OpenSolaris vs. Linux, For Linux Users 303
An anonymous reader writes "With Sun busy being swallowed up by Oracle, should Linux geeks pay any interest to OpenSolaris? TuxRadar put together a guide to OpenSolaris's most interesting features from a Linux user's perspective, covering how to get started with ZFS and virtualisation alongside more consumer-friendly topics such as hardware and Flash support."
I really like OpenSolaris (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I really like OpenSolaris (Score:4, Interesting)
* Solaris only includes Unix versions of system tools.
* OpenSolaris includes a mishmash of crappy Unix tools and crappy GNU tools.
* Linux only includes GNU tools.
In other words, if you thought the Linux ecosystem was a mess, Solaris will not surprise you - pleasantly, that is.
The only selling point for OpenSolaris is SUN's ZFS that seems to give some geeks a hard-on.
If you are looking for a consistent system any BSD will beat OpenSolaris and FreeBSD has also better performance.
Hardware support is also a lot better for BSDs.
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I'm not particularly devoted to the GNU tools, but... sadist.
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Here's a short list of keywords or programs you'll need to know abotu. Google for anything that interests you.
Role based access control
prstat instead of top
prtconf
vmstat
iostat
svcs, svcadmn
dtrace
Nexenta (Score:5, Informative)
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What I liked about this article is that it has nice clean tables showing the Solaris verison of the Linux commands I already know. Nexenta seems to want to hide me from all the Solaris stuff under
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That is exactly what I've been looking for - but not for desktop use, for a server on some old x86 hardware with 1G of RAM. I just love the debian packaging tools that much.
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My Hope for OpenSolaris (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenSolaris looks polished in many areas, but I see Linux as ahead of it as a Desktop OS. I hope that Desktop Linux distributions (and Linux kernel hackers) take note of what OpenSolaris does right (easy snapshot support - sure Linux doesn't have ZFS, but it has LVM which appears to be able to do snapshots) and play a bit of catch-up. And who knows, maybe OpenSolaris will do the same and try to catch up to Linux.
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That is why they are developing btrfs file system, which in theory should be superior to ZFS or at least do more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs [wikipedia.org]
If you really want ZFS in linux right now, it can be done through fuse in linux as I understand.
Where are the forks? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where are the forks? (Score:5, Informative)
OSOL's own site lists several different distributions. There's also auroraux, which aims to have its own kernel source repository and freedom from any remaining binary bits: http://www.auroraux.org/index.php/Main_Page [auroraux.org]
Re:Where are the forks? (Score:4, Informative)
I'll take a look at OpenSolaris when there's at minimum 3 variants of it being developed.
Here is a list of 13 OpenSolaris distros [opensolaris.org] as of March 2009:
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I am waiting for Blackware, but don't want Batrick Bolkerding to over-extend himself.
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I grew up on Slackware. If Patrick switched to the dark side and forked OpenSolaris, I would probably drop Linux from my home server and switch just on principle.
ZFS (Score:5, Interesting)
Having had a few EXT3 filesystems go tits up because they've been quietly borking themselves on a 24/7/365 server being able to do a weekly "zpool scrub" in a 4TB array without the downtime is a beautiful thing. Kernel CIFS with proper ACLs and integration with ZFS snapshots is pretty great as well. When btrfs is released and gets a few miles on it I may switch back. But for now my file server stays OpenSolaris.
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Why OpenSolaris, rather than FreeBSD? ZFS support is stable, Samba is certainly better supported/tested, and it's much less of a departure from Linux (Open Source, really) than Solaris.
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If I were Larry Ellison, I would invest in a packaged Sparc based server running OpenSolaris with Oracle on top.
Call it a NAS/CMS/whatever-you-need in a box. And since it's from Oracle, who only have customers with deep pockets, they don't need to be shy about pricing it too high.
/tmp and /var/tmp (Score:5, Interesting)
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-- but they failed to point out that Solaris also has a /tmp, and that, by default /tmp is actually partially backed by RAM, which is extremely convenient and useful from time to time, when you want a little piece of lightning-fast filesystem space, or want to eliminate disk as a variable in some sort of timing test.
In any new Linux distribution, /dev/shm is also backed by ram, so you can do:
Obviously, I had to copy four times the data to reach the slowness of Solaris :-)
Re:/tmp and /var/tmp (Score:5, Interesting)
One example I was reminded of by the "differences" table -- the authors note that the Solaris equivalent of Linux's "/tmp" is "/var/tmp" -- but they failed to point out that Solaris also has a /tmp, and that, by default /tmp is actually partially backed by RAM, which is extremely convenient and useful from time to time, when you want a little piece of lightning-fast filesystem space, or want to eliminate disk as a variable in some sort of timing test. Of course, linux also has ramdisks, but this is generally far more convenient.
Is the way Solaris handles /tmp really all that different from the Linux tmpfs implementation?
Other than picking the maximum size at mount time, tmpfs seems to be the same thing. If you pick a size equal to swap space, I think it is the same thing:
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Those who do not understand RAM caching are doomed to re-implement it... poorly.
Just mount /tmp async and be done with it.
Writes as fast as your memory can store it, and will be cached in RAM (like everything else on the filesystem) until something more important fo
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Depends on your application. Benchmarks can often show that the regular (cached) file system outperforms tmpfs.
or want to eliminate disk as a variable in some sort of timing test.
If the mount is backed by hard drive (as tmpfs is) then the space might get swapped to disk, so to eliminate that you need a ram disk. It isn't difficult, but the ram drive size is fixed.
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If I need a small, temporary ram-based file from a shell script, i just touch /tmp/whateverfile. Seems like that was the point here.
Linux Wins (Score:4, Informative)
I was recently tasked with doing an inventory and repurposing of a stack of older Sun machines (Sunfire, Netra, etc).
What I discovered is that OpenSolaris won't even install on some of the models. Install from CD? Nope. Install remotely via a network install? Nope, and let me go on record as saying that the network install process is *absurdly* complex.
On the other hand, I popped a Debian CD in, and it installed beautifully once I booted into expert mode and loaded fdisk (parted blows when dealing with Sun tables).
That's right, Linux was easier to work with on these Sun servers than OpenSolaris. OSOL has some really cool features (ZFS and DTrace, for example), and I've mucked around in it on my x86 boxes before, but overall Linux is still easier to work with in my experience, even on Sun servers.
I always keep an OSOL VM in VirtualBox, but it doesn't see much use. I'd rather use Linux or BSD.
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I was working off the most recent release, but yeah, I know SPARC support is pretty new. I'm hoping it will get better in the future, but I've had so many issues even on x86 platforms that I'm not expecting a whole lot.
I'm typically an early adopter, so I'm not too concerned with having to do workarounds, rebuild packages, etc. But it seems that with OSOL I was running into more issues where I just couldn't find any workarounds, both in KB searches and in my own playing around.
There's some really great feat
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Yup, it has definitely improved. Another year or two with the right focus and it could be really useful. I'll continue to keep an updated install in VirtualBox for testing (I agree about hardware issues). Of course, VirtualBox has its own issues with OSOL (building the guest tools really mucked things up, but I blame VB for that, not OSOL).
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Personally, I've always found Solaris way easier to install on both headless systems (i.e. servers) and diskless systems (i.e. lean clients).
Almost every distro out there assumes that you have a graphics card, and in half of those that claim they still support serial setup, it's not tested and not working.
And diskless? To almost follow the standard guidelines doesn't cut it -- if a single process requires write access to a ro resource, it won't work.
And even trying to run a typical linux distro with a read
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I haven't tried it on a diskless system, but I didn't really have any issues installing Debian on the Sunfire servers (all were headless).
Started the install through the serial port, configured SSH and did the rest through an SSH conn (serial is just too painful on the eyes *grin*)
I can't speak for all distros, but I've found serial setups to be fine in both Debian and Gentoo (my two primary distros over the past 8 years).
The OSOL install isn't really *bad* up to the point where it failed (though I really h
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I was recently tasked with doing an inventory and repurposing of a stack of older Sun machines (Sunfire, Netra, etc).
What I discovered is that OpenSolaris won't even install on some of the models. Install from CD? Nope. Install remotely via a network install? Nope, and let me go on record as saying that the network install process is *absurdly* complex.
On the other hand, I popped a Debian CD in, and it installed beautifully once I booted into expert mode and loaded fdisk (parted blows when dealing with Sun tables).
That's right, Linux was easier to work with on these Sun servers than OpenSolaris. OSOL has some really cool features (ZFS and DTrace, for example), and I've mucked around in it on my x86 boxes before, but overall Linux is still easier to work with in my experience, even on Sun servers.
I always keep an OSOL VM in VirtualBox, but it doesn't see much use. I'd rather use Linux or BSD.
Network install isn't finished yet on OpenSolaris. Regular Solaris Jumpstart (net install) on SPARC is trivial compared to Linux (Or Solaris x86). PXE boot is some kind of absurd joke.
Re:Linux Wins (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want the best of the Solaris and Linux world, install FreeBSD. Stable ZFS support, DTrace, etc. Plus ports and packages, and Linux binary compatibility if you need it.
It still heavily favors the BSD side of things, rather than SysV style... in fact, much more than any Linux distro I've seen... but it still definitely has far more of the nice features of the old commercial Unix systems than Linux.
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Yup, I always have a FreeBSD guest installed in VirtualBox. I've always like the BSD distros, mainly for the reason you mentioned (getting the best of both worlds...old-school Unix and Linux).
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I find it easy to upgrade my deb-based Ubuntu system. I imagine Debian users find it just as easy.
Linux does not always imply RPM any more than Solaris always implies SPARC.
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Aye, deb packages aren't bad, and I've had good experiences with Gentoo's portage setup (though that seems to have gone downhill the last couple years). RPM is my least favorite of the major package formats, though I may just be biased from my memories of RH and dependency hell years ago *grin*
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Well, I couldn't even get OSOL installed on the SPARC machines, so my experience on that side comes from my experiences on x86 boxes.
OSOL has some great features, and I agree with you about RPM and ZFS (personally, I consider the BSD ports setup to be the best of the current options).
My experience is simply that Linux is more stable. With OSOL I was constantly running into issues in all areas (day to day sysadmin work, package management, hardware, etc). I'm not saying OSOL sucks, I think it has great poten
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My first experience outside MS was actually in Solaris, and I migrated to Linux later. I'm familiar enough with Solaris from my early days that I understand it has to be treated differently.
And yeah, I'd been through the HCL and knew that this particular model wasn't supported. But I also know that HCL's aren't always comprehensive and you can sometimes get away with installs on other hardware with a little tweaking.
I'm not saying OSOL is bad, I really do love some of the features, I just don't find it to b
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Yeah, and I can understand the sentiment. It usually is one of the biggest problems. Windows users treating Linux like Windows, Python coders treating it like C++, etc. A lot of "newbie" issues with most things can probably be traced back to them just not realizing that they have to treat the new *whatever* as a different entity from what they are used to.
I spent a couple weeks on this issue. Looked at the HCL, the BigAdmin stuff, pored through Google and all the OSOL docs and ml archives I could find. I ju
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I haven't tried vanilla Solaris, and we didn't currently have any Solaris media (we're mainly an MS shop with a handful of Linux servers/VMs and Xserves...though I'd prefer the reverse *grin*)
These machines aren't intended for production use anytime soon. We're using them now just to play around, get familiar with the hardware, poke around in the apps. Mainly just prep work in the event that we need to support Sun machines for a client sometime in the future.
I'll weigh in... (Score:2, Informative)
One thing I thing the Linux community could take from OpenSolaris is its concentration on the approval and standardization of applications, so long as you stay on the OpenSolaris repositories. There is pretty much one tool for each job. That's it -- generally speaking of course.
It is exactly why the Linux community shun it (cannot find binaries of specific software). When I use a Linux based OS, I feel the ADD in me kick in; to
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No luck for me (Score:2)
I've tried OpenSolaris, and also NexentaOS/StormOS, which is Ubuntu running on the OpenSolaris kernel instead of Linux.
I found that there was a lack of good documentation, and incompatibilities with certain hardware (for example, the hardware emulated by VirtualBox). Also, it seems to be hard to get ZFS to play nicely with other filesystems on the same hard disk.
Ubuntu already does everything I need it to. Persisting with OpenSolaris would be a bit masochistic.
Other people may be able to tell you a happie
Re:OpenSolaris (Score:5, Funny)
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Using JFS:
$ time cp data test2
real 0m0.062s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.040s
Re:OpenSolaris (Score:4, Funny)
how long did it take you to copy a 17 meg file from one folder to another?
this is one of my all time favorites, the fact that people below responded with timing makes it ever sweeter. I am in your debt.
Re:Its a Server OS... (Score:5, Interesting)
You could say the same about Linux. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea to try it.
In fact, I quite like the fact that there are enterprise-grade features lying around my system, just in case I ever happen to need them. As long as they don't get in the way of day-to-day tasks, what's the harm?
(A good current example of this is ZFS. Although casual users won't have a use for this, I find ZFS's awesome filesystem-creation and pooling features to be a godsend for managing my central backup repository and media store. If I need more space, I add another drive, type a short line into the console, and the space is available instantly to use with my existing filesystems with full-redundancy built in. Removing an old/small/broken drive from the pool is just as easy.)
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Well not exactly, Linux wasen't written with servers in mind, Solaris was, but anyway thats by-the-by now. Im not against Solaris, I think its great also, infact ive even been toying with the idea of putting it on my home server for the exact same reason you just stated regarding ZFS. I just think that at the moment, the only Open Source OS thats even nearly practical for typical day-to-day desktop use is Linux. OSS is pretty thin
Re:Its a Server OS... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not true. Most applications that run on Linux compile just as well on a variety of platforms. Gnome and KDE4 both have packages for FreeBSD for example. If you really want something simple and portable run Fluxbox or Openbox.
A lot of things are written in Java as well, which means you even have binary compatibility. Things written in Python and other scripting languages are also portable.
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That is why Linux is practical and others aren't. Most isn't good enough. Only ALL is satisfactory.
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Linux will always have a larger number of packages available than pretty much anybody else due to the decision to not actually have a base system. You get a kernel and the rest you have to add via third party developers. On top of that, there isn't any particular reason for a number of the other packages to be available as most people w
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Then Linux fails too, by your own definition it can only run *most* windows programs (via hardware emulation or Wine).
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Which is the exact same reason people stick to Windows.
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Ironic (Score:2, Insightful)
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Why all the unneeded complexity?
*stares*
I suppose that you're writing this from your Windows 3.11 (or perhaps OS/2) machine?
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And what is wrong with posting from an OS/2 machine? This is posted with Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.9.3a1pre) Gecko/20090914 Minefield/3.7a1pre. Of course Flash is ran with Odin which is basically Wine ported to OS/2.
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I'm running Flash on FreeBSD/amd64, by way of the Linux emulation layer. It's documented in the handbook, and it's pretty easy to get going. As much as I despise Flash's abused ubiquity, I've found it worthwhile to have it installed for guilty pleasures like Pandora, Hulu, and RagDoll Cannon. In fact, it runs more smoothly on my machine than natively on the OpenSUSE box in the living room.
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A) Use YouTube and a multitude of other video sites
B) Play Flash games
C) Use parts of Google Maps
D) View some sites with webmasters who sought fit to put the navigation in 100% Flash
Just setting up a decent
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Gnash can handle most Flash navigation, as well as YouTube. And you're aware that Flash wasn't available for 64 bit Linux users until recently right? Even now I think only an alpha release is available.
Horror. You actually iterate through a list of hundreds of blocked domains every time you do a domain lookup?
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I don't, the computer does. Doesn't seem to complain, either.
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I've used that HOSTS file on Windows as well as Linux, to speed up browsing. Reading the HOSTS file might take me a couple minutes, but the computer does it in an instant or two. Why should I download all the trash the ad servers offer, when the content I want makes up only a fraction of the entire page? With limited bandwidth, HOSTS can make browsing a lot more enjoyable, as well as making a browser hijack somewhat less likely. Ever been Rick Rolled? Are you always aware of cross site scripting as you
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If you're depending on a static blacklist of bad sites to protect yourself from bad scripts then you're doing it wrong.
Just don't run scripts without your explicit approval, require a click to enable flash/java objects, and use a secure browser (chromium, konqueror, probably kazehakase over firefox if you're in GTK+).
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Why don't they just run flash in a virtualized Linux box if they want to run it in *BSD? Sure, it's a bit of a hack, but any OS that can't show a kitten playing guitar is not, in my opinion, feature complete.
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OpenSolaris is perfectly practical for the desktop, just maybe not EVERY desktop.
This really depends on what you want to do with your computer. If it's a gaming rig, neither OpenSolaris nor Linux will be perfect for that. If you're looking for maximum software compatibility within the Unix-y realm, Linux is your answer.
If your desktop is a part time file or mail server, OpenSolaris has some features you might like. ZFS and fault management are big ones in that. DTrace also goes way beyond what is available
Re:Its a Server OS... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll throw in that Open Solaris has the best accessibility software for the blind, in Sun's Orca project. It works in Linux, but not as well as where it's developed... in Solaris. This is a key indicator of just how ready an OS is for the desktop, IMO.
Anyway, the whole Windows vs Linux flame war is pointless. Linux is the best OS ever developed for hackers, period. I couldn't be happier with it (unless it ran cool software like Orca stably). Windows is for Joe Sixpack who needs games and porn. Joe will always outnumber the hackers. It's ok. Just learn to live with it.
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Dunno, I've found plenty of Linux-compatible porn.
Just maybe...
you're doing it wrong.
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I'm a hacker that needs games and porn, you insensitive clod!
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Well not exactly, Linux wasen't written with servers in mind.
Yes it was [xkcd.com].
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No. What gave you the idea? Linux always was a "everything" OS. From the smallest portable and embedded devices capable of 32 bit, to the biggest supercomputers on the world.
But I agree on the enterprise-grade features. We're professionals. Professional craftsmen wouldn't use tools from the local DIY store. They use tools like this: http://www.us.hilti.com/holus/modules/prcat/prca_main.jsp [hilti.com]
Besides: I use ZFS on my small Linux server via FUSE, which unfortunately makes it a crazy resources hog, with using up
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I wonder how much resources it takes under OpenSolaris, and if a OpenSolaris virtual server, just for the ZFS, would make sense...
ZFS will always try to take up as much RAM as it can for the ARC [wikipedia.org] (Adaptive Replacement Cache).
While ZFS on FUSE probably works fine, it will always make me a bit scared. But kudos if it works for you!
P.S. I like your Hilti analogy. The average do-it-yourselfer does not (and has no need to) know who Hilti is or what kind of products they make. Those who need to know, do.
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I saw what you did there! You linked to some Macho-man Pr0n to distract the simple minded!! Don't worry, I'm reporting you for spamming the forum!! You're really a Hilti marketing agent, right?
I'll make you a deal. You come to my house, renew my card, and leave a few boxes of studs for the powder actuated gun, and I won't report you. Fair enough? ;^)
More seriously - no, I don't have my own gun. I sure wish I had invested in one. The people I work with now have this stupid, ancient remington brand thi
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Why try to hack it on to a desktop?
Who said anything about using it for a desktop?? I use OpenSolaris at home to run my NAS for one reason: ZFS. I strongly considered using BSD, but figured OpenSolaris was a better choice for my needs. So far I have had zero issues with it. It just sits in a room and quietly does what it was supposed to do. I am sure I would never try to use it for a desktop OS, but then again I'd never use Linux, BSD or Windows either. For that matter, why try and hack Linux on to a desktop??
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Hmm... OS/2?
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One Linux to rule them all, One Linux to find them, One Linux to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Where, exactly, doesn't Linux threaten every other OS?
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Opensolaris is just as desktop-ready as Linux. Open source desktops are the same in Linux, Opensolaris and BSD: Gnome, KDE, Openoffice, Firefox, X.org, dbus, etc. They all use the same code. From the user POV they are the same.
The one real difference is the hardware support (where Linux is the king). But once you have hardware support in Opensolaris and BSD, the rest of the software stack is identical (and the same applies for servers, BTW).If Linux is desktop ready, opensolaris is also desktop ready.
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You miss my point. Thats user ready for US - me and you - who are interested in computers and are happy to take the time to learn all about it. Most people are too damn lazy (i refuse to accept stupid to be the case given personal experience, its pure laziness) to learn a new OS. Setup Ubuntu on a laptop, then show someone how to open Firefox and thats it; their sorted.
Thats really not the case for OpenSolaris; nowhere near it.
But anyway, Im on the side as you here, anything that gets more people off Window
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You should give Belenix [belenix.org] a spin. Pretty damned desktop-friendly for an alpha.
Re:Its not just a server OS anymore (Score:3, Informative)
OpenSolaris 2009.06 has some excellent new desktop features,
TimeSlider which is similar to Apples Time Capsule
Image - GUI Package Mangement
AutoMagic - Network Configuration Wizards including wifi
Multimedia Codecs and Support
Improved OpenSolaris CIFS for interoprability with Windows networking.
I've been using it at home for a month or so and I'm enjoying it. I've also just gone to Windows 7 which I'm loving so its becoming a bit of a hard choice what I want to run on my notebook.
Re:Its not just a server OS anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
TimeSlider which is similar to Apples Time Capsule
I think you mean Time Machine (Time Capsule is Apple's NAS product). Saying TimeSlider is similar to Time Machine is doing TimeSlider a gross injustice. Time Slider works how Time Machine should. It uses the ZFS O(1) snapshot feature, making it very cheap to use and very robust. Time Machine creates a tree of hard links, which are not created atomically. The fact that it works at all is impressive, but it's very fragile. From an end-user perspective they are similar, but TimeSlider is a much cleaner implementation.
I'm not sure if it made it into the main OpenSolaris tree, but Nexenta also uses ZFS snapshots for package management with a wrapper around apt. When you do an update, it snapshots the system first, so if something went wrong (e.g. one package didn't update cleanly, or had regressions) you can revert trivially. Once you're happy, you can discard the snapshot. This is really great for testing experimental code; you can install the development version and revert it trivially if it broke anything.
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I haven't installed it on my laptop yet(Dell XPS M1330), but plan to once I get a 400GB HDD so I can dual boot it with Windows 7.
I have it running on a HP WX4000 series workstation at home.
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Opensolaris simply won't give you the same hardware support.
It's a RAID server and partition map... (Score:2)
Why try to hack it into a filesystem?
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Linux is great and all, but after using various other UNIX for a number of years, its just "different" in many ways for no good reason at all. Sure, if you've come fr
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I'm having a hard time deciphering why the license for the ZFS source code would affect the end user?
It smells like a red herring to me. Is it the license, or the additional support for Solaris that the customers are avoiding?
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OpenSolaris has no EAL rating either, but that doesn't mean it isn't secure.
Solaris has a long history of common criteria testing and OpenSolaris is largely based on the Solaris codebase, or so I've been told. The one doesn't require the other, but it does allow you to make some fairly safe assumptions about the fundamental design and security of the operating system, assuming it is set up properly.
At the hands of an idiot, any OS can be insecure.
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Why do you think anybody complaining about GPL compatibility must be a FSF drone?
There's lots of good software out there under the GPL, including the Linux kernel. Much of it is designed to be hacked and put together with other things. In its various incarnations, it's probably the most popular of the Free Software/Open Source licenses (second being the BSD-style licenses - and anything compatible with the GPL is compatible with those).
This means that a GPL-compatible program is more versatile than a