Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Open Solaris Derivative Available

Posted by Zonk on Sat Jun 18, 2005 03:22 PM
from the zonkx-is-coming-next dept.
Operating Systems Software Unix
tezbobobo writes "Well, Open Solaris has only been available a matter of days and already there are new projects available. SchilliX is an OpenSolaris-based live CD and distribution that is intended to help people discover OpenSolaris. When installed on a hard drive, it also allows developers to develop and compile code in a pure OpenSolaris environment. More details are available on the author's blog."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Open Solaris Derivative Available 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Been in dev for some time. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DAldredge (2353) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:24PM (#12852555) Journal
    Thursday, March 24, 2005
    Pure OpenSolaris boots on x86
    Today, I have been able to boot from a disk that was empty before I did install a self compiled OpenSolaris on it.

    So we now reached a certain limit that makes it possible to start with creating a OpenSolaris based x86 distribution at BerliOS.
  • Battle of *nix(es) is on!!

  • Torrents (Score:5, Informative)

    by RickPartin (892479) on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:36PM (#12852624) Homepage
    In case the Open Solaris site goes down or you just don't feel like clicking two links on the page

    Torrents! [sun.com]

  • Derivation on the purest form (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Transcendent (204992) on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:37PM (#12852629)
    Technically, can't I change one line of code or some small functionality and call it a derivative? It even sounds like they didn't do much: "When installed on a hard drive, it also allows developers to develop and compile code in a pure OpenSolaris environment."

    It seems just a cut-down version (text only) of Solaris, so where's the improvement?

  • echo OpenSolaris | sed s/O// | sed s/Solar// (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:43PM (#12852653)
    Enough said.

  • Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by diegocgteleline.es (653730) on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:45PM (#12852662)
    does it have cdrecord?

  • When I choose ___ OS, it is because... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:46PM (#12852667)
    What is the *primary* reason anyone would use Open Solaris over Linux, *BSD, and Windows?

    When I use Linux, it is because I am hosting/running existing software like Trac/Subversion/PostgreSQL/... which appear most heavily used/tested on Linux than any other platform.

    When I use FreeBSD, it is because I am hosting/running/distributing my own software and I don't want to deal with LGPL requirements regarding binaries linked to LGPL C libs (yes, I consultant an IP attorney about differences between GPL and LGPL requirements and also consulted FSF.ORG).

    When I use Windows, it is because I am running software that is not available on either FreeBSD or Linux. And also for distributing software on a platform that has the largest marketshare.

    When I use Open Solaris, it is because ???

    • Re:When I choose ___ OS, it is because... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is a very stable, scalable and secure OS with extremely good backwards compatibility, derived from BSD UNIX and created by a reputable company.
        • Not BSD derived.

          Depends how you look at it.

          Solaris 2 (2.7 became 7, 2.8 is 8, etc.) is based on the SunOS 5 kernel - which is SysV based.

          However, Solaris 1 (also known as SunOS 4 and below - sun has a thing for changing names and version numbers) had a BSD derived kernel and userspace.

          So there's a lot of BSD in Solaris 2 - they'd have been stupid to completely trash all the SunOS 4 code. Solaris 2 still runs a lot of SunOS code fine.
        • It was SunOS that was BSD derived: "Joy left Berkeley with a master s degree in electrical engineering, and became cofounder of Sun Microsystems (Sun stands for Stanford University Network). Sun s implementation of BSD was called SunOS."

          Of course, then, "1993 Sun announced that SunOS, release 4.1.4, would be its last release of an operating system based on BSD. Sun saw the writing on the wall and moved to System V, release 4, which they named Solaris. System V, release 4 (SRV4) was a merger of System V and

    • Re:When I choose ___ OS, it is because... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by njcoder (657816) on Saturday June 18 2005, @04:19PM (#12852812)
      The OpenSolaris license is the CDDL. It is not a viral license like the GPL. It was derived from the Mozilla Public License.

      OpenSolaris is based off of the Solaris Next source tree which is the working codebase after (and built on code from) Solaris 10. I've run PostgreSQL 7.3, 7.4 and 8.0 on Solaris. http://www.sunfreeware.com/ [sunfreeware.com] has Subversion binaries. As for Trac it should compile fine. Solaris has a lot of development behind it and a lot of resources from Sun. OpenSolaris is still in its early stages though. Solaris 10 (the commercial one) might be a good fit for your hosting/running apps instead of FreeBSD. Solaris 10 is free to use but not open source. For distributing OpenSolaris might be a good choice but it was just released and not quite all the code is out there.

      The CDDL is a per file license so unless you're hacking the actual OpenSolaris code it should serve the needs you have for using the BSD's. Some different benchmarks (like the mysql os benchmark) showed Solaris doint better than FreeBSD. Different independant benchmarks (think zdnet had some and different ISV's) show that the new Solaris can even hold it's own against Linux.

      Though you'd probably want to consult a lawyer or at least check out the cddl faq and not just take my opinion.

      • Re:When I choose ___ OS, it is because... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Curtman (556920) on Saturday June 18 2005, @05:31PM (#12853115)
        The OpenSolaris license is the CDDL. It is not a viral license like the GPL

        Too bad they fucked up the Sun Contributor Agreement [opensolaris.org]

        2. You hereby assign to Sun joint ownership in all worldwide common law and statutory rights associated with the copyrights, copyright applications and copyright registrations in Your Contribution, to the extent allowable under applicable local laws and copyright conventions, and agree never to assert against Sun any "moral rights" therein. You understand that
        (i) this Agreement may be submitted by Sun to register a copyright in Your Contribution, and
        (ii) Sun may exercise all rights as a copyright owner of Your Contribution. This Agreement supersedes and replaces all prior copyright assignments for Contributions made by You to Sun. Neither party has any duty whatsoever to render an accounting to the other party for any use of a Contribution.

        If I contribute to Linux, I don't have to assign the copyright to Linus.
        • "If I contribute to Linux, I don't have to assign the copyright to Linus."

          No you don't but the FSF recommends that you assign your copyright to them for GPL'd code. Sun is asking for joing ownership. You don't give up your copyright completely. When GPL v3 comes out, if Linus wants to upgrade to it he'll have to track down all the copyright holders to get their permission to relicense it. Didn't something like this already happen?

            • Re:When I choose ___ OS, it is because... (Score:5, Insightful)

              by njcoder (657816) on Saturday June 18 2005, @06:22PM (#12853342)
              If you read that quote directly, the licensor has to specifically state [fsf.org] "any later version" in the license. "If each program lacked the indirect pointer, we would be forced to discuss the change at length with numerous copyright holders, which would be a virtual impossibility. In practice, the chance of having uniform distribution terms for GNU software would be nil."

              So if the file doesn't say "Version 2 of the GPL or any later version" then that clause does not apply.

              If you look at the linux kernel readme it says "It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the 19 accompanying COPYING file for more details. "

              Also note that in the COPYING file it specifically states

              "Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated."
              And there were only a couple files I found that explicityly stated it.

              Next time, know what you're talking to before you call bullshit. This is from the 2.6.11 kernel. I didn't look at 2.6.12

        • "Not true. Solaris 10 is free to use for development and evaluation purposes only."

          Not true according to Sun you can use Solaris for free [sun.com] "As software business models are evolving Sun is taking an innovative lead role in making the Solaris 10 OS freely available for commercial use - and at zero cost." Though this does not extend to previous versions of Solaris like Solaris 9. Those you can only use for testing and development. RedHat doesn't even let you do that with RHEL. They only give you a 30 day

    • Re:When I choose ___ OS, it is because... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pedantic bore (740196) on Saturday June 18 2005, @04:31PM (#12852862)
      Why run OpenSolaris:

      Tools like DTrace. The ability to scale to large numbers of processors. A security model that is quite strong. A stable code base. A reasonable license. Decent management tools; a server mindset.

      There's nothing all that revolutionary about it; it doesn't so much as fill a hole as provide another choice. Personally I see it as something to use when I would have used *BSD but I don't want to deal with the politics...

  • author is well known (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:46PM (#12852668)
    You might know the author from cdrecord. He has a rather low opinion of the ide-scsi/ide-cd component of the kernel in general and Linus in particular. Good to see him where he is happy.

    And solaris has a kick-ass kernel, no doubt about that. Debian/SunOS is the ultimate Unix environment in my mind. One day it will become reality, or so I hope...

    • Debian/SunOS is the ultimate Unix environment in my mind. One day it will become reality, or so I hope...

      Not likely. Take a look at the OSolaris license.

    • Re:author is well known (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vsprintf (579676) on Saturday June 18 2005, @05:44PM (#12853171)

      You might know the author from cdrecord. He has a rather low opinion of the ide-scsi/ide-cd component of the kernel in general and Linus in particular. Good to see him where he is happy.

      If you have any evidence to support your claim that he has ever been happy, quite a few of us would like to see it. Or maybe all those caustic replys to mailing lists are a sign of hidden joy?

  • What really disappoints me... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:48PM (#12852685)
    ...is that there were those of us in Sun who wanted to do this kind of thing 5 years ago, but the pointy-hairs just didn't get it. There was talk of a GNU/Solaris as well.

    The pointy-hairs did get it eventually, but they RIF'd us and let external people do it instead. Meanwhile millions of $s of R&D money was wasted on stupid projects that were not needed, ill-concieved, cancelled, etc.

      • I still have my old copy of the NeWS sources, but I don't think anyone at Sun does. But "open sourcing" NeWS would be a waste of time. Just because people are still using an inferior obsolete window system like X-Windows doesn't mean we need to revive another old obsolete window system to replace it. It's better to make something new with current technology, than to use X-Windows or NeWS [c2.com].

        -Don

  • Interesting,, but no thanks. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It looks like a interesting distro, and I'd be partially interested in downloading it and taking a look at it if wasn't for the whining and complaining about the GPL he makes. I don't like the idea of my contributions potentially being distributed/used in a closed-source project [total value of my code: err.. about 2 cents] if I contribute to an open-source (GPL or Compatible license) project, and the GPL gives me that control [not that I'm concerned about it]. I've not got much code out there [mostly reall

  • Hosting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KidSock (150684) on Saturday June 18 2005, @05:30PM (#12853113)
    Wouldn't this be good for hosting? You could sell zones w/ root like linode.com does with UML. Is anyone doing this or planning on it?

  • Backport? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Digital Pizza (855175) on Saturday June 18 2005, @09:19PM (#12854096)
    So, how long before someone backports this to the Sun architecures that have been EOL'd: sun4m, sun4d, and dare I say it: sun4c?

    I do believe I've heard that it's already running on the sbus-based sun4u's (Ultra 1 and Ultra 2), and there actually is a lot of interest in getting this for the sun4m's (Sparc 4, Sparc 5, Sparc 10, Sparc 20).

    It'd be kinda fun to pull my old IPX out of the closet again to try cramming OpenSolaris into it :-)

  • Bigotry (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Craig Ringer (302899) on Sunday June 19 2005, @01:12AM (#12854889) Homepage Journal
    The bigotry being displayed here is astonishing. Between whining about cdrecord, making uninformed snipes about how Linux is better, and writing off Solaris because of the CDDL, it's a pretty poor show. I know slashdot can do better than this :S

    note: I have concerns about the CDDL too, but it ONLY MATTERS if you want to contribute your code into the core codebase, use Solaris code in your own, or redistribute modified Solaris code. The contributor agreement only matters if you want to have your code merged into Solaris - you can simply maintain an outside patch/dist if you have a problem with it. I'm 99% sure none of the loud complainers here will be doing any of the above anyway.

    I also tried Solaris 10 - and got rid of it. It's not much of a desktop yet - old software, and it needs a comprehensive package collection of libs and GNU tools REALLY badly. It does, however, serve some people's needs fantastically, especially in the server space. Let's not write something off entirely because "sun are bad, mmkay" or because it doesn't have the latest GNOME.

    As for cdrecord ... come on. The fellow can be abrasive but I don't see how that's important here, and he can do what he wants with his code. He did license it under the GPL in the first place, which I for one appreciate, so we can use it and the extended DVD-supporting derivatives of it available in Linux distros. I don't see why him deciding *not* to give away *more* of his work draws such incredible indignation here. Sure, it'd be nice (FSF zealous would argue "morally required"), but really it's his work and his code.
    • But the article says "Derivative" not "Dervivatives".

      No need to jump the gun.

    • Re:Oh great, let the fun begin (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FidelCatsro (861135) <fidelcatsro AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday June 18 2005, @03:47PM (#12852681) Journal
      Honestly i think your Jumping the gun a little. This wont happen to solaris , solaris will always be solaris and compatible with itself . If this distros goes so far as to be incompatible with Solaris main then it will cease to be a solaris.
      Solaris is an OS as opposed to linux which is just a kernel
    • I mean, how much did you pay for Linux? Or OpenSolaris? How much code did you write for either? What's your personal stake in this?

      I think it's great - GNU/Linux has been made possible by people writing software that suits their needs. We've got some great software, viable operating systems, and Linux systems are all basically compatible with one another. Your "favorite programs" wouldn't exist without it.

      So why don't you stop bitching about what YOU want, and appreciate the work that's been done th

      • OSS? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pedantic bore (740196) on Saturday June 18 2005, @04:19PM (#12852808)
        ... majority of the OSS community is made up of ego driven men striving to be the alpha.

        No need to smear the OSS community. That describes the non-OSS community perfectly also.

        There are people who hack for the love of it, and there are people who write code because they have a vision of making the world a better place through better technology... you just don't hear about them too much. They don't feel the need to self-promote.

      • Just to emphasize... According to Eric Boutilier in his blog [sun.com] "under the new Solaris/Opensolaris model, in order for a Sun developer to put code into regular Solaris (the Solaris that Sun ships), he/she will have to put it into Opensolaris first."

      • Re:Oh great, let the fun begin (Score:4, Interesting)

        by njcoder (657816) on Saturday June 18 2005, @05:01PM (#12852987)
        " Yes, Linux is such a "mess" that Sun have been _forced_ to copy it !" Actually, it looks like the reverse [lkml.org] is already starting to happen. And in the past the linux kernel guys were able to get info from solaris and solaris engineers. here [google.com] Some comments are negative some are positive but Solaris is mentioned the most by far out of any of the commercial Unixes. I can't find the link right now but I remember someone saying that back in the day Sun was a lot more open with it's technology. Sun engineers would publish info about their hardware and software. Especially when someone was having some sort of trouble. Then they got a little more closed down. Probably when they were making a ton of money. Sounds like Scott McNealy recognizes that and wants Sun to go back to being more open [bayosphere.com].

    • Re:Good news! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by njcoder (657816)
      I don't think that Jörg is part of xcdroast. He wrote and maintains cdtools. xcdroast is just a gui for cdrecord. cdtools is released under the GPL. Why don't you find some open standards minded people yourself and fork it to fix it. From what I've read on the lkml it doesn't seem to have anything to do with open standards anyway and you can get around it by running it as root.

      That's one of the benefits of open source. :)

    • You're an idiot! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Some Random Username (873177) on Saturday June 18 2005, @05:35PM (#12853134) Journal
      He does cdrecord, not xcdroast. And he does use open standards, that's why it works on several unix OSs. Just because linux developers make some random change does not mean its magically an "open standard", its non-standard, linux-specific behaviour. Linux making random stupid changes and not informing people who use the now altered API is entirely the fault of linux developers. If you don't like it, use an OS that doesn't do this, or complain to the linux developers who created the problem.
        • He, like many people, does not use linux as his primary OS. He is just nice enough to make software that works on linux. He relied on an API that is not supposed to be changed. Do you honestly expect him to spend all his time searching changelogs of various operating systems checking to see if the developers are changing stable APIs on him? If you are going to alter the API, it would be reasonable to email people who write important software that relies on that API. And there is no reason to change the

    • Re:whats the difference ? (Score:5, Funny)

      by node 3 (115640) on Saturday June 18 2005, @04:00PM (#12852733)
      between solaris and linux ?

      One sucks, and the other doesn't.

      Or it might be the other way around.

    • Re:whats the difference ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by FidelCatsro (861135) <fidelcatsro AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday June 18 2005, @04:09PM (#12852769) Journal
      They are two different OS and run on different kernels for a start(note that linux is just a kernel anyway)
      Linux has a broader compatibility with x86 hardware
      Solaris has by default a better permissions system
      Linux is under the GNU GPL and thus a little freer than OpenSolaris
      Solaris has far better NFS support , not that you would notice unless your running with allot of clients
      Solaris is certified POSIX complient and linux is just pretty much POSIX compliant (mainly due to the cost of being declared posix compliant , and the rate the linux kernel evolves)
      Those are some of many many many differences.

      • Solaris has far better NFS support , not that you would notice unless your running with allot of clients

        ie. More than one client.

        Linux NFS is improving dramaticly, but still has some way to go. NFS on 2.4.20 is dog slow, on 2.6.10 using TCP/IP it's just noticably slow.

        I use solaris on I/O intensive stuff (in my case the hardware I have is better for it too, which is the major difference) and linux for the CPU intensive stuff (fast intel/amd chips are cheap).

        The funny thing is the stuff that really s

        • >But they are both UNIX-like systems right, with everything you could
          >expect from such an operating system? (chown, ls, /, etc.)

          Solaris is full-blooded SysV, Linux is a hodgepodge of SysV and BSD style Unix.

    • Re:Hooray! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by njcoder (657816)
      "This was just the thing I needed to convince me to try Open Solaris. Hopefully porting drivers from Linux and the *BSD's to Open Solaris won't prove too difficult."

      BSDs more likely than Linux because of licensing restrictions. Although a good number of drivers for the linux kernel are written as modules and don't have to have to be GPL'd. In fact there are a number of drivers that are released under a BSD license as well as proprietary, binary-only drivers. Also more hardware venders might support the

    • As a desktop Solaris and Linux user, I would say no. At least for me, Linux, especially with the 2.6 kernel is *much* more responsive on the desktop, plus Solaris is missing many pieces that really help for the desktop (like Alsa). Granted, you can get audio running on Sun (I wrote the ARTS Solaris driver for KDE), but you're much better off under Linux.

      Also, at least on Sparc, Sun's X server doesn't appear to support a number of key features useful on the desktop, and Xorg doesn't run on Sparc Solaris d

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.