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September 03, 2007
OpenSolaris will challenge Linux says Sun
Sun seeks to apply the lessons of Linux and turn open source Solaris into an operating system to rival Linux and to be as commonly used as Java.
By China Martens, IDG News Service
Sun Microsystems has ambitious plans for the commercial and open-source versions of its Solaris operating system, hoping to achieve for Solaris the kind of ubiquity already enjoyed by Java.
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To come close to reaching that goal, Sun needs to reach out more to developers and endeavour to overcome some long-held prejudices against the OS.
Sun's Java programming language, which debuted in 1995, is present in most of today's PCs, mobile devices and embedded systems. The vendor is now seeking that same kind of omnipresence for Solaris, its flavour of Unix.
Sun intends to take the operating system into markets where it hasn't traditionally been a force, such as desktop and embedded systems, according to Marc Hamilton, vice president of Solaris marketing at Sun. The vendor is also keen to position OpenSolaris as a real alternative to Linux.
"There's an enormous momentum building behind Solaris," said Ian Murdock, chief operating platforms officer at Sun. He joined Sun in March after serving as the chief technology officer of the Linux Foundation. Murdock is also the creator of the Debian Linux distribution and is keen to take the lessons he's learned in the Linux community and apply them to Solaris.
Sun is preparing to release OpenSolaris binaries early next year in a distribution code-named "Project Indiana" that will be similar to Linux distributions. The work, which is getting under way in the OpenSolaris community, is aimed at creating a single CD installation of the basic OS and desktop environment, giving developers the option to install additional software from network repositories.
Developers also will be able to create limited releases of the distribution targeted at attendees of a particular event.
The whole idea behind Indiana is to build more of a developer community around Solaris, Murdock said. "How can we lower the barriers to programmers and run OpenSolaris as an ideal open-source operating system not originating from Sun?" he asked. Indiana will also enable faster release cycles, with a new version appearing every six months.
With Indiana in place, Sun will adopt a two-tier development model, Murdock said, establishing a clear path from Indiana and OpenSolaris -- for developers and early adopters -- to Solaris, which will be largely used by more conservative enterprise users. The challenge will be delivering what's effectively a single Solaris platform to two very different communities, he added.
Sun has already managed various versions of Java, including mobile, standard and enterprise editions of the software. But whereas with Java, the challenge was getting developers interested in a new technology, with Solaris, Sun needs to appeal to people who may have had previous negative experiences with the OS.
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Comments received
Harold said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
The fatal flaw of Solaris on non-Sun hardware has ALWAYS been hardware support.
Back in 1999, to support an app that had customers on a variety of PC platforms, we built a Tyan BX box, and the only installation failure was Solaris x86 (FreeBSD, BSDI and Linux OK).
Today, I have a file server that's running Windows for the moment since OpenSolaris fails to boot from my SCSI system drive.
There are some FANTASTIC disconnects between the people at the top and their customers. The ininfamous inability to buy their hardware in medium quantity is probably just as well known; doesn't matter how good your stuff is if you won't sell it to people or it won't run on their hardware.
For the latter, I cannot see the community doing *enough* of this very hard and thankless work. College Ambassadors are simply not to the point with such minimal platform support. Only a serious $$$ commitment from Sun will solve this problem, and there is no sign from them that will ever happen.
Anonymous said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
"on which the OS is available on." should be "on which the OS is available."
Anonymous said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
Dodgy grammar, good article...
Mike said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
"ininfamous inability to buy their hardware in medium quantity" What are you talking about? Did you know you can go to any VAR and purchase as many or as few Sun systems as you want? They will even sell a Sun support contract to you.
Dr. Kenneth Noisewater said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
What shared/global filesystem and clustering solution will Sun be providing to compete with Linux' free and relatively-mature clustering?
sources.redhat.com/cluster/
Granted, ZFS could be superior to EXT3 over CLVM, though last I heard ZFS still needs performance optimization..
Jeff Cobb said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
Having tried Open Solaris a number of times and had it fail on every bit of Intel hardware I tried it on, I would say that Sun needs more help than they are willing to admit. If they could just get their act together from a hardware support standpoint and deliver the goods for the devs (inluding non-Java; all the world does NOT run on Java, sorry), I would seriously consider switching platforms.
Current Linux developer.
Jeff Cobb said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
Having tried Open Solaris a number of times and had it fail on every bit of Intel hardware I tried it on, I would say that Sun needs more help than they are willing to admit. If they could just get their act together from a hardware support standpoint and deliver the goods for the devs (inluding non-Java; all the world does NOT run on Java, sorry), I would seriously consider switching platforms.
Current Linux developer.
Steve Jones said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
This is great. I'm getting it onto my grid farm as soon as I can...
VelocityWebDev said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
I remember a Chris Angel show where he was to escape a van running at 60 MPH towards a cliff. The van would explode as it went off the cliff - Chris had to get out....
The momentum for SUN is the van - You need to get out before it explodes!
I ran into a couple of guys at Linux World who introduced themselves as Developer leads for OpenSolaris. What a joke - they were going around scamming every free CD of every Linux Distro available. I asked them straight up if they were trying to migrate Linux distro code into OpenSolaris - they said "unofficially, yes!" This has been well documented for some time that SUN Solaris is looking to merge Linux code, XEN code, and who knows what else.
Why? If they want to be like Linux, why not go ahead and use Linux? Solaris 10 and it's Zones - fancy name for chroot - isn't bringing anything to the table that Linux doesn't do with ease.
So, SUN, bring it - copy is the best form of flattery!
kebab said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
VelocityWebDev,
Zones is not what you think it is. Neither is DTrace or ZFS. Maybe you should read a little about them, or try them out?
In short, they allow things noone has ever been able to do before.
xlinuks said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
Who care about ZFS or DTrace if the system is unable to install on different hardware and needs LOTS of serious work to get to what Linux is today. I tried installing OpenSolaris on x86 and x64 platforms and it failed. Linux (Ubuntu) installed fine. OpenSolaris doesn't even get 10% of the development that Linux gets these days. When will there be a mature OpenSolaris for x86/x64? Not soon. If it doesn't get GPLed then maybe never.
Harold said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
Mike: nice theory that "you can go to any VAR and purchase as many or as few Sun systems as you want", but the reality is different, in my experience and in these examples:
Sun Isn't Relevant to Startups:
photomatt.net/2007/01/18/relevant-sun/
Startup Essentials program drops the ball.
blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/good_bad_and_brave
A reply by Sun's CEO.
The Sun Doesn't Shine on Me:
joyeur.com/2006/03/20/the-sun-doesnt-shine-on-me
Can't buy six figures of Sun kit for love or money.
Sun's resellers hurting Sun:
uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/suns-resellers-hurting-sun.html
An individual in the U.K. gets the runaround from Value "Added" Resellers. Outside the US, the situation seems to be much worse,
Be sure to skim the comments of these for lots of confirmation; in general, Sun and its outsourced "VAR" etc. sales force don't seem to give SMBs the time of day. It's not wise to not be able to sell to companies that may one day become big.
rsanders said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
Believe it or not, there are people running data centers who buy the hardware to run a specific OS, and so it doesn't matter if Solaris runs on their old eMachines box from 2004.
Developers these days are also more likely to run dev platforms inside VMWare or some other VM. OpenSolaris runs perfectly well inside VMWare.
And if you think Zones are just chroot, then I can understand why you'd be dismissive. But you're wrong. They're much more like OpenVZ, with some interesting twists of their own -- especially in concert with ZFS.
I don't think Solaris is going to win the desktop, but it can certainly do well in the data center and back office.
VelocityWebDev said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
kebab - sorry, you're mistaken. I have Solaris 10 running on 15K's - it's not a panacea. I didn't talk about ZFS (crap) or DTrace (don't care).
Zones and domains are chrooted environments on steroids. And that's a complement. You are right about one thing - it will provide Solaris users something they have NEVER been able to do before!
Zones allow processes to run in isolation. The HOST O/S still greatly impacts the "virtualized" environment. Sun's Domains are better - but we call those LPARS in AIX and mainframes.
SWSoft virtuozzo is a close resemblance of SUN Zones - except they isolate and encapsulate changes to a particular guest. So, no reliance on one OS copy...
Carla said on Tuesday, 04 September 2007
Still beating the tired old Java drum. Why? What does Java have to do with Solaris? Who cares about Java? Users hate it- it's fat and slow and gets stuffed into all kinds of places it shouldn't. Devs seem to love it. Fine, just keep it away from end users.
I think Solaris is a great OS that needs two things to gain mass adoption: better hardware support, and way better system administration tools. Like dependency-resolving package managers (Yum, Aptitude). Like the entire GNU toolchain that Linux users have benefited from all these years. Solaris is a total pain to administer; if you really want to go after Linux users, it's going to need a lot more polish and flexibility.
darphbobo said on Wednesday, 05 September 2007
I love this FAQ quote from OpenSolaris -
Q: Are VLANs supported in zones?
A: Yes, but the VLAN interface must be plumbed in the global zone.
That's a security risk. One of the main issues our caompnay still has resisted using Solaris 10
Brad Powell said on Wednesday, 05 September 2007
Sigh. Too little too late. Hire a thousand device driver writers and support the common off the shelf hardware people buy, and I'd switch (back.) Till then, I'll stick to linux and Mac OSX.
I plug stuff in, and 'it just works' on OSX, I can't claim the same for solaris. Pick a market Sun, throwing stuff out there to see what sticks is getting old.
Andrey said on Wednesday, 05 September 2007
I tried Open Solaris and it refused to install the development platform into 384 megs of RAM. I have got Solaris Express without NetBeans in the Gnome menu. That was the end of it.
rsanders said on Wednesday, 05 September 2007
darphbobo, that FAQ's out of date. In OpenSolaris NV_57 or later you can use the "IP Instances" feature to give every zone its own virtual IP stack, including complete ownership of its VLAN interface, routing, etc.
It's still not perfect, in that you can only have one zone per machine using a given VLAN. That will be fixed when the rest of the Crossbow/VNIC changes are merged.
However, I'm not sure how performing operations from the global zone, which has full control over other zones, is a security risk. Giving people access to your global zone that you don't trust may be, but there's no reason you have to do that.
darphbobo said on Wednesday, 05 September 2007
rsanders - hey, if OpenSolaris wants me to convert - then their website needs to be upgraded -
My opinion - Crossbow and XEN are the only hopes for me to look seriously at OpenSolaris.
yoda from Russia said on Thursday, 06 September 2007
Hardware support is the main goal for Linux now.
Peter said on Friday, 07 September 2007
Solaris actually may have a shot in the long term. Linux is a monolithic kernel. This was the right design choice for most of Linux's history -- Linus is right that the academic arguments about microkernel stability are BS. On the other hand, machines are increasingly multicore. In the not-too-distant-future, they will be obscenely multicore (dozens or hundreds of processors). On a multicore machine, being able to split the kernel into processes makes a big difference. Solaris was designed from the ground up to run on 64 CPU machines. Linux was not, and will have a very hard time refactoring to work there.
ka3 said on Friday, 07 September 2007
You are correct that Linux has a monolithic kernel - they're probably going to have to completely rewrite most of the kernel when the day comes to shift to a non-monolithic kernel. However, since I'm still running on a single-core, single-processor computer (and will be for the next little while), Linux is fine. I might give OpenSolaris a shot someday, but until then, I'm sticking with Linux.
Jem Smith said on Saturday, 08 September 2007
Hi
are you sure on this?
Regards
Jem Smith
Infoseek Software Systems
BF said on Tuesday, 11 September 2007
It has long been known that straying too far from Solaris on Sparc will get you into trouble. Not too long ago, x86 support was dropped altogether, then, like a phoenix it rose from the ashes. Now Opensolaris attempts to get the plethora of device drivers and hardware interfaces for the x86 world developed for free. The problem with x86 nixes has always been hardware support, even as far back as the SCO hay day. So risk it if you will, but keep on the straight and safe path my son. Solaris on Sparc, the old standard lives on with no hardware support worries.
Matthew said on Friday, 19 December 2008
OpenSolaris sounds good, but the concept of Solaris becoming open-sourced and then challenging Linux seems like a person climbing on top of a friend to try to reach higher than him and then proceeding to kick that friend out from underneath him.
Cade Foster said on Sunday, 26 July 2009
It's July 2009 and I am writing this comment on my OpenSolaris (snv_117) box (HP xw9300 system). For me, it was C/C++ on MSDOS/Linux during 1990's, C++ on MS Windows during 2000-2008 and C++ (SunStudio) on OpenSolaris for 2009. The best platform for me has been the OpenSolaris route due to operating system features and the good SunStudio tools. People should not forget that:
- (Open)Solaris is an accredited UNIX platform while Linux is a UNIX-clone and it is Linux that needs to aspire to (Open)Solaris' level
- while Linux was being developed from a bedroom in northern Europe and then entering the commercial scene through the back door (prior to IBM "seeing the light" and embracing Linux, but also letting the good OS/2 rot) Solaris was satisfying real-world contraints backed by real-world warranties
- the good thing Linux did was make Sun go back to it's roots and open-source it's powerful Solaris OS.
It has been evident that Linux/etc clone (Open)Solaris technologies not vice-ver