7 ms·

Why not FreeBSD? Just to run Oracle? But it is much easier to run it on Linux nowadays. btw, who will write and debug all the new device drivers?

• nailer 16y ago
  I've modded you back up as I have the same question, albeit I think some explanation would help: FreeBSD has the good bits of the Solaris kernel - ZFS and DTrace - and the common Solaris 10 userspace - toolchain, packaging, etc. - aren't particularly up to date.
  • adbge 16y ago
    FreeBSD supports ZFS v14, which lacks some of the features of ZFS on OpenSolaris, namely data deduplication. However, it is my understanding that porting later versions of ZFS to FreeBSD would require non trivial changes to the FreeBSD kernel, making it unlikely.
    • shin_lao 16y ago
      I'm sorry but could you elaborate on "porting later versions of ZFS to FreeBSD would require non trivial changes to the FreeBSD kernel"?
      • lol 16y ago
        He's wrong. There's already work going on to port newer ZFS (w/deduplication) to FreeBSD. The biggest outlying question is if it will only be in 9, or if it might make it into 8.x.
  • c00p3r 16y ago
    Add to this an idiotic attempt to replace SystemV startup scripts with some insanely non-obvious java-based (of course!) crap, badly ported in a great hurry outdated 32-bit userland (when at the same time x86_64 version of Fedora or FreeBSD-ports were several years old), some in-house designed and quite alien packaging system (pkg) and so on. It is dead. As dead as Irix or Tru64 or even OpenVMS.
    • rbanffy 16y ago
      > some in-house designed and quite alien packaging system Looks a lot like apt
      • koenigdavidmj 16y ago
        Actually it is on occasion quite cool. For example, it will take a ZFS snapshot before doing package updates, so that if Bad Things (TM) happen you can simply reboot into the system snapshot taken before the update. And it's all copy-on-write, so you only use the disk space for what changed.
        • rbanffy 16y ago
          We have to admit - it may have weird userland tools and run a slightly old-ish Gnome, but it does tricks no other OS does.
    • ssmoot 16y ago
      Solaris SMF is actually one of the best things about Solaris (IMO). Runit documentation as an init replacement are woefully out of date for most platforms, and Upstart seems like it's still beta at-best. I'm not that savvy, but I know of nothing for Linux or FreeBSD that starts everything up, makes sure it gets restarted if it crashes, notifies you, has maintenance states, supports simple, robust dependencies (process or file-based). The SMF covers these bases very well. Runit seems to come closest on the service side, but it's not nearly as well documented. Monit is almost a suitable substitute (even though that's not really it's goal), but robust dependency support is lacking last I checked.
      • nailer 16y ago
        > Solaris SMF is actually one of the best things about Solaris (IMO)? XML config files? Java when a regular Unix system language like C or Python (or Perl for older folks) would suffice?
        • 16y ago
• dman 16y ago
  Perhaps theres a sizeable body of customers who have apps written and deployed for solaris. The cost of moving and certifying existing apps is often something enterprises like to avoid. Furthermore Oracle is expected to push to make the individual bits of Sun more profitable which means existing customers might feel squeezed in various ways. Combined both of the above facts mean that there is a sizeable body of customers willing to pay for solaris based support / products and who might be open to an alternative to the Oracle solaris distribution and support. One last point - some companies with established products find linux to be a fast moving target and the relative stability of the solaris kernel interfaces is considered a good thing.
• itgoon 16y ago
  No hypervisor host for FreeBSD, poor ZFS for Linux. If either situation changes, that's when I'll give up my opensol machines.