A new feature of the Sun Solaris 10 Operating System lets you run Linux applications, unchanged, on their own or side by side with Solaris applications.
Solaris runs Linux applications easily
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If I am not wrong it is something possible with SCO a long time ago.
Also does that mean I can run ndiswrapper to make my wireless card work.
The BSD’s can run Linux binaries too. NetBSD can even run Solaris, SCO and Darwin binaries on their respective hardware platforms.
The tittle should read, “Solaris runs Linux binaries easily”. As far as I know most applications writte on GNU/Linux can be easily ported to just about any other platform that is supported by the GNU Compiler Collection. There are some applications that are overly Linux dependant but those are usually lame.
But, they fail to mention that Project Janus is not yet available to the public…(afaik).
Forgive my ignorance, but does it mean Solaris can also run Linux drivers (for example ethernet or wlan drivers)?
@Luk
Forgive my ignorance, but does it mean Solaris can also run Linux drivers (for example ethernet or wlan drivers)?
No.
The tittle should read, “Solaris runs Linux binaries easily”. As far as I know most applications writte on GNU/Linux can be easily ported to just about any other platform that is supported by the GNU Compiler Collection. There are some applications that are overly Linux dependant but those are usually lame.
That’s not what they’re talking about, Solaris will run Linux binaries. So you could run (for non-sense sake) the Linux edition of Oracle on a Solaris (x86) box. Or at least, I assume you have to use the same architecture.
And, this is only new for Solaris. Linux and most BSDs have had this type of functionality for awhile. All it really requires is you write a library that implements all the Linux kernel APIs to translate those into Solaris APIs.
pffft… hasn’t Linux had this for ages?
But seiriously, guaranteed compatiblity for RHEL is going to be huge. I just hope they don’t wait anylonger to release the Solaris code.
I still yet again must ask Why? only handy if you want to run Linux apps that you don’t have the source for to recompile..how many is that? 10-20 Applications? Who would run the linux version of Oracle on Solaris when there is native support for Oracle on Solaris.
It’s not really for those apps that are already native on Solaris for x86/x64 or can be easily recompiled. It’s for those commercial apps that ISVs haven’t been or will never be ported to Solaris. Regardless of the apps there are some benefits to running the them on Solaris: they can be hosted in containers for more security or better resource management/consolidation, they can be monitored with tools like dtrace if you need to really see what the app is doing so you can improve it (even if your plan is never run it on Solaris in production), etc. Alas, Janus is not for everything – it only deal with userland stuff so forget about anything that needs to touch hardware, etc. but it can be a powerful tool for many scenarios.
Yes I do work for Sun…
Well anyway, not much point without driver support. Not a feature for the general user.
System admins maybe.
GJ
Yet another place when Sun waste their money and don’t bring value to their technology. That’s whay they have this horrible 18 consecutives quarter results.
Mr Schwartz, Mr. McNealy, return to our loyal customers the *real* Sun. The current Sun is just a sad ghost.
Well anyway, not much point without driver support. Not a feature for the general user.
No, it is a feature for the general user… Adobe Reader for example. As far as “without driver support”. Please. Basic driver support for almost everything that counts to run a system is there or available from 3rd party sources. An NVidia accelerated OpenGL driver will be available later this year…
I don’t agree it is a watse of money – many customers were very interested in this technology. Now I don’t beleive it’s the highest priority in Solaris development (a credible GUI for all of our tools is IMHO but I digress) but if we’re to make a big push in x86/x64 then projects like Janus certainly don’t hurt. I’m actually curious to know what specifically the “*real* Sun” is to you – all the reasonable feedback we can get helps me out everyday as I work the issues…
Nvidia drivers for Solaris… yeah, I see that coming just around the corner…
Would you mind sharing with the rest of us the source of that little piece of information? I seriously doubt that will happen, for various reasons:
1. It would be yet another platform for nvidia to support;
2. Who is going to use it? Who’s running Solaris x86 on the desktop?
3. If they are targetting migrations from Solaris/SPARC workstations to x86, they are assuming those people won’t just migrate from Solaris/SPARC to Linux/x86 (which is what’s happening).
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Don’t claim something without screenshots, If you are telling me that I can run Linux apps under Solaris. Give me Screenshots!
It’s actually a nice bonus. For those who want to use some of the Solaris’s new features (like containers), but can’t transition their legacy Linux applications, it gives them a mechanism to pull this off.
It also let’s them safely “try” Solaris with Linux binaries to see if they like it.
See, Sun has to add value over Red Hat. That’s The Plan. That’s how you get in the door and get CIOs to adopt your technology.
If you’re a full blown Red Hat shop, there are a lot of deterrants to switching over to Solaris. Janus helps lower one of those boundaries.
Solaris is in Better Mousetap syndrome. It does the same thing as Red Hat, runs your Red Hat binaries (modulo drivers, but most apps don’t need drivers), costs less, and is potentially more stable.
Sun wants to make it as painless as practical to help transition Red Hat users to Solaris. They need to convince ISVs to compile their apps for Solaris, and convince customers that Solaris is worth replacing or integrating with their current Red Hat installations. Running Linux binaries is just one more aspect to help them burn the candle at both ends to promote adoption.
Will Linux binary compatibility hurt Solaris the same way that Windows compatibility hurt OS/2, at least in the long run?
If a commercial developer can compile binaries for Linux and have them run on Solaris, why would they bother with Solaris binaries?
Just tossing a thought on the table…
In other news.. Solitare now cross platform on nearly everything…
Oh Joy!
Sun has some cool tech (with containers) but trying to cut into the ‘nix server market is going to be tougher than this…
MrX
Nvidia drivers for Solaris… yeah, I see that coming just around the corner…
Would you mind sharing with the rest of us the source of that little piece of information? I seriously doubt that will happen, for various reasons:
1. It would be yet another platform for nvidia to support;
2. Who is going to use it? Who’s running Solaris x86 on the desktop?
3. If they are targetting migrations from Solaris/SPARC workstations to x86, they are assuming those people won’t just migrate from Solaris/SPARC to Linux/x86 (which is what’s happening).
We currently have those nVidia drivers available internally. There is a partnership in place with nVidia to provide the hardware for the W1100z/W2100z graphics and a few other things besides (try searching sun.com for nVidia some time).
You ask who is running Solaris/x86 on their desktop. I am (laptop and workstation at home), my colleagues in the Sydney office are, there are in fact thousands of Sun employees who run Solaris on intel or amd hardware.
As far as I am aware there is no targeting of sparc->x86/x64 migrations — it is all about providing choice for the customer.
It read as a favorable article until right towards the end. “There’s no stopping Project Janus.” Okay, so what you’ve done is published a Sun press release. Is it newsworthy that they think their product’s awesome?
is to fight against IBM’s blockade. IBM does not want to port their software onto Solaris x86, for the reason that they want to lock Sun on SPARC forever and keep the x86 server market one less competitor. An example is that there is no WebSphere for Solaris x86. If you want to use WebSphere, you have to run Solaris SPARC, or Linux x86. If you choose the later, why do you have to get the server from Sun?
The overwhelming majority of closed-source applications available for Solaris are SPARC, not x86. Sun’s x86 market share is negligable, so ISVs have little reason to *support* an x86 version, even if the porting is trivial. Testing and support is not trivial.
Solaris/SPARC has been losing market share to Linux/x86 in workstation applications, such as EDA. It’s primarily due to the poor value of smaller SPARC systems relative to x86 systems, rather than the OS. Red Hat has become the new standard platform for applications such as ModelSim. So Sun now must emulate RHEL or lose the very market segment that created the company.
<< If you want to use WebSphere, you have to run Solaris SPARC, or Linux x86. If you choose the later, why do you have to get the server from Sun? >>
IBM won’t support WebSphere running on Janus. Its pointless without the support.
The feature has been very useful on the BSDs. In any case I doubt Janus is as polished as the BSD equivalents: they don’t mention if threads work well. Plus I’m sure many things (kernel modules, development libraries) will not work.
@James: Ok, you win…
However, Sun employees running Solaris/x86 on the desktop do not really count. I wonder how many of those workstations are going to run Solaris, as opposed to Linux (or Windows, but we’re not talking about Solaris vs. Windows here).
But getting back on the topic…
This Janus thing could end up blowing up in Sun’s face (if it had one), for two reasons:
1. If Linux isn’t more relevant than Solaris, why does Sun offer a Linux compatibility layer?
2. Given 1. why not just run the “real thing”? (This is what I always say about stuff like WINE – no matter how good the layer, the “real thing” is always better).
I think Sun should just market Solaris/x86 for its own capabilities (ZFS, DTrace, Zones) and avoid direct confrontations with Linux (more serious when you give credibility to the adversary using compatibility layers…).
I’m a Linux guy but I also like Solaris (and the BSDs) so I guess I’m not being biased when I say this Linux-centric Solaris push is going to turn out disappointing for Sun.
First let me say I love Linux and will always use only it. But, I’ve been running Linux since 1999 and I still feel good when I get a new program running. Sometimes I give up in failure. So, I wonder how Solaris runs them so easily???????????????????
@James
However, Sun employees running Solaris/x86 on the desktop do not really count. I wonder how many of those workstations are going to run Solaris, as opposed to Linux (or Windows, but we’re not talking about Solaris vs. Windows here).
Well, my entire company is switching their servers and Linux workstations to Solaris one by one. So…
I’ve been running Solaris 10 x86 since it’s official release on my desktop at home as my primary development and desktop environment.
Imagine partitionioning a sweet 4 or 8 way Sun box to run many Solaris and Linux applications side-by-side. That’s one use for Janus.
Raymond (IP: —.ez-data.com)’s comment about using Janus as leverage against IBM is a good idea, too. If Sun will guarantee RHEL compatibility, then I wonder if IBM would have to support it? Containers would allow running JES, WebLogic, and IBM’s stuff all on the same box–I’m sure there’s a few companies out there where this would be useful.
Sun has some serious technology, right now. It’s too bad the naysayers don’t see it (or don’t want to see it).
“It’s primarily due to the poor value of smaller SPARC systems relative to x86 systems,”
Now that Sun has Solaris 10 on Opteron, RHEL technically has some catching up to do in x86-land. The SPARC workstations do lag in integer, but last time I looked the FP was suprisingly good (apparently matching Xeons of twice the clock). Overall, I think Sun has a pretty good workstation line-up, which will really get a boost whenever PCI-E systems come about (PCI graphics is really just a stopgap between UPA and PCI-E, IMO).
@Pedro
The feature has been very useful on the BSDs. In any case I doubt Janus is as polished as the BSD equivalents: they don’t mention if threads work well. Plus I’m sure many things (kernel modules, development libraries) will not work.
You shouldn’t post wild speculation like this. I sincerely doubt SUN would ship anything less functional than what the BSDs have. Janus is about running applications, not kernel modules. Besides that, threads should work just fine. If you read the article you’d see that they’ve run several applications under it so far, some of them threaded even…
A *really* bad bit of irony – Solaris is sooooo good, and soooo much better that they expect customers to rely on an emulation layer as to allow them to run applications on Solaris.
How about instead of wasting that $7billion on ‘new licensing policies’, how about get some bloody workstation applications on Solaris! you sell workstations, you want to PUSH it as a workstation AND thin client platform, and yet, you can’t even be bothered investing that $7billion either by licensing source code and porting yourself or paying the IP holder to port it to the Solaris platform.
Yeap, that coupled with the lack of an Nvidia driver and AGP driver will really make the next maintanance release of Solaris 10 a major time waster. All I can say is RedHat, Novell and Apple must be peeing their pants in delight – getting worried at first that Solaris might actually be a competitor and now finding that SUN is simply a SPARC whore but in x86 clothing. They haven’t changed – same “buy out over priced, underperforming hardware” rant as aways, but now they’re sucking you in first with lofty promises and x86 servers.
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~steven/lxrun/
Sun itself was advertising that:
http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/lxrun/
They just moved it in the kernel for better crashability
@Kaiwai
A *really* bad bit of irony – Solaris is sooooo good, and soooo much better that they expect customers to rely on an emulation layer as to allow them to run applications on Solaris.
Which is no different than the SCO Unix binary compatability some Linux distributions used to push. Secondly, the customers are the ones that asked for this, it’s not like someone at SUN woke up one day and say “hey, let’s go burn hundreds of man years of time and lots of money on something no one asked for.” Duh.
How about instead of wasting that $7billion on ‘new licensing policies’, how about get some bloody workstation applications on Solaris! you sell workstations, you want to PUSH it as a workstation AND thin client platform, and yet, you can’t even be bothered investing that $7billion either by licensing source code and porting yourself or paying the IP holder to port it to the Solaris platform.
They’re working on doing just that, and they are pushing Solaris as a workstation and thin client platform don’t know what cave you’ve been living in.
Yeap, that coupled with the lack of an Nvidia driver and AGP driver will really make the next maintanance release of Solaris 10 a major time waster.
How do you know it won’t be in the next release? Begging your pardon, but there are already commercial 3D driver available for Solaris:
http://www.xig.com/
And NVidia and SUN have announced an official partnership to bring workstation class accelerated 3D to Solaris:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_16275.html
NVidia drivers are coming, they’re in testing now. When they’re ready, I have no doubt SUN will make them available. Stop trying to disparage something with wild speculation.
Imagine partitionioning a sweet 4 or 8 way Sun box to run many Solaris and Linux applications side-by-side. That’s one use for Janus.
What Solaris applications would I want to run? Isn’t this more for someone who’s been running Solaris apps for years and feel the need to upgrade but don’t want to replace their current systems?
If I were to build a new network I would get up to a 4 or 8 way Opteron and run Linux. I doubt I’d use a system like that for ALL my services, so containers and such wouldn’t be very useful. And Linux has sufficient resource management for small servers like this.
The only reason I would have for running Solaris is nostalgia and sentimental value. I trust the software to be stable and secure, but I also trust Linux. I don’t trust Sun Corp to not dis my beloved GPL, though, and that’s why they get no money from me.
> I don’t trust Sun Corp to not dis my beloved GPL, though, and that’s why they get no money from me.
People who sign the checks don’t give a crap about GPL and other hippy nonsense. What really matters is that Solaris is much more advanced and stable OS in all respects than Linux and offers a much better bang for the buck than Linux. Solaris is out-linuxing Linux on its own ground – cheaper, better, faster and soon open-source. The question people should start asking is “why the hell would you need Linux if there is Solaris?”.
“People who sign the checks don’t give a crap about GPL and other hippy nonsense”
You are calling the most commonly used open source license, hippy nonsense?. no wonder you are a SUN fan
“A *really* bad bit of irony – Solaris is sooooo good, and soooo much better that they expect customers to rely on an emulation layer as to allow them to run applications on Solaris.”
Which is no different than the SCO Unix binary compatability some Linux distributions used to push. Secondly, the customers are the ones that asked for this, it’s not like someone at SUN woke up one day and say “hey, let’s go burn hundreds of man years of time and lots of money on something no one asked for.” Duh.
Customers are only requesting it because the lack of third party, native software for Solaris is so crappy. As I said, had SUN invested that $7billion into getting applications and hardware support on Solaris, SUN wouldn’t be in the mess they are in today.
The fact is, they’ve sat on their ass doing nothing; they’ve fired 100s of their programmers every quarter, and now they’re wondering why they’ve got scarce resources and why they can’t deliver products ontime with all the features demanded by the marketplace.
“How about instead of wasting that $7billion on ‘new licensing policies’, how about get some bloody workstation applications on Solaris! you sell workstations, you want to PUSH it as a workstation AND thin client platform, and yet, you can’t even be bothered investing that $7billion either by licensing source code and porting yourself or paying the IP holder to port it to the Solaris platform.”
They’re working on doing just that, and they are pushing Solaris as a workstation and thin client platform don’t know what cave you’ve been living in.
Great, promote a platform with no commercial applications – “come to our operating system – we have no software, but we’re really cool dudes, so that should make up for the fact that you’ll have a 3/4 of a million dollar white elephant sitting in your datacentre”. Yeah, great stratergy.
“Yeap, that coupled with the lack of an Nvidia driver and AGP driver will really make the next maintanance release of Solaris 10 a major time waster. ”
How do you know it won’t be in the next release? Begging your pardon, but there are already commercial 3D driver available for Solaris:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_16275.html
NVidia drivers are coming, they’re in testing now. When they’re ready, I have no doubt SUN will make them available. Stop trying to disparage something with wild speculation.
Interesting, 6months and still nothing has eventuated from the so-called “relationship”. They may as well have said they were in an alliance with Microsoft to bring a native port of Microsoft Office to Solaris x86.
> Customers are only requesting it because the lack of third party, native software for Solaris is so crappy.
What the hell are you bleating about? Solaris has got more and much better quality commercial software than pretty much any other server OS out there. It seems to me you don’t know jack about Solaris or enterprise software, it is time for you pull your head out of your ass and have a look around. Solaris on SPARC has *huge* following and x86 Solaris is catching up quick — Oralce, BEA, CA, Sybase and a ton of other vendors already ported and certified their software for Solaris x86. IBM is trying to pretend that Solaris x86 is not that important, but I’m pretty sure they will change their mind pretty soon. Solaris is #1 deployment platform for their WebSphere and Tivoli product lines, so it is only logical that customer will start demanding (they already do, just talk to GM) support for Solaris x86. Actually with Janus coming out for Solaris 10, you’ll be able to run all WebSphere junk as a supported configuration under Solaris 10 anyway.
“What the hell are you bleating about? Solaris has got more and much better quality commercial software than pretty much any other server OS out there. It seems to me you don’t know jack about”
they whats the use of running Linux applications. You cant argue both ways.
I think we should form an Open Source posse to find out just how compatible this Janus project actually is, and why it doesn’t run Windows applications?
2. Given 1. why not just run the “real thing”? (This is what I always say about stuff like WINE – no matter how good the layer, the “real thing” is always better).
Not always. I think most people were in agreement that DOS programs ran better (and far more effectively) under OS/2 than they did under DOS, and the ability to run Windows programs in individual Windows sessions under OS/2 was also an advantage (preemptive multitasking plus isolation from each other which made Windows hangs a nonissue — just kill that Windows process and relaunch it).
I’m not so sure that much real difference exists (from an end-user desktop perspective) between Solaris and Linux, however, so it might be harder to find that type of advantage with Solaris.
[To Sun folks: note that I said “desktop”. :-)]
It’s for those commercial apps that ISVs haven’t been or will never be ported to Solaris.
ISV’s that only produce binaries for Linux? How many are there? i would guess they don’t survive long in the software industry. As an SA i would recommend a native software alternative rather than run foriegn binaries.
Imagine partitionioning a sweet 4 or 8 way Sun box to run many Solaris and Linux applications side-by-side. That’s one use for Janus.
I can’t think of one Linux only application that i can’t live without. Let alone dedicating a whole partition on a very expensive SUN box. when i can run linux on a cheap PC based server. Not to mention i believe partionaing is only available on the Sparc side of things.
I agree that Solaris needs a GUI tool similiar to Smitty in AIX and SAM in HP-UX. Command line is great and powerful but its nice to be able to open up a GUI and do eactly what you want to do after you have been up all night troubleshooting a production issue and can’t quite remember the command you need. SVM is not a bad product just needs some touch up bundling it in with Solaris 9 was the best idea for a long time.
@Kaiwai
The fact is, they’ve sat on their ass doing nothing; they’ve fired 100s of their programmers every quarter, and now they’re wondering why they’ve got scarce resources and why they can’t deliver products ontime with all the features demanded by the marketplace.
And most of those programmers knew they were there for a limited time. Additionally, you fail to mention that SUN still has over 30,000 employees. Suddenly a few hundred people being let go doesn’t mean as much when you hear that…
Customers are only requesting it because the lack of third party, native software for Solaris is so crappy. As I said, had SUN invested that $7billion into getting applications and hardware support on Solaris, SUN wouldn’t be in the mess they are in today.
No, they’re requesting it because it cuts costs and time to deployment for them and because some vendors don’t release their applications for Solaris. But Oracle, CEA, BEA, Sybase and many others do. I suspect Maya will be available for Solaris too as soon as NVidia cards start being shipped in Solaris Workstations.
Great, promote a platform with no commercial applications – “come to our operating system – we have no software, but we’re really cool dudes, so that should make up for the fact that you’ll have a 3/4 of a million dollar white elephant sitting in your datacentre”. Yeah, great stratergy.
No commercial applications? I suppose Oracle, CEA, BEA, Sybase and others aren’t commercial? Really? Where can I get Oracle for free? Stop spreading FUD.
So, what you’re saying to me, is after paying for support, I should then fork out even MORE money to get decent hardware support? Thats like Microsoft selling you Windows XP, and then expecting you to pay a third party for drivers (which is essentially what you’re proposing with XIG).
That’s an option customers have, it isn’t required. NVidia drivers will be coming soon. Additionally, you can use Solaris 10 commercially or non-commcercially on as many machines as you want without paying a dime to SUN.
Secondly, as far as having to buy support for drivers, that’s not SUN’s fault. You can’t expect them to go out and pay companies for drivers for everything. Same situation under Linux really though. If you want high performance OpenGL drivers under Linux your only two options are ATi or NVidia, or to buy drivers from XiG. XiG makes Linux drivers too. The free DRI ones are hardly fully OpenGL compliant or high performance in comparison to XiG or ATi/NVidia’s drivers. So your argument would have to apply to Linux as well.
You are refuted and refuted, but you keep saying the same thing like a broken record. If Sun has no NVidia drivers…how on earth do they sell exclusively NVidia AGP graphics on their Opteron workstations?!?
In my tests current DRI OpenGL drivers were typically more compliant than ATI’s Windows offerings, and only 5-10% or so slower on average. However they are less _comprehensive_ in that you can’t get DRI drivers for a new X800, yet.
You do need current drivers though, a generic Fedore Core install is going to give you “known good” drivers that are running AGP1x, conservative memory settings, no Z acceleration etc. That’s going to be more like 80% slower, not 5%.
You are refuted and refuted, but you keep saying the same thing like a broken record. If Sun has no NVidia drivers…how on earth do they sell exclusively NVidia AGP graphics on their Opteron workstations?!?
1) You haven’t refuted anything yet, you’re the only broken record here
2) They have NVidia drivers, internally only at the moment, but they will be available soon
3) Their Opteron workstations run Linux too, and SUN also offers Linux as a choice to their customers. You would be correct in saying that *CURRENTLY* they don’t ship NVidia based Solaris workstations with supported 3D graphics.
4) I believe there is work being done to port DRI somehow to Solaris, since Xorg 6.8.x is a standard part of Solaris now I think that has a good chance of ocurring
5) Stop with the stupidity already. I never said *ANYWHERE* that SUN had NVidia drivers *available to the public* right now.
Does VMware (GSX or ESX) for linux work on Solaris with linux compatibility layer ?
I think this is also the kind of applications needed on this platform to make Janus very interesting.
Does VMware (GSX or ESX) for linux work on Solaris with linux compatibility layer ?
I wouldn’t think so given that VMware requires a kernel module.
Solaris is currently supported as an experimental guest operating system by VMware, I imagine there will eventually be a native version.
I think this is also the kind of applications needed on this platform to make Janus very interesting.
Maybe to you, but it will be interesting enough on it’s own if it’s just able to run normal applications.
Besides, there isn’t much point in running VMware with Solaris 10 if you’re just wanting to “virtualize” a bunch of Solaris boxes. Solaris 10 already includes a feature called “containers” or “zones” that allows “virtualization” of servers on one box.
“You would be correct in saying that *CURRENTLY* they don’t ship NVidia based Solaris workstations with supported 3D graphics.”
Their website disagrees. They say NVidia’s drivers are certified for Solaris x86 and that even the FX4000 is supported under Solaris. Are you saying that the publically available information is wrong?
http://nvidia.com/object/IO_16082.html
http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/w1100z/ws-support-matrix-v2-…
@Anonymouser
Their website disagrees. They say NVidia’s drivers are certified for Solaris x86 and that even the FX4000 is supported under Solaris. Are you saying that the publically available information is wrong?
Yes I am. Read the Solaris x86 yahoo group mailing list where several SUN engineers post quite frequently.
Okay, this is making more sense now. The original problem is that Kaiwai is such a lame troll and generalizes to make Solaris x86 look bad (on purpose, I’m sure). People at Yahoo are complaining about non-Quadro 3D performance, and Sun is saying improved drivers are on the way, right? That’s fair enough, but it still appears that (even sub-optimal) Nvidia drivers do exist for consumer cards and that the pro Quadro cards are better supported.
@Anonymouser
Uh…kinda. There are no NVidia 3D drivers for Solaris available outside SUN afaik currently is the issue at hand. They will be coming soon, but are not available yet.
“Customers are only requesting it because the lack of third party, native software for Solaris is so crappy. ”
What the hell are you bleating about? Solaris has got more and much better quality commercial software than pretty much any other server OS out there.
For a so-called expert, you do *VERY* little reading AND comprehending. I have *CLEARLY* stated the workstation market – no desktop, not server, heck, not even set-top-box – WORKSTION – read and repeat until its like a mantra one would repeat whilst meditating.
It seems to me you don’t know jack about Solaris or enterprise software, it is time for you pull your head out of your ass and have a look around. Solaris on SPARC has *huge* following and x86 Solaris is catching up quick — Oralce, BEA, CA, Sybase and a ton of other vendors already ported and certified their software for Solaris x86.
Bullcrap. Grab a server from Dell, load Solaris onto it and see the number of devices unsupported equal that of book the size of war and peace.
Solaris x86 ISN’T catching up quick. *OVER* 80% of new hardware sold is preloaded with Solaris (SUNs figures, not mine), and the other 20%, who knows? how many of them just said, “Solaris” simply to get a deeper discount, and then rip it off to run Windows or Linux?
IBM is trying to pretend that Solaris x86 is not that important, but I’m pretty sure they will change their mind pretty soon. Solaris is #1 deployment platform for their WebSphere and Tivoli product lines, so it is only logical that customer will start demanding (they already do, just talk to GM) support for Solaris x86. Actually with Janus coming out for Solaris 10, you’ll be able to run all WebSphere junk as a supported configuration under Solaris 10 anyway.
I don’t blame IBM. There is no market, so why should they invest their dollars into a product that may or may not return money on the investment.
It goes right back to what I said; if SUN so despirately want IBM to port and support their software (or IBM port and sell the software, SUN provide the support) – why hasn’t Scott jumped on his Segway and zoomed over to IBM HQ to cut IBM a cheque? $100million or so for a complete software line up; out of $7billion in the bank, its chickshit compared to the mirade of problems they have. $100million investment could mean another ten thousand machines sold – it might actually motivate even more software companies to port their software to Solaris x86 without the need of an cash injection.
Anonymouser (IP: —.clt.bellsouth.net) – Posted on 2005-04-19 16:34:16
You are refuted and refuted, but you keep saying the same thing like a broken record. If Sun has no NVidia drivers…how on earth do they sell exclusively NVidia AGP graphics on their Opteron workstations?!?
There is no bloody 3d accelerated driver. There is no OpenGL, no 3D acceleration. When you purchase their workstation loaded with Solaris x86, you are getting the ordinary, run of the mill Xorg Nvidia driver.
As for AGP support – Solaris treats the AGP bus as nothing more than a mutated PCI slot, meaning, any fancy features provided by AGP will not be used, hence the reason why the graphics performance blows chunks – even SUNs OWN benchmarks for their beta Nvidia and native AGP driver proves that point.
Oh, and in future, get a clue. Having run the damn thing since 2.6 on x86, I certainly don’t need broken record fanboys who have dived into Solaris at the last minute giving me lectures on what is going on. Quite frankly, you’re no better than the Linux fanboys who think that Linux is gots gift to man, and yet have only used the operating system for less than 5 years.
“People who sign the checks don’t give a crap about GPL and other hippy nonsense. What really matters is that Solaris is much more advanced and stable OS in all respects than Linux and offers a much better bang for the buck than Linux. Solaris is out-linuxing Linux on its own ground – cheaper, better, faster and soon open-source. The question people should start asking is “why the hell would you need Linux if there is Solaris?”.”
People who sign the checks don’t care about the GPL, certainly, but they also don’t care about a “much more advanced and stable”. They care about TCO. Prove that Solaris professionals are cheaper and plentiful enough to be more economical for a business. It doesn’t matter how much better it is if I need to hire more expensive staff to support it.
> Prove that Solaris professionals are cheaper and plentiful enough to be more economical for a business. It doesn’t matter how much better it is if I need to hire more expensive staff to support it.
The proof is in the pudding. Solaris is cheaper to buy and support than RedHat and SuSE by about 40%, just check the pricing, there are no misterious TCO calculations involved. Solaris is cheaper than Linux, get over it.
> Bullcrap. Grab a server from Dell, load Solaris onto it and see the number of devices unsupported equal that of book the size of war and peace.
First of all I was talking about enterprise software support, not about HW support for some PC crap, you freaking bonehead. And err, I’m writing this from a Dell workstation (Precision 220) running Solaris 10 and the only device that is not really supported is the sound card. I’ve loaded Solaris on a number of different Dell machines (servers and workstations) and with the exception of sound cards and other multimedia miscelenia Solaris works without any problems on Dell gear. Again another example talking crap without having a freaking clue.
“Oh, and in future, get a clue. Having run the damn thing since 2.6 on x86, I certainly don’t need broken record fanboys who have dived into Solaris at the last minute giving me lectures on what is going on. Quite frankly, you’re no better than the Linux fanboys who think that Linux is gots gift to man, and yet have only used the operating system for less than 5 years.”
It only took a half-dozen posts for you to finally clarify your original over-generalized troll. Your troll posts are as bad as and worse than any fanboy posts.
@kaiwai
There is no bloody 3d accelerated driver. There is no OpenGL, no 3D acceleration. When you purchase their workstation loaded with Solaris x86, you are getting the ordinary, run of the mill Xorg Nvidia driver.
Oh, but wait THERE IS. The NVidia driver isn’t public yet, but it does exist, SUN engineers have it running on their desktops now. They’re supposed to demo LookingGlass 3D on it soon. The point is, if you say there isn’t a driver at all (i.e. vaporware) you’re calling both NVidia and SUN a liar. That makes you look pretty stupid.
>The proof is in the pudding. Solaris is cheaper to buy and support than RedHat and SuSE by about 40%, just check the pricing, there are no misterious TCO calculations involved. Solaris is cheaper than Linux, get over it.
You might want to go to Wikipedia or somewhere and read up on what TCO means.
As Microsoft is so fond of saying, licensing cost is only a small fraction of TCO. I spend MUCH more on people to manage the system.
This is the reason why a system that is expensive up-front (like the IBM eServer iSeries) delivers one of the lowest TCO’s in the industry — it requires less staff and the ones that are out there aren’t expensive compared to other technologies (which is the case for Linux and UNIX).
If you can’t handle informed debate, get over it.