31–40 of 279 posts
Does the death of Solaris have any implications for the future of SPARC? Seemed like most of the SPARC hardware that Oracle sells/sold exclusively ran Solaris. I could be wrong about that, though.
As someone who's never used Solaris or looked into its merits I'm curious: can someone comment on why all the nostalgia for Solaris?
For some Solaris has been one of the first UNIX experiences, as it was one of the most popular unices out there. Most university used it before Linux became popular. For others, like me, who learned Solaris fairly late (2006), Solaris was a testbed for one of the best operating system technologies out there. Modern filesystem (ZFS), dynamic tracing (dtrace), containerization (zones), dependency management during boot…
This was my case. I was playing around with Linux, both on my own machine at home as well as with a server at my high school (shell accounts being a perk of joining the computer club). While learning about Linux I also picked up some of the history of UNIX. At some point I learned that you could get a copy of x86 Solaris 7 for for Every few months I browse ebay and look at SPARC machines. Though it's not really practically useful, I think it would be cool to have an Ultra 5 again.
Probably the biggest problem is the fact that all existing distributions are undermaintained and unpolished. SmartOS is the only exception, but it's not a replacement for Solaris which was a general-purpose server OS. SmartOS is merely a bare-metal hypervisor.
I really hope that some of the laid-off developers will start contributing to the project. It really needs them.
[1] - https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commits/master
As someone who's never used Solaris or looked into its merits I'm curious: can someone comment on why all the nostalgia for Solaris?
It was solid, well laid out, consistent, and it advanced good technology seemingly far ahead of its time. ZFS, dtrace, zones (i.e. containers), FireEngine networking, etc.
I always thought Solaris was a beautiful and memorable name for an operating system. Any connection with the Stanislaw Lem novel (or Tarkovsky movie) was always a bit unclear to me... But I guess a book about futile interactions with a planet-sized alien brain that doesn't care about you other than mysteriously experimenting with your memories is a reasonable metaphor for the Unix user experience.
Soderberghs version is much more reflective of what happened with the emergence of OpenSolaris and Illumos (not to give away any spoilers but apparently forking is a real thing and it lives on). Tarkovskys movie was such a philosophical drivel that I feel asleep. How is the book - is it worth reading? As I understood it neither of films follow the novel very closely.
> ..employees who had given their careers to the company were told of their termination via a pre-recorded call — “robo-RIF’d” Every single first person or second hand account I've heard about Oracle makes like a terrible place to work... is this just people being hyperbolic, or is is truly that terrible?
As someone who's never used Solaris or looked into its merits I'm curious: can someone comment on why all the nostalgia for Solaris?
I always thought Solaris was a beautiful and memorable name for an operating system. Any connection with the Stanislaw Lem novel (or Tarkovsky movie) was always a bit unclear to me... But I guess a book about futile interactions with a planet-sized alien brain that doesn't care about you other than mysteriously experimenting with your memories is a reasonable metaphor for the Unix user experience.
Soderberghs version is much more reflective of what happened with the emergence of OpenSolaris and Illumos (not to give away any spoilers but apparently forking is a real thing and it lives on). Tarkovskys movie was such a philosophical drivel that I feel asleep. How is the book - is it worth reading? As I understood it neither of films follow the novel very closely.
Besides Solaris, his meditations on life and society in The Cyberiad remain some of my favourite science fiction of all time.
> ..employees who had given their careers to the company were told of their termination via a pre-recorded call — “robo-RIF’d” This sounds awful, and very long from what would be the legal requirements demanded in the country I live in. What would such a robot call say?
I'd imagine something like "shutdown -h now" or the solaris equivalent
Solaris and derivatives are great OS's and far before their time in so many ways.
> ..employees who had given their careers to the company were told of their termination via a pre-recorded call — “robo-RIF’d” This sounds awful, and very long from what would be the legal requirements demanded in the country I live in. What would such a robot call say?
HCF