3 ms·

How come? Our experience with OpenSolaris so far has been headache-y.

rbanffy 17y ago
I have some limited experience with OpenSolaris, but it has, so far, been good. I particularly love ZFS and its Linux-ish the package management. They could have the latest Gnome desktop for the adventurous ones.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  We ended up using OpenSolaris for a project specifically for ZFS, plus some related hardware support. I typically use OpenBSD or Debian for most projects requiring a BSD or Linux, so I found myself comparing it to those two systems. We've definitely had some trouble with getting packages to work correctly, especially when using newer versions of software that were available as packages in the distribution. Most maddeningly though, it's slow. We set it up on a pretty beefy abmx machine, and at its worst it took over 15 minutes to boot.
  - patrickgzill 17y ago
    There is something very wrong with your setup. It should boot within +- 20% of the time taken by Linux on the same hardware.
    - thaumaturgy 16y ago
      I know; we just haven't been able to puzzle out what's wrong with it. For now, we have to live with it. This was a while ago, but IIRC the slowdown was happening at a point in the boot process where logging wasn't helpful at all.
j_baker 17y ago
Last time I experimented with OpenSolaris, it seemed as though it was very useful for Java development, but not a whole lot else. It might have changed since then though.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It's a decent Unix OS. It's as comfy as any modern Linux distro. Much nicer than, say, AIX for a development desktop.
  - nailer 17y ago
    What does it do better than Solaris 10, which seems about the equivalent of AIX or HPUX in terms of installation, package deployment, and toolset maintenance (as little as possible).
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      A newer Gnome, mostly.
  - chollida1 17y ago
    > Much nicer than, say, AIX for a development desktop. Interesting observation. In what way do you think Solaris is better for dev than AIX?
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      Gnome. Last time I used AIX, I used CDE. I assume I could install Gnome (I did it on an SGI, long ago) but I never got to.

I have some limited experience with OpenSolaris, but it has, so far, been good. I particularly love ZFS and its Linux-ish the package management. They could have the latest Gnome desktop for the adventurous ones.

thaumaturgy 17y ago
We ended up using OpenSolaris for a project specifically for ZFS, plus some related hardware support. I typically use OpenBSD or Debian for most projects requiring a BSD or Linux, so I found myself comparing it to those two systems. We've definitely had some trouble with getting packages to work correctly, especially when using newer versions of software that were available as packages in the distribution. Most maddeningly though, it's slow. We set it up on a pretty beefy abmx machine, and at its worst it took over 15 minutes to boot.
- patrickgzill 17y ago
  There is something very wrong with your setup. It should boot within +- 20% of the time taken by Linux on the same hardware.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    I know; we just haven't been able to puzzle out what's wrong with it. For now, we have to live with it. This was a while ago, but IIRC the slowdown was happening at a point in the boot process where logging wasn't helpful at all.

j_baker 17y ago

Last time I experimented with OpenSolaris, it seemed as though it was very useful for Java development, but not a whole lot else. It might have changed since then though.

rbanffy 17y ago
It's a decent Unix OS. It's as comfy as any modern Linux distro. Much nicer than, say, AIX for a development desktop.
- nailer 17y ago
  What does it do better than Solaris 10, which seems about the equivalent of AIX or HPUX in terms of installation, package deployment, and toolset maintenance (as little as possible).
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    A newer Gnome, mostly.
- chollida1 17y ago
  > Much nicer than, say, AIX for a development desktop. Interesting observation. In what way do you think Solaris is better for dev than AIX?
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Gnome. Last time I used AIX, I used CDE. I assume I could install Gnome (I did it on an SGI, long ago) but I never got to.