Previewing the Next Solaris OS 278
Eric Boutilier writes "Amy Rich has written an excellent Solaris Express (Solaris 10) how-to and general overview. It covers how the program works, using the community web site, and what's new in Solaris Express." Among many new features, the TCP/IP stack has been redesigned, IPv6 support improved, and both NFSv4 and USB 2.0 support added.
Solaris doesn't suck... (Score:5, Insightful)
The market for Solaris is very different from Linux, it's datacentre-land, not home user. I still don't see it lasting too long though... One of the microsoft lines that really is true is that Linux is a larger threat to Unix than to MS, at the moment (MS forgot the 'at the moment' bit
Two wars: The desktop and the datacentre. Despite the cliche of fighting a war on two fronts, Linux is porbably uniquely positioned to fight a war on N fronts (where N is a positive, large integer). The way it's set up is to leverage groups of people whilst folding the advances back into the core.
SGI are turning to Linux, Sun will too. There'll be a few releases of both OS's first, though, IMHO.
Simon.
Hopefully (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope they have Bash, OpenSSL (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this is a trivial thing, but it's a real pain in the butt to have to use ksh all the time because most Solaris boxen I've worked on don't have Bash installed by default.
The same goes for OpenSSL [openssl.org] and a bunch of other tools that would be great to have but that I cannot count on being there.
On the other front, having Gnome [gnome.org] as a gui readily available is definitely deserving of kudos. If only I had more than ssh access to most of the boxes I work with, I could actually use it. We have Hummingbird [hummingbird.com] Exceed, but it's such a HUGE pain to set up. Neither myself, a reasonably good programmer, nor any of the sysadmins at the very large bank where I work know how to set it up.
Alas.
-- Kevin J. Rice
Re:Nice (Score:1, Insightful)
god-awful GNOME? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't know if your flaimbait was intentional or not, but you should have at least elaborated on why it's "god-awful". In my opinion, Gnome is far less awful than CDE. And although it is less feature-rich and configurable than KDE, its behaviour seems more consistent. That is what businesses and Solaris' market wants. Assuming that KDE is your awe inspiring desktop of course.
Sun's move from CDE to Gnome is a good move, if not from Solaris to Linux completely.
more power to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course Microsoft's market share won't go down if this OS just replaces one *nix variant with another, but that's another story.
Sun/Solaris will survive (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem with Solaris and Linux side by side and neither do the management. We are actively and with prejudice trying to kill off HP-UX as soon as possible though.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:SunOS, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
> the V100s did not boot.
> That's it, we almost ended up with a
> network-enabled FORTH compiler that cost us
> $1500.
My friend bought a new car, and the dealership accidentally gave him the wrong set of keys. That was it, he almost ended up with a sealed glass and metal box that cost him $35000.
One little tiny, easily rectified mistake does not mean the product sucks. If someone dismissed linux because they bought a preinstalled box which didn't boot because of a wrong jumper, would that mean linux was crappy? No. Of course not.
> I'm still glad we didn't wait for tech support
> to react (and I'm pretty sure it would take
> them several more weeks)
Have you ever *used* Sun support? To answer your later question, that's one of the reasons Sun are so expensive. They have great support. If you were on a decent support contract there could have been a guy with you inside an hour with a bag full of V100 parts. If you don't need support, go with linux/bsd or buy Sun kit off ebay.
Once more, FUD-ish Sun-bashing gets modded up as interesting/informative. Replies which dare to defend Sun are usually modded down. Flamebait, troll, whatever. (They should have a "-1 heresy" tag.)
Re:Solaris doesn't suck... (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest difference (IMNSHO) between the open source community (including what is commonly referred to as the Linux community) and Microsoft is cultural. MS is a marketing driven organisation - features are chosen and development is directed based on what will shift boxes - even the current security initiatives are aimed at minimizing the amount of damage the reputation of the company was incurring due to its repeated and high profile security problems.
OSS projects seem to come in a huge range of styles and with a similarly huge number of objectives, however there is a larger emphasis on technical merit. Linus has a reputation for being draconian in what he will allow into the kernel, he is entirely willing to throw patches away that don't meet his standards no matter how wonderful the functionality they provide may be.
The result of this is that although OSS is generally not as "shiny" as MS products tend to be, it seems to be built on a much more solid foundation. Whether that is enough of an advantage for it to take a sizeable bite out of MS' market share remains to be seen.
Of course MS also seem to be their own biggest enemy. The new licensing arrangements and product activation seem to be designed to make life difficult for businesses. Likewise the way they seem to alternate between smear campaigns against Linux and running scared any time a business talks about moving there desktops over to an OSS solution has been raising the profile of alternatives to people who would not have otherwise heard of them.
Truly we live in interesting times (in both senses of the phrase.)
Sun support (Score:3, Insightful)
I have tried to. When I started my first professional C++ project, I bought Sun C++ because at the time it had the reputation for being the best C++ compiler available. Unfortunately, the license key they send me didn't work, so I was unable to actually run the compiler. I spend the first three month of the project simply trying to make Sun send me a working license. And, to be able to do something meanwhile, I downloaded and installed G++ which obviously requires no license to run. After three months I decided g++ was "good enough" and stopped pestering Sun to deliver the goods I had already paid for. In any case g++ was quickly improving, and no new versions of Sun C++ were forthcomming (for years, I later learned).
Morale? Sometimes freedom is more cost efficient than technical quality and professional support. I have certainly since then tried to avoid dependence on single source suppliers of hardware, software or support.
Re:Solaris doesn't suck... (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest reason this cliche doesn't really hold water is because Linux isn't really fighting in the same sence of the word as Microsoft, Sun, SCO (not flamebait) and other OS-makers are.
Linux, or rather the development of it, isn't based on sales and income. Linux development will (and does) go on without having to produce financial profits and results.
Sun for example wouldn't be able to produce an OS that nobody use. It just wouldn't go down well with shareholders, and would frankly be a right out stupid idea businesswise.
Linux on the otherhand isn't dependand on one single company or entity. It's made by the people for the people. So it hasn't got anything to loose, and we all know that those who can make the ultimate sacrifice usually wins the battle, if not the war.
Re:Hope they have Bash, OpenSSL (Score:3, Insightful)
For SSH?
Wrong. You only need OpenSSL on the system where you compile SSH. (You don't have compilers on all the systems, do you?)
You compile SSH so the SSL libraries are included, and push the package out to all of your hosts.
Oh, and a really convenient way to turn off the r* services is to shut off inetd altogether.... who needs it?
The only port a system needs open by default is 22/TCP... the rest are just holes waiting to happen!
(Well, so is SSH, but what can ya do?)
Re:Solaris doesn't suck... (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't take into account that the current generation of UltraSparc processors (not the US4 which was just announced), suck in comparision to Itanium 2 and Power 4. Those companies willing to spend a few million on just one system, they want the fastest one.
Sun's sweet spot is still the mid-level systems, where they can still make a profit (unlike the commoditized low-end). By this time next year we'll all see how Sun, HP, and IBM do with their next generation processors out in the marketplace.
Re:Solaris doesn't suck... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SunOS, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can design, write, compile, and test an application on your little one or two-processor workstation. Once you're satisfied that it'll correctly calculate the national debt to 100 significant figures, you can copy it over *completely unchanged* to a 108-CPU Sun E15K and it will run exactly the same. Exactly. Just a little faster.
Platform scalability of that sort is not available from any other vendor that I know of. It's also darn nice when you've got a 4-CPU server that is swamped and want to upgrade to a 32-CPU box. You don't have to change anything. I know a sys-admin who once upgraded their machine by literally swapping out the boot drive. Not exactly elegant (and he didn't tell his boss how he did it so quickly), but it worked for him.
So, you're right: if you're looking for a desktop machine that'll run web browsers and still give you all the CLI goodness of a UNIX or a work-alike, you can get it cheaper elsewhere, although the difference is less than most people think. Have you priced one out recently? Really? Oh yeah, and the support is simply awesome.
--Mid
Re:Solaris doesn't suck... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Solaris doesn't suck... (Score:3, Insightful)
My username did not give it away? :)
Glad to be aboard. I have long wondered what everybody else is on. You should have seen my jaw drop when I went to a local Sun event (mind you I had already been using Sun equipment and had been very happy with it) when I learned just how long they support their OS's. I also learned that if you certify you app on Solaris and a newer version of Solaris is released and ends up breaking your app, they will either fix Solaris or they will pay you to fix your app on Solaris. Absolutely Incredible!!! Then the guy telling us all this said he has a small app that he wrote 12 years ago, lost the source code 5 years ago and that he runs on Solaris every day.
No major vendor even comes close to bringing this level of value, longevity and investment insurance.
My favorite Slashdot posts run along the line of "Why would my company purchase a 106 processor E15K when we can just create a Linux Cluster out of Dell PC's?" This lack of understanding of the fundamental difference between a horizontal cluster utilizing parallel programming and a single server image scaled to 106 processors and half a terabyte of RAM, just baffles me. Unfortunately this kind of logic is far too common here. Don't get me wrong, there are people on Slashdot with tons of knowledge and lots of experience. Unfortunately it *seems* that 80% of the posters refer to servers that are likely sitting in their bedroom next to their nightstand.
People who question Sun typically do not know shit about Sun and make comparisons analogous to comparing a Ford and a BMW. Unfortunately Sun is largly to blame for this in their lack of marketing some of the incredible facts I have mentioned in my posts. But those who know, know.