Significant performance, availability and feature enhancements make Solaris 10 an automatic choice for existing Sun customers. But as an alternative to Linux, it doesn’t yet deliver, says ZDNet.
Solaris 10 Reviewed
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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i’ve been fair with solaris 10, i really have, but it’s an absolute joke of an OS, from a user or administrator standpoint.
hell, setting a root password suring install is only optional? this isn;t linspire, folks, this thing’s supposed to go on £200,000 supercomputers
It’s shocking to see that journalist blame Solaris for being a proprietary OS. I did not know Windows was Open Source. And blaming it for keeping Janus as a separate module is childish.
That review is worthless anyway as it’s so superficial. Bet that guy never heard the word scaleability for example.
Rating: 1/10
We prefer using name brand hardware and it turns out the minimum Dell servers we order(400SC) are on the list ^_^. We also prefer tested hardware from a vendor like Dell. So call us happy campers, and I am sure the Linux fan boys aren’t going to be happy about that.
Regression tested hardware, something Linux supporters seem to know little about is a must when you want to sell a system to a customer and not a hobby system that you download and tinker with.
Since Sun offers prepackaged dual Opteron systems, it’s a no brainer if you want more power. They cost less than similar systems from Dell.
One thing not mentioned in the terse review, is Sun offers support for much less cost than RH — So buying Dell hardware and downloading the software, then getting the Sun support for the customer is great. Much cheaper than RH AS4.
BTW, since when did downloading 4 CDs became a problem? Aren’t all Linux distros online? Hello, don’t you have broadband at ZDnet? Call your cable company.
A very biased review with no substance.
Solaris is really going to make a big dent in the viral GPL Linux and the fanboys know it. If I were starting a TIVO style imbedded UNIX company I would never use GPL Linux.
BTW: The OpenSolaris source is due out this quarter, the insiders already have it.
I expect more from a “professional” publication than the mindless banter about what didn’t work with Solaris 10. Especially when they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) specify what hardware it was they had trouble with. I remember Linux having similar problems when it was “new”, so the problems are not unique to Solaris 10.
They fail to mention that Solaris 10 is also available as DVD images (the link provided shows that both are available). So did they “review” Solaris 10 or Solaris Express, because Project Janus did not ship with Solaris 10 GA.
Complaining that they could not use it under VMWare is not Sun’s fault. When I was Beta Testing Solaris 10, I got it to work under Microsoft’s Virtual PC with Build 63 (and only Build 63). It never worked under VMWare Workstation 4.5.
This is not a review, this is a joke.
Solaris 10 isn’t IMHO competing to be a desktop alternative. Its meant to be competitive in the server arena. First this “full review” doesn’t even start to even scratch the surface with Dtrace. Its a very impressive tool that has helped many developers optimize their code on the same hardware. A Sun rep. showed how one finance company speed its financial transactions 400% using Dtrace, when the company said its code couldn’t be optimized anymore.
Second the review blows by Solaris Zones and makes no comparison to FreeBSD jails. Zones allows greater security by separating out services and ease of administration.
Then there was no mention of ZFS. The built from the ground up 128bit filesystem. ZFS doesn’t need to be journaled since the filesystem has better checking and data integrity than previous filesystem generations. The review complained about compatibility on various x86 hardware and not being 100% compatible with Linux code, which is a rather myopic. Solaris 10 is an enterprise class OS and thats what the review misses. Linux is useful in its many desktop and server and embedded systems. But give Sun credit for creating new technologies for enterprise that Linux has no equivalent to … for now.
Agreed. The review has merits, but overall is flawed…
My company’s experience so far with Solaris 10 has been very positive. The mountains of documentation SUN has that are easily accessible to the public for free make administration significantly more pleasant compared to RedHat. RedHat’s documentation for RHEL3 (our previous platform) is a joke.
All of our hardware seems to be supported just fine so far, and our important applications (Samba, Apache2, Perl, Oracle) all run.
Not only that, the “free to install it on as many machines as you want with free security updates” is hard to beat price wise.
We’re opting to buy support on a select set of systems instead of all of them (since not all of them need anything beyond security updates) which in turn makes the price of Solaris 10 about half what RedHat wants (it would be about 2/3rd normally if we bought basic update support for all…).
>> BTW: The OpenSolaris source is due out this quarter, the insiders already have it.
yeah, Sun employees have had the source to their OS for years now. what is your point?
The review blew chunks. However, since the topic is Solaris, once OpenSolaris comes out, people can make it the core of a pretty nice desktop. A non-GPL kernel (and one not openly hostile to binary only packages) makes more sense. Companies don’t want to open source their drivers. That is just a dream. Reality is that either linux needs to play nice with binary drivers or it’s going to hit a brick wall with acceptance. There are no political/philisophical obstacles of binary drivers with Solaris.
Right now Solaris 10 isn’t even close to being user friendly. The install needs a lot of work as does the user environment. But don’t confuse that will being an inferior OS. Solaris is very powerful and stable. Slap a good desktop on it, give it a good installer, and a little polish and it will make a fine alternative.
Quit trolling. OpenSolaris insiders aren’t sun employees.
> Quit trolling. OpenSolaris insiders aren’t sun employees.
have a look at the CV of the board member of opensolaris… they work for sun.
> have a look at the CV of the board member of opensolaris
3 out of 5 only. Not that bad for an OS that’s only been developed by Sun engineers so far…
The board has nothing to do with the OpenSolaris Insiders who are testing the builds right now.
So if you’re a Sun customer, then go for it. Otherwise stick with Linux until the bugs have been ironed out and it does what it says on the tin.
Allways true,stick to what you have invested in if you loose to much money or funtionality with a migration.
Solaris 10 is feature rich,secure,fast and consistent.The desktop isn’t ugly either.Easy to add users with the solaris management console (usr/sadm/bin/smc &) and updating is more or less “smpatch update” if you don’t count the extra install of patches which need additional attention (forbidden areas).
Tested Solaris with vmware 5 and several teams,man now the x86_64 is handy with a lot off mem :-),vmware is very nice to.
I almost choked when he mentioned Solaris as a Linux alternative….What?
To begin with, it’s important to understand that you’re still dealing with a proprietary OS here.
So what! spoken like a true Linux zealot! Its a question of usability and picking the best tool to enable business. Not whether or not the product you choose supports the OSS religion or not…what a wanker this guy is.
Sun’s new license brings exactly nothing new to the table, it’s just another minor variant on the MPL. So what’s with all the license hype?
If the GPL really were such a problem, don’t you think we’d have seen the evidence by now? It’s not like there haven’t been plenty of alternatives all along (e.g., the BSDs), but the GPL (or minor variants thereof) has thus far been overwhelmingly choosen as the preferred license for both community and corporate F/OSS projects. Despite the noisy claims of it’s detractors, I’ve seen no convincing evidence that the GPL has hindered in any way the development of Linux, or of OSS software in general.
Solaris 10 is a very nice piece of work and, although I still have some serious reservations about Sun’s longterm viability, I definitely think opening up Solaris is a step in the right direction.
Its’s blatently obvious this person has no clue and they certainly should NOT be reviewing Solaris 10 or even Linux for that matter. This is the worse review I have ever seen.
” I’ve seen no convincing evidence that the GPL has hindered in any way the development of Linux…”
Where are all the device drivers for hardware? Why does my Wi-Fi card not work or my webcam? That’s exactly the problem.
The reason Linux got popular is just a media fluke.
Don’t know about your particular hardware, but my wireless works just fine (don’t have a webcam). Linux is far from perfect with respect to hardware compatibility, but the truth of the matter is that Linux currently has broader hardware support than any other OS with the notable exception of Windows, which is the actual target for most hardware manufacturers. So I ask again, where’s the evidence that the GPL is the problem, when it exceeds even Apple’s hardware compatibility?
Well why aren’t those companies targetting Linux then? GPL.
Well why aren’t those companies targetting Linux then?
Because they’re zealots like Gates and Schwartz, who dislike the GPL because it forces them to play fair. They only play the game when the deck is stacked in their favor, like most public corporations.
Hmmm, I wonder if they like to gamble.
No, marketshare not the GPL is the reason most hardware manufactuers don’t target Linux (or Macs for that matter). As Linux’s marketshare has grown, manufactuers have slowly been moving toward supporting it. For instance, you’ll find that harware compatibility is a significantly different factor on servers, where Linux has substantial marketshare, than with desktop oriented doo-dads, where Linux has a marginal presence at best. But even that is slowly changing. For instance, I just happened to discover today that last month Plextor released drivers and an SDK for their USB video capture/tv tuner devices.
By insiders he means non-sun people have been give access to Open Solaris. It will be out by the end of this quarter. A lot is going on in the Open Solaris world.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?W1CE41FEA
I haven’t been really following OpenSolaris but it seems to me the more systems around the better, I would love it (due to my own selfish nature) if OpenSolaris was GPL but I respect that it is not. Competition is a good thing. As OpenSolaris is not GPL I do not see it really replacing Linux as, I think, there is a demand for a GPL system. I also think that many Free Software developers may fear being burned by OpenSolaris’s ties with Sun (pun intended) and steer clear of it. While I use and love Linux I have no reason to fear other projects as long as they don’t break hardware compatibility or threaten lawsuits e.g. Windows is benign without things like ‘trusted computing’ and Microsoft’s patent portfolio. Go diversity!
eric: “Sun’s new license brings exactly nothing new to the table, it’s just another minor variant on the MPL. So what’s with all the license hype?”
Garbage
The CDDL makes a re-usable MPL variant to end the proliferation of MPL “vanity” licenses. To compare this class of license to GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache etc is to stick your head in the sand. Patent litigation is an issue, simply ignoring the issue is not going to make it disappear. I am glad that someone has finally addressed this issue.
I think maybe you guys are missing the point a little. I don’t think the author of the article is ragging on Solaris just for being closed source, but rather he’s saying that because it has been closed the amount of hardware that Solaris supports is still rather limited. I’d certainly agree. I’ve always had problems on any x86 hardware I’ve ever tried Solaris on. Hopefully once it opens up we’ll start to see some good things happenning with regards to hardware compatibility.
I’d also agree with some of the posters in that Solaris is quite arcane in a lot of ways when compared to Linux. I’ve dealt with quite a large number of operating systems here at my work in the past couple years, and I can definitely say that Solaris was one of the hardest to get the hang of. But then I’d probably also agree that Solaris is much more mature and robust than Linux. So there you go.
Where are all the device drivers for hardware? Why does my Wi-Fi card not work or my webcam? That’s exactly the problem.
Its the GPL’s fault these things don’t work? Do they magically work on BSD because it has a different license? The reason that these things won’t work is because Linux doesn’t have a large enough marketshare. Of course, they might work (most wireless card work with NDISWrapper and webcam supprot was added to gaim recently I think) and you didn’t put in the effort. Thats not the GPL’s fault either.
The reason Linux got popular is just a media fluke.
Holy crap, Linux is popular? When did that happen? Since when is less than 10% desktops “popular?” For how UNPOPULAR it is, it works great with more hardware than you would assume considering the low market saturation. It has the numbers it does because the software is appealing. The software is appealing because the GPL protects it.
But never mind what I said. Its easier to fling mud.
Solaris 10 is a GREAT Server OS. I have moved a 4 computer Linux setup, into a 8 CPU Solaris 10 Server. The new setup is wonderful. Why do I like it so much?
Zones: I was able to take the one system and zone it out as 6 machines. Each created zone only takes up like 120mb. So I had 5 machines using only like 700mb. If anyone wants a dedicated machine for their own use, I setup a zone and away they go. All this is setup by the use of a easy command line utility.
Resouce managment: I use the Solaris Rosource Managment and each zone only gets a “slice” of the total cpu usage. That means when only one zone is running it has access to all the CPUs, while if another zone starts it is shared (Fair Share Scheduler). This way I don’t have wasted system resources (for example in the old setup I had a DNS server, and DNS doesn’t really need much CPU. So I have wasted CPU usage on that DNS machine). For the complex setups, you can even do resource managment inside the zone (on top of zone managment) on individual processes inside the zone, and heck you can even have different processes or zones running under a different scheduler. So one zone can run under FSS while another can use the real-time scheduler. WOW!
Easy updates: When I do system patches (simple as “smpatch update”), package updates, or setup new software, I just do it on one machine, and all the zones get the updates. Plus the software is installed only in one instance, so I save having it installed on every OS install (save on drive space).
Self Healing: Lastly, people might think of fault tolerance being a problem because of everything running on on one machine. With Self Healing, when a problem occurs, it will only offline the offending CPU or memory module. I even get SNMP reports telling me which CPU board and which memory module had to do a ECC error correction. I had a memory module go bad on me recently, and it took that bank of memory offline and kept running fine.
The above is why I run and use Solaris 10 and only have great things to say about it. After using Linux for 8 years, I can say with Solaris 10 I am not looking back, and consider it my favorate Server OS.
Before Linux people talk it down too much, I think you need to try it out and see what it can do. I do agree this is probably not the best OS for a desktop install, since alot of the above features are Enterprise server based features.
Sounds like I oughta give Solaris 10 a try. Still, From looking at Sun’s website, an 8 cpu system would be pretty darn expensive. I’d be curious to know how much of my taxes you spent on your machine as opposed to what the 4 Linux boxes cost, or would have cost to upgrade or whatever. =)
…but there’s nothing at all unique or even very compelling about it
If I read your comment correctly, then you are totally unconcerned about patent terrorism. That’s a shame, because patent terrorism is a very real problem as any brief search of osnews, slashdot, el reg, the inquirer.net et al will show you. The CDDL draws a line in the sand for patents (remember, this is not copyright we’re talking about) which provides you as the developer of a work or contributor to a work licensed under CDDL with the security and peace of mind to get on with developing or maintaining that work.
The CDDL is not merely a collection of minor variations on the MPL as you claim in an earlier comment.
Might I request that you think a little bit larger than you currently appear to be, and phrase your comments accordingly.
You don’t have to buy a system from Sun in order to use Solaris 10 although of course Sun’s sales people would prefer it if you did
You can (if you’ve got squillions to spend) buy an 8cpu x86 or x64 system from your pc vendor of choice and run zones etc on that box too. My colleagues and I run zones on our single-cpu intel and amd/amd64 boxes at home and in the office without any problems at all.
It’s actually quite a lot of fun to do that on hardware that from a windows point of view is too old to run…
The one caveat is that (as far as I am aware right now) fma is not available for x86/x64 machines. The fma team is working on fixing that as fast as they can and I for one will be be eager to test it when they integrate.
Check the http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl hardware compatibility list for the list of what non-Sun hardware has been verified as running Solaris 10. New systems are added all the time too; it’s not a static list at all.
Garbage yourself there buddy. Sun’s license establishes effectively the same conditions as does the MPL, but with all the Netscape and jurisdictional stuff yanked out and generalized. Yes, it’s nice that Sun was wise enough to forego introducing yet another vanity license and optead instead to use a generic license as a cornerstone for their nascent Open Solaris community, but there’s nothing at all unique or even very compelling about it. If you’re already inclined to prefer an MPL style license, then by all means please use the CDDL license rather than furthering the problem of unnecessary license proliferation.
Other than being the best current contender for the title of standard MPL type license, what exactly is it that you believe CDDL will do for you?
The patent grant? A whole lot of noise over nothing at all. What exactly is it that you think Sun has committed to with respect to their patents? As I read the terms of the license, the only thing Sun is offering up is a committment not to sue anyone for patent infringement by using the Open Solaris codebase in accordance with terms it’s licensed under. It’s nice that they’ve explicitly put it in writing, but I rather think that such a commitment is implicit in the very act of open-sourcing Solaris, or any other piece of software for that matter. It’s not much of a “gift” if you plan on suing the recipient for using it, now is it?
Additionally, as far as I can tell, those patents will have no effective value to third party developers distributing software wholly independent of the Open Solaris codebase under the terms of the CDDL, save for shielding them from future patent infringement suits filed by Sun. So, Sun is offering to protect us from Sun in exchange for using its license, right? How nice, but, to be completely honest, I never really thought we ever had much to worry about from Sun on the patent front.
If Sun is looking to “sweeten” their license, in order to attract developer mindshare, they’re going to have offer up more than just promising not to sue people for doing exactly what it is they’ve asked them to do.
Call me naive, but I never really thought of Sun as a terrorist organization.
I’m not poo-pooing Sun’s putting a perfectly sensible commitment in writing, thereby making explicit what is often times assumed implicity in OSS licenses, but I’m not exactly altogether very impressed either. I already assumed the Sun organization had some integrity to it. It’s an unfortunate reality that in our world promising not to resort to “evil” and nefarious tactics in legally binding language is sometimes a legal necessity, but I’m not about to get all excited by it.
So, again, I ask what’s all the noise about?
… only GPL survive in open source marketplace…
Oh, please! Go away and have a look at the licenses which are in use today in the IT world — BSD, MIT, MPL, Apache,…. GPL is not the only game in town.
But you knew that, and I fed the troll. Shame on me.
> I look at Solaris, and it’s very cool. But it’s not GPL, and only GPL survive in open source marketplace. GPL brings all multinational corporations to knees, including Sun
What is it with you GPL fanatics? GPL is not the best license for every project out there especially ones that have any sort of commercial underpinnings. CDDL is actually more free and more comfortable kind of a license than GPL because it doesn’t have a viral clause in it. CDDL is a lot easier to work with than GPL. A project *does not* have to be GPL to be successful, just look at Apache or Mozilla, which are much more successful than any GPL project out there. There is place for everyone, get it? I think CDDL is great and there is great future for OpenSolaris.
> GPL brings all multinational corporations to knees,
When GPL takes out companies, remember there are humans who also get taken out. Companies are not run by robots.
First it was Microsoft’s Borg and now it the GPL Matrix. Trust me I’ve taken the Red pill…and I can see through the Matrix.
Call me naive, but I never really thought of Sun as a terrorist organization.
I’m not poo-pooing Sun’s putting a perfectly sensible commitment in writing, thereby making explicit what is often times assumed implicity in OSS licenses, but I’m not exactly altogether very impressed either. I already assumed the Sun organization had some integrity to it. It’s an unfortunate reality that in our world promising not to resort to “evil” and nefarious tactics in legally binding language is sometimes a legal necessity, but I’m not about to get all excited by it.
Thankyou for the compliment — Sun does pride itself on its integrity and it’s nice to see that it’s noticed.
I think what you should be looking at is this:
1. Sun creates (for want of a better word) CDDL
2. Sun says that OpenSolaris will be licensed under CDDL
3. In order to adhere to the CDDL license terms, Sun must
license under the CDDL terms the patents which it
has in Solaris and which are included in the OpenSolaris
source tree.
4. If you want to be part of the OpenSolaris community,
then you must do likewise with any patents you own if
you want them included in OpenSolaris.
Recall that ( http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-01/sunflash.20050125.2.h… ) Sun granted access to 1600 patents as part of the preparation for OpenSolaris. Those patents were all about software, and related to technology that is used in Solaris.
That is what the fuss is about.
“To begin with, it’s important to understand that you’re still dealing with a proprietary OS here.”
So what! spoken like a true Linux zealot! Its a question of usability and picking the best tool to enable business. Not whether or not the product you choose supports the OSS religion or not…what a wanker this guy is.
LOL, true, so true. Its like “WOW! who cares if it is completely useless, lets rant about how great linux is because it is opensource” – as you’ve pointed out several times – companies don’t care if it is open or closed source.
In a nutshell, if it does what required, and solves the problems set out by the company – for those concerned with the deployment, that particular solution is addressing the issue at hand.
I wouldn’t worry about the trolls Smartpatrol – sooner or later they’ll get out into the big band world >:-)
“To begin with, it’s important to understand that you’re still dealing with a proprietary OS here.”
So what! spoken like a true Linux zealot! Its a question of usability and picking the best tool to enable business. Not whether or not the product you choose supports the OSS religion or not…what a wanker this guy is.
LOL, true, so true. Its like “WOW! who cares if it is completely useless, lets rant about how great linux is because it is opensource” – as you’ve pointed out several times – companies don’t care if it is open or closed source.
In a nutshell, if it does what required, and solves the problems set out by the company – for those concerned with the deployment, that particular solution is addressing the issue at hand.
I wouldn’t worry about the trolls Smartpatrol – sooner or later they’ll get out into the big band world >:-)
You don’t have to buy a system from Sun in order to use Solaris 10 although of course Sun’s sales people would prefer it if you did
True, but then again, why would you? its not as though there is a massive difference in price between servers these days. SUN’s Opteron offerings are competitive, and personally, if it were me, I’d be more than happy, if I were a company, to purchase some quad Opteron boxes loaded with Solaris and Sybase (I hate Oracle with a religious zeal – the only company on the planet that can produce a product that can make a cutting edge piece of hardware technology operate worse than a BBC Micro trying to load software off a tape drive).
Both the pro-GPL and pro-CDDL camps need to relax. Both licenses are a world of improvement on the average closed source leasing license. Both GPL family licenses and CDDL family licenses have been successful in large scale projects.
I use GPL myself but am quite happy to use other open source licenses if the occasion demands it e.g. for patches or to follow organisational standards. License elements are just part of the featureset of a program and depending on the use different program features are important.
90% of software development is done for inhouse use and for those organisations it doesn’t matter whether the license is GPL family or CDDL family. Software retailers are only a small part of the industry.
Where are all the device drivers for hardware? […] Well why aren’t those companies targetting Linux then? GPL.
Uh, no. Market share. The GPL has nothing to do with it.
Proof: NVIDIA releases binary-only drivers for Linux, and no one complains. There’s nothing stopping other companies from doing the same thing.
Furthermore, hardware companies have little to lose from opening up their drivers, since they don’t sell those in the first place, and most hardware don’t contain any trade secrets that could somehow be reverse-engineered from the driver source code.
In other words, you don’t have any real arguments to support your anti-GPL agenda.
Well said.
They always have been.
In a very narrow way, I agree that solaris is not a reasonable linux replacement. For most desktop users: linux is easier to use, runs on more hardware, it’s a smaller download, give you more choices, and has a more open license.
On the servers, of course, it might be a different story. Also, maybe some specialized desktop uses.
Proof: NVIDIA releases binary-only drivers for Linux, and no one complains. There’s nothing stopping other companies from doing the same thing.
Really, I wonder why the kernel has a tainted flag and there is much hoopla over binary drivers and Non-GPL drivers.
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5041108431.html
Some Linux kernel developers do not like non-GPL code to make use of the Linux kernel interface. To discourage such non-GPL code, the Linux kernel provides two mechanisms: a ‘tainted’ flag and GPL-use-only exported symbols.
People don’t complain too much about nvidia releasing thier drivers binary on;y is because they can’t they have to use it if they want linux to succeed on the desktop.
In other words, you don’t have any real arguments to support your anti-GPL agenda.
Sigh. again with the GPL. The only reason the GPL is being discussed in a Solaris review article is because some Pro-GPL anti-Sun troll started a flame war. which attracts the pro-GPL zealots to defend it. Then they claim that they would stop posting on Sun related articles if people didn’t bring linux up and spread misinformation about it. please just state your point and leave peoples agenda to themselves, your’s is no better.
Really, I wonder why the kernel has a tainted flag and there is much hoopla over binary drivers and Non-GPL drivers.
Who cares about the tainted flag? No one it seems. Nor is there any big hoopla over binary drivers. I follow the Cooker mailing list (for Mandriva development) and I can’t recall seeing a post that described this to be a problem. On the contrary, there are many posts regarding NVIDIA binary drivers and how they work well (or not) with other packages, and not once in recent memory has anyone mentioned that the fact that they are proprietary driver causes licensing issues.
So in fact this is more a problem in the mind of anti-GPL zealots than in reality, as they are the ones to constantly bring it up. In other words, they are using this non-issue to make a tempest in a teacup.
Sigh. again with the GPL. The only reason the GPL is being discussed in a Solaris review article is because some Pro-GPL anti-Sun troll started a flame war.
Actually, you are dead wrong: the first inflammatory post mentioning the GPL in this thread was from a pro-Sun, anti-GPL poster. If I’m not mistaken, it was the third post in the thread. Here’s the link:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10377&offset=0&rows=15#36…
please just state your point and leave peoples agenda to themselves, your’s is no better.
My “agenda” is to dispel FUD. Both the GPL and CDDL are good licenses. Those trying to start flame wars on the subject are the problem, not those like me who try to say that both licenses are valid. I suggest you revise your own position on the matter before lashing out at those whom you disagree with…
It’s shocking to see that journalist blame Solaris for being a proprietary OS. I did not know Windows was Open Source. And blaming it for keeping Janus as a separate module is childish.
You missed the point. He was refering to the fact that OpenSolaris is not out yet. The source will make a big difference if they’re trying to attract a community, which is exaclty what Sun wants.
Solaris 10 isn’t IMHO competing to be a desktop alternative.
Then why are they using JDS? Why would they include an entire desktop environment if it wasn’t meant to compete on the desktop?
Then there was no mention of ZFS
Actually they did mention it, specifically that it was NOT included.
If I were starting a TIVO style imbedded UNIX company I would never use GPL Linux.
What would you use then? Solaris? I don’t think so. It isn’t an embedded operating system, was never meant to be, and probably never will be. Maybe NetBSD? Please clarify. If that’s the case then can I ask what is wrong with using Linux on an embedded project like Tivo?
The OpenSolaris source is due out this quarter, the insiders already have it.
So? It’s still vaporware until it’s released to the community.
It’s pretty fun to see how rabid these SUN fans are considering the language they throw around at Linux advocates. It just proves that every OS has zealots who will ignore their own OS’ shortcomings and blast everything else. The article isn’t the greatest but a lot of the foaming at the mouth is completely misplaced.
@Abraxas
Then why are they using JDS? Why would they include an entire desktop environment if it wasn’t meant to compete on the desktop?
They’re competing for the average desktop. They’re competing for the Enteprise Desktop. There’s a BIG difference.
So? It’s still vaporware until it’s released to the community.
First, Vaporware is the name of a company that makes games and other products for Amiga users
Second, OpenSolaris pilot members are members of the community, so therefore your statement is false anyway.
By calling it vaporware you imply that it doesn’t exist or hasn’t been released to anyone (by definition) which is falase. I’m going to enjoy watching you have a few million lines of code shoved down your throat when OpenSolaris gets released to the *public* later this quarter. Nothing like seeing an idiot eat crow.
Where I have a problem with articles like this is the fact that this guy doesn’t have a clue and obviously spent limited time with the product. His Pro-Linux and anti-Sun stance is so obvious it is not funny. If a supposed “professional” cannot be objective when evaluating a product then maybe they should not be evaluating it at all.
If a Linux article was written with the level of anti-Linux bias that this anti-Sun drivel was written people like you would be calling for his head on a plate! Whether you like Solaris or not is irrelevant, you should not support poor “journalistic” efforts. So the “foaming at the mouth” is not displaced.
If a Linux article was written with the level of anti-Linux bias that this anti-Sun drivel was written people like you would be calling for his head on a plate!
The real question, however, is: would you? In other words, do you react as strongly against anti-Linux bias as you do to anti-Sun bias?
It seems to me that some very vocal Sun advocates can’t seem to validate Solaris on its own merits, but feel compelled to elevate it by dragging Linux (and the GPL) in the mud. This attitude is as immature as the one you’re denouncing, and both should be condemned in the same breath.
If you want an example, read the seventh comment about Mandrake Linux Corporate Server.
1. A “no brainer” for Sun users to upgrade to Solaris 10 (run, don’t walk
2. A “no brainer” for the reviewer, or at least he demonstrated very little brain power putting it together
First of all, the reviewers overview section lists the “pros” and “cons” of Solaris 10 that apparently contradict themselves. x86 and Linux compatibility are both “pros” and “cons”, guess you can’t please everyone (no less a schizophrenic reviewer). While he does have a point that x86 compatibility is lacking, please check the HCL if you’re going to do a “professional” OS review before you complain about things not working. I’m not really concerned about reviews of unsupported configurations:( As for Linux compatibility, it is well known that the Janus Project was not going to be included with Solaris 10 FCS, so why is it’s omission such a big part of the review (as is ZFS)? And what “other promised features not yet available” is he talking about, it was never elaborated in the review. But then little was actually “elaborated”.
Now let’s move onto the “Full Review”. Just four sections: Features, Installation & Setup, Linux Compatibility, Conclusion. A review comprising of less than 1000 words! Even Cliffs Notes and Readers Digest would have provided more information than was present in this blurb. This is an enterprise OS that runs on from 1 to 64+ CPU with no changes (or few, I like to call it “tuning”) to the OS or the application. That in itself is a feat few can lay claim (we’re talking real SMP here)! I must confess during the intro of the review many of the “real” enhancements of Solaris 10 were noted (but never really reviewed): “faster than any previous Solaris implementation….slick new IP stack….new integrated cryptographic framework….Role Based Access Control….virtual execution space using Solaris Containers.”
Yes the Solaris install sucks eggs, always has for a single system install. Want to roll out to multiple servers or for disaster recovery, not so bad.
JDS is not entirely a “play for the desktop”, for some of us it’s a Solaris GUI for the 21st century…please no more OpenLook and CDE (although for system admin purposes, CDE is quite usable if you want/need a GUI)!!!
Linux compatibility…why? Yes, I’m sure someone will come up with something…but I’m not familiar with too many Linux and not Solaris applications. Most are just a recompile under Solaris on the OSS side and if it’s a proprietary app, then run it under the supported systems (just like trying to run Solaris x86 on supported hardware). Select the best application for your particular business, then find out what computer environment(s) it runs on, then select a computer environment….maybe it’s Solaris, or Linux, or Max OS x, or (god forbid) Windows. (We don’t all exclusively drive Ford’s or Chevy’s or BMW’s either!) As for “Sun has further gone down the Linux route and bundled…x.y.z”, Sun and others have provided OSS software for YEARS. Sun’s Solaris companion software CD, Sunsite web/ftp sites, and sunfreeware.com in the past and now blastwave.org.
I’m sure many Solaris and Linux users are watching what is happening on the OpenSolaris front, but this is supposed to be a review on Sun Solaris 10 *NOT* OpenSolaris or the CDDL. So I assume that is what the comments should be confined to (boy am I naive!). This is not the place or more precisely time, to get into open source license and community envy. There will be ample time for all of that to transpire. And I’m also sure it will get quite heated once OpenSolaris is released to the “wild”. Can’t wait…should be fun!
NB–This post has now officially surpassed the word count of the original review I am discussing–time to go!
GO *NIX
They’re competing for the average desktop. They’re competing for the Enteprise Desktop. There’s a BIG difference.
Thay may well be true and in fact I never argued otherwise but that’s not what was said. Let me give that quote better context:
Solaris 10 isn’t IMHO competing to be a desktop alternative. Its meant to be competitive in the server arena.
Hmmm. I don’t see anywhere in that quote anything about enterprise desktops.
Second, OpenSolaris pilot members are members of the community, so therefore your statement is false anyway.
I stand by my assesment. Until it is released to the community it IS vaporware. Once both you and I have a copy of the source code in our hands (or at least have the ability to get a copy) it will continue to be vaporware. The product may be there but the idea of OpenSolaris, specifically the opened source, is not.
If a Linux article was written with the level of anti-Linux bias that this anti-Sun drivel was written people like you would be calling for his head on a plate! Whether you like Solaris or not is irrelevant, you should not support poor “journalistic” efforts. So the “foaming at the mouth” is not displaced.
Thanks for proving my point. The exact reverse of this situation has been seen many times on OSNews and the anti-Linux/pro-Solaris advocates have come down hard on linux advocates. Now with the situation reversed the same people that complained about the bitching and moaning of the linux community have come out to bitch and moan.
I wouldn’t exactly call this review poor as much as incomplete. I can’t speak for the entire linux community and I know I don’t but personally I’ve refuted incorrect data when it was presented instead of complaining about a lack of coverage. The author DOES make some valid points. Specifically that some of the “great” features always touted by Solaris advocates are not there in Solaris 10, like ZFS. Another valid point is that as it stands Solaris only supports one version of one Linux vendor’s binaries. Also the hardware support that has been so often used against Linux is now a problem for Solaris. At least Linux has the excuse that the GPL is incompatible with closed source drivers from hardware manufacturers. Solaris shouldn’t have that issue and I’m sure their support for different hardware will grow but they will NEVER approach the kind of support Linux has now.
Despite what some may believe I can’t wait until OpenSolaris is released. I am really excited about some of the technology. I definitey want to give it a spin if i can get it to work on my hardware. I’ll never favor it over Linux though because I’m using Linux for more than just the software.
I guess my point, that was completely missed, is that the claim that this kind of behaviour is only attributed to Linux advocates is obviously false.
@Abraxas
The Solaris 10 review is incomplete and factually accruate. I propose that you can be accurate but not necessarily truthful. Yes, Solaris 10 FCS did not include technologies like ZFS and Janus, but that was already outlined months prior to it’s releash by Sun. Since Sun has already told the world it would not be part of Solaris 10 FCS, so why is it’s absence a point of discussion? You are accurate that it isn’t there, but you’re not intirely truthful on when it was expected. No one expected ZFS or Janus to be included with Solaris 10 FCS.
ZFS and Janus not expected in Solaris 10 FCS, November 15, 2004
http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article2/0,1759,1727366,00.asp
As for Janus only supporting “only one vendors binaries”, what do you want?!? There are at least 300+ Linux distros out there, what you want Sun/Janus to support them all? Hell, half of them (Linux distro’s) can’t even support there own binaries! LSB support would be better, but even some proprietary software producers have issues with that scenario. Get real!
Also your comment, “At least Linux has the excuse that the GPL is incompatible with closed source drivers from hardware manufacturers”, is way off base….ever heard of NVIDIA? Try again.
As for “Solaris shouldn’t have that issue and I’m sure their support for different hardware will grow but they will NEVER approach the kind of support Linux has now”….
….NEVER say NEVER
GO*NIX
This message goes out to all the people going on about an 8 CPU system and how expensive it cost me etc. To you “Mathman”, since you gave me a rude comment I will tell you the truth so I might expose your ignorance.
First off, this was my personal system I bought. We do buy Sun stuff in the government because it works! When you have 6 terabytes of data, and 500-1000 Engineers working on CADD information, and don’t want downtime, Sun stuff is proven and works. We also use Linux, Windows, Novell, and HP. We use everything, and buy stuff appropriate for the job. And let me tell you, we have a small budget and the stuff we do buy has to last, so don’t think we are rolling in your money. My friends in the private area have it much better then me when it comes to purchasing. When I purchase everything needs a study report for usage, and I must get 3 bids and accept the lowest bid.
Now about the cost of that 8 CPU system I bought for myself with my own money from the lower then average wage I make working for the government, everyone went on about. I built an E4500 with 8 CPUs (7 gig memory, 2 IO boards, 2 hard drive boards with 18 gigs) for $1200 off E-bay. The 4 rack mount PCs I built 2 years previous cost me like $2400 (about $600 each for rack case, motherboard/cpu, memory, 450 watt ps, and 2 hard drives mirrored on Linux). So the Sun was actually WAY cheaper solution then the off the self-PCs I bought. Hey did you happen to know that there was a BIG dot COM bubble and Sun Spark machines can be had dirt-cheap.
So “Mathman”, maybe before you make rude comments you should do your math first!
Yeah, some don’t understand the philosophy of “throughput computing” and the balance between CPU power, memory access, backplane throughput, network access and a “tuned” OS. The system you decribes with your E4500 should scream compared to most x86 servers from even 5+ years later than production of your system. And you are probably running 336 or 400MHz CPUs as well?!? Amazing what a “real” backplane will do for you, as well as an OS that you can “stomp on” and it won’t die (easily). The clock speed is not usually the bottleneck in most modern systems, as Sun USPARC servers will atest. The Timex of servers, “they just keep on ticking”! ;0)
You brought back many memories of working with similar systems as yours. And they were always easy to work with (hardware and software) and a workhorse of the dot.com age. Forget about the rest of the riff-raff.
GO*NIX
Jeez man, when was I rude here? As I said, you make solaris 10 sound rather appealing. And I put the little smiley face on the end of that little tongue in cheek taxes comment.
Anyway, you’re not the only one with large amounts of data on a shoestring budget. I can tell you, we looked into Sun, and they’re just way too expensive.
I stand corrected. You are indeed true to your word.
go*unix: I agree 100%! I am running the 400mhz SPARCs. And yes this system is way easier to work with then the 4 rackmount servers I built in the past. Everything in that system is a module, if it goes bad, slide it out and push a new one in. Plus you have backups of everything in that system, so if one peice fails, others take its place until you can replace the bad part. For example a CPU goes bad or memory module, Solaris 10 will offline the offending part. Great system, I am glad someone sees the power in such a system.
mathman: Sorry if I got upset, but I don’t think the tax comment was needed. And if you do mean a comment as a joke, next time put “j/k” at the end or “just kidding”. I have seen several people smile as they make rude comments.
But thanks for letting me know you didn’t mean anything negative by the comment.
As far as Sun, like the previous Sun exmployee said, you don’t have to buy a big system. Sun actually prices their AMD computers pretty well as comapred to the other companies selling such systems in the market. But if you need to build your own X86 systems, just follow Suns HCL guide to make sure everything you put in the system will work (you can zone a 1 CPU system into many systems also). If you are thinking about going Sparc for systems, hit Ebay and pick up some of the old systems from companies that went under after the dot com bubble burst. There are alot of great systems out there for a great price. Don’t let the whole mhz thing fool you, the Sun systems offer alot more, like solid hardware. Also with Solaris 10, those systems will report any hardware problems, and has tons of hardware probes to find faults. Personally these are more important to me since you don’t need a super fast CPU to run most of your server applications. What is more important to me is lots of memory, and solid system that don’t die on you, and when it has problems it tells you exactly where the problem is.
I am glad I made Solaris 10 sound appealing. I have been impressed by it since I set out on converting my Linux stuff over to it since it was released in Feburary. Solaris 10 has delievered for me, and I am glad my pevious post was able to show you the kind of things Solaris 10 can deliver. The only thing I am upset about with Solaris 10 is that ZFS was not released with the main release, after them hyping it soooo much. But I know it is coming soon and will be excited when it does.