Comments on: Solaris Wishlist – Lose the PhDs

By: stateless

stateless — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 08:54:51 +0000

If Linux support ZFS with zvols and iscsi I might not even bother with Solaris. Although it might be claimed that Zones work well and performance for things like databases and java is pretty good. The productivity bonus from running Linux systems is much much better. The ecosystem of tools is huge, at need it would probably be easier to I could find additional Linux admins.

Its a competitive world, product choice is defined not only by brand and performance, but also by what people know and how easy it is for them to learn new stuff.

By: stateless

stateless — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 08:45:20 +0000

Certainly there are reasonable differences between Solaris and Linux to make it difficult to go the other way without reference. Although with GNU userland being standard on Linux I would say it is likely easier. However if you search amazon or oreilly for Solaris books all you find is exam study guides. Even 10 +years ago when I started using Linux after using SunOS in the University I was able to get a copy of “Running Linux”, now the options are massive. Sun hasn’t had the chance to create that level of community, mostly I think because it is a monolithic system. Which is it’s strength and weakness.

A classic example is change from dhcp to static IPs on a network interface. In either Debian or Redhat it is a simply matter of changing ONE /etc config file. If you don’t know how it is very easy to google it. In Solaris it is not 100% clear to me how to do it. I’ve tried it many times last year without much fun. I haven’t tried it recently with OpenSolaris, but I’m not sure I’m looking forward to figuring it out. Google searches are not completely consistent.

System updates are another thing. Apt-get is magic, but it works. Rpm have similar mechanisms which are ok. Solaris seems to be struck in the same BSD “make world” monolithic update system which is SUCH a PITA. I know as I run openbsd firewalls for a long time , standard openbsd was bad enough but embedded openbsd routers with roll-my-own CF images were bad to keep up to date after a while.

This is the lesson I learnt from running BSD and Debian systems side by side. Monolithic system updates do not work well. Even binary patchs can be a bad when dependencies become an issue. Package management is vital.

I don’t doubt Solaris is a great system. I’ve trying to learn it now myself. I just wish apart from the new tech like zfs that it didn’t seem like such a 90s Operation Systems.

By: RNC

RNC — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:04:06 +0000

this is not a one way track. years ago (gosh – i am old enough to write that now) i used bsd 4.2, linux 0.99, solaris 3.6, solaris 2.0, SVR4.2. a couple of years back i loaded up debian sarge. felt completely lost in user land trying to get an interface up. took days to get the machine sorted out. tried a red hat. uggh. tried freebsd 5 (and more recently 6). again, very different user land (and OS build). solaris – still feels familiar from 2.1 to 9, altough 10 looks to be a leap.

it would be interesting to know where in userland all these linux users run into problems with solaris, beyond the installer (unfortunately that is poo). it’s obviously not just shell command expansion.

PS if you thought you were confused by solaris, try unixware userland. . .