“Because I personally don’t think they have anything left worth taking after I’ve applied the general Unix principles. I really do think Linux is the better system by now, in all the ways that matter.” Read more here
“Because I personally don’t think they have anything left worth taking after I’ve applied the general Unix principles. I really do think Linux is the better system by now, in all the ways that matter.” Read more here
Solaris on the other hand shows stellar scalability in the single image, something Linux can’t really brag about.
And this is important to… who? Yes, Solaris can do one thing in particular (run on systems with insane numbers of processors) much better than Linux. So what?
For tasks that are CPU-bound, there are other ways to handle the load, such as clustering. Having 32 dual-CPU systems will probably give you the same kind of performance that a single 64-CPU system will for raw computational performance. It would likely be cheaper too, and have increased redundancy.
For virtually everything else, the number of CPUs you can have at once isn’t really going to make much difference. You will likely start having problems with network bandwidth long before you start running out of CPU power. Even then, there are other ways to handle things.
I have never seen the source code to Solaris, so I could not comment on design. Though with its traditionally poor performance, I would say it is not better designed.
Ah, but you have to remember the “better performance” of Solaris is not that it is faster, but that it takes a hell of a lot to make it slow down.
IOW, a Linux box might be faster at the start of a benchmark with only a small number of users, but a Solaris box will still be ticking along with little to no performance degradation long after the Linux box has ground to a halt.
I have not seen proof to indicate Solaris is much more scalable than Linux. I do know Linux scales to the most powerful super clusters, http://www.top500.com. The fastest super computer is the IBM Blue Gene/L and it runs Linux, not Slowlaris.
Well, it depends what you’re measuring. A renderfarm, for example, puts a much different load on the system than a webserver or a machine used for hundreds of interactive users.
Solaris’s lack of showing in things like the top500 probably has a lot more to do with the lacklustre raw performance of SPARC hardware, than any lackings in the OS.
I have no clue why people call Linus Torvalds “arrogant”, Linus Torvalds did create his own operating system kernel that is used and has bested many commercial products (Slowlaris, so his input should be respected.
I would propose that Linus’s input into Linux has long since been eclipsed by everyone else’s input into Linux (not to say he doesn’t make significant contributions, just that everyone else – combined – is almost certainly making more. Certainly Linus is of the “make it work first” rather than “design it first” school of software development.
I agrree, though, Linus has never come across to me as arrogant, just a typical engineer.
Even though there are free dev tools with Linux, people are still not able to do most of what they want. This problem is not elclusive to Linux but it is true for all OS’s in the world (including the brain).
I am not going to burn my fingers on ich is better bla bla bla
the fact is a emailed the solaris x86 team and gave them my problems i
had with solaris, lie the java desktop not working, no working s-ata driver, or at least it did not work etc. and i got a very nice and quick respons like, you could try this and that and please download the newest version. I was very pleased!
Good support is very important…..
Merry Christmas to everyone and may all your wishes for 2005 may come out…….no, no not you Bill you have used up all your wishes!
Is the OS just a means to an end (leasure), or is the OS the end, and the meaning is the exercise, or a little of both. The only OS that matters is your own personal one.
And a happy new year!
It’s all highly personal, which OS is the best, but the truth is that none of them are the best when you take away the end purpose, because the dog or dinosaur doesn’t care if you are running Windows/Unix/Linux. The OS of choice is very much relative to the individuals requirements, and it is entirely possible that DOS could be the best OS by far to a specific individual.
If Linux is being actively developed than it has a future, and that is more important to the individual than sales or performance because sales and performance are relative.
If you use Linux, you should use it for a specific purpose, and you should be able to defend a specific purpose or two.
Use Linux for a purpose, but beyond that, you are just resting and nothing matters, so don’t defend yourself, you are just resting!
That’s the community code.
[quote]
“To invent something totally new and different just because you want to do something new and different is in my opinion, the height of stupidity and hubris.”
If everybody followed this would we still have nothing but a CL interface? Yes doing something totally new and different can be a waste of time but it can also produce good things. [/quote]
I don’t completely agree with him as I think that anyone has the freedom to do anything experimental without a clue where they are headed which leads to discoveries (not inventions). But as for most inventions – they have an idea of what they want to achieve so in that case this is not what he is talking about.
For instance, the GUI was invented for a purpose – an alternative method to the CL for ease of use – and not because someone wanted to do something new and different without a clue where they where headed. So here they had an aim.
Is it just me, or do the moderated comments seem reasonable counterarguments? (ATM there are three)
They might be a little sarcastic, and one calls another poster an idiot, but neither of those horrible crimes seems out of place on the OSNews comments.
> “I haven’t tried it, I have no plans to try it” — how much more arrogant and ignorant
> can you get?
A lot, just call a person arrogant and ignorant based on the above quote and and there you go.
Fallen into your own semantic trap by the looks of things.
Inflammatory and/or off-topic comments will often get moderated. Also anything that talks about politics in the larger sense (because that usually ends up being either off-topic or flamebait).
Note that someone has to report the post as abuse for it to be moderated.
Im amazed at how many ppl are mad at Linus as well as defending Solaris.
I personally thought the interview was great and think Solaris is a joke myself.
But, I have no inteterst in joining a flame war so I will leave it at this. In the classic tradition of sporting competition I will simply point to the score board and ask….whos got the lead and the momentum? I think the answer is obvious.
It’s quite evident that from all OSS or related Linux has *the* momentum.That doesn’t negate the fact that (Trusted)Solaris is an outstanding server OS.Comparing Linux with Solaris is inherently asking for problems alike.
Linus just said what an increasing number of people are beggining to realize-“It’s the hardware support, stupid”.
It doesnt matter how incredible the design of the OS is, or the grandness of the architecture-when an OS hits “the streets” it has to cope with perplexing array of hardware configurations and this has proven time and again to be the biggest limiting factor on the uptake of OS’s. Linus can now, proudly, patting himself and others on the back, point out that in regards to this greatest challenge, which boils down to the whole chicken-egg complex, Linux has actually stood the market test and succeeded.
I don’t know if I am the only one who has noticed this(I doubt it), but a couple of years ago everyone and there brother was crying about the lack of hardware support and critical propietary applications-nowadays hardly anyone talks about such anymore. The uphill battle to establish itself with virtually *no* support from the corporate world was indeed diffuclt for Linux, the community of hacker-users. But Linux, the FOSS community, managed to pull it off-and then the big name corporations started paying attention. Now virtually every major corporation wants to be associated with Linux and FOSS-even if its only a superficial “us too”.
That chicken-egg complex-ie. if you don’t already support a large amount of hardware(/software) you can’t attract the community of developers to create the needed support for the hardware(/software)- is the same dilemna which confronts every single OS out there.
People tend to forget that when MS-DOS first came that there were extremely few machines in existance that it could run on and very little in the way of peripheals. Microsoft piggy-backed the dominant hardware platform and most hardware was designed to work with it-not the other way around-and not that the new hardware was designed for Microsoft-but rather for the new dominant hardware platform which happened to come with a Microsoft OS.
The largest single reason why Linux mastered and successfully resolved this hurdle is because of the community it engendered-and the lisence was the key to that community. The second largest reason for this success is that the hardware platform at which Linux was targeted was the market of the commodity PC which most hackers and developers already had at home.
Sun’s Solaris 10/x86 may be a great OS-both form the design and architecture point of view-and it may end up competing with other Sun products in the niche market which Sun has claimed for itself. But Solaris x86 doesn’t have a chance succeeding on “the streets”-ie. with commodity PC’s. Not that Sun would want that anyway;).
The reason why they will never have the hardware support that Linux(Linus) now takes for granted is because Sun does not understand that the pivotal issue of community support, and the most important aspect of community support is the matter of trust-and this trust finds its expression in the licensing of the software. Sun has a notorious level of distrust as regards the communities which have formed around their products.
Sun has produced so many different licenses in the past couple of years-but one doesn’t neeed to be a lawyer to read between the lines of these licenses and grok the “we don’t trust you” attitude which permeates most of them. There really is no two ways about it: an OS can either promote a community of equals, with trust as its basis, or a company can try to buy all of the support it has.
If Linux had been the product of *a* corporation there is little doubt that it would have failed miserably. Corporations can and do succeed in Linux by piggy-backing on the community which Linux already had-and in so doing the community becomes larger and larger. But a corporation cannot establish a community-communities are of and for those who constitue it.
If Sun were to release Solaris x86 under licenses which expressed trust towards the community it might occur that a community arises around it. But even then there is no guarantee. As it is Solaris only marginally supports a tiny fraction of commodity PC hardware-most hackers who might otherwise have an interest in developing for Solaris do not already own hardware which is adequately supported(tiny little things like the fact that Solaris and Linux don’t coexist peacefully on the same drive).
Right now the community around Solaris x86 is painfully small-and it is a community which has been dissed on multiple times before, one has to hand it to them -that they have stuck with Sun even as Sun stabbed them in the back multiple times.
Linus is mistaken in one sense: for him what the GPL license expresses is utterly common sense:
“make the code available to others, and make sure that improvements stay that way. That’s really it. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is fluff.”
His mistake lies therein that he fails to see how radically non-common sense such is for so many of his contemporaries. The degree of pro-GPL loyalty is directly related to the vehemence with which its claim to common sense is rebutted by those who wish to prevent it’s success. The number of those who are vehemently oppossed to the kind of common sense embodied in the GPL far surpasses those who “naturally” grok it.
Simplicity is rarely ever simple to achieve let alone maintain. For Linus the “common sense”, embodied in the GPL, is simple, and he would prefer that it was so simple for others. Linus has had the luxury of being surrounded by a large number of people who share this common sense-consequently all the hub-bub about licensing is extraneous BS from his point of view.
But Linus would not have been surrounded by people who shared this common sense if it were not for the work of the GNU folks to establish precisely this common sense. Back in the day before the IP wars broke out most hackers participated in a community based on trust-it was common sense that people shared their ideas and code and helped each out. But that trust was violated time and time again-usually by people who had nothing to do with the actual programming. People got burnt left and right and back-stabbing became the norm.
The IP industry created a no-trust zone-the basis of it’s own economy. The IT industry in Finland at the time when Linus was learning how to program was about 15 years culturally behind the times-the concerns of those involved in the GNU, which had developed in the context of the IP wars-which largely took place in the US, were probably unfathomable for Linus at the time.
In summary: Solaris x86 will probably do quite well where Sun was already successfull. Solaris x86 does not have the support(hardware/software) to expand significantly beyond this niche. In order to have such support Sun must attract a community of developers around it’s products. In order to attract such a community the license under which its products released must express trust towards the community. Sun has had an antagonistic relation with the FOSS community since the advent of FOSS-Scott Mcnealy(IIRC) was personally involved in the dispute that occassioned Stallman to create the GNU. Sun has a bad reputation in terms of community. Even if Sun changes its lisences to express trust in the community and in so doing succeeds in earning a positive reputation there is still no guarantee that Solaris x86 will be more than niche platform-these conditions are necessary but not sufficient. It has yet to be proven that one can buy the support they need *and* have a community of trust and still be more than a niche player-this is the model that Apple a la Mac OS X is attempting right now-and is apparently the model that Solaris is attempting to emulate-except that Apple has total control over the hardware available for its platfform and large legacy of supporting commerical hardware/software vendors.
Hmm,i agree with that so far as the desktop is concerned.
NFS codebase is the same between Solaris and Linux.
I work with Solaris and Linux in the same place and there is no difference in stability for NFS serving.
If the “lack of hardware support” argument works for Linux over Solaris, it works equally well for Windows over Linux.
That’s why Linux has single digit penetration on the desktop market and little better on servers.
The thing that riles me (and I’m speaking more generally than at you now) is the same people that say hardware support is not an issue for Linux are here arguing that hardware support is a problem for Solaris.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the vast majority of motherboards, nics, and processors use a very limited amount of different types of chips. These are for the most part already supported. Also, the OS does not really need to have much drivers for USB devices because if the USB device is manufactured correctly, it should take care of that itself. Finally, in terms of graphics, Sun basically needs to support standard vga for the console and Xorg will do the rest (since it will have all the same graphic drivers it has in Linux.) And finally, any other drivers they might want, they can easily rip them out of Linux, and load them up as modules. So exactly, why is Solaris so far behind in drivers support?
The thing that riles me (and I’m speaking more generally than at you now) is the same people that say hardware support is not an issue for Linux are here arguing that hardware support is a problem for Solaris.
Hardware support is allways an issue.I bought a mp3 player lately and guess what it comes only with windows software.Now this wasn’t a problem on my SuSE9.2 box.The mass storage device was detected and configured without any serious intervention.Allthough i have a small home network with only FreeBSD and SuSE Linux clients/servers i know windows has by far the best hardware support,not because windows itself is stuffed with drivers but because the market share makes it easier for third parties to sell their computer related products.Second to windows SuSE and Mandrake have the best hardware support out of the box .I never understand why so many articles deal with Linux in general while only a handfull are worth mentioning.This article is an exellent example:What is Linux?,do we talk about a LiveCD,credit card size distro,a firewall,etc which distro?For the rest i agree with karl,it’s to simple comparing Linux (which distro?) with Solaris without a reliable reference fit.
“For tasks that are CPU-bound, there are other ways to handle the load, such as clustering. Having 32 dual-CPU systems will probably give you the same kind of performance that a single 64-CPU system will for raw computational performance. It would likely be cheaper too, and have increased redundancy.”
You are missing the point of so-called ‘big iron’. A cluster
will give you good raw computational throughput as long as
you have a partitioned workload (read litte to no inter
node communication required) which is not latency sensitive.
It is also ‘may’ give you some redundancy depending on the
clustering and the application. However, it won’t help with your real estate, power, or administration problems.
slash,
Solaris 10 Sparc has a driver infrastructure for Fibre Channel devices that Solaris 10 x86 does not have (yet). Most of the complaining I have heard about Solaris x86 and driver support has to do with NIC’s and some video cards. A couple of people have had some issues with Sis chipset motherboards.
If the “lack of hardware support” argument works for Linux over Solaris, it works equally well for Windows over Linux.
..and sometimes Linux over Windows..
That’s why Linux has single digit penetration on the desktop market and little better on servers.
Ah, thats the reason. Thanks for elobarting your reasoning, and providing yet another useless ‘explanation’ without any ground.
Oh, and Quality over quantity.
And for years this complaint about Linux was a major source of problems-but this has changed. Linux now supports an amzing diversity of new and old hardware-so much so that this issue is no longer seen as a major issue for Linux today.
The question is really whether or not Solaris will be released under licenses which engender enough trust towards a community to enable such a community to really thrive and perhaps provide Solaris with sufficient hardware drivers(and applications) to allow for it to succeed on commodity x86 hardware.
If they do so, perhaps, in 2-3 years we can talk about the about the Solaris desktop on a cheap walmart PC. It’s important to remeber-if Solaris x86 had the same class of hardware compatibility that JDS(which is SUSE based) has, JDS would probably be based on Solaris x86. The fact that Solaris x86 supports perhaps 10% of what JDS supports is probably the main reason behind why JDS and Solaris x86 are marketed the way they are being marketed-I’m sure Sun would love to use Solaris x86 as the basis for JDS but that remains rather distant. Solaris x86 needs 2-3 years given a trully awesome community to reproduce even the majority of what Linux out of the box supports. If Sun does not wish to do this and Solaris x86 is only a x86 version of its OS for the same niche which Sun already holds-what is the need for all of the comparison between the two? In reality I relatively little direct competition between Linux and Solaris-there is some overlapping of markets but not that much really-the overlap between Linux and Windows is much, much larger.
As far as the comparison goes between Linux and Windows regarding driver support-at this point Linux comes with more driver support than Windows *itslef* does-most Windows drivers are written by the hardware producers themselves. Is the Linux driver support perfect or all-inclusive ? of course not-but Linux supports more hardware now than almost all other non-microsoft OS’s put together. The fact is that there is now a burgeoning 3rd party market starting to produce hardware for Linux as a platform. Linux has crossed the threshold. Now it is only a matter of time, rarely a question of if, if there will be good driver support under Linux. Sun is stuck in the “if” department as regards x86. We’ll see.
um.. hello… it is not engineering OR marketing… it is the fact that you people do not yet truely value usability. Microsoft’s big win was copying Apple’s recognition that people are stupid, and reequire intuitive interfaces…. And then Microsoft innovated upon those ideas and better penetrated the market.
Linux does not value usability nearly as much… And I would much rather pay $129 for a georgeous Apple OS which I can actually use, rather than spend all day figuring out how to start a debian installation (let alone finish it)… on average.
“JDS would probably be based on Solaris x86. The fact that Solaris x86 supports perhaps 10% of what JDS supports is probably the main reason behind why JDS and Solaris x86 are marketed the way they are being marketed-I’m sure Sun would love to use Solaris x86 as the basis for JDS but that remains rather distant. Solaris x86 needs 2-3 years given a trully awesome community to reproduce even the majority of what Linux out of the box supports.”
You obviously don’t understand what JDS is. The fact is that Solaris 10 x86 will have JDS sitting on top. Solaris 9 was way too mature (read application breakage) and sucked too much on x86 to be able to support JDS sufficiently, but Solaris 10 is a whole different beast. JDS is basically a complete graphical environment with a set of prechosen applications and administrative tools that sit on top of a kernel. Sun will support it on Solaris and Linux and in the future might even migrate it to Windows. JDS will work with Solaris, Sun will sell JDS on Solaris just as they will sell it on Linux. It is platform neutral.
um.. hello… it is not engineering OR marketing… it is the fact that you people do not yet truely value usability. Microsoft’s big win was copying Apple’s recognition that people are stupid, and reequire intuitive interfaces…. And then Microsoft innovated upon those ideas and better penetrated the market.
Hello back at you. Who is “you people?” I neither program, or market software. I am a home user. Personally, I find KDE desktop usability better than Windows usability. Those people I help change over from Windows to Linux have a variety of different reactions to the various desktops available for Linux, ranging from, “It’s the same,” to, “This is so cool!”
There is another flaw in the usability argument. If usability were key, Apple should be doing better than it is. So I will propose a couple of other factors:
1) Cost. Windows machines are cheaper than Apple. Linux may be cheaper than Windows, but as long as the vast majority of machines have Windows installed prior to purchase, there is no cost savings.
2) Market share. This carries huge advantages in a couple of ways.
a) Better driver support
b) Bigger range of software
And big market share is self perpetuating. Hardware and software developers develop for Windows, because it’s dominant. Windows is dominant, because of its driver and software support – it’s a self-perpetuating circle.
Microsoft can also leverage their market share with manufacturers to limit future Linux offerings. Dell is a classic example. This is one of the shady, less appealing aspects of Microsoft.
Linux has overcome some of these problems through massive community and company support (as Linus emphasized in the article). That creates a system where much of Linux operates under the radar of anyone trying to measure its usage. Each machine I own would be counted as a Windows box by most measurements. A number of Web sites also see me as running Internet Explorer on Windows XP, although I can assure you I do not.
What Sun lacks is both that commitment to the mass market, and the community. Given the posturing of its executives on their various blogs, given the weakness of of the “open source” licenses they submit for approval, I don’t think Sun understands this “community thing,” and I don’t think they will for quite some time. Indeed, I think Sun will require a major leadership change before they make much progress in that area.
“I expect Solaris 10 to thoroughly decimate Linux in the Opteron server market. ”
hhahahahahahahah! Keep dreaming, brother.
Cheap, truly open and with a big head start in drivers will kill you everytime. Linux has the head start (try getting any Opteron mobo drivers in Solaris)….It’s truly free, whereas we have yet to see about Solaris.
“In any case, he really didn’t come out as arrogant to me, though I can see how his words could annoy Solaris/x86 enthusiasts. Both of them. (See, that is arrogance! ;-)”
ROTFLMAO.
Yes, the Solaris/x86 fans are an interesting lot. All two of them.
Drivers? For servers? What hardware does a server have in it? A processor (or several), a pile of RAM, a pile of hard disks and a network card. Whether Solaris supports Joe USB Webcam or not is important on the desktop…but not on the server.
network card
—
one key area where an insane amount of hardware is being supported by Linux out of the box which isnt matched by solaris on x86
You obviously don’t understand what JDS is. The fact is that Solaris 10 x86 will have JDS sitting on top. Solaris 9 was way too mature (read application breakage) and sucked too much on x86 to be able to support JDS sufficiently, but Solaris 10 is a whole different beast. JDS is basically a complete graphical environment with a set of prechosen applications and administrative tools that sit on top of a kernel. Sun will support it on Solaris and Linux and in the future might even migrate it to Windows. JDS will work with Solaris, Sun will sell JDS on Solaris just as they will sell it on Linux. It is platform neutral.
Karl’s point is still correct though. The only reason Linux is an option for JDS is because of hardware support. SUN probably wouldn’t mind selling you a high priced Solaris certified computer but they also understand that there is a much bigger market for cheap PCs these days and are trying to grab that market with Linux. JDS wouldn’t be feasible without Linux. In fact I would be willing to bet that 90% of the JDS licenses they sell are for Linux and not Solaris.
If the “lack of hardware support” argument works for Linux over Solaris, it works equally well for Windows over Linux.
No it doesn’t. Not even close. Linux is much closer to Windows in terms of hardware support than Solaris is to Linux.
That’s why Linux has single digit penetration on the desktop market and little better on servers.
You’re joking right? More webservers run on Linux than Windows. Companies like Oracle sell commercial Linux server software. IBM and SGI sell high tech, high end servers loaded with the GNU/Linux operating system. If this constitutes little more than “single digit penetration” then you’re nuts.
The thing that riles me (and I’m speaking more generally than at you now) is the same people that say hardware support is not an issue for Linux are here arguing that hardware support is a problem for Solaris.
That’s because this isn’t 1997 anymore. Linux has excellent hardware support. Does is support everything? No, but does WindowsXP support everything? No. In fact I’ve had a much easier time installing Linux on some machines then I had with Windows. The fact is Solaris has support for next to nothing in terms of commodity hardware and Linux supports more hardware out of the box than pretty much any other operating system. I never needed a driver CD (or floppy) for Linux.
FYI,
I’ve been using Solaris 10 on my Ultra60, Netra X1, a PC at work, and a compaq evo laptop. All systems work as expected. With Solaris 10 using Xorg on x86, I didn’t have to do anything during the install for the video card. No more guess work. It just works! USB, sound, video, and even the cheapo realteck NIC in my PC all work! No extra drivers, no hacking! It just worked. It even works inside of VMWare with no issues. So the hardware support as improved a lot. I could never get Solaris 9 to work on either the PC or laptop at work. But Solaris 10 worked out of the box. As for performance, it’s more responsive than Slackware, and that’s pretty good considering how small Slackware is footprint wise. Of course, it runs perfectly on my Ultra60 and my Netra. I noticed a boost in video performance on my Ultra60.
As for JDS. It’s integrated into Solaris SPARC/x86. I’ve been beta testing it for months now and I think it’s a nice clean gnome implementation that’s perfect for a work environment. It’s nice to have StarOffice 7 included with it too:) So all you Linux users and ppl who call Solaris, Slowaris, I challenge you to test it out and see how things really are. Remember what Linux was like for desktops 8 years ago? But you tried again right? So give Solaris 10 a try, don’t be afraid:)
With Solaris 10 using Xorg on x86, I didn’t have to do anything during the install for the video card. No more guess work. It just works
—-
You managed to install a operating system for which the final release has yet to be released. so solaris 10 does not exist. builds of them do. congrats
true, but if you’re building a server you’re not likely to use any random network card lying around the place. You buy a new, fairly high quality one, and there’s no shortage of these for Solaris/x86 (Intel ones, for e.g., which are very popular at the high end anyway).
Choose your OS based on your needs. Test it. Don’t trust benchmarks or “industry experts” to tell you what you need.
If Linux/x86/AMD/etc has the price, support, performance you need, use it. If Solaris/x86/AMD/SPARC/etc has the price, support, perfomance you need, use it.
Even if Windows or Mac OS fit your needs, use them.
Just do de-FUDify some of the comments here: Solaris x86 is fully supported. Sun sell certified AMD64 servers with Linux, Solaris, Windows OSes. Solaris traditionally improves as you add CPUs; Linux improves until about 4-8 (depending on patches) then deteriorates in performance-per-CPU, while Solaris improves up to 128 CPUs.
All this depends on your workload, of course. See above. Do your own tests. Only an idiot makes a decision without investigating the options. Try it. Vendors will lend you kit if you need to test bespoke applications; they’ll give you signed, written, statements about how standardised servers (eg, Oracle, etc) will perform for a given workload on a given platform for a given OS config. (That’s the same thing as doing your own testing, except the vendor has done the work for you, and stands by it). They will also supply reference sites, if you ask. These reference customers will tell you what worked, what didn’t work.
Make your own decision. There is no “right” answer which can be answered on fora like this. Your needs are different from the next guy’s needs.
If you don’t realise that, you can watch your job shift towards Asia. If you’re in Asia, you can watch it shift to China.
ObLameCarAnalogy:
If you buy a Porsche 911 for off-roading, you can’t complain that it doesn’t work.
If you choose a certain application, then a certain OS, then certain hardware (the traditionally-accepted “right way to do it”), it’s a bit late to start complaining that “I’ve installed all this lot and suddenly realised that this OS doesn’t support this hardware”.
(last week, I had a customer specify a 12″ PCI card to be installed into a machine with 5×7″ PCI slots!)
When your application doesn’t lead to one specific OS, and you have a choice (let’s say you have decided on an Oracle database), look at what the different OSes provide. Do you need to provide one SELECT per minute? Any OS on any platform will do. Do you need thousands of transactions per second (TPS)? Don’t just get quotes from vendors, get guarantees. You’re probably also going to change the traditional priorities, by going App -> Hardware -> OS. (if you need 16 CPUs, x86 isn’t the way to go, so commercially-supported Linux, as well as Windows and Solaris x86 are out of the window). Sun’s answers here would likely be SF6800, SF15K, etc. Other non-x86 hardware is available, too (only seriously from IBM now, it seems :-[)
Once you’re at this level, you’ll be comparing hardware features, (and how they’re supported by the OS). That’s where dynamic reconfiguration (and dynamic multipathing, dynamic IP, dynamic everything) come into play, along with OS support for that specific high-end hardware, like (commercially-supported) swapout of the CPU which the Kernel is running on, without downtime.
Okay, maybe I’ve switched from trying to be unbiased into mentioning the differences between “Great at the low-end” OSes like GNU/Linux and “Serious high-end business support” like Solaris, and the hardware it supports.
Criticism against Solaris x86 traditional x86 hardware support is fair enough – it is improving with S10. It now uses Xorg (same as Mandrake 10, etc) for video, FWIW.
The only reason we don’t read criticism about Linux’s lack of support for Lights-Out-Management (LOM) is that Linux users don’t expect such features in the first place.
Last week, I installed a Sun V1280, pretty humble machine, 4 CPUs, 8GB RAM, but it has a serial port (you can “cu” into it to get a console session), and a network port on the System Controller. You can telnet/ssh into the system controller, and, from a remote location, do most things you could do by being there in the datacentre. Power off the machine (full poweroff, not just to the OK> prompt – the SC stays running so you can power it back up again). Upgrade the OBP (roughly equivalent to a PC’s BIOS) – without shutting down the OS. Things which many Linux users have never even thought possible.
I could go on, but you can always go to http://docs.sun.com/
I’m no great Sun fanboy, either. My main laptop dual-boots Linux and Solaris; spends 90% of that time in Linux for the better low-end x86 hardware support, although now I’ve installed the latest S10, the only thing missing is the crappy WinModem in this Dell C640 laptop. It took about a year to get it working under Linux; I haven’t tried it on Solaris 10 x86 yet. I will report back on that one issue (not that I’ve needed to use the 56kbps modem for over a year)
On my (deliberately) Intel mobo, Intel CPU, Intel-approved RAM, HP 5150 Printer, Sun USB Keyboard, IBM PS/2 Mouse PC.
Installing Solaris 10: About 2h.
Installing Mandrake: Less than 2h, but it still believes that my UK keyboard is a US keyboard, even though it still claims that it “knows” it’s a UK keyboard. It detected my HP 5150 printer as an HP510 (a totally different beast). It booted into CLI mode, and took a few runs of xorgconfig to get it working (reminded me of GNU/Linux/X installs from 2000 – no better, no worse. No complaints from me, but my Mum would never have got this far).
Installing Windows 2000: Forever. Install the OS. Patch it. Install the drivers. Install some more drivers. Never got the HP printer driver working as documented (“install, reboot, run this program, attach printer when prompted, (nothing happens), give up, reboot, attach printer, reinstall driver, hope for the best)”. Pretty stable, though, considering where it comes from. Installing, patching the OS, plus drivers, plus apps, for a desktop user (when all these are included in Linux/Solaris) takes a LONG time, comparitively.
I’ve been using both on a variety of machines since ’98.
Most of the comments about Solaris are true for versions prior
to Solaris 8 – this was a big step up for Solaris x86 in both
performance and usability.
The utility programs and GNU tools that Linux users take for granted was usually not available on Solaris or the versions supplied were sadly outdated.
Compiling programs on Linux has usually been FAR easier than on Solaris.
But, as yet, I’ve never been able to get Solaris to work on a laptop – I’ve tried a Compaq Armada and a Toshiba Satellite Pro. This was very disappointing as I’ve never had a problem installing Linux or FreeBSD on either machine.
I’ve also had big problems with a built-in network card on a Dell Optiplex using Solaris 9 – until I could get a patched driver, the box would spontaneously reboot. I’ve NEVER seen that kind of problem with any other OS – be it Windows, Linux, BSD, QNX or BeOS.
Sounds like you missed the graphical configuration part of the install (it’s a bit stupidly set up – near the end of the install you get shown a summary screen of all your hardware, and you have to click the graphics card to set it up. It’s not set up when you’re just walking through the steps.) You’d probably have found it easier to configure the card with XFdrake (Mandrake’s configuration tool) than xorgconfig, though whatever works is fine. Dunno about the keyboard, but Cooker is perfectly happy with *my* UK layout keyboard (10.1 was too, when I was in 10.1 state). What happens if you run keyboarddrake after booting up? For the printer, it’d be good if you could file a bug, with lsusb output (assuming it’s a USB printer) – http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/ .
Linux strengths:
Massive hardware support
Stability
Security
Speed
Great for clustering, which often makes up for limited support on multi processor “big iron” servers
Ease of use (with most modern distros),
Runs on all major platforms
Runs great on many types of machines – from ebedded devices cell phones, laptops, PCs, web servers, clusters, and multiple processor servers (up to 16).
Huge, helpful community
Lots of choice (many distros, desktop environments, etc)
Huge application support
Lot’s of affordable (or free) support options
Low (or no) cost
GPL (everyone benefits)
Built on shoulders of giants
Everyone can get involved, and everyone can benefit
Debugged and improved by “many eyes”, from many cultures and perspectives
Many choices of desktop environments
Linux weaknesses:
doesn’t scale particularily well to “big iron” servers going beyond 8 processors.
distros forking kernel, APIs, ABIs
Solaris strengths:
The ultimate “big iron” server OS
Multiple processors (up to 128)
Zones
Hot swapping hardware
Zfs
Stability
Security
Scalability (unparelled)
Ease of use improved with using GNOME
Solaris weaknesses:
Limited hardware support
Many new features in Solaris 10 not relevant to SMBs
One vendor support
Uncertain licensing
Like all proprietary software, intellectual development Limited to in house
Limited software support
Limited desktop environment choice – GNOME and CDE (although Gnome is excellent, of course)
Sun inconsistent and not fully trustworthy
So, in short Linux is the ultimate “all around OS” for most people and situations. But it’s a little bit limited in the “big iron”, multiple processor super servers.
Solaris is the ultimate “big iron” server OS on steroids, for the largest, most mission critical and demanding of deployments. But it’s limited in other areas.
Just do de-FUDify some of the comments here: Solaris x86 is fully supported. Sun sell certified AMD64 servers with Linux, Solaris, Windows OSes. Solaris traditionally improves as you add CPUs; Linux improves until about 4-8 (depending on patches) then deteriorates in performance-per-CPU, while Solaris improves up to 128 CPUs.
That’s funny because SGI’s Altix runs beautifully on 256 processors. Admittedly SGI does not run a standard kernel but it is obviously possible to efficiently run MORE than 128 processors on Linux. The only reason it is not in the main tree is because the changes affect too many other things at this point. The simple fact is that you can get a 256 processor machine that runs Linux and runs it well.
http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/
The only reason we don’t read criticism about Linux’s lack of support for Lights-Out-Management (LOM) is that Linux users don’t expect such features in the first place.
Last week, I installed a Sun V1280, pretty humble machine, 4 CPUs, 8GB RAM, but it has a serial port (you can “cu” into it to get a console session), and a network port on the System Controller. You can telnet/ssh into the system controller, and, from a remote location, do most things you could do by being there in the datacentre. Power off the machine (full poweroff, not just to the OK> prompt – the SC stays running so you can power it back up again). Upgrade the OBP (roughly equivalent to a PC’s BIOS) – without shutting down the OS. Things which many Linux users have never even thought possible.
I could go on, but you can always go to http://docs.sun.com/
That’s nice and all but try it on a PC. Solaris is a nice OS when used with their hardware but the point is that no one is buying their hardware. That’s the whole reason Sun is pushing x86 Solaris. When it comes to Solaris vs Linux on commodity hardware, I’ll take Linux any day.