NYT Ponders the Future of Solaris In a Linux/Windows World 340
JerkBoB links to a story at the New York Times about the
future prospects of Sun's Solaris, excerpting: "Linux is enjoying growth, with a contingent of devotees too large to be called a cult following at this point. Solaris, meanwhile, has thrived as a longstanding, primary Unix platform geared to enterprises. But with Linux the object of all the buzz in the industry, can Sun's rival Solaris Unix OS hang on, or is it destined to be displaced by Linux altogether?"
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
The current solaris systems will only have issue with this if they actually need to be rebooted one day and the new admins notice its not linux.
Nahh.. its not going anywhere. (Score:5, Insightful)
Solaris is a great big iron OS. I don't think it will be disappearing anytime soon.
Virtualization makes Solaris less relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of the operating system is to act between the hardware, system abstractions, and the algorithms. But now that virtualization is taking over, the hardware responsibility of OSes is being minimized -- or centralized. Therefore, the advantages of one hardware platform can be more easily decoupled from those of an OS.
In my opinion, Sun was always known for rock-solid hardware, and this move toward hardware-agnostic computing means that Solaris gets just a bit less relevant today. Especially since cost is still a factor, and the hardware-specific advantages are disappearing...
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Probably the wrong question. (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is "how much of a premium will Solaris be able to command?" This is probably connected to the question of how much of a premium SPARC hardware can command. If Sun gives Solaris away, and doesn't charge more than any of the major linux vendors for support, then Solaris will do fine; but that isn't necessarily helpful to Sun. If Solaris can justify a premium(either upfront or for support) or can drive or be driven by purchase of fancy SPARC boxes, then the resulting market share may be about the same; but far more valuable. That seems like the more relevant question.
How about some technical analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Tech shouldn't be about "gee, everybody's using it."
How about some hard, technical facts?
So many things in Solaris are more advanced than Linux...Sounds like a Linux PR piece...
For instance, you can count on general ABI breakage on Linux. They even take pride in it. That's not a system you can trust for the long haul. You can't trust your applications will remain compatible.
Linux is a mess, IMHO.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
You say Solaris, I say SunOS, let's call the whole thing old. ;-)
Seriously, if you can't figure one out, you don't know the other very well.
Performance (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep hearing that Solaris is the king of performance. Aside from ZFS, is the kernel really that much better?
With OpenSolaris, I'd really like to see some standard benchmarks of a few common server distros (SLED, CentOS, Debian, FreeBSD, NetBSD, whatever) compared to OpenSolaris on the same hardware.
Not all the best features are technical (Score:5, Insightful)
When evaluating the success of a product in the marketplace, it's important to note that there are many features of even highly technical products that are not technical in nature, at all.
Linux compares very closely to BSD from a technical standpoint, BSD has a much longer history than Linux, and is arguably better than Linux in many areas. It's definitely had more time to mature. So what feature does Linux have that has everybody talking about Linux?
Its license.
I'm not knocking the excellence that Linus Torvalds [wikipedia.org] has displayed over and over again over the years. He's done a great job and I depend on his efforts every day in running my own business. But as great as Linus has done managing the technology of Linux, it would be hard to say that Theo De Raadt [wikipedia.org] has done any worse. It would be easy to claim that Theo's work is more secure, but both have produced excellent products that are truly world class in nature.
But what has everybody talking about Linux is the license - the share and share alike requirement laid down by the GPL, which turns the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org] around on its ear so that everybody is pushing the project along together, rather than taking what's convenient and giving nothing back.
The sad truth? "More free" isn't always better. Just like "less government regulation" isn't always a good idea [google.com], you can often get a better mix for everybody by limiting people's freedom to screw each other.
Now, Solaris is behind the 8-ball. Even with the same license as Linux, they'd have to show a clear, compelling advantage to cause people to switch their efforts away from Linux. Given just how good Linux is in so many different areas that Solaris can't even touch today, that would be very, very hard to do.
Show me a Solaris supercomputer and I'll show you hundreds of Linux-based supercomputers. Show me a $40 Solaris-based router, or a Solaris phone, or a Solaris-based pocket calculator. Ironically, while Solaris is touted for "big iron", it's a non-starter in the list of the top 500 supercomputers, while Linux is dominant.
Go Tux!
PC-BSD anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How about some technical analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Tech shouldn't be about "gee, everybody's using it."
Ok, lets switch our servers to Plan 9, surely any CS grad will understand how to perfectly use it, right? While yes, you are correct in saying you should look at the benefits of Solaris Vs Linux, and because it is still UNIX it is more or less a void point, but if most of the new graduates don't work with an OS, it is bound to die out and get replaced with a more familiar OS. Either that or you have an incompetent admin running your servers.
That's not a system you can trust for the long haul. You can't trust your applications will remain compatible.
No, but you can usually count on a more up-to-date system and generally a stable one at that. Solaris only has a few releases, Linux has many, many more (mostly because it is OSS). Also, most UNIX apps are developed for Linux and later ported to Solaris, not the other way around, meaning that some things may be untested on the Solaris platform.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats a technical reason. In the US though, its about shareholder perception. If the CEO is trying to do big things and keeps talking in "old" terms, he will quickly be accused of being out of touch with reality.
Like the post said, Linux is generating the buzz. The money follows the buzz even if it does not make sense.
Rival what huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't aware of the 'rivalry' between Sun and, uhh, those bunch of other people who openly contribute to GNU/Linux.
Maybe it's similar to that 'rivalry' between Gnome and KDE, or Slackware and Red Hat, or all those other things that it's generally the onlookers that assume there's a conflict because heaven forbid there's such a thing as two different things sharing the same space when there's a choice to be had between them.
So, one day Solaris might win and then everything else will be gone?
These competitions only exist when there's money or ratings at stake, or when people are bored.
Of course it isn't going anywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unification (Score:5, Insightful)
One or at most 2 will become defacto standards and the others will fade away.
We already have that. We have Red Hat (RPM) based distros and Debian (APT) based distros. Just about any major distro can fall into that category, CentOS, RHEL, Fedora, Yellow Dog, and even openSUSE can be considered to be with Red Hat based (RPM) distros. On the other hand, Ubuntu, Debian, KNOPPIX, Xandros, DSL, etc.
There has also been a lot of talk about LSB that could help unification (which, honestly IMO is not needed and will just be a waste of work on distros for a failed standard)
MacOS could become dominant
I can't see Apple wanting OS X to become dominant. They make $$$ of of hardware sales to fanboys. The die-hard Mac fans. Apple honestly wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand if Macs had 25% or more of the marketshare. Apple is happy to sell iPods to everyone and keep the Macs for the fanboys. Now, they want OS X to have access to all major software and to have drivers, so they don't want too low of a marketshare, but I can't see Apple wanting OS X to have more than 10% of the marketshare. Much as how Ferrari doesn't want us all to be driving Ferraris, it loses the prestige of driving one.
In the worst case scenario the desktop and server segments become so fragmented that you'll have dozens of versions of each app - 1 per OS.
Ummm... How is that bad? There are dozens of versions of Apache, one for each OS, yet it still manages to be a unified server. And dozens of separate distro specific Linux kernels but just about all are compatible with all programs (when the proper libraries are installed).
The Times? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was a little confused to see this on the NYT web site, since most readers there would never have never heard of Solaris before. But this seems to be some kind of syndicated story that's appearing on a lot of other web sites. This one [thestandard.com] has an interesting post from somebody at Gracenote. Of course, his comments will be read in light of the fact that Gracenote is Evil [slashdot.org].
A decent article, though I wish they had quoted somebody besides a Linux Foundation flack for the Solaris-Is-Dying side of the argument.
Re:How about some technical analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of crap are you talking about here. GCC bugs? They're common to ALL operating systems using GCC - including OpenSolaris.
Security issues have been either few and far between - or in applications running on TOP of linux, which is a whole other subject.
If you had a clue, you'd eat it.
Old OSes don't die, they just fade away... (Score:5, Insightful)
Solaris is the smallest percentage of UNIX platforms my company's clients run on. AIX is first, followed by HP-UX. However, though Linux is a popular operating system with universities, web sites, startups and small server solutions, Linux on x86 scales horribly (and I do mean horribly) on our application and other high-performance database solutions with thousands of users compared with the big UNIX operating systems. ext3 can't support the filesystem throughput required even with RAID 10.
We still configure Solaris systems on Solaris 10 UltraSparc, and I believe Sun just came out with a new, rather mean processor. Solaris, and certainly HP-UX and AIX, are not going anywhere soon. There are too many enterprise database systems (new, not just legacy) that require the far more powerful and scalable hardware and software that Sun, IBM and HP offer.
Have you ever benchmarked the 4.7 GHz POWER6 chips on AIX 6.1? It's the fastest processor and operating system combination I've ever seen.
Re:PC-BSD anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
Here! Here!
Also, Mac are on a come back and they are Unix as well.
Re:Unification (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is... Linux took off, but people are too busy debating about irrelevant issue to notice, there are millions of Linux users already.
Re:Solaris 10 (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree.
If we were talking Solaris 8 or 9 vs linux, it would be no contest. Solaris 10 is another story.
In the current shop where I work, Solaris is the OS of first choice. We only run linux if we absolutely have to due to application compatibility issues. From a cost standpoint, they both run on the same server hardware (intel or amd), so there is no cost advantage there. The major one is that a RedHat support contract cost more than the equivalent one from Sun for Solaris (they are both free if you dont want support... sorta.... You can download solaris from sun for free and install it. You cant do the same with RedHat. That said, if you use kickstart you can get around the mandatory rhn registration that stops you dead if you dont have a valid support contract.)
It just that with solaris we have the ability to load the box up with dozens of zones that are easy to manage compared to the alternatives on linux (yes, there are alternatives to solaris zones, and all of them involve unsupported kernel patches. ) We tend to run 20+ zones per dual proc box. Each zone gets its own env. We dont need them to differ too much from the main zone, so things like Xen are overkill. Chroot would be nice if we could also get better control over things like IP's, admin access, hostname resolution, etc. For what we want, Zones are absolutely perfect. zfs and Dtrace just add icing to the cake.
That said, this article read like a BMW sales rep's opinion of the newest Audi. If I want opinions of if solaris is dying, I'm not going to go and ask the head of the linux consortium which has a vested interestin seeing their prophecy come true.
For a good time, go to the IDC site and read the comments. Most of them are ripping the author for the piss poor job he did since it reads like a linux marketing piece more than an actual news article.
Re:How about some technical analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine a lot of MVS admins and users would be surprised to hear this, as I don't believe there are a lot of MVS-centric courses in most IT curriculums.
Re:Virtualization makes Solaris less relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of the operating system is to act between the hardware, system abstractions, and the algorithms. But now that virtualization is taking over, the hardware responsibility of OSes is being minimized -- or centralized. Therefore, the advantages of one hardware platform can be more easily decoupled from those of an OS.
It's more important than ever, and Solaris delivers virtualization through Sun logical domains, hardware virtualization (zones), and the xVM hypervisor based on Xen (with Solaris dom0).
Now with Virtualization: if your physical machine fails, and your hypervisor cannot recover immediately from the error (without a reboot), you don't just have one server down -- you have many virtual machines disrupted.
Your Linux VMs that use ext3 may have some problems after that unclean death (filesystem corruption); whereas, your Solaris VMs backed by ZFS are less likely to have fatal problems, as filesystem backed by ZFS with redundancy 1 with no issues, as ZFS all but guarantees filesystem itself is consistent.
You can restart axed VMs on another server, perhaps: you have a shared storage environment, but this disruption costs something, and it is higher the more VMs you were running on that machine.
Also: there are application I/O-intensive workloads that do not virtualize well, such as high-load databases i.e. your 5 billion row Oracle DB.
Solaris is perfect for managing the hardware for these specialized applications that are not efficient to be run in a virtual environment.
ZFS may also be a major factor.
If you have shared filesystems -- you need SANs & NASes.
Do you use a $5 million NAS, or do you buy a couple high-end Sun servers, load them up with a direct-attach storage arrays, and share via NFS in order to provide a good bit of reasonably fast storage on the cheap? hmmm...
Think about it: Linux isn't really even a possibility for backing your servers' storage, you want 99.9999% uptime of your servers, right?
Systems based on Linux cannot generally guarantee uptimes like that (yet); although it is over time getting closer.
Your storage can't be efficiently shared by a VM (I/O in a virtual machine is notoriously slow, plus the CPU usage and available memory for caching is limited by other usage of the host).
Stupid flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
This is like asking when Ford is going to squeeze Chevy out of the automobile market. It probably isn't going to happen, and there's really no reason why it should.
Competition is good. "Monoculture" is bad. Having more than one dominant UNIX-like OS is good. In this case it's great because both products are more or less standards compliant.
Re:Performance (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course it will! (Score:4, Insightful)
After all, the arguments for Solaris's survival are cogent and persuasive. A handful of features, an installed base, a matter of trust, superior solidity, people actually switching back.
All, indeed, the same cogent and persuasive arguments presented in 1998 for why SCO's Unix versions weren't going anywhere anytime soon. And look at SCO today!
I Ponder the Future of Solaris In a non-IB world (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not all the best features are technical (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the license. It's the huge PR machine behind it. IBM and all big boys supporting Linux are really selling hardware and are using Linux to commoditize enteprise software.
And do you know why these companies chose Linux as the focus of their PR machines? As the GP post argued, it's because the advantages the GPL provides to these big companies over BSD-style licenses.
These big companies know that if their competitors use the code they contribute, it will have to be on the same terms as the contributor. It can't be closed up, embraced, extended and then used as a weapon against the original contributor. It's a simple exercise in game theory.
Solaris and perception (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is "how much of a premium will Solaris be able to command?" This is probably connected to the question of how much of a premium SPARC hardware can command.
Sun sells some (really nice) x86 kit. Solaris is certified and supported on HP hardware (though HP is not an official OEM). Dell has an OEM agreement with Sun, and so does IBM. Furthermore Solaris is being ported to IBM's mainframe systems, and it works just fine as a guest in VMware (and xVM, and work is being done with Xen).
A software support contract is cheaper for Solaris than it is for Red Hat.
The main issue is perception: Solaris is viewed as "old and tired", and Linux is viewed as new and exciting. I do not think this corresponds to any meaningful reality (and I've run DOS, DESQview, OS/2, Linux, BSD, Solaris, and OS X on my home machine since I began computing).
My perfect system would be the core of Solaris, the interface of OS X, and FreeBSD's ports tree. The development model of Linux (and BSD and GNU/FSF), and the freedom it gives you, is the most important thing that Linux has brought to the table, but I don't see anything inherent in the technology that Linux gives that makes it anything special.
Re:Unification (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't believe your post got modded up like that.
We already have that. We have Red Hat (RPM) based distros and Debian (APT) based distros.
You're confusing package formats with distributions. When software moves between each seamlessly requiring the same steps and instructions exactly on each distro that uses that package format, with no extra effort from end users or developers, then what you say will be true.
There has also been a lot of talk about LSB that could help unification (which, honestly IMO is not needed and will just be a waste of work on distros for a failed standard)
LSB is certainly NOT what I'm talking about. I'm talking about everyone downloading and installing the same software when they talk about Linux. I'm talking about a wide variety of companies hosting that same software. Nothing's more compatible with a distro than another copy of that distro (assuming similar config)
I can't see Apple wanting OS X to become dominant. They make $$$ of of hardware sales to fanboys. The die-hard Mac fans. Apple honestly wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand if Macs had 25% or more of the marketshare.
I think you're hallucinating. They couldn't cope with such demand today but if they have the ability to capture that kind of market share in a way that allows them to grow sustainably I'd bet body parts they'd take it. They'd still produce an elite line of hardware and focus on selling that of course. The 2 aren't incompatible.
Much as how Ferrari doesn't want us all to be driving Ferraris, it loses the prestige of driving one.
That's where you spin off a new company to cater for a different segment of the market so you don't dillute the brand. Do you really think business men running Ferrari wouldn't jump at the chance at running a second company catering for lower end cars (assuming that's a profitable market segment)?
Ummm... How is that bad? There are dozens of versions of Apache, one for each OS, yet it still manages to be a unified server.
I really need to answer that question on slashdot??? It's bad because there's effort in maintaining multiple versions, customising to various systems etc. That's time and effort wasted. Why do you think installers and exes on Windows are seen as simpler? (and even then users don't like going to the effort of understanding and running the installer).
Re:Solaris 10 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Literally" I Do Not Think That Word Means... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Performance (Score:3, Insightful)
Those two guys above this are spot on, and I'll add that ZFS administration is beyond easy and effective. Growing file systems on the fly is also a piece of cake. We've been using ZFS in our DC for about two years now and it is almost *criminal* how easy it is to take care of! Did I mention that our Solaris 10 zones cost around $2500 each on SPARC h/w, while our Windows pals are offering individual VMware virtual instances for about $4000/ea? I love it!!!1!
Personally, I think my Unix group is about to enter the x86 business... if I were a Windows admin at my shop, I'd be worried. Fear my virtual instances that are about half the cost, kids!
Re:Or else... (Score:3, Insightful)
As an OSS advocate and 20+ year SunOS/Solaris admin I will welcome both operating systems in my home and data center. Like the man said above, you know one, you practically know the other.
It's too bad in a way that you did not have a good experience with RHEL. My workplace approved RHEL on the desktop that I use has never been rebooted for anything other than power failure. My older Solaris workstation has, but that was only because I was unfamiliar with the system and did not know how to get it to use a decent bit depth for the X display.
It's all *nix in the end.
Yup. Absolutely works for me, the 20+ year Unix and descendents user at home.
-sb (Penguin advocate, but as long as it's something Unixy, I can live with that.)
Re:How about some technical analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
There must be a reason for that...
And that reason couldn't be that Sun is someone to sue if something goes wrong? Makes business sense, but not technical sense.
Re:Old OSes don't die, they just fade away... (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Way up. This is typical "advocacy": Write pithy articles wondering what in the world are your competitors going to do now that you've allegedly cleaned their clock. Sun isn't going anywhere. Solaris is in many, many ways much more advanced, stable and mature than Linux. The closest thing to Solaris in the OSS world is probably OpenBSD.
More importantly, in the world of PHBs, Solaris is a brand name, while Linux is not. RedHat has been working hard to change that, but they have a ways to go still. Trust me, out there in the real world Linux is not the true heir to the UNIX legacy. That may change in time, but Sun would have to continue making dumb mistakes for quite a while.
Re:Or else... (Score:5, Insightful)
That was the main reason why I canned OpenSolaris after trying it out.
Uhh. Yes. No.
I guess you talk about the miserable 2008.5 or so.
I for one hopped on the SXDE/SXCE/Nevada; just for a try, and have been there ever since. It contains (almost) all that I need, out of the box, from Macromedia Flash to StarOffice. The most complete one I ever tried. Compiz included, and the (alas) proprietary blobs (NVIDIA). Show me a Linux that you can install, and brings up 173.14.09 NVIDIA on reboot, at the correct resolution?
Actually, it only missed on Mplayer, Dia and Gnumeric for me. Over.
Now I run a few multi-boot systems, with Debian/Ubuntu and OpenSolaris as choices, and I tend to use OpenSolaris. The problem of OpenSolaris is not so much OpenSolaris as it is the SUN management's low visionary angle.
True, hardware support is better on Linux(Ubuntu), resource requirements are easily 2 GB (it consumes close to 1 GB after boot and starting GNOME), networking, and especially wireless, is far behind Ubuntu. Mounting of ext3 needs external programs to be installed the old SUN-way, and is not possible as R/W; it is limited to readonly. For the rest OpenSolaris is at par, if not superior.
That default username "Jack" does not exist in the world of Nevada. As I said above, the one that you had your hands on was 2008.5; codenamed Indiana, enforced on the project by a bunch of managers at SUN who have since long passed their expiration dates.
It is not only the DTrace and Zones that make it great(er), ZFS is truly the file-system contender for the next millennium. A file system needs to be seen as a self-contained, holistic, entity. fdisk and format are so last millennium.
The Caiman installer was the greatest piece of installation software I ever used. But it was broken half a year ago and now rumbles on as a low-priority project. Don't talk to me about bullshit: The installer is the first thing a potential user hits. And currently it is either the venerable CDE-SUN installer or console. This is how to screw up a visionary project like OpenSolaris at its best.
And then, community. Make me puke. The bug reports that I file (and still file) disappear in the intestines of SUN, and I can't even see them. Not to mention modify them.
Yes, OpenSolaris might fail, in the end. But not on technical reasons, and this is where the article is erroneous. It is a badly managed hybrid of proprietary-free software.
Re:Virtualization makes Solaris less relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Solaris is the only good action around (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's face it: Linux has stagnated. It used to be the hot new kid around, bringing together all the new-world desktop technology with the old-school unix reliability, modularity, and maintainability. It did it by being somewhere in between the two. And it took off! People loved it over windows.
But, look at it now. When's the last time it did something *well*? Its standard was always Windows, which is a very low bar to aim for. It's full of sprawl and half-implemented ideas that you have to constantly hack at to make the system work. It's been 10 years and Linux is still a maintenance pain-in-the-ass.
Most people don't care: they're happy to run a tomcat or php stack on top of it. For them, it's really just a SATA and ethernet device driver, which then lets you use your favorite app server.
Containers/Zones, ZFS, dtrace, and SMF blow linux out of the water in every category the affect. What's linux done in the last 4 years? More Windows Ketchup? Thanks but no thanks. I'll take good documentation, manageability, and stable behavior any day. Sorry, but Linux is still too much of a hobby instead of an OS for my book.
Re:Unification (Score:1, Insightful)
may i ask you - in a "debian fanboi way" of course - why you use pure apt when there are userfriendly frontends like synaptic (X) or aptitude (ncurses). aptitude's more powerfull than anything i've seen and for sure the best packet manager in existence. there is a easier way to do all this selecting tasks, you know, if you're not fit on the commandline and confused by the the fact a program offers you more than three parameters to choose from. the hole architecture of Debian package managment is layered: dpkg -- apt -- aptitude/synaptic. it never let me down, so i don't really understand what your problem is, troll...