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Taking a Look at Nexenta's Blend of Solaris and Ubuntu
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Nov 22, 2008 04:56 PM
from the little-a-this-little-a-that dept.
from the little-a-this-little-a-that dept.
Ahmed Kamal writes "What happens when you take a solid system such as Ubuntu Hardy, unplug its Linux kernel, and plug in a replacement OpenSolaris kernel? Then you marry Debian's apt-get to Solaris' zfs file-system? What you get is Nexenta Core Platform OS. Let's take Nexenta for a quick spin, installing and configuring this young but promising system."
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Submission: Solaris+Ubuntu, can you say SolaBuntu by Anonymous Coward
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Better Proposed Names... (Score:5, Funny)
But seriously, sounds like a great idea.
Re:Better Proposed Names... (Score:5, Funny)
Why are you making this so difficult?
Clearly this new distro should be called GNU/Solaris.
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Re:Better Proposed Names... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Solaris" is a reference to the Sun (and by extension, to Sun Microsystems) in Latin. "Ubuntu" is Zulu for humanity.
An elegant blend would be "Ilanga" (Zulu for Sun) or "Humanitas" (Latin for Ubuntu).
Don't mind me. I just hate portmanteaux.
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Re:Better Proposed Names... (Score:5, Funny)
How about Usuntzu?
Fool around with Linux names on /. and you're dabbling in the art of war....
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Re:Better Proposed Names... (Score:5, Funny)
Or at least confucius the issue.
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Re:Better Proposed Names... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Better Proposed Names... (Score:4, Funny)
i don't think i'd take a sleeping pill that causes sleep walking.
but maybe if they marketed it as a diet pill that lets you lose weight while sleeping...
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
More stories like this (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the types of stories I miss on /. No, politics, no civil procedure/court news, no DRM wars. Just plain old news for nerds (even if it doesn't matter all that much).
Re:More stories like this (Score:5, Funny)
Real slashdotters use lots of the nice checkboxes to change their preferences. Nerds are complex beasts.
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Re:More stories like this (Score:4, Funny)
Real Slashdotters use Lynx and despise checkboxes.
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Re:More stories like this (Score:5, Funny)
George Bush was keeping stories like this off Slashdot. Now that Obama's elected, we won't have any politically-charged stories. ;)
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Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll look at it when there's a Redhat/CentOS userland to go with it. I'd say I'm pretty familiar with both Redhat Linux and
Solaris and the BSDs but you would have to give me some really compelling reasons I should go through the Debian/Ubuntu
learning curve.
Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:5, Insightful)
>really compelling reasons I should go through the Debian/Ubuntu learning curve.
A 7 year old child can?
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the problem with Red Hat is it isn't as popular. Most people who know Linux know or at least have heard of Ubuntu, and know that it is easy to use, on the other hand Red Hat isn't as popular and so while there might be a small number of people who would only use it if it was based off of Red Hat, more people use Ubuntu than Red Hat and so it only is logical to base it off of Ubuntu.
That's one of my problems with Linux. Ubuntu has been out for what--less than 4 years, and popular for less than that? Before Ubuntu was the big thing, it was Gentoo. Etc etc, and before that, Redhat. (ignoring, Fedora, Suse, etc and of course the parent distro of Ubuntu--debian--has been around forever as well)...before that, slackware. And so on.
So far Ubuntu seems to have decent staying power (and most importantly--*one* man with money behind it). It just seems crazy to me that Red Hat which virtually WAS linux for the first decade of Linux has been relegated to near irrelevance?
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason Ubuntu is so popular is because they took a standardized, stable, flexible, but up-to-date base (Debian) and took care of the desktop-oriented customization that a Debian user would normally have to do manually. Then they started filling in the holes in the UI, which trickled back to Debian of course.
The reason Red Hat is no longer popular (and I don't know why it ever was, since Debian has almost always been this good) is, in my opinion, because the packaging system is way too open and not nearly standardized enough. Although they have been fixing this in the recent years, when you run a Red Hat based system (Fedora, Centos, etc), you seem to end up installing packages from random places.
From Debian, if you stick with the official repositories (which is possible since they are very thorough and extensive), you are pretty much guaranteed that all your packages have passed through a standardized system where they are checked for problems, inter-dependencies, and are all compiled with the same methodology.
Additionally, Debian's seemingly-overbearing policies on legal issues are actually a good thing, as long as they have enough developers (and they do): as long as you have your "gold standard" distribution where every package meets very strict rules, you can always branch out from there by adding other trusted repositories or doing what Ubuntu has done. However, if you start from a "messy" packaging system / distribution where anything goes, its much harder to select the "standardized" subset of those packages.
Finally, Debian's developer base is very large, diverse, and relatively unified in their efforts, and their organization is *very* democratic and user-driven. There is no one central authority that has total and permanent control over the distribution. While this has the possibility for failure, they've done it in a way that seems to have worked out very well. In contrast, Red Hat is a corporation that has a vested interest in getting customers to pay for support contracts, while the Red Hat based distributions are more numerous and don't have nearly as much manpower (note: purely based on speculation). I don't know how much penetration Debian has in the enterprise, but if someone stepped up to provide paid Debian support, I think they could make a lot of money...
Anyways thats just been my view. I honestly don't mean to offend anyone who really likes Red Hat -- I just feel that Debian's packaging system is much more powerful, standardized, up-to-date, and trustworthy (the key being meeting all of these points, and not sacrificing one for another -- say more up-to-date for less standardization, etc).
Please feel free to correct me -- I am interested to hear a Red Hat admin's point-of-view on the issue.
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:5, Insightful)
So, to answer you question (mark, really), RH has only been "relegated to near irrelevance" on the desktop, and that happened only because they didn't want it.
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, you mean that they saw the desktop was a market full of people who didn't want to pay for an OS, and didn't need to pay for support contracts, and realized that if nobody was paying them it was a useless market to chase?
Holy shit, it's almost like Red Hat aren't completely inept. Who knew that a company based in the same city as MIT and Harvard might be able to find a few people who are good technologists AND some who are good at business (not to mention I've heard their legal department isn't too shabby either...)
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one of my problems with Linux. Ubuntu has been out for what--less than 4 years, and popular for less than that? Before Ubuntu was the big thing, it was Gentoo. Etc etc, and before that, Redhat. (ignoring, Fedora, Suse, etc and of course the parent distro of Ubuntu--debian--has been around forever as well)...before that, slackware. And so on.Z
While Gentoo might have been the distro with the most buzz before Ubuntu, the audience for Gentoo was never the same as the audience for Ubuntu. Each has had its share of buzz, but for totally different reasons.
So far Ubuntu seems to have decent staying power (and most importantly--*one* man with money behind it). It just seems crazy to me that Red Hat which virtually WAS linux for the first decade of Linux has been relegated to near irrelevance?
Irrelevance? By what standard? Red Hat has a market capitalization of $1.64 billion. You think they got it from their rich uncle?
The reasons you don't hear a lot of buzz about Red Hat on Slashdot are A.) Red Hat is well-established, produces a stable, reliable, quality product -- and that kind of thing doesn't make the news; and B.) most of the people reading Slashdot are not Red Hat customers. You can't fiddle around with Fedora and decide "Red Hat is irrelevant." Talk to me when you actually pay for a Red Hat Enterprise support contract, then tell me you're going to give it up and go back to Gentoo. I believe if you investigate you'll find that Red Hat enjoys a quite healthy popularity -- in the markets it cares about.
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:4, Interesting)
What's so different in Ubuntu vs. Red Hat, on a desktop machine?
The packaging system is very similar AFA what the end user sees, and there's a GUI program installed by default that can handle all that for you anyway. I suppose config files might sometimes be located in different places, but how many of those to you edit on a regular basis, if any? Especially with modern, highly effective automatic hardware detection and configuration, it's unlikely that you'll need to edit a large number of config files on a desktop machine. Just locate the one or two (if any) that you need to work with and you're done.
The GUI is Gnome or KDE in either one, or any of the other WMs that you can install on either. No big learning curve.
Bash and 99.9% of the console tools are the same.
Installing a program that doesn't have a package is going to be the same on either, usually a configure and a make.
Hell, I'm pretty sure the network manager in Ubuntu was originally created for (and, I assume, is still used by) Red Hat.
What's the learning curve? I'm not trying to be a dick, I really just can't figure out what would be so different, and would like to know what gave you trouble. I can understand servers being troublesome, since Red Hat has tons of tools that other distros don't, but the desktop experience ought to be very similar, considering they're largely composed of the same 3rd party apps.
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Re:Get me a Redhat/Centos userland (Score:4, Interesting)
The importance of doing an apt-get and having the apps work bugfree is importance as a desktop. I used to be a unix guy from 1999 when I tried Caldera openLinux lite and then tried out the FreeBSD's from 2001 - 2004.
I switched to vista (shudder)because I want something to just work. I just very recently got ubuntu to actually install bugfree on my laptop only to see strange screen artificats on white screens due to some way X is setup.
Anyway the big deal for OpenSolaris is for servers. Solaris can handle many threads concurrent and loads for high end servers and ZFS and Ztrace are very nice for system administrators running server farms.
As a desktop I would run from this as the plague as I assume its untested and buggy. Wifi, 3d, flash, and maybe wine compatibility for those hell bent on win32 apps. I could be wrong. I would not trust a server on this either as its not as well tested as Sun Solaris.
If you want a desktop use MacOSX or Windows. Linux for when you need to learn programming or unix and real solaris from sun for reliability and big iron.
I agree this would be a nice toy for those wanting to learn solaris.
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Even if.... (Score:3, Informative)
Even if the idea behind all this is sound.. Try to consider that Nexenta has been around for 2+ years and still not finished the process to being a Debian port. Is it because the parent company is too busy trying to sell storage appliances or they simply don't have any developers to pull it off? The long term maintenance plans for the project to stay in sync with both upstream OpenSolaris and Debian/Ubuntu is fatally flawed and will cause extraneous effort. Then ask yourself.. why? If you really want ZFS + Ubuntu/debian/linux then please.. start work on that.. smf and a lot of the other useland tools *can* be ported to linux with relative ease if you guys actually knew what you were doing..
Re:Even if.... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, there is a kfreebsd-port for Debian, but it's not gonna be in the upcoming release of Debian (Lenny) so it seems.
Re:Even if.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Even if.... (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite that simple. You can distribute GPL (V2) code which links against an incompatible (or even closed-source) libc, provided you don't also distribute libc. This is the "special exception" in section 3. Of course, a distro like this does distribute libc, so it's not eligible for the exception.
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Re:Even if.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Debian people believe that distributing GPL'd code that links against a GPL-incompatible libc is a violation of the GPL (and they are probably right).
The FSF themselves distribute GPL'd code that links against GPL-incompatible libcs (including Suns) - and they have done for years (in fact decades), way before CDDL exsited, when Solaris / SunOS libcs were proprietary.
The FSF are right, "the Debian people" are wrong. If there was one thing the system libraries exception clearly covers, it is libc.
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Re:Even if.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Even if.... (Score:4, Insightful)
*BSD distros include their own libc and GPL software that links against it. OS X includes their own libc and GPL software that links against it
All of these have a BSDL'd libc, which does not have this problem because it's not a GPL-incompatible license. It's been a great many years since I used BeOS so I can't speak for their case, but possibly they were in violation. As I understand it, GPL'd software in SFU links against the libc which is part of Windows (and not distributed with SFU) and so falls under the 'system libraries' exemption in the GPL.
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Sun's libc/complier are my BANE! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even if.... (Score:4, Funny)
In this case, the GPL is the problem. The CDDL is a per-file license. This is why Apple can put ZFS and DTrace into OS X, linking directly against their code. Because the CDDL'd code they get from OpenSolaris is under a per-file license. The same is true of FreeBSD - they can put ZFS code into their kernel and the CDDL only affects those portions of the kernel. People who don't want to use ZFS still get a BSDL kernel, people who do get a BSDL kernel with a few CDDL components. Linux, on the other hand, can't incorporate any of this code, because of the GPL.
The CDDL isn't the only license to be incompatible with the GPL. The FSF maintains a long list of Free Software licenses which are incompatible with the GPL [fsf.org]. Other notable examples include the Apache Software License (version 2 is compatible with GPLv3), the Apple Public Source License, and the Mozilla Public License. None of these license place any requirements on the final product, only on the code released under that license, and so all three can be mixed together without issue.
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Re:Got that backwards, and a misuse of term (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess the other software wasn't very Free then to start with if it disallows something as simple as linking with a GPL package, was it? After all, any GPL software can link with any other without legal complications...
Nice troll. The CDDL is roughly equivalent to the Mozilla Public License. It makes no demands on code linked to it at all. It is a per-file license, and can be linked with any other code unless the other code's license explicitly prohibits it. You can mix CDDL, Apache licensed, BSD licensed and any other per-file license together into a single program.
It is the GPL which makes this a problem. The GPL states that, if you distribute a GPL'd program, all parts of the program must be covered by licenses which impose the same conditions as the GPL and no others. The CDDL (along with every other Free Software license on this list [fsf.org]) does not fall into this category. This means that you do not have a distribution license for the GPL'd software if you attempt to distribute it along with any software under any of these licenses (and they link together - 'mere aggregation' is allowed).
Apple would have the same problem distributing bash on OS X if their libc were APSL'd (like most of the rest of Darwin), but since it comes from FreeBSD they kept the BSDL, which is GPL-compatible.
Any GPL'd software can link against any other GPL'd software without legal complications, but you can say the same about the CDDL, the APSL, the ASL, and even a load of proprietary licenses. It's only when mixing with the GPL that any of these have problems.
If the CDDL is the problem then it is not Free.
Well, the Free Software Foundation list it as a Free Software License, and the Open Source Initiative class it as an Open Source License, so it certainly seems free.
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Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes: more is better. And it might breathe some life into Solaris. Sun could use some of that right now. Solaris has the benefit of solid code developed at a comparative snail's pace, but with the energy of being hard, and toughened. Any distro mix is a good mix, because you learn from it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point, but we already have the whole BSD family. Having a third family of kernels available is probably a lot less important than having a second one. I would think that avoiding monoculture would be a much less important argument in Nexenta's favor than the availability of ZFS, for people who need specific features of ZFS. Hmm...but then
Looks interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks fun but I am still waiting for 3ware Solaris drivers. And I am not holding my breath either.
What happens when... (Score:5, Funny)
> you... unplug its Linux kernel, and plug in a[n]... OpenSolaris kernel...
What happens?
Neither Linus nor Richard are happy.
This is what Indiana should have been..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been working with Solaris for many years. When OpenSolaris was announced, I jumped for joy at what could be accomplished. When it was just a re-release of Solaris major, I said, ok, well, it is a certified Unix(tm) and now open source. But when they started working on Indiana, their replacement for the old Solaris system, I again jumped for joy, a chance to remove the cruft, while keeping ZFS and other Solaris goodies. When Ian jumped on the project, I thought, HOLY cow, we can get Debian GNU/Solaris. Well...... Guess what, they had to re-implement dpkg, why, well, I don't rightly know. Sure, you can install the old packages on the system and you now get a network repository, but darn it, why not just go with the darned proven system. Their current ipkg will break a system if the upgrade doesn't go well. I know dpkg can theoretically do this, but why re-code something that has had YEARS of testing and is used by almost half of the Linux community? I don't get it. Why the heck did they decide to re-implement something that could work so well? Just because it is GPL doesn't taint the core OS, it sits in userland. This must be so that they can sell proprietary Indiana builds to those who don't want to play out in the open. That is the only reason I can see. I really hoped for a good package system, but instead, we get a "me-too" system. It just doesn't make sense. And yes, I have been following OpenSolaris since it was barely usable, about nv 40 or something like that. I really wanted an old school Unix to survive, but at this point, I can't see it happening. They are now, not "Unix" they are "Not Linux" and I don't think they can handle the new market. Their Open Source strategy doesn't make sense. Their new storage line, I cannot see where this has a market. Sure, you get support, but once it is up and running well, there isn't much need for that support. There are much cheaper solutions for the SMB to MB segment, with much better support plans. I hope they survive for MySQL, VirtualBox, Java and NetBeans' sake, but I am not quite sure about it. I cannot find a revenue stream that they are first in class for anymore. Their workstations are a joke. I put together a home made Ultra 24 with the same specs for half of what they are asking. This was when they used the slower Q6600 quad cores. I see they upgraded. For outfitting a small to medium development group, I can't see going with the support premium. I know, support, etc... but hey, I can buy a service plan separately for OpenSolaris and when the H/W fails, just buy a new quad core workstation, which will be faster than the one it is replacing. I can't see the price premium. Apple is another story. Their system is integrated and will only work on their hardware. Sun is trying to compete in the commodity OS market. I just don't see it happening. Comments are welcome.
Re:solaris and.....ubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
Open Solaris is OSI approved Open Source.
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Re:solaris and.....ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not possible to compile Opensolaris without downloading and using a whole bunch of binary components which are distributed under a proprietary license. (see here for details [sun.com].
This is in stark contrast to OpenBSD (and to a lesser degree NetBSD and/or FreeBSD -both of which include proprietary binary-only blobs). Their license is OSI approved, but you can't compile a working system using only the parts that are open source.
And this is after three and a half years, guys.
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Re:solaris and.....ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
Let me clarify this before someone gets confused -by "Their" I only meant Opensolaris.
NetBSD and FreeBSD include binary blob device drivers -but you can compile a working system without them.
You can't compile a working system without using the binary-only components of OpenSolaris.
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Re:solaris and.....ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thus is the power of open source. If you don't like something, change it
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Re:solaris and.....ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
You must have missed the memo. Sun has been open sourcing projects left and right: OpenSolaris, Java and VirtualBox to name a few high profile examples. Sure OpenSolaris isn't GPL'd, but Java and VirtualBox are.
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Re:solaris and.....ubuntu? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you are just jaded.
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Re:64 bit? (Score:5, Informative)
The x86 iso includes 64bit kernel. It auto detects on boot.
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Re:64 bit? (Score:5, Informative)
as for the x86 port, it is both, you don't need a separate distro for 64 bit support because of isaexec and a smart kernel
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Re:where's the ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
Hi, I'm one of NCP (Nexenta Core Platform) developers. The Ubuntu part of Nexenta is the userland. So over 5000 apps that you see in our repository are ports of 8.04 counterparts.
Theres some more information for developers in an article [osnews.com] I wrote over at OSnews.
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Re:Stick with the Real Deal (Score:4, Informative)
Let's get this straight, an article about the new version of Nexenta (2.0alpha - you did RTFA, right?) comes out, and you complain that nexenta hasn't been updated ;-) ? The reason for the delay is nexenta tracks ubuntu's long term releases.
I agree with you on Nexenta's irrelevance, though. Nexenta just isn't worth it unless you need untrained monkeys to administer the thing.
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