Sun boosts OpenSolaris on Atom Intel has announced that the OpenSolaris variant of Unix is now better supported on its Atom processors. The Atom support is being positioned to bring the joys of x64 computing to netbooks and other low-power computing devices, and it offers some of the best performance/watt in processing these days. Sun Microsystems, which …
The question I've never seen answered about OpenSolaris is this: Who cares?
Sun and open source are uneasy companions. There are a few features present in OpenSolaris that aren't present in Linux (or *BSD, for that matter), but these features aren't sufficient to overcome concerns about the sustainability of the OpenSolaris effort, considering the small size of the community and the strong control exerted by Sun.
A vibrant community is essential to the commercial acceptance of an open source software solution, because it ensures competition between support providers; aids in expansion of hardware support, software compatibility, and testing; and bodes well for long-term support.
It would be better for Sun to license technologies such as ZFS in such a way that they could be incorporated into other open source kernels, and leverage the large and diverse developer and support communities around those kernels.
Everything works out of the box with Opensolaris 2008.11 on a 945GCLF2, except I seem to have attached the sata drives as legacy cmdk rather than sata framework sd. I'll look into that at some point. Works fine either way. Only a 2 drive ZFS NAS, not a 4 though. Ask for a better motherboard?
So what's the difference besides a recompile?
And when you have to install Solaris AND a ton of open-source stuff to make it useful, why not just install Linux/*BSD?
Last time I was masochistic enough to deal with Solaris, it didn't even have a compiler any more... is that still true?
There is a ton of opensource software available for (Open)Solaris. The Sun Studio compiler was free for a long time. And you can use also crappy GCC if you wish...
The problem nowadays is that software is written for Linux and does not follow any standards (e.g. POSIX), which makes it a little harder to port software to other platforms.
Linux people are pissed that Microsoft (and now Apple) do not follow standards, but they are repeating the same mistakes...
It's just too easy to blame Opensolaris for other peoples ignorance...
Why would I want to install Solaris instead of Linux? How about - a huge pedigree of datacentre operations, trusted and certified security with a real support model? No?
You should maybe go and read up on processor architectures - it's way more than just a recompile if you're going for uberperformance.
Perhaps you didn't have the skills to install the necessary packages. Never mind - you just run back to your little pretend OSs and leave the real ones to those who can actually follow installation documentation.
There aren't many (any?) real securable operating systems that come with compilers as standard.
You can add them if you require - that's the beauty of modular systems.
The 'Slowlaris' tag was appropriate when Solaris was first introduced and misguided souls attempted running it on their 20MHz SPARCstation 1s, but it hasn't been the case for 10 to 15 years. Anyone suggesting otherwise really needs a reality check. I have a 170 MHz SS5 here that I still use regularly (like the keyboard) and OpenSolaris just flies - it is fast enough for day to day use. A few apps (OpenOffice and Firefox) take a few seconds to start but once open it isn't a problem.
And yes, there are some good reasons to run it - many of the purely free OS's, Linux included, are slightly rough around the edges. OpenSolaris is polished in comparison. We're not talking about anything major, but for example man pages properly reflect reality and file locations. Not always true elsewhere, especially with some of the Linux distributions.
My, my. You have been away a while. Opensolaris ships with GCC, as does Solaris 10. Heck, you can even get Sun's own C compilers with Opensolaris. Having used SunOS/Solaris since 1985, I'm pretty sure that if I need it, I can compile it. (Sound is the only real bug bear)
Wow the "pkgadd" command is too complicated I guess. Oh wait -- you would have to know what packages were instead of just spouting off about them. and BTW --- In solaris you can both add AND REMOVE packages successfully. Also you don't have to use different package managers for software from different projects. If you just want to have some entitiy on the other side of the Internet load you up sight-unseen then you need WIndows
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