and does not give you any less bugs unless you're willing to backport vigorously as Debian do. You also end up having a diverged codebase that produces bugs not seen upstream. 'Production ready' means absolute jack and is generally just used as cover for this development model. "
Sorry, but that's just wrong.
And yes, they do backport vigorously.
"Sun, unlike most GNU/Linux distributors doesn't simply throw a bunch of packages into a distribution and "call it good."
Well, they obviously have with this release because networking is a bit of a fundamental ;-). "
Networking is supported on thousands of configurations. Unfortunately, in the PC world, there are millions of configurations.
On both my Desktop and Laptop, networking works just fine.
I had the same issue, and I was slightly astonished at what I had to do. I've never seen a system not just get an IP address from DHCP when asked. If that was a non-production ready Linux distro being reviewed it would be given a big thumbs down all round. I don't know what the article adds to that fact.
DHCP works just fine as far as I know. You haven't filed any bugs that I've seen, so I would suggest that you do so that any issues can be resolved.
"Engineering and documentation evaluation is done for every single component shipped and that means things move somewhat slower.
I'll come to you when I want to find some information on Sun's site then ;-). "
Look at docs.sun.com, etc.
"Then, it should be fine, as Sun does backport many fixes and adds many fixes of their own.
Then what happens there is that you've effectively forked the software, as Debian does. This means that you're responsible for maintaining the software yourself, and in a project such as OpenSolaris that is trying to get more contributors and use more open source software and share resources for its own sake, that just seems a bit.......daft. At this point in time it isn't what Solaris needs. "
No, that's what happens when you promise your customers that you will support them year after year. Enterprise-level distributions provide a certain level of stability and support.
In the future, you'll see OpenSolaris move to having six-month "bleeding edge" releases and a separate long term release to better streamline things.
Until then, complaining about software that is not that old (from a release perspective) is counter-productive.
As for the issues you've encountered, unless you file bugs, your complaints aren't useful.
Edited 2008-06-04 14:44 UTC
RE[3]: Review of the Review
by Kebabbert on Wed 4th Jun 2008 15:28
in reply to "RE[2]: Review of the Review"
Member since:2007-07-27
Could you care to explain this?
"using software that is several versions behind the current version does not make you 'production ready' and does not give you any less bugs"
I thought it is a bad thing to run the latest bleeding edge software on production systems? But, hey, I am no sysadmin. What do I know?
RE[3]: Review of the Review
by MattPie on Wed 4th Jun 2008 17:27
in reply to "RE[2]: Review of the Review"
Member since:2006-04-18
Well, they obviously have with this release because networking is a bit of a fundamental ;-). I had the same issue, and I was slightly astonished at what I had to do. I've never seen a system not just get an IP address from DHCP when asked. If that was a non-production ready Linux distro being reviewed it would be given a big thumbs down all round. I don't know what the article adds to that fact.
My initial thought is you haven't been around very long then if you haven't had issues with DHCP clients. I don't know you, so I won't actually say that, but I've had to fight with DHCP on Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX, and Solaris in the past. Granted, Linux and FreeBSD are a lot cleaner with DHCP nowadays, but there used to be some serious issues.
On the flip side, I've had all kind of trouble using static IPs (!!) with Fedora 9. NetworkManager seems to get rather confused, my network adapter (Intel built-in on a Dell Latitude) doesn't always show up in the GUI, and I had to tweak a few things to have the interface come up on boot. I need to look for a bug report on that one...
RE[2]: Review of the Review
by jjgorsky on Fri 6th Jun 2008 06:58
in reply to "RE: Review of the Review"
Member since:2008-06-05
It doesn't ship with the latest and great applications because OpenSolaris is FCS all the time.
No it's not.
Meaning, the goal of the engineers is to be production ready all the time.
But it isn't.
Sun, unlike most GNU/Linux distributors doesn't simply throw a bunch of packages into a distribution and "call it good." Engineering and documentation evaluation is done for every single component shipped and that means things move somewhat slower.
This has never been true. Let's go back to day one. Sun never even implemented SysV packaging properly, for example. Sun's own docs on BigAdmin make reference to the fact that Sun sed is horribly broken. Yet it is broken to this day, and they won't bundle gsed with the OS.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Do you really need to know anything else? "
It doesn't ship with OpenOffice because it has to fit on a single CD and there isn't any room for it right now.
It doesn't ship with the latest and great applications because OpenSolaris is FCS all the time. Meaning, the goal of the engineers is to be production ready all the time. Sun, unlike most GNU/Linux distributors doesn't simply throw a bunch of packages into a distribution and "call it good." Engineering and documentation evaluation is done for every single component shipped and that means things move somewhat slower.
I hear that argument all the time, but in practice it tends not to hold up. Software moves on, bugs and security problems are fixed in successive versions and general quality gets better. There's no evidence to suggest that using Gnome 2.20 is better than using Gnome 2.22 unless you're willing to backport fixes, as all the code goes into the new version. It still has all the same bugs and problems as it ever had, and having a very long incubation period doesn't solve the problem. Debian has this problem as well, as software versions they use become unsupported. "
Then, it should be fine, as Sun does backport many fixes and adds many fixes of their own. Sun doesn't just ship the raw bits that someone else produces.
I think it's fair to say that Sun's own OpenOffice developers don't use OpenSolaris as their development platform, and it shows. "
Wrong. Many of Sun's developers do use OpenSolaris, and they know they can easily install OpenOffice just by doing:
pkg install openoffice
While Sun definitely has room to improve things, things are nowhere near as dire as you would like to paint them.