This article looks at the impressive new features in Solaris 10 and also some flaws that prevent it from being perfect. Elsewhere, you can find 113 screenshots of the upcoming Solaris 10, Java Desktop 3 and CDE environments. (Caution: 130+ screenshots on page)
I dont understand a review of a product which is yet to be released.
I think Solaris 10 looks great. The modern UNIX I’ve long been looking for, almost without flaws.
I don’t see the problem with Solaris hardware compatibility though. Especially for graphic cards most graphic cards are supported by x.org, aren’t they? So they will still remain supported under Solaris.
One can also buy one of the Sun built Opteron computers (there’re several places you can buy them for cheap) and hardware compatibility won’t be an issue.
I doubt Sun will ever get it when it comes to GUI interfaces. I can see them ever succeeding on the desktop. But at least the fonts look a bit decent.
I think Solaris 10 looks great. The modern UNIX I’ve long been looking for, almost without flaws.
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there a pretty strange assumption. there is no indication that solaris is almost without flaws anywhere
”
I don’t see the problem with Solaris hardware compatibility though. Especially for graphic cards most graphic cards are supported by x.org, aren’t they? So they will still remain supported under Solaris. ”
thats a major sore point right now however you choose to dice it. hardware compatibility goes much beyond x.org graphics drivers. when it comes to the kernel, solaris is seriously lagging behind
”
One can also buy one of the Sun built Opteron computers (there’re several places you can buy them for cheap) and hardware compatibility won’t be an issue.”
solaris has to survive on commodity hardware like intel x86 to make progress on competition otherwise its not going to succeed. opteron isnt as cheap as typical x86 hardware. if you are just going to aim for opteron you will remain high end and expensive on the whole…. typical “unix” failure
I doubt Sun will ever get it when it comes to GUI interfaces. I can see them ever succeeding on the desktop.
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cde wont cut it anymore but SUN has already forked Gnome and called it “java” desktop which will likely to be more pleasing atleast for the workstations
opteron isnt as cheap as typical x86 hardware. if you are just going to aim for opteron you will remain high end and expensive on the whole
Are you on crack? Or did you make this comment without actually doing any research? Opteron hardware is cheaper than or at least comparably priced to Intel x86 hardware. Sun is selling their v60’s and their v20z at the same price for a comparable configuration. IBM is doing the exact same thing. If anything, Intel’s x86 hardware is slightly more expensive.
“solaris has to survive on commodity hardware like intel x86 to make progress on competition otherwise its not going to succeed. opteron isnt as cheap as typical x86 hardware. if you are just going to aim for opteron you will remain high end and expensive on the whole…. typical “unix” failure”
Opteron has very solid potential in the midrange server market, which is Sun’s bread and butter. Also, Opteron is cheaper than Itanium, POWER, and UltraSPARC for people who want some of the “big iron” experience without having to fork over an arm or leg for it. IMO, Opteron is a perfect fit for Sun’s low to mid-range, while Xeon is only appropriate for price-performance-to-the-max-screw-everything-else clusters.
I have always been solaris fan. I believe SUN has one of the best engineers and they do good things but somehow they screw things up like they did with Java and gave Microsoft a chance to catch up with .NET
But truly this solaris looks damn cool. Even the JDS UI is damn good. I feel SUN is going in right direction. A powerful server OS and a good UI if needed.
Way to go SUN, don’t screw this up for god sake. Solaris is cool and i want to always see it around.
Solaris 10 on an AMD64 machine. Seems like piece of cake:
http://www.hup.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7490
Doyou want facts? Go to sun.com and price an opteron server, then go to DELL and price a comparable Xeon-64 server.
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huh. i said typical commodity x86 hardware. how does xeon 64 qualify for that.
“Now shut up please..”
no way…
The catches
Solaris 10’s unique features are only useful if the operating system will install and run on your computer. Sun is not known for supporting a lot of x86 hardware, and Solaris 10 does not alter that reputation. You’re pretty much limited to the hardware in the hardware compatibility list; I’ve tried to get several different custom-built systems to work with Solaris Express over the past few months, and none of them has functioned fully, with the usual suspects being ATI video cards and integrated LAN chips. Unlike previous releases, Solaris 10 supports a fairly wide range of UltraSPARC hardware — especially systems that use the newer IIIi and IV processors. The 64-bit AMD64 edition of Solaris 10 will not be available for another few months.
Solaris 10 will not tolerate Linux partitions on the same drive, so if you want to dual boot, you’ll need a separate hard drive. Speaking of hard drives, I was not able to get an SATA hard drive to be recognized by Solaris Express 10/04 on any of my test systems. Sun told me that Solaris 10 would eventually have SATA support, but didn’t have specific dates or details on which SATA controllers would be supported.
While Solaris 10’s official release is January 2005, it will not initially ship with ZFS functionality. ZFS instead will be included in the first update.
It is very clear that Sun is not making any substantial effort to support x86 hardware. In fact, it is very clear that Sun is making a system that will only run on x86 as a demo so you are forced to buy Sun hardware. Otherwise there is no business model for it. Sun’s own x86 machines are far overpriced compared to the competition as Sun works with a very fat channel and has to price-defend their channel resellers. Only if Sun adopted a Dell-like direct model would Sun have any affordable hardware to offer.
Meanwhile there are many other great operating systems that may not have these few interesting features but will run on your current affordable hardware not to mention run much more software than Solaris.
Overall, there seems to be nothing compelling regarding Solaris. Another scripting language to learn for one of the new features shows the same mental retardation Sun has always had.
Code workers should look elsewhere for the future… or even a future.
JDS looks great. Nice Sun/Java theme with GNOME. They’ve done a good job.
I would consider a Solaris/JDS on a PC, if the hardware support is there.
Until then, I prefer Linux, with Mandrake, Ubuntu, and Mepis.
But if Sun makes Solaris kick ass on the desktop (it already does as a server), more power to ’em.
I’ve had mixed results with trying Solaris 9 and the latest Solaris 10 11/04 on my various computers. I’d probably have better luck if I was more of a Solaris expert and knew how to get around various problems.
I’ve got an older Compaq 900Z AMD 1800+ laptop that actually runs Solaris 9 just fine. I managed to find drivers for the built-in network interface and found a page that said how to adjust the resolution to 1400×1200 (or what ever the funky laptop resolution is, I forget at the moment). The only thing really missing is support for the weird wireless device built-in to the lid. I even have it multi-booted with Windows XP Pro, SUSE Linux 9.1, and Solaris 9 thanks to instructions from http://www.solaris-x86.org.
I had an Opteron 150 based computer I built myself but I couldn’t get Solaris to recognize the Adaptec 29160 SCSI card during installation even though it’s in the Hardware Compatibility list. Maybe it was an issue with the Asus SK8V mother board or something. I never bothered to try it with regular IDE disks.
I have a Dell 600SC Pentium 2.4GHz server that won’t run Solaris either. I think it’s an issue with the weird IDE controller with three IDE channels. I never got around trying with the SCSI card and some SCSI disks. It’s listed on the HCL so that would probably work.
Solaris 9 worked perfect on an old IBM x220 dual 933MHz server. Everything worked out of the box except for the crappy video card. But that was an easy fix by just installing Sun’s XFree86 kit drivers. The Adaptec SCSI controller built into the motherboard worked just fine. Makes a great file server, hehe.
And last but not least, I got one of those new Sun W2100z workstations Sun was selling on ebay. Now THAT is nice. I actually had a harder time trying Windows XP on that computer than I’ve had trying to run Solaris on any other systems. Windows works on it if anyone has ever wondered, but you just have to track down every single driver in the system because it seems that none of them are already in the Windows CD.
I’ve mostly been using Solaris on an old 4 CPU Ultra 80. That was working great until my friggin’ hard drive died last week. Java Desktop System is a huge improvement over Gnome 2.0 in the old Solaris 9… but that goes without saying. I was in the middle of installing Gnome 2.8 from http://www.blastwave.org when the damn hard drive died.
So anyway, try it out on your computer. You might get lucky. Chicks dig it. You’ll be the evny of all your friends. And it looks good on a resume.
I dont understand a review of a product which is yet to be released.
Then obviously you haven’t read many review magazines, articles etc in your life.
I mean, WTF? Reviews of products near the end of their release cycle happen all the time.
hehe, didn’t thought about this!
I’ll sure be checking it out, but I think I’ll just wait until they release the final version. It’s supposed to be somewhere in january I think.
“cde wont cut it anymore but SUN has already forked Gnome and called it “java” desktop which will likely to be more pleasing atleast for the workstations”
FUD, FUD, FUD. Sun has forked Gnome as much as RedHat has the Linux kernel. Considering Sun contributes so much to the Gnome project and bases all their Java Desktop Systems on specific versions of Gnome, it would be nice that you don’t spread FUD against them. “Java” desktop is nothing but their collection of tools and Java sitting on top of Gnome. There is no proprietary forking.
hehe ok ok, you’re right
I think you need to scroll farther down for the real desktop screenshots. It’s the bar with the arrows to the right.
FUD, FUD, FUD. Sun has forked Gnome as much as RedHat has the Linux kernel. Considering Sun contributes so much to the Gnome project and bases all their Java Desktop Systems on specific versions of Gnome, it would be nice that you don’t spread FUD against them. “Java” desktop is nothing but their collection of tools and Java sitting on top of Gnome. There is no proprietary forking.
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no tell me why Jonathan called patches made to Linux kernel by Redhat proprietary forks?.
there is no FUD. Java is proprietary. mixing it into gnome and calling it “Java” desktop *is* a proprietary fork unlike Redhat which contributes all patches upstream. Just look at bugzilla.gnome.org on the details regarding this
what is the gnome version used by this java desktop?
If you want KDE, just go to http://www.blastwave.org and get it. Same goes for blackbox and icewm.
Ever notice how 95% of the people that trash talk Solaris have either never used it or never had to make a living from administering computers?
Solaris is great at what it was make for… If you don’t think Solaris is great, then it probably wasn’t made to solve your problems. To all you 15 year old Linux fanboys out there, I’m sorry that it’s over your heads. But don’t worry, Sun is in the process of making it easier to use, even for you.
As the saying goes, “Don’t hate the playa, baby. Hate the game.”
I agree too the GUI is ugly CDE is old and not easy to use plus hardware support with x86 stuff is hard to get to work. Again most users dont want to compile their Reltek nic drivers to get on the internet. I still prefer to use Linux.
If you want KDE, just go to http://www.blastwave.org and get it. Same goes for blackbox and icewm.
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totally unsupported and Sun will disown it
what is the gnome version used by this java desktop?
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the fact that they call it “java” desktop
Ever notice how 95% of the people that trash talk Solaris have either never used it or never had to make a living from administering computers?
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it thought it was 96.5%. where do you sun zealots pick up these stastics from?
”
To all you 15 year old Linux fanboys out there, I’m sorry that it’s over your heads. But don’t worry, Sun is in the process of making it easier to use, even for you.”
when did Linux arrive on the scene. Oh I forgot. a Jonathan mouthpiece
“Brian Cameron wrote:
One thing that makes GNOME a little easier to deal with is that
most Sun customers do not build their own applications using the
GTK+/GNOME stack. Further, Sun discourages customers from
depending on (linking against, for example) the GTK+/GNOME stack”
see how they use the fork of gnome for their own promotion but ask ISV’s to stay away from it while also not developing anything in gnome.
smell anything?
If you don’t like the way it looks, customize it! As far as hardware support goes, the Realtek RTL-8139 has been supported since Solaris 9 (see http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl) for more information. This is no different than any other OS, install unsupported hardware, then don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work! I have never had any trouble with Solaris Intel (from 7 to 10), I just used what was on the HCL. I use Intel Pro/100 NIC’s and Solaris picks them up just fine.
If you don’t like the way it looks, customize it! As far as hardware support goes, the Realtek RTL-8139 has been supported since Solaris 9 (see http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl) for more information.
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CDE looks ugly regardless of how you customise it and gnome is not supported by SUN. the hcl is very poor compared to other unix and unix like systems
Man that website is bad!
Name a Unix variant that has better support for Intel hardware other than Linux and SCO Unix (and who uses SCO today)? Let’s see AIX doesn’t run on Intel at all, neither does HP-UX, or Unicos (Cray).
And I don’t know where you get your information, but Gnome is fully supported by Sun. It might not be the latest release but it is supported and has been since Solaris 8.
http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/
Name a Unix variant that has better support for Intel hardware other than Linux and SCO Unix (and who uses SCO today)?
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SCO Unix powers many legacy systems. it is being phased out but not dead yet…
almost all of the bsd’s have been better than solaris in x86 too.
And I don’t know where you get your information, but Gnome is fully supported by Sun. It might not be the latest release but it is supported and has been since Solaris 8.
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perhaps you havent heard the news yet. straight from SUN employees
”
Brian Cameron wrote:
One thing that makes GNOME a little easier to deal with is that
most Sun customers do not build their own applications using the
GTK+/GNOME stack. Further, Sun discourages customers from
depending on (linking against, for example) the GTK+/GNOME stack” ”
”
do you call that supported?
What the heck is going on here? Stupid, frothing, linux fanboys…*grrr*
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who said anything about Linux other than you sun zealots?
Is ZFS in the current build (72)? I didn’t see an option for ZFS during the install process.
ZFS in Current Build??
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obsolutely not. there is no project janus or zfs in solaris 10…
it is supposed to be released later. A sun developer admitted that they hyped it early
Hi,
They did not ‘hype it’ – but unlike some companies, Sun seems to be happy to let engineers determine release date, as opposed to marketing/PR types.
If you follow some of the blogs (blog.sun.com), you can see how progress is going on those two projects.
I actually emailed Sun, and they said it would be out in Update 1 or something like that.
Also, no offense meant, but I think you need to check your english definition (no, english wasn’t my first language).
‘hype’, doesn’t that suggest they exaggerated it’s abilities? What has that got to do with the release date? Unless you have some other inside information which suggests that ZFS/Janus won’t do what they have said it will do? (which you didn’t specifiy, and which I highly doubt – Janus has already been available in another form in user-level, Sun just made it kernel-level).
Bye,
Victor
Opteron is a perfect fit for Sun’s low to mid-range, while Xeon is only appropriate for price-performance-to-the-max-screw-everything-else clusters.
This is a huge misconception: Opterons have hypertransport and a memory manager built in. So they have a dedicated “pipe” to the memory, not a shared bus. The advantage kicks in when you have more than 1 CPU, because there Xeons share bandwidth, while Opterons mostly don’t.
Already now, memory bandwidth is the biggest bottleneck for processing power. CPUs spend a lot of cycles doing nothing – this is the main reason behind multicore efforts, BTW. Xeons are at a clear disadvantage and fall behind the Opteron in multiprocessor configurations. Gazillions of cache RAM can go only so far.
Gee guys, don’t you know that Sun has a sizeable team of developers paid for working on Gnome exclusively!
(BTW, how’s that for contribution to open source)
So we have an OS that will be the most narrow margin OS out there besides SCO maybe that will run on the same hardware I have here but with a much higher price tag.
Solaris 10 is free. OpenSolaris is going to be released soon. I don’t get it either, how can Solaris have a higher price tag than Linux? Certainly RedHat charges more for their enterprise class OS…
Certainly RedHat charges more for their enterprise class OS…
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You certainly wont get it if you have this screwed thinking that redhat=linux. It seems to be what all Sun people are delibrately doing. I have heard this from Jonathan many times before and it has never made sense.
The software is free and downloadable from centos.org. redhat and sun both charge for support.
Redhat has been delivering a product completely open source for a decade. Sun has so far published just PR.
Lets see you guys propose a license and get it accepted by FSF and OSI. then you form a community and improve your x86 compatibility and support gnome completely.then you prove that you can be competitive for a decade with just pure open soure code and later maybe you will get it.
This is a huge misconception: Opterons have hypertransport and a memory manager built in. So they have a dedicated “pipe” to the memory, not a shared bus. The advantage kicks in when you have more than 1 CPU, because there Xeons share bandwidth, while Opterons mostly don’t.
Agreed. However, it’s a bit of an understatement really. I’ve benchmarked 2.0ghz Opterons that will beat 3.06 Xenons in all but the most compute-intensive benchmarks.
Just to expound upon some of the stuff you’ve already mentioned: Each Opteron chip has an on-board memory controller, so it’s possible to allocate DIMMS to each individual CPU. On x86, you’ve got a huge bank of DIMMS that are shared by all of the processors, and the Northbridge, where the memory controller is on Intel, is where this gets bottlenecked. HyperTransport is just an interconnect technology, but the clever thing that AMD has done with it is to leave memory local to each CPU and then allow the processors to talk over the interconnect to access remote memory. Opterons are effectively mini-NUMA systems.
Opterons also have a shorter pipleline and don’t suffer so heavily from a branch mis-predict. It also helps that they use 2-bits instead of one to do their branch prediction. They seem to be correct more often than a Xenon would.
Another thing that is worth noting, is that AMD completely redesigned their processor core when they went to Opteron. Intel hasn’t done this in quite a while. Their Xenons which will feature 64-bit extensions are just Xenons with additional extensions tacked on. Intel hasn’t done any substantive processor redesign work, at least to my knowledge, and is why they’re suffering accordingly.
CDE looks ugly regardless of how you customise it and gnome is not supported by SUN. the hcl is very poor compared to other unix and unix like systems
You are without a doubt the worst troll ever. I saw you trolling away on the ULE thread and didn’t bother to bite because I’ve been having so much trouble with 5.3 I didn’t feel the need to defend it, but the assertions you are making here are so thoroughly false it cannot be believed.
As [email protected] mentioned, Sun has contributed a SUBSTANTIAL amount to Gnome development for the past several years. Most notably, they’ve provided usability testing which has resulted in a considerable number of cleanups across the whole Gnome UI. Not only has Solaris been shipping with Gnome since Solaris 9, but Solaris 10 now integrates the Gnome-based Java Desktop System, which is fully supported by Sun.
I’d tell you to stop trolling but you won’t. Why do you feel the need to post unsubstantiated negative comments about operating systems it’s clear you have absolutely no experience with?
Definitions of HYPE on the Web:
– Extreme promotion of a person, idea, or product.
http://www.motto.com/glossary.html
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Project janus and ZFS were hyped early. thats a fact
“Gee guys, don’t you know that Sun has a sizeable team of developers paid for working on Gnome exclusively!”
no. it isnt supported in solaris. as posted earlier SUN DOES NOT recommend gnome to ISV’s nor does it develop applications over gnome as a platform.read
———————————-
Brian Cameron wrote:
One thing that makes GNOME a little easier to deal with is that
most Sun customers do not build their own applications using the
GTK+/GNOME stack. Further, Sun discourages customers from
depending on gnome
————————————-
”
Sure Sun will disown it, but my comment is meant for for the Solaris haters whining about the “ugly GUI.” Most users that need real support from Sun could care less about the eye candy. ”
why not support a better GUI rather than the ugly CDE. there is a difference between elegance and eye candy..
You certainly wont get it if you have this screwed thinking that redhat=linux. It seems to be what all Sun people are delibrately doing.
I’m not certain that you get it either. So, please enlighten me. I posed a question to the author of the previous statement:
[H]ow can Solaris have a higher price tag than Linux?
Yet, you don’t seem to have a very convincing answer to the contrary. I know that there are plenty of truly free Linux distributions. I used Debian for a number of years. However, I mentioned RedHat since I know that they do charge a license fee for RHEL.
According to this:
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/purchase/index.html
It could cost you $18,000/yr/server to run RedHat.
Another question for you:
You assert that RedHat is not synonymous with Linux, yet they are undoubtedly a Linux vendor. How would you characterize RedHat, if not as a Linux vendor?
“I have always been solaris fan. I believe SUN has one of the best engineers and they do good things but somehow they screw things up like they did with Java and gave Microsoft a chance to catch up with .NET”
ms spends more on marketing then sun spends on research and development, and thats not even including intel, ibm, and oracle on both the hardware and os software side. they cant possibly compete with all of these companies combined r&d budgets. sun could only have put so much money into java development.
You assert that RedHat is not synonymous with Linux, yet they are undoubtedly a Linux vendor. How would you characterize RedHat, if not as a Linux vendor?
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I will assume that you really dont know the answer. Redhat is *one* of the Linux vendors. there are several others. Linux is a kernel downloadable from kernel.org. Redhat is *one* of the Linux *distributions*. if you want the software download it from centos.org.
*Both* Sun and Redhat charge for *support*.
got it?
Hi,
Dude, get a *real* dictionary and look it up – don’t be lazy, and just type in define:hype into google (I actually did that before, saw the definition, and decided to get off my behind and look up the word in a real dictionary). I used the Macquarie, but any good dictionary (Oxford, Webster, etc.) should give it to you – and no, I’m not going to bother typing it out, do it yourself – do some research, like I’ve done.
ZFS/Janus were not hyped – Sun released whitepapers, webcasts, blog posts and articles (try BigAdmin.com) on what these features would do. As I have already said, Janus was available in another form before – lxo, or something, which ran in userland. ZFS is in build 71, I believe, which should become next months Sol Express release (not sure, since I don’t work for Sun).
Bye,
Victor
MJ, those guys are just trolling.
I’ve got an idea to kill the trolls! OK, check this out… Before you’re to post a negative comment about an operating system, you have to attach a copy of your resume, business card, and paycheck stub along with any relevant certifications you’ve earned.
That way the rest of us can see where your constructive criticism is coming from.
Anonymous (IP: 61.95.184.—) – Posted on 2004-12-14 18:25:51
“Do you want facts? Go to sun.com and price an opteron server, then go to DELL and price a comparable Xeon-64 server.”
huh. i said typical commodity x86 hardware. how does xeon 64 qualify for that.
Do you even know what commodity hardware is, or are you simply creating and argument like a nice little troll? Dell is about as commodity as you can get, so why don’t you compare it to SUN?
Oh, thats right! you think commodity means, “I’ve built it myself”, nice, so come back to me when you came name fortune 500 companies that have IT crews sitting around assembling 30,000 desktop PCs and 4,000 servers for deployment.
As for you GNOME comments, when was Brians comments? oh, *THATS* right, circa GNOME 2.0, silly me. Back then GNOME was considered EXPERIMENTAL! YES! amazing! now that it is STABLE and PRE-BUNDLED *WITH* SUNS products, it now falls under SUNs support plan.
Oh, and by the way honey, SUN preferred API that you right for is Java. If you don’t know that, then it is obvious that you’ve been hiding under a bloody big rock for the last ten years.
<<what is the gnome version used by this java desktop?>>
I think JDS3 is using Gnome 2.6
As for you GNOME comments, when was Brians comments? oh, *THATS* right, circa GNOME 2.0, silly me.
——
really. you are in for a shock then. this particular comment was about gnome 2.6 forked as JDS 3….
Sun does not support gnome as a platform even today in solaris. thats a fact.
Do you even know what commodity hardware is, or are you simply creating and argument like a nice little troll? Dell is about as commodity as you can get, so why don’t you compare it to SUN?
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sure dell is commodity hardware. but xeon 64. nah…
that desktop looks suspiciously like gnome
CDE is beautiful. JDS is pretty fugly. The colours are aggressive and way too dark. JDS’s whole UI is awful.
Even text based is pleasant to look at…
http://www.hup.hu/old/images/hup/Solaris/Sol10beta7/6.png
Here’s a much better one:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/chandan/solaris-cde.png
Hi,
Actually, I think I’d have to agree with you – I don’t know why everyone bashes CDE, personally I like it quite a lot.
It’s fast, responsive, and has a consistent interface throughout (at least in my experience) – just because it lacks “oh my gosh, transparencies!”, or cool eyecandy effects doesn’t mean it isn’t efficient or well-designed.
When I refer to it as being ‘beautiful’, I mean clean *and* usable.
Bye,
Victor
solaris 10 has been fixed to tolerate linux partitions. the article in not clear but it is the x83 the swap partition number which solaris also wnats to use … that can be chaged to what they call solaris2 partitions. see elsewhere on net.
Hi,
Hmmm, if you do some reading on the net, you would see it’s not so much a matter of Solaris ‘tolerating’ linux swap partitions, but rather of the original Linux coders not bothering to check whether the 0x82 partition number was already in use by Sun.
Whilst it’s true there is no central repository of reserved partition numbers, it would have been better if they’d had a quick look at the popular OSes at the time (Solaris, HP-UX, NT etc.), and seen what numbers were taken.
Once again, we see an example of a perversion of facts by the Linux crowd (I don’t mean you – I’m refering to some /. and osnews posters), who cry foul, “Oh my gosh! Solaris is trying to undermine Linux – when you install Solaris it screws up Linux”, without bothering to read up on any of the history on the issue.
Also, this isn’t really a big thing, but the number is actually 0x82, I believe, not “x83” – just though I’d mention it.
The link you are referring to is probably:
http://blog.sun.com/roller/comments/hstsao/Weblog/solaris_10_x86_fd…
bye,
Victor
Linux coders not bothering to check whether the 0x82 partition number was already in use by Sun.
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its not Linux coders. Linux is just the kernel. its fdisk coders or diskpart coders or whatever not limited to Linux or solaris…
Solaris is simply amazing…its rock solid and if you use Unix a lot or want to, it doesn’t get much better. I used various BSDs and Linux over the year and nothing beats how clean and consistent Solaris is.
Solaris is a server OS. You do not need a desktop to run a server.
If you want a pretty desktop for Solaris then JDS is available for it (or will be shortly)
I’m sick of hearing stuff about solaris’ graphics. Already too many linux distros have desktop crap in it when you do a server install of it.. I just do my own.
Already too many linux distros have desktop crap in it when you do a server install of it.. I just do my own
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no they dont. name just one?
“Do you even know what commodity hardware is, or are you simply creating and argument like a nice little troll? Dell is about as commodity as you can get, so why don’t you compare it to SUN?”
sure dell is commodity hardware. but xeon 64. nah…
Why isn’t Xeon64 commodity? when does it go from niche to commodity? from what I see, all of Dells servers and workstations are either Xeon64 or Pentium 4 with EMT64 technology.
So please, explain oh great one, when does something suddenly become commodity?
Oh, and darling, you still haven’t provided the link for Brians comments. Hearsay doesn’t equate to fact.
Hi,
Ummm, no, it actually *is* linux coders – when I use the term Linux here, I am actually referring to the Linux kernel.
If you read the link I posted above, or through drydog’s excellent sun-x86 faq here:
http://sun.drydog.com/faq/
you’ll see what I mean – it’s an issue (or rather, now, “was an issue”) with Linux.
Of course, if you think I’m mistaken, feel free to point out my error (don’t worry – it’s happened before, as several of the lurkers here will attest to *grin*)
Bye,
Victor
Oh, and darling, you still haven’t provided the link for Brians comments. Hearsay doesn’t equate to fact.
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huh. how does one *quote* heresay. just google parts of what i have quoted above several times
Your claim, you have the burden of proof. Provide links to what you’re talking about so we can look at it too or STFU.
so many screenshots on a SINGLE page ?
“Intel hasn’t done any substantive processor redesign work, at least to my knowledge, and is why they’re suffering accordingly”
You’re right. Well, all their substantive processor design work went into the Itanic. Ooops
. As you say, the 64-bit Xeons are just Xeons with the 64-bit instruction set tacked on, and the Xeons themselves are just P4s stuffed with cache.
“I’ve got an idea to kill the trolls! OK, check this out… Before you’re to post a negative comment about an operating system, you have to attach a copy of your resume, business card, and paycheck stub along with any relevant certifications you’ve earned.”
Oh dear. You appear to be several millennia behind the debating times; the ancient Greeks recognised that authority did not count as a solid base for argument, and it’s been generally recognised by every course in formal logic since…
Holy cow, I don’t know how my eyes differ from Victor’s or the other guy who likes CDE, but that link you posted is still hideous. I couldn’t live with a desktop that looked like that. Ow. Oooh. Ow. It’s nasty. You honestly don’t think GNOME looks better? With a nice simple theme like, say, LightHouseBlue?
If you don’t like the way it looks, customize it! As far as hardware support goes, the Realtek RTL-8139 has been supported since Solaris 9 (see http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl) for more information.
RTL8139 sucks anyway (low performance) use an Intel eepro100 or 3Com 905x instead.
Holy cow, I don’t know how my eyes differ from Victor’s or the other guy who likes CDE, but that link you posted is still hideous. I couldn’t live with a desktop that looked like that. Ow. Oooh. Ow. It’s nasty. You honestly don’t think GNOME looks better? With a nice simple theme like, say, LightHouseBlue?
Some people, in some situations just don’t care how it looks like as long as they get easy access to xterms. Some people, in some situations see their desktop only 5 minutes a day and futhermore only see their main application, window decoration and/or ‘startbar’. Have you ever figured out why people run for example Fluxbox (or *box)? Probably for similar reasons. A screenshot doesn’t necessarily tell you much about user-experience btw.
cause the sun engeeneers made vi a piece of garbage.
@ AdamW
Have you even bothered to look at the Java Desktop System GNOME screenshots? Windows 3.1 is prettier by a long shot. JDS is beyond ugly, it’s hideous. Worst than the colours are the widgets. They don’t even match up. I hope they didn’t have to pay someone to make it so horrible.
Ok, I call bullshit on this one. If you are going to quote things, please make sure you a) aren’t quoting out of context and b) are providing an accurate quote. You missed the entire point of Brian’s message ( http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-December/msg… )
where he is saying that Sun wants to work more closely with the GNOME community to maintain stability and compatibility.
Since Sun provides a guarantee that applications will not break on Solaris, Sun will work with customers to keep applications working if at all possible. When working with internal applications, Sun has some control to ensure that applications make things work appropriately in a backwards compatible fashion. However, when working with a project like GNOME, Sun has only some influence. This influence is somewhat hampered by the fact that the GNOME community itself does not make backwards compatibility a priority (at least not to the same degree as Sun).
What the specific quote actually says is
One thing that makes GNOME a little easier to deal with is that most Sun customers do not build their own applications using the GTK+/GNOME stack. Further, Sun discourages customers from depending on (linking against, for example) the GTK+/GNOME stack since the GNOME community doesn’t provide strong enough stability guarantees.
And, as far as Sun not developing GNOME applications, what does this mean:
Since Sun itself provides most of the core GNOME applications with Solaris, most breakages that have occurred to date have not been noticed by customers.
I would like to thank you for bringing this message up though. I think everyone should go back and read it with an open mind (rather than looking for partial quotes that can be twisted) to see how Sun really does want to work with the Open Source community and to see how Brian says that GNOME is one of a few technologies that Sun relies upon but doesn’t directly control.
Here’s some commodity hardware supported by Solaris (as of the latest downloadable build) that some may not be aware of:
NIC
—
– Realtek 8139 (native, not 3rd party)
– all Intel 10/100/1000
– 3com 10/100 3c905x, 3c980
– SMC 10/100 EtherPower II
– Broadcom 10/100/1000 5703x, 5704x, 5700, 5701, 5705, 5782
SATA
—-
– Intel ICH5
– Silicon Image 3112, 3114, 3512
* USB audio (i.e. USB speakers for sound device)
* USB storage
* Firewire storage
Tips for new users
——————
* be sure to set your bios’ “Plug N Play” option to “No” (or Win95).
* in /platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/ata.conf, change both properties “drive[01]_block_factor=0x1” to “drive[01]_block_factor=0x10” and reboot (see ata(7d))
* you can use installboot(1m) to install the Solaris boot loader
* you can use fdisk(1m) (alone or within format(1m)) to change the active partition
* the now-resolved “conflict” between fdisk partition ids extends into the nomenclature of carving disks shared between Linux, Solaris and BSD’s:
there are differences–some of which are antithetical to each other–in how these OSes use the term “parition”, “slice”, “label”, and “format”;
Solaris’ scheme of slices within a partition described by a VTOC (which itself is located within a disk label) is like that of *bsd, EXCEPT *bsd’s “partition” == Solaris “slice” (whereas *bsd’s “slice” == dos/linux/fdisk “partition”)
Of course, but that’s not what the people I replied to said, did they? They actually said they think CDE looks good. That’s what I was replying to, not someone who said it works well or does the job. I’m sure it does both of those, but it’s *still* fugly.
Ronald: yes, it’s not very lovely either, but if they haven’t hacked stock GNOME up *too* much you can just go ahead and use a better GTK theme instead.
Hi,
No, they haven’t “hacked” up gnome – you should still be able to use standard Gnome/Metacity themes from say, art.gnome.org.
Also, as somebody already mentioned Sun is one of the *founding* members of the GNOME foundation, as shown here:
http://www.omg.org/news/releases/pr2000/2000-08-15.htm
Any changes they make would probably be sent upstream. Seriously, I don’t see what’s all this fuss about bashing Sun, when they support OSS a *lot* more than say, IBM (historically shown to be a pack of backstabbing two-bit thieves) or Novell (no track-record yet).
Finally, I consider CDE to be both beautiful *and* usable (more the latter than the former, of course). THen again, I consider something like Plan9
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/screenshot.html
to look good as well =).
Bye,
Victor
Sun is the enemy of OSS. They contribute. But only because they are too stupid to get their strategy straight. They bad talk OSS and GPL. The redestribute gnome but make absolutely no mention of it by renaming it. Those millions of new chinese users, are they really a meaningful increase in the gnome userbase? No, because they have been cut off completely from the gnome community. That is half the reason developers choose to use an OSS license for their apps! To get people to contribute back. There is a synergy in OSS projects because users can and do contribute so more users means the project as a whole gets stronger and gets even better. Not the case with gnome and sun. Sun stole gnome in exactly the way the GPL licensing is supposed to prevent only sun is doinging by fooling their more ignorant customers into not realizing that they are part of the gnome community. Same is true of Sun’s linux offerings (other Linux vendors who don’t make mention of their Linux underpinnings are guilty of this same ethical crime).
Sun sucks. Their contributions with OOo are just so they can nuke Microsoft. Their contributions with gnome are just so they can leverage some free work of others for less work than just making the product themselves. They have no concept of the spirit of OSS cooperation and contribution for the common good of *everyone* involved, including themselves if only they could pull their heads out of their asses. OSS gains in the short term in some ways from Suns involvement but don’t ever think Sun is the friend of OSS. They are not. They will turn and shit on Linux, GNU, Gnome, etc the minute it serves them.
Compare Sun relationship with OSS with IBM and RedHat’s. Both companies have taken a principled OSS stance many times when it might have served them to double deal the OSS community. It is not that these guys are saints! They are in business too. The difference is that they *get* it. They understand that playing ball can be a win for everyone. Sun is so short sighted, unethical, and dirty they are trying to play both sides.
Dirty deals with MS. They paid SCO instead of standing with other Linux vendors. The list goes on and on. I respect MS more than sun. At least bill gates knows who he is and is a good businessman even if he is a rutheless dirty bastard. OSS is supposed to be about more. It is supposed to be about everyone winning and things getting done in a way where everyone can feel good about their involvement. Sun’s luke warm and vascillating involvement makes them worse than and enemy like MS, it makes them a betrayer.
For Solaris fan boys…
Question : Is solaris a good or even great operating system?
Answer: I don’t give a crap if it is or not. Sun can burn. One day sun will die and I for one will piss on their grave.
Love,
Foo.
Dude, are you serious??? That is the ugliest screenshot I have seen in a long long time. You have pretty much voided your testimony by proving yourself to be totally insane and/or incompetent with that one link! OMG some people really are into some strange shit!
Hi,
Dude, you have got to be kidding me…
You are either intentionally trolling, or seriously ignorant. You sound like a whiney 15 year old Linux fanboy, who’s never actually used any OS outside of Windows and Linux, and who is attempting to parade around your silly little theories as facts.
Sun is undisputedly the second largest single contributor to the OSS movement, behind UCB, something which if you bothered to read up on, you would soon realise. (note the word ‘single’).
They have been around for a *long* time, far more than those upstarts Microsoft (*grin*), and they’ve historically had fairly close ties to the GNU/OSS movement, ever since the 1980’s.
Admitedly, these ties suffered somewhat during the 90’s, but this was more due to poor marketting and PR than anything else.
I’ll ignore your rabid comments, apppaling spelling, abysmal grammar, and obvious stupidity, and attempt to understanding your *cough* arguments.
“Sun stole gnome…”
What the ? This is the biggest piece of FUD I’ve seen on this post yet. If you actually knew what you were talking about, you would know that Sun was one of the *founding* memebers of the GNOME foundation.
http://www.omg.org/news/releases/pr2000/2000-08-15.htm
Also, who the h*ck do you think wrote most of the HIG? Hmmm, I wonder….starts with S, ends in U-N. Any ideas?
“Sun sucks. Their contributions with OOo are just so they can nuke Microsoft. Their contributions with gnome are just so they can leverage some free work of others for less work than just making the product themselves. ”
Another piece of FUD. Check out the openoffice mailing lists, , and look at who the biggest contributors are? Hmmm, the @sun.com email addresses might be a bit of a clue, huh? OO is still coded predominantly by Sun engineers – they *donated* StarOffice code to the public, starting the OO project themselves – can you think of anything that IBM/RH has done that is even comparable.
Without OO, Linux as a enterprise platform wouldn’t even be viable. Gnome office is, I’m sorry to say, nowhere near complete, and nor is KOffice (although it is admitedly closer), and no Cross Over office doesn’t count, since you’re just using Microsoft Office, for which you still need a license.
I’ve already debunked your “Sun steals Gnome” arguments above, but to recap, Sun is one of the *founding* memebers of the Gnome Foundation – they contribute vast amounts of code and R & D, they are largely are responsible for the entire UI direction of the Gnome project (via the HIG), and they are also vocal advocates of the Gnome project (contrary to what silly trolls who take Sun comments out of context will allege – I’ll be one of the first to admit that their PR and public statments needs some work…*grin*)
“Compare Sun relationship with OSS with IBM and RedHat’s. Both companies have taken a principled OSS stance many times”
Excuse me? IBM? As in, patent-hoarding, anti-competitive, taken-to-court-multiple-times-and-lost IBM? I still fail to see why people such as you insist on protecting and snivelling up to IBM, whilst aimlessly bashing Sun.
I never though I’d see the words IBM and principled in the same paragraph, let alone on the same page… (except for “lacks any”)
Since you seem to be having trouble constructing valid arguments, I’ll even help you out. One argument you could use is their developerworks network, where they write articles on Linux. Of course, look a little deeper, and you’ll see that any Linux-centered articles stopped sometime in 2000, for a grand total of about 25 actually useful articles (the majority of which were written by Daniel Robbins anyway).
If you go to ibm.com/developerworks, you’ll see that the majority of the articles are on IBM-centric products, such as Rational, Tivolli, DB2 etc. – even the so-called “Linux” section is nothing more than a glorified IBM PR department (a department which IBM, unlike Sun seems to excel in – the *only* department now, seeing as IBM R & D has essentially now gone down the drain) for their “Linux” solutions.
“Is solaris a good or even great operating system? I don’t give a crap if it is or not. Sun can burn. One day sun will die and I for one will piss on their grave. ”
OK, this is once again trolling, I think your words speak for themselves.
And no, they aren’t that many Solaris “fan boys” – the majority of Solaris users are probably sysadmins and enterprise, not home users, a market that Sun has never been particularly keen on enticing.
Bye,
Victor
Have you even bothered to look at the Java Desktop System GNOME screenshots? Windows 3.1 is prettier by a long shot. JDS is beyond ugly, it’s hideous. Worst than the colours are the widgets. They don’t even match up. I hope they didn’t have to pay someone to make it so horrible.
Dude, you can’t be serious. If you honestly feel that Win3.1 looks better than Sun’s Java Desktop then don’t keep your hopes up about getting a GUI/Graphic-design job. Gnome is hardly the “best GUI ever” (hell, personally I don’t like Gnome very much) but surely it looks and works better than something as old and buttugly as Windows 3.1. Interacting with the desktop might be an entirely different story but visually – no frikkin’ way. IMO the Java Desktop looks OK. As for CDE – it’s not exactly the prom queen but it works, it’s standardized (http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/xdm4.htm) and it provides basic functionality which is the only thing that counts in some environments (thus why including it is a good idea).
Dirty deals with MS. They paid SCO instead of standing with other Linux vendors.
Sun produce this other operating system called Solaris which is a decendant of AT&T unix, SCO undeniably own the rights to AT&T unix, so maybe, just maybe their purchase of a license from SCO had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH LINUX (shock horror!) and had more to do with them needing to cover their other (more important to them at least) product.
Actually SUN claim they bought a license from SCO so they could open source Solaris, belive that if you want to, but it is pretty clear that SUN is in a very different position regarding SCO then the pure linux companys (Redhat SuSE etc.) are.
Does that condecending and yet irrational attitude really get you far in life?
Look, I know full well that Sun has contributed. I said so myself very clearly so please please please do not mention for the 50th time how Sun was a “founding” member of Gnome. I get it. We all get it. Ok? Stop mentioning it.
You have said absolutely nothing at all that I did not say myself (except more loudly) and have done nothing at all to refute my point which was never that Sun hadn’t contributed but that they were an unfaithful and opportunistic friend to the OSS world.
And, as for there being no Solaris fan boys, how many fucking times have you posted on this thread defending Sun every which way you can? Sometimes rationally and sometimes pulling out crap of your own to make your point or simply not addressing the arguments you claim to be refuting? You are most definitely a fan boy if there ever was one.
And as for my atrocious spelling and grammer, uh, man are you really that desperate to win your point that you start attacking grammar? I invite you to dismiss my arguments (since you didn’t even try in your first response) but please, stick to the subject. You argue like a Bush republican. I conceed the IBM issue. Replace IBM and Redhat with just RedHat. It doesn’t really affect my point which is about Sun and not IBM at all. Quit throwing around your “I know more than you and I’m smarter than you attitude” and make some actual coherent arguments.
Haha…Ok thats funny. Youre basically saying any negative comment about an OS is trolling? Please.
Some info you requested…..I’m the Information Security and Technology Manager for a half billion dollar credit union. I won’t embarrass you by telling you my salary.
Hi,
My “condescending and irrational attitude” ? If you’re referring to the fact that I don’t rant and write like a 9 year old kid, then yes. My arguments are far from “irrational” – I’ve already systematically analysed your “arguments”, and shown them to be, by and large, false rantings. If you want, I can just Select, Middle-Mouse it here again, but that would be pointless.
I suspect the reason you think I’m being “condescending” is because I don’t swear or rant like you do.
“Sun is the enemy of OSS. They contribute. But only because they are too stupid to get their strategy straight.”
This is your argument? Let’s ignore the fact that the third sentence doesn’t even make sense – you’re alleging that Sun is only contributing for their own gain, and that at the first opportunity, they’ll backstab the OSS movement.
Well, as I’ve already stated, Sun is the number two single contributor to OSS behind UCB, and has been so *since the 1980’s*. Just to save you time, that’s over *twenty years*, alright?
IBM has probably backstabbed about twenty companies in that time – and RH has already publicly admitted that they’re trying to get people into “vendor-lock” – of course, I see nothing wrong with that, they’re a business and they’re trying to make money, so it’s perfectly fine.
What’s not fine is when people like you come along, and rant and rave at Sun whilst turning the blind eye to companies like IBM, RH, and Novell – all three of these haven’t exactly been paragons of corporate altruism (although RH has a fairly good record compared to the other two) – I still don’t understand why you insist on aimlessly bashing Sun with silly arguments, whilst defending companies like RH, which has already shown it’s true colours – they’re in it to *make money* – get it?
About the “stealing gnome” issue – this is absolutely stupid – you said you understand my point about Sun/Gnome, and that I should stop repeating it – well then, explain to me how Sun can then turn around and “steal” gnome?
JDS is *not* Gnome – JDS is the Java Desktop System – it’sa consistent UI and suite of desktop application (OpenOffice, Evolution, RealPlayer, Mozilla etc.) that sits on top of a variable framework – there’s JDS for Linux, JDS for Solaris, and possibly a JDS for Windows in the pipeline (speculated by one of the Sun engineers a while ago – not sure about progress on this now, though).
They’re not “tricking” anybody – Sun openly advertises that JDS is running on Gnome (after all, they helped create it – yes, get it now?) – about-gnome will tell you everything you need to know.
“unfaithful and opportunistic friend to the OSS world. ”
Excuse me? You accuse me of saying “absolutely nothing at all that I did not say myself (except more loudly)”, and you’re trying to argue that Sun is “unfaithful and opportunistic”?
Name one instance where Sun has intentionally backstabbed or betrayed the OSS movement? C’mon, just one. Sure, they’ve screwed up PR, press releases, marketting, you name it, and they’ve had trouble getting their message across, but their actions speak for themselves – Apache, Java-Ant, OpenOffice, Mozilla – all of these projects have benefitted substantially from Sun’s R & D.
You still haven’t refuted a single one of my arguments: the Gnome/HIG issue (yeah sure, you said “I get it. We all get it. Ok? Stop mentioning it.” – but where have you refuted it?), the OpenOffice issue, the SCO/Sun IP issue (mentioned by bil), the IBM/RH/SUN comparison, etc.
I have yet to see a single, coherent, well-thought out refutation from you – point one out, and I’ll be happy to retract that last statement.
Also, it’s not your spelling/grammar that I take offense at (I’ve already stated that I’m more than happy to overlook it, and argue directly about your points) – it’s your abusive language, ranting, swearing, and overall immaturity (and let me assure you, I’m probably a lot younger than you).
Comments like:
“Sun is the enemy of OSS. They contribute. But only because they are too stupid to get their strategy straight. They bad talk OSS and GPL.”
“Sun stole gnome” (What the? This is so silly and stupid it’s beyond belie.)
“Sun sucks. Their contributions with OOo are just so they can nuke Microsoft”
“They will turn and shit on Linux, GNU, Gnome, etc the minute it serves them.”
“I respect MS more than sun. At least bill gates knows who he is and is a good businessman even if he is a rutheless dirty bastard”
Please do reply to this – I’m interested to hear your real arguments, rather than your rants.
Bye,
Victor
“but that they were an unfaithful and opportunistic friend to the OSS world”
Sun is cca 30 000 different people: engineers, sales people, support personnel, managers of all kind. It’s a big organization with different mentalities, different cultures.
Many engineers (probably a few hundred) are working full time on OSS products (Gnome, OOo, NFSv4 for Linux, Netbeans, FreeTTS, new automounter for Linux just to name a few). Sun invests a large amount of money to pay people to work on OSS development. This is IMHO a good thing. If you do some OSS development during university, it’s nice to find a company where you can continue with the development and get paid for doing so.
“Sun is so short sighted, unethical, and dirty they are trying to play both sides. ”
What do you call a person who equals an organization of 30 000 different people with a single personality?
🙂
@AdamW
yes, it’s not very lovely either, but if they haven’t hacked stock GNOME up *too* much you can just go ahead and use a better GTK theme instead.
Thank you for agreeing with me.
@Anonymous (IP: —.telia.com)
Dude, you can’t be serious. If you honestly feel that Win3.1 looks better than Sun’s Java Desktop then don’t keep your hopes up about getting a GUI/Graphic-design job. Gnome is hardly the “best GUI ever” (hell, personally I don’t like Gnome very much) but surely it looks and works better than something as old and buttugly as Windows 3.1. Interacting with the desktop might be an entirely different story but visually – no frikkin’ way. IMO the Java Desktop looks OK. As for CDE – it’s not exactly the prom queen but it works, it’s standardized ( url ) and it provides basic functionality which is the only thing that counts in some environments (thus why including it is a good idea).
Don’t worry, I have no drawing skills beyond stick match figurines. CDE has way better widgets and colours. Look at the JDS screenshots, it’s a mess. How did this got past Q&A? There are way better GNOME themes out there than that one, like SmoothGNOME or Industrial.
“I’m the Information Security and Technology Manager for a half billion dollar credit union.”
A half-billion dollar company with just one IS manager? That’s an interesting management structure! I see they’ve decided to cut down on bureaucracy…:)
“new automounter for Linux”
heck, you’re not serious, are you? supermount, supermount-ng, automount, magicdev, project utopia – what the Linux world needs is…ANOTHER AUTOMOUNTER!
sheesh, big companies can start idiotic products too, it seems
. Unless you meant proj. utopia, which Sun is involved in. Though it’s not just an auto-mounter by any means.
The automounter in question is an improvement of the current autofs system for linux, which was already *trying* to–but not so successfully–model Sun’s autofs feature wise. In other words, it’s trying to bring linux autofs up to par with Sun’s. Linux autofs doesn’t support much of the features that Sun’s does making it very difficult for a linux client to integrate into a Sun environment.
The automounter in question is an improvement of the current autofs system for linux, which was already *trying* to–but not so successfully–model Sun’s autofs feature wise.
—-
Ok. any links and developer ids?
I am so happy that one we both agree on this issue. you have no idea how happy i am
http://autofsng.bkbits.net/
There’s a link from http://www.sunsource.net/
The freshmeat page:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/autofsng/?branch_id=54652&release_id=…
An announcement on the kernel list:
http://lwn.net/Articles/103950/