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How was Solaris or SPARC awesome? If they were so awesome why are basically all modern companies that use lots of compute, your Googles and Facebooks and Amazon

How was Solaris or SPARC awesome? If they were so awesome why are basically all modern companies that use lots of compute, your Googles and Facebooks and Amazons and whathaveyous, ALL based on Linux/x86? Even after Solaris went open source?

holydude 10y ago
Solaris did not go open source. Oracle killed open source Solaris long time ago. Google,Facebook and Amazon were big from the start and needed specific hardware and software combo for their use cases. Solaris used to host 99% of the internet then Linux took off and it was cheaper and just good enough. Oracle failed to catch up and lure developers and companies in. Basically what Oracle did was that it "refused" (meaning poor service and support even if you paid a lot) to work with non-fortune 500 companies. It's still being used in most of your banks,insurance companies and large corporations all around the world. Oracle considered itself better than others and failed miserably to deliver. Also a lot of really neat futures that got into Linux were built on top of the giants from Solaris communities. It's really a shame to lose all of this.
- jen20 10y ago
  Solaris _absolutely_ "went" open source in the form of OpenSolaris. Oracle re-closed it, but the main line of innovation in that line of operating systems (arguably all operating systems) is still open source in the form of Illumos.
baldfat 10y ago
The past is filled with superior technology that died due to non-technical reasons. 1) Amiga (Seriously 7 years ahead of everyone else) 2) BeOS (Unless you used it and saw it you still don't understand why it was awesome) 3) Digital Alpha Chips (I had a soft spot for old VAX what can I say) 4) SPARC was awesome but you have to remember it was awesome over Windows, Apple Server (Um anything was better then that spawn of Satan) and the various other UNIX systems. Solaris lives on in spirit with ZFS
- Annatar 10y ago
  Solaris lives on in spirit with ZFS Solaris lives on in reality in illumos, OpenZFS, Delphix, and SmartOS. Joyent's Cloud on a laptop ("CoaL"), Triton and Manta are really cool. Try them out sometime.
  - mvidal01 10y ago
    Do you have a link?
    - Annatar 10y ago
      https://www.joyent.com/blog/test-drive-joyents-elastic-container-infrastructure-for-docker https://www.joyent.com/blog/test-drive-joyents-elastic-conta... https://github.com/joyent/triton/blob/master/docs/developer-guide/coal-setup.md https://github.com/joyent/triton/blob/master/docs/developer-... https://github.com/joyent/triton https://github.com/joyent/triton https://github.com/joyent/manta https://github.com/joyent/manta https://github.com/joyent/containerpilot https://github.com/joyent/containerpilot https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Users+Guide https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Users+Guide https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Home https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Home

holydude 10y ago

Solaris did not go open source. Oracle killed open source Solaris long time ago. Google,Facebook and Amazon were big from the start and needed specific hardware and software combo for their use cases. Solaris used to host 99% of the internet then Linux took off and it was cheaper and just good enough. Oracle failed to catch up and lure developers and companies in. Basically what Oracle did was that it "refused" (meaning poor service and support even if you paid a lot) to work with non-fortune 500 companies. It's still being used in most of your banks,insurance companies and large corporations all around the world. Oracle considered itself better than others and failed miserably to deliver. Also a lot of really neat futures that got into Linux were built on top of the giants from Solaris communities. It's really a shame to lose all of this.

jen20 10y ago
Solaris _absolutely_ "went" open source in the form of OpenSolaris. Oracle re-closed it, but the main line of innovation in that line of operating systems (arguably all operating systems) is still open source in the form of Illumos.

baldfat 10y ago

The past is filled with superior technology that died due to non-technical reasons. 1) Amiga (Seriously 7 years ahead of everyone else) 2) BeOS (Unless you used it and saw it you still don't understand why it was awesome) 3) Digital Alpha Chips (I had a soft spot for old VAX what can I say) 4) SPARC was awesome but you have to remember it was awesome over Windows, Apple Server (Um anything was better then that spawn of Satan) and the various other UNIX systems. Solaris lives on in spirit with ZFS

Annatar 10y ago
Solaris lives on in spirit with ZFS Solaris lives on in reality in illumos, OpenZFS, Delphix, and SmartOS. Joyent's Cloud on a laptop ("CoaL"), Triton and Manta are really cool. Try them out sometime.
- mvidal01 10y ago
  Do you have a link?
  - Annatar 10y ago
    https://www.joyent.com/blog/test-drive-joyents-elastic-container-infrastructure-for-docker https://www.joyent.com/blog/test-drive-joyents-elastic-conta... https://github.com/joyent/triton/blob/master/docs/developer-guide/coal-setup.md https://github.com/joyent/triton/blob/master/docs/developer-... https://github.com/joyent/triton https://github.com/joyent/triton https://github.com/joyent/manta https://github.com/joyent/manta https://github.com/joyent/containerpilot https://github.com/joyent/containerpilot https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Users+Guide https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Users+Guide https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Home https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Home