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Yep, Solaris was on life support when they * dropped x86 * dropped the free C compiler * and Linux became sufficiently stable in other words, around

Yep, Solaris was on life support when they * dropped x86 * dropped the free C compiler * and Linux became sufficiently stable in other words, around 2000-2002 From 1998 or so, my home 486dx2 with Linux was faster and a hell of a lot cheaper than my Sun workstation at work.

Annatar 7y ago
Well, illumos is faster than Linux on the same hardware now, as starting in 2004, every situation where Linux was faster was treated as a priority 1 bug. Yes, a bug.
- Tester0x1 7y ago
  Not at all... Definitely not for the last decade or so. Linux beats illumos in speed in every category. Some of these categories are not even close. Linux even outperformed illumos in ZFS!
  - Annatar 7y ago
    No sorry, but that's incorrect. I saw the bug requests myself when the database was still accessible, and I read multiple accounts from engineers working on performance improvements at Sun Microsystems, who I trust far more than anecdotal, arbitrary claim from you here in "Hacker" "News" of all places, which has meanwhile become notorious. And considering I know how fast illumos is because I ran Solaris and Linux on the same hardware, I'll just stick with running SmartOS, thank you very much: for example, Solaris would regularly peak to 85 MB/s while Linux could barely muster 55 MB/s on the same hardware... HTTP response times are up to 10x faster on Solaris; and so on, and so forth. I've never seen Linux max out 40 Gbps per second and saturate the switch, but I sure as hell did do that with Solaris 10 on a DELL server, of all the shitty hardware out there. I've also never been able to get Linux to deliver anywhere close to 100 MB/s with NFS, while SmartOS regularly delivered over 433 MB/s, while peaking multiple times at 533 MB/s; that's faster than our EMC SAN was at work! So yeah, I'll stick with what doesn't break backwards compatibility and is blazingly fast... Solaris and SmartOS for the win. Good luck with GNU and Linux. You'll need it.
    - Tester0x1 7y ago
      >No sorry, but that's incorrect. WRONG! It is factually correct that Linux beats illumos in performance. >I saw the bug requests myself when the database was still accessible, and I read multiple accounts from engineers working on performance improvements at Sun Microsystems As did I, and the former lead performance engineer at Joyent says Linux beats illumos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 >who I trust far more than anecdotal, arbitrary claim from you here in "Hacker" "News" of all places, which has meanwhile become notorious. Hopefully you trust the anecdotes of the lead performance engineer that worked on illumos LOL! >And considering I know how fast illumos is because I ran Solaris and Linux on the same hardware, I'll just stick with running SmartOS, thank you very much: I also ran it with the same hardware, and Linux beats it in pretty much every category. You can continue to use your Slowlaris based OS and live in the past. Your prerogative. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensolaris_schweinshaxe&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensola... >for example, Solaris would regularly peak to 85 MB/s while Linux could barely muster 55 MB/s on the same hardware... AHAHAHA I got more performance from my junk server on Linux 10 years ago, easily beating Solaris, regularly peaking around 100 MB/s. >HTTP response times are up to 10x faster on Solaris; and so on, and so forth. I got 40x response time increases on Linux; and so on, and so forth. >I've never seen Linux max out 40 Gbps per second and saturate the switch, but I sure as hell did do that with Solaris 10 on a DELL server, of all the shitty hardware out there. Wow, so slow. We had to get special switches specifically because Linux would over saturate way past 40 Gbps. Never had that issue with Slowlaris. > I've also never been able to get Linux to deliver anywhere close to 100 MB/s with NFS, while SmartOS regularly delivered over 433 MB/s, while peaking multiple times at 533 MB/s; that's faster than our EMC SAN was at work! AHAHAHAHA Slowlaris could barely make it through a day without NFS crashing. We were regularly peaking in the 800 MB/s range with Linux, that's faster than Slowlaris crashing on the EMC SAN at work! >So yeah, I'll stick with what doesn't break backwards compatibility and is blazingly fast... Ah, so you'll stick with Linux! Awesome! >Solaris and SmartOS for the win. Winning the dunce award for antiquated OSes, yep. >Good luck with GNU and Linux. You'll need it. Good luck with the OS that runs the fastest super computers in the world, all of HFT, etc.? Yep, we'll need luck to leverage the best platform to push us into the future. Thanks!
  - Tester0x2 7y ago
    Copy/paste the dead comment, for posterity to show Annatard getting rekt yet again: >No sorry, but that's incorrect. WRONG! It is factually correct that Linux beats illumos in performance. >I saw the bug requests myself when the database was still accessible, and I read multiple accounts from engineers working on performance improvements at Sun Microsystems As did I, and the former lead performance engineer at Joyent says Linux beats illumos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 >who I trust far more than anecdotal, arbitrary claim from you here in "Hacker" "News" of all places, which has meanwhile become notorious. Hopefully you trust the anecdotes of the lead performance engineer that worked on illumos LOL! >And considering I know how fast illumos is because I ran Solaris and Linux on the same hardware, I'll just stick with running SmartOS, thank you very much: I also ran it with the same hardware, and Linux beats it in pretty much every category. You can continue to use your Slowlaris based OS and live in the past. Your prerogative. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensola.. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensola.... >for example, Solaris would regularly peak to 85 MB/s while Linux could barely muster 55 MB/s on the same hardware... AHAHAHA I got more performance from my junk server on Linux 10 years ago, easily beating Solaris, regularly peaking around 100 MB/s. >HTTP response times are up to 10x faster on Solaris; and so on, and so forth. I got 40x response time increases on Linux; and so on, and so forth. >I've never seen Linux max out 40 Gbps per second and saturate the switch, but I sure as hell did do that with Solaris 10 on a DELL server, of all the shitty hardware out there. Wow, so slow. We had to get special switches specifically because Linux would over saturate way past 40 Gbps. Never had that issue with Slowlaris. > I've also never been able to get Linux to deliver anywhere close to 100 MB/s with NFS, while SmartOS regularly delivered over 433 MB/s, while peaking multiple times at 533 MB/s; that's faster than our EMC SAN was at work! AHAHAHAHA Slowlaris could barely make it through a day without NFS crashing. We were regularly peaking in the 800 MB/s range with Linux, that's faster than Slowlaris crashing on the EMC SAN at work! >So yeah, I'll stick with what doesn't break backwards compatibility and is blazingly fast... Ah, so you'll stick with Linux! Awesome! >Solaris and SmartOS for the win. Winning the dunce award for antiquated OSes, yep. >Good luck with GNU and Linux. You'll need it. Good luck with the OS that runs the fastest super computers in the world, all of HFT, etc.? Yep, we'll need luck to leverage the best platform to push us into the future. Thanks!
commandlinefan 7y ago
> hell of a lot cheaper Not just cheaper, but faster, too. Before Linux really took off, there was a time when it was starting to look like Windows was going to become the only player in town. I kept trying to make a case for Unix (that is, Solaris back then) and the deeper I dug the less convincing my case became. Sun & Irix hardware was orders of magnitude more expensive with worse performance than PCs no matter how I measured it. You can go on and on (and I tried) about how the hardware architecture is upgradeable, how it’s more fault tolerant, how it’s better tuned to the OS, but at the end of the day the only thing the Sun hardware had going for it was you could run the Unix toolchain on it.

Annatar 7y ago

Well, illumos is faster than Linux on the same hardware now, as starting in 2004, every situation where Linux was faster was treated as a priority 1 bug. Yes, a bug.

Tester0x1 7y ago
Not at all... Definitely not for the last decade or so. Linux beats illumos in speed in every category. Some of these categories are not even close. Linux even outperformed illumos in ZFS!
- Annatar 7y ago
  No sorry, but that's incorrect. I saw the bug requests myself when the database was still accessible, and I read multiple accounts from engineers working on performance improvements at Sun Microsystems, who I trust far more than anecdotal, arbitrary claim from you here in "Hacker" "News" of all places, which has meanwhile become notorious. And considering I know how fast illumos is because I ran Solaris and Linux on the same hardware, I'll just stick with running SmartOS, thank you very much: for example, Solaris would regularly peak to 85 MB/s while Linux could barely muster 55 MB/s on the same hardware... HTTP response times are up to 10x faster on Solaris; and so on, and so forth. I've never seen Linux max out 40 Gbps per second and saturate the switch, but I sure as hell did do that with Solaris 10 on a DELL server, of all the shitty hardware out there. I've also never been able to get Linux to deliver anywhere close to 100 MB/s with NFS, while SmartOS regularly delivered over 433 MB/s, while peaking multiple times at 533 MB/s; that's faster than our EMC SAN was at work! So yeah, I'll stick with what doesn't break backwards compatibility and is blazingly fast... Solaris and SmartOS for the win. Good luck with GNU and Linux. You'll need it.
  - Tester0x1 7y ago
    >No sorry, but that's incorrect. WRONG! It is factually correct that Linux beats illumos in performance. >I saw the bug requests myself when the database was still accessible, and I read multiple accounts from engineers working on performance improvements at Sun Microsystems As did I, and the former lead performance engineer at Joyent says Linux beats illumos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 >who I trust far more than anecdotal, arbitrary claim from you here in "Hacker" "News" of all places, which has meanwhile become notorious. Hopefully you trust the anecdotes of the lead performance engineer that worked on illumos LOL! >And considering I know how fast illumos is because I ran Solaris and Linux on the same hardware, I'll just stick with running SmartOS, thank you very much: I also ran it with the same hardware, and Linux beats it in pretty much every category. You can continue to use your Slowlaris based OS and live in the past. Your prerogative. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensolaris_schweinshaxe&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensola... >for example, Solaris would regularly peak to 85 MB/s while Linux could barely muster 55 MB/s on the same hardware... AHAHAHA I got more performance from my junk server on Linux 10 years ago, easily beating Solaris, regularly peaking around 100 MB/s. >HTTP response times are up to 10x faster on Solaris; and so on, and so forth. I got 40x response time increases on Linux; and so on, and so forth. >I've never seen Linux max out 40 Gbps per second and saturate the switch, but I sure as hell did do that with Solaris 10 on a DELL server, of all the shitty hardware out there. Wow, so slow. We had to get special switches specifically because Linux would over saturate way past 40 Gbps. Never had that issue with Slowlaris. > I've also never been able to get Linux to deliver anywhere close to 100 MB/s with NFS, while SmartOS regularly delivered over 433 MB/s, while peaking multiple times at 533 MB/s; that's faster than our EMC SAN was at work! AHAHAHAHA Slowlaris could barely make it through a day without NFS crashing. We were regularly peaking in the 800 MB/s range with Linux, that's faster than Slowlaris crashing on the EMC SAN at work! >So yeah, I'll stick with what doesn't break backwards compatibility and is blazingly fast... Ah, so you'll stick with Linux! Awesome! >Solaris and SmartOS for the win. Winning the dunce award for antiquated OSes, yep. >Good luck with GNU and Linux. You'll need it. Good luck with the OS that runs the fastest super computers in the world, all of HFT, etc.? Yep, we'll need luck to leverage the best platform to push us into the future. Thanks!
- Tester0x2 7y ago
  Copy/paste the dead comment, for posterity to show Annatard getting rekt yet again: >No sorry, but that's incorrect. WRONG! It is factually correct that Linux beats illumos in performance. >I saw the bug requests myself when the database was still accessible, and I read multiple accounts from engineers working on performance improvements at Sun Microsystems As did I, and the former lead performance engineer at Joyent says Linux beats illumos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16382456 >who I trust far more than anecdotal, arbitrary claim from you here in "Hacker" "News" of all places, which has meanwhile become notorious. Hopefully you trust the anecdotes of the lead performance engineer that worked on illumos LOL! >And considering I know how fast illumos is because I ran Solaris and Linux on the same hardware, I'll just stick with running SmartOS, thank you very much: I also ran it with the same hardware, and Linux beats it in pretty much every category. You can continue to use your Slowlaris based OS and live in the past. Your prerogative. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensola.. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=opensola.... >for example, Solaris would regularly peak to 85 MB/s while Linux could barely muster 55 MB/s on the same hardware... AHAHAHA I got more performance from my junk server on Linux 10 years ago, easily beating Solaris, regularly peaking around 100 MB/s. >HTTP response times are up to 10x faster on Solaris; and so on, and so forth. I got 40x response time increases on Linux; and so on, and so forth. >I've never seen Linux max out 40 Gbps per second and saturate the switch, but I sure as hell did do that with Solaris 10 on a DELL server, of all the shitty hardware out there. Wow, so slow. We had to get special switches specifically because Linux would over saturate way past 40 Gbps. Never had that issue with Slowlaris. > I've also never been able to get Linux to deliver anywhere close to 100 MB/s with NFS, while SmartOS regularly delivered over 433 MB/s, while peaking multiple times at 533 MB/s; that's faster than our EMC SAN was at work! AHAHAHAHA Slowlaris could barely make it through a day without NFS crashing. We were regularly peaking in the 800 MB/s range with Linux, that's faster than Slowlaris crashing on the EMC SAN at work! >So yeah, I'll stick with what doesn't break backwards compatibility and is blazingly fast... Ah, so you'll stick with Linux! Awesome! >Solaris and SmartOS for the win. Winning the dunce award for antiquated OSes, yep. >Good luck with GNU and Linux. You'll need it. Good luck with the OS that runs the fastest super computers in the world, all of HFT, etc.? Yep, we'll need luck to leverage the best platform to push us into the future. Thanks!

commandlinefan 7y ago

> hell of a lot cheaper Not just cheaper, but faster, too. Before Linux really took off, there was a time when it was starting to look like Windows was going to become the only player in town. I kept trying to make a case for Unix (that is, Solaris back then) and the deeper I dug the less convincing my case became. Sun & Irix hardware was orders of magnitude more expensive with worse performance than PCs no matter how I measured it. You can go on and on (and I tried) about how the hardware architecture is upgradeable, how it’s more fault tolerant, how it’s better tuned to the OS, but at the end of the day the only thing the Sun hardware had going for it was you could run the Unix toolchain on it.