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You had a SPARCStation 20 with Linux on it? Facepalm. The very first SPARCstation I bought also had Linux on it. I promptly ordered Solaris 7 from Sun for $50

by Annatar 10y ago

You had a SPARCStation 20 with Linux on it? Facepalm. The very first SPARCstation I bought also had Linux on it. I promptly ordered Solaris 7 from Sun for $50 (which is how much redhat CD's cost back then), played with Linux until my Solaris 7 kit arrived in the mail, completely wiped away Linux, installed Solaris 7, and never looked back. Seeing that UNIX System V Release 4.0 was such an awesome feeling. I was thrilled. My very own Solaris machine. I actually owned a Sun! I walked out, my whole body shaking in excitement. It was surreal. Before that, a Sun workstation was a mythical system, something one only saw on a poster, or got to log into along with 1,250 other users at the computer center, but never see in person. And you actually ran Linux. What a waste of good hardware.

pmoriarty 10y ago
Solaris was definitely head and shoulders above Linux back in the early days. But, in retrospect, it might have been a very good move to use Linux and get familiar with it, and especially to contribute to its development, as Linux turned out to be the future (thought not so much on Sun hardware).
- Annatar 10y ago
  But, in retrospect, it might have been a very good move to use Linux and get familiar with it, and especially to contribute to its development, Linux might be all the rage now, but it won't last forever. I grew to intensely hate GNU/Linux precisely because I grew up on Solaris, and when I had to work on Linux extensively, it just made it painfully obvious how bad Linux is. Even to this present day, I work with Linux daily and it still isn't anywhere close to Solaris in terms of correctness of operation, reliability, or virtualization capability, let alone post mortem analysis. Even performance on Linux is a lie, as to get the same levels of performance as illumos does on the same hardware, Linux has to forego reliability guarantees. For example, check out how the GNU/Linux kernel handles the fsync(2) system call, and how it miscalculates system load because of wio (wait on input/output). And that is just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface. I was very happy and content with Solaris - it is a superb server OS, it is reliable, and it has served me extremely well, especially since I had virtually no incidents caused by the fault in the OS, but by misconfiguration by others. Under these circumstances, I had no incentive whatsoever to help with GNU/Linux, especially when Solaris became the free, open source illumos project. I certainly won't help Linux when I want SmartOS to succeed it (SmartOS is based on the illumos source code). But the biggest irony is that GNU/Linux can be made to run almost as reliably as Solaris / illumos - by running it inside of an lx-branded zone on SmartOS, because then the SmartOS hypervisor makes it more reliable because of ZFS and no memory overcommit, for instance. That's what one would call a proverbial slap in the face to GNU/Linux. (Even though one is running Linux, the kernel is actually illumos, that's why the thing is high performance and reliable.)

by Annatar 10y ago

pmoriarty 10y ago

Solaris was definitely head and shoulders above Linux back in the early days. But, in retrospect, it might have been a very good move to use Linux and get familiar with it, and especially to contribute to its development, as Linux turned out to be the future (thought not so much on Sun hardware).

Annatar 10y ago
But, in retrospect, it might have been a very good move to use Linux and get familiar with it, and especially to contribute to its development, Linux might be all the rage now, but it won't last forever. I grew to intensely hate GNU/Linux precisely because I grew up on Solaris, and when I had to work on Linux extensively, it just made it painfully obvious how bad Linux is. Even to this present day, I work with Linux daily and it still isn't anywhere close to Solaris in terms of correctness of operation, reliability, or virtualization capability, let alone post mortem analysis. Even performance on Linux is a lie, as to get the same levels of performance as illumos does on the same hardware, Linux has to forego reliability guarantees. For example, check out how the GNU/Linux kernel handles the fsync(2) system call, and how it miscalculates system load because of wio (wait on input/output). And that is just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface. I was very happy and content with Solaris - it is a superb server OS, it is reliable, and it has served me extremely well, especially since I had virtually no incidents caused by the fault in the OS, but by misconfiguration by others. Under these circumstances, I had no incentive whatsoever to help with GNU/Linux, especially when Solaris became the free, open source illumos project. I certainly won't help Linux when I want SmartOS to succeed it (SmartOS is based on the illumos source code). But the biggest irony is that GNU/Linux can be made to run almost as reliably as Solaris / illumos - by running it inside of an lx-branded zone on SmartOS, because then the SmartOS hypervisor makes it more reliable because of ZFS and no memory overcommit, for instance. That's what one would call a proverbial slap in the face to GNU/Linux. (Even though one is running Linux, the kernel is actually illumos, that's why the thing is high performance and reliable.)