Comments on: Sun, get real! solaris is dead, move on.

By: ex tempore » Blog Archive » why ? because it scales!

ex tempore » Blog Archive » why ? because it scales! — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:01:23 +0000

[...] the past i ranted a bit or two about Sun Microsystems. Today i feel the need to do it again. Make no mistake – I like them, [...]

By: Sangeeta

Sangeeta — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:26:08 +0000

So what are the things that Solaris needs to provide to win back the hearts and minds of developers in terms of tools, features, protocols etc.

By: Ron

Ron — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 05:06:59 +0000

You are so misguided in you thoughts about Sun. What the hell do you think has been the back-bone of the internet?..Unix and Sun! try placing a bunch of linux crap servers in a ISP email environment a see what happens…they fail! besides linux is just a variant of v4 Unix not to mention pieces of other Unix variants. Besides, the support and documentation is crap… basically linux is a “hobbyist” piece of software.

By: ex tempore » Blog Archive » well, hell is freezing!

ex tempore » Blog Archive » well, hell is freezing! — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:11:10 +0000

[...] The big news of the day isn ‘t that Sun is freeing java under GPL, the big news is that they are considering to do the same with… Opensolaris. That is, obviously, the right thing to do. Not only Linux would benefit from some cool stuff Solaris has (in one word – ZFS), but Sun would benefit too, and a lot. After all, and independently (me) of considering that in the long term there are no space for OpenSolaris, as it stands today, as a general purpose end-to-end mass market operating system, there are too many stuff that would only benefit all sides if developed jointly and in parallel, avoinding unnecessary effort duplication. Stuff like Xen, device drivers, even filesystems, hal, acpi, lots of APIs, etc, would gain a lot if developed/released/synced a layer above the OS (as Xorg proved that it is possible, and scalable). For the moment, and under CDDL, the ‘opensourcing’ of Solaris only appealed to those already in the Solaris camp (mainly inside Sun) having little or no impact in the general *nix landscape. If Sun truly believes they have a superior OS, as they say, they should have no fear going the GPL route because it will be the linux features that would land in Solaris and not the other way (emptying solaris’ appeal)… [...]

By: Marc DM

Marc DM — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:59:07 +0000

> The author of the article isn’t familiar with java. I have a feeling
> he thinks its something for making pretty web pages because
> he’s generalized it with ror and others.

I’m no Ruby programmer, but I can testify that Python has been better for my write-once-run-anywhere ambitions than Java ever was.

For starters, I can distribute the python runtime with my program without too much additional disk space or licensing issues*

I don’t know much about Solaris, but after trying to install it in VMWare, and it complaining about needing more than 170MB RAM, I stopped the installation, and have gone back to ignoring it.

> Solaris rocks and is the best.
> So what’s my point? …. What’s your point?

My point is, Sun needs to step back and look at their software offerings, and how its damaging their business.

And you’re right, “Solaris” is a pretty word. My gf says it sounds nicer than Linux.

By: SW

SW — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 02:20:33 +0000

Linux SUCKS! There I said it! No kernel binary compatibilty, no kernel API for modules and stuff developed by school kids is crap!.

Solaris rocks and is the best.

So what’s my point? …. What’s your point?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 17:48:53 +0000

I’ve found solaris to be sub-par. It’ll boot a sun workstation, but that’s about all I’ve found it good for. Stuff in the os has been so neglected that tcp wrappers is a 3rd party add-on (or was in Solaris 9 anyway). The author of the article isn’t familiar with java. I have a feeling he thinks its something for making pretty web pages because he’s generalized it with ror and others. Java was not intended, originally, to be a Flash replacement. It just evolved that way through carless programming, and that has developed a widely believed stigma. Java was originally intended to be a cross-platform byte-code interpreter – with applet functionality. Many columnists do not know this, and hence are misinformed. Java code you write on one platform will run on any other platform that has the same version of JVM. This means you can develop a java application on x86 Windows, and run the same application on a RISC based ARM processor (if the JVM is there). The overhead the interpreter needs is staggering – ram and cpu usage is very heavy – especially if any Swing is needed. Threads consume a large amount of memory as well, and grow exponentially. Java isn’t right for every application, but when your hardware costs less than your development costs, and you need multi-platform support, Java is what the others are not.

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 00:21:27 +0000

The only thing i feel about sun’s software is slow. It’s IDE, app server, or even Java itself, are way slower than its competitors. In my opinion, most of its works are over engineered.

By: António Meireles

António Meireles — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:32:26 +0000

Pat… Ok, you don ‘t have a need for virtualization. Great. I, and the vast majority, don ‘t have as that money, so we ‘ll need it. And even if we had, right now one of the great ways of achieving greater RAS is… guess what – Virtualization. Or do you think that SUN put a hw supervysor in the niagara chips (which sadly no OS is using) just by accident ?

By: Pat Augustine

Pat Augustine — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:21:05 +0000

Linux is great for what it does. But it isn’t Solaris, which is far from dead. In a big organization, where your system rebooting will cost millions of dollars in the couple minutes it takes to come back up, you don’t put critical infrastructure on Linux.

Solaris has a very good role in large enterprises. I don’t think it should be running small webservers any more than you do, and the places where Xen is likely to be “incredibly useful” are not the same places where Solaris is likely to be “incredibly useful”. We’ve got hundreds of servers (Solaris, AIX, Linux) and we don’t use Xen on ANY of them.

By: António Meireles

António Meireles — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:28:59 +0000

alucinor… I ‘ll not rebate your point. I even mentioned Nexenta, remember ? I’ll simply reinforce that what Sun is doing now is not what you ‘re proposing.

As a side note ‘Linux’ is much more than a kernel, is a concept, and an ecosystem. Sun would gain **much** more if it could fuse it’s own libc with the standard – glibc, and if diferent kernels (*nix, solaris, whatever) could really share a common userland API (more abrangent than POSIX…).

The story isn’t about what if scenarios, it’s about facts. I finish noting that you recognize that Linux and Solaris have diferent goals. Did ever Sun strategists recognize(d) that ?

By: alucinor

alucinor — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:05:32 +0000

Also, Linux and Solaris have different goals: Linux is not meant to be as rock-solid as some claim. It’s really suppose to just be “good enough” and be feature-rich and extremely multipurpose.

Solaris is designed for web application services and databases. It goes far beyond just “good enough” however into the “excellent” category.

By: alucinor

alucinor — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:02:52 +0000

Should everything be Linux now? I think there needs to be more variety and competition out there.

OpenSolaris and the *BSDs can cross-pollinate their source code, you know. I see the future of UNIX as probably being the two primary “legacy” (though this is debatle) *nix’s, AIX and HP-UX, along with the open source *nix’s of BSD/Solaris and Linux.

Must open source software can run on Solaris anyway. And it’s not hard to repackage closed source for variety POSIX-compliant systems. Sun can customized Solaris to fit its hardware like a glove, so that can be a major selling point for it.

Why throw out such excellent technology anyway? Does everything have to be a computing monoculture just because?

By: Kevin Schroeder

Kevin Schroeder — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:40:40 +0000

I think that a lot of this depends on your perspective. In the environment I work in dtrace is a major selling point for me. The ability to debug a system that’s in production without a major performance impact? That’s worth its weight in gold to me. Commands like prtdiag, not available (or useless) in non-Sparc hardware, are also very important.

Solaris is meant to be a bullet-proof, highly scalable OS, and I think it succeeds very well there. I personally prefer Linux (I think it’s easier to use) but if I need something that absolutely needs to stay up and is secure to boot, Solaris is the way to go. Virtualization is an important feature, but I, personally, am not convinced that it’s a must-have app. There are some places where it’s usefull, but many places where it’s not.

By: António Meireles

António Meireles — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:44:48 +0000

Doug, to me, atm, the killer feature is hw virtualization, more exactly xen. To me, and to every other *nix admin i know, in the field. Solaris lacks it, and will lack for another year at least. Sure, dtrace, zfs, zones, smf, good resource management, a stable kernel abi are good to have, but for the kind of workloads i usually do, xen is simply more important…

By: Doug Scott

Doug Scott — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:26:26 +0000

While, I can agree with some points. Sun has over the years, has got somethings wrong. Open Solaris is definitely not one of them.

One thing I certainly dont want the to do is to become just another Linux bandwagon junky. That would be their death.

If you dont think much of zones, zfs, and dtrace to use Solaris then that is your choice. I can see some useful things on Linux when I use it. I would have to say that I am using less and less. It lacks dtrace, zfs, zones, smf, good resource management, a stable kernel abi.

What would Sun gain in putting ZFS, Zones on Linux rather then Solaris? They would simply follow SGI.

I certainly agree, they have failed to capitalize on the Sun Ray front. They absolutely rock.

By: Le Thanh Trung

Le Thanh Trung — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:22:47 +0000

totally agree. Great post