OpenSolaris fork imminent? • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#11

Post by vegai » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 12:35 PM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #10

Perhaps this is a inane question, but why should we care about Solaris? What does it bring to the table over BSD or Linux? If it died tomorrow would your shop close up and everyone go home? I know some of its features (DTrace and ZFS) are quite impressive but they are not really deal breakers. A kernel is great but it doesn't do much on its own. You still need applications and drivers to have a complete system.

Pretty much no reason. The deal breakers you mention have also been ported to FreeBSD and are said to be rather stable already.

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#12

Post by adbge » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 12:36 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #8

c00p3r wrote: post #6

Why not FreeBSD? Just to run Oracle? But it is much easier to run it on Linux nowadays. btw, who will write and debug all the new device drivers?

I've modded you back up as I have the same question, albeit I think some explanation would help: FreeBSD has the good bits of the Solaris kernel - ZFS and DTrace - and the common Solaris 10 userspace - toolchain, packaging, etc. - aren't particularly up to date.

FreeBSD supports ZFS v14, which lacks some of the features of ZFS on OpenSolaris, namely data deduplication. However, it is my understanding that porting later versions of ZFS to FreeBSD would require non trivial changes to the FreeBSD kernel, making it unlikely.

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#13

Post by dman » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 12:59 PM UTC

c00p3r wrote: post #6

Why not FreeBSD? Just to run Oracle? But it is much easier to run it on Linux nowadays. btw, who will write and debug all the new device drivers?

Perhaps theres a sizeable body of customers who have apps written and deployed for solaris. The cost of moving and certifying existing apps is often something enterprises like to avoid. Furthermore Oracle is expected to push to make the individual bits of Sun more profitable which means existing customers might feel squeezed in various ways. Combined both of the above facts mean that there is a sizeable body of customers willing to pay for solaris based support / products and who might be open to an alternative to the Oracle solaris distribution and support. One last point - some companies with established products find linux to be a fast moving target and the relative stability of the solaris kernel interfaces is considered a good thing.

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#14

Post by shin_lao » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 1:11 PM UTC

adbge wrote: post #12

nailer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've modded you back up as I have the same question, albeit I think some explanation would help: FreeBSD has the good bits of the Solaris kernel - ZFS and DTrace - and the common Solaris 10 userspace - toolchain, packaging, etc. - aren't particularly up to date.

FreeBSD supports ZFS v14, which lacks some of the features of ZFS on OpenSolaris, namely data deduplication. However, it is my understanding that porting later versions of ZFS to FreeBSD would require non trivial changes to the FreeBSD kernel, making it unlikely.

I'm sorry but could you elaborate on "porting later versions of ZFS to FreeBSD would require non trivial changes to the FreeBSD kernel"?

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#15

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 1:19 PM UTC

zemanel wrote: post #2

i like OS but the desktop UX is where linux was years ago

It may not be as flashy in some respects, but things like the time slider are killer

http://blogs.sun.com/erwann/entry/zfs_on_the_desktop_zfs

It they aren't done already, I suppose integrating these parts to newer versions of Gnome is, at least, in the pipeline for *BSD folks (and, once ported to current Gnome, they would be rather easy to adapt it to BtrFS, which is to be fully supported by canned linux distros by the end of the year).

Just now, OpenSolaris is a very cool server OS with a slightly old Gnome desktop on top of it.

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#16

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 1:21 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #4

zemanel wrote: post #2

i like OS but the desktop UX is where linux was years ago

I'd distinguish between OpenSolaris the distribution and Solaris the kernel; and my interest in this lies in the server side of things, not UI. I'm currently using Nexenta, which uses the Solaris kernel with a server-oriented Debian userland. The things Solaris brings along, ZFS, dtrace, SMF etc. are not hugely relevant to the desktop.

> The things Solaris brings along, ZFS (...) are not hugely relevant to the desktop

Have you ever accidentally deleted your MP3 collection? ;-)

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#17

Post by c00p3r » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 1:26 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #8

c00p3r wrote: post #6

Why not FreeBSD? Just to run Oracle? But it is much easier to run it on Linux nowadays. btw, who will write and debug all the new device drivers?

I've modded you back up as I have the same question, albeit I think some explanation would help: FreeBSD has the good bits of the Solaris kernel - ZFS and DTrace - and the common Solaris 10 userspace - toolchain, packaging, etc. - aren't particularly up to date.

Add to this an idiotic attempt to replace SystemV startup scripts with some insanely non-obvious java-based (of course!) crap, badly ported in a great hurry outdated 32-bit userland (when at the same time x86_64 version of Fedora or FreeBSD-ports were several years old), some in-house designed and quite alien packaging system (pkg) and so on.

It is dead. As dead as Irix or Tru64 or even OpenVMS.

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#18

Post by twsted » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 1:39 PM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #10

Perhaps this is a inane question, but why should we care about Solaris? What does it bring to the table over BSD or Linux? If it died tomorrow would your shop close up and everyone go home? I know some of its features (DTrace and ZFS) are quite impressive but they are not really deal breakers. A kernel is great but it doesn't do much on its own. You still need applications and drivers to have a complete system.

Because in any ecosystem diversity is a good thing (as biodiversity in nature).

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#19

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 1:42 PM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #10

Perhaps this is a inane question, but why should we care about Solaris? What does it bring to the table over BSD or Linux? If it died tomorrow would your shop close up and everyone go home? I know some of its features (DTrace and ZFS) are quite impressive but they are not really deal breakers. A kernel is great but it doesn't do much on its own. You still need applications and drivers to have a complete system.

> why should we care about Solaris?

It's the only OS that can boot from a ZFS volume and that also has a sane package management system.

Re: OpenSolaris fork imminent?

#20

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Aug 02, 2010, 1:44 PM UTC

vegai wrote: post #11

Corrado wrote: post #10

Perhaps this is a inane question, but why should we care about Solaris? What does it bring to the table over BSD or Linux? If it died tomorrow would your shop close up and everyone go home? I know some of its features (DTrace and ZFS) are quite impressive but they are not really deal breakers. A kernel is great but it doesn't do much on its own. You still need applications and drivers to have a complete system.

Pretty much no reason. The deal breakers you mention have also been ported to FreeBSD and are said to be rather stable already.

Lack of proper package management (you can't compare ports to yum or apt) is a dealbreaker for me. Ports is minimal and you can, conceivably, grow a real package management system out of it, but it's not one.