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Sun want to sell servers. They can either become a commodity box-shifter on razor thin margins, or they can make their products better so customers want to pay

Sun want to sell servers. They can either become a commodity box-shifter on razor thin margins, or they can make their products better so customers want to pay a premium. To make their boxes better, they'd have to come with pre-installed server software, all the normal stuff you'd see on a web server, and tightly integrate the OS / file system / database so that (e.g.) MySQL is running very fast. Kirk Wylie is right that no-one cares anbout Solaris anymore. If they'd open sourced it ten years ago, things might be different. But today, Linux is king on servers. I use Ubuntu on the desktop; I use it on the server too out of convenience -- I know that i can install new package on both systems in exactly the same way using apt-get, I know that the diorectory structure is the same, I know that I can test a feature on my desktop then port it to the server without getting wierd incompatibility problems. The only way I'd consider using Solaris is if it worked exactly like Ubuntu, i.e. make the Solaris kernel a plug-in replacement for the Linux kernel in the Ubuntu distro. Fortunately, such a thing exists: http://foss-boss.blogspot.com/2008/11/nexenta-can-you-say-solabuntu-part1.html http://foss-boss.blogspot.com/2008/11/nexenta-can-you-say-so... Then, in order to be a one-stop shop, Sun should get into the hosting business, setting up datacenters around the world running their hardware/software solution. They could even do a system that automatically mirrored a web server at different locations around the world to make it more resilient.

gaius 18y ago
Server != web server. I think that's something that a lot of "Linux has won" people miss.
- bbgm 18y ago
  In the scientific computing world, the move away from Solaris was swift and comprehensive. It's not a question of what's better, but of what gives you the best bang for the buck at an acceptable level and Linux has more than delivered that.
briansmith 18y ago
On servers, Solaris is better than Linux. DTrace, ZFS, Zones, resource management framework, RBAC, service management framework, among other things, are all better. Solaris already has most of the Linux userland available. A lot of it is even installed by default; it just isn't in the default PATH. If you change your default path, you can get access to a lot of the inferior Linux tools that you are used to. Yum and apt-get are better at patching and package installation than Solaris tools. However, the experience on Solaris isn't so bad that the whole OS has to be thrown away because if it. Besides, when IPS is released Solaris's package management will be better than both Yum and apt-get.
- bretthoerner 18y ago
  > "Solaris is better than Linux." That's a very blunt statement of fact. Yes, DTrace is great. ZFS has a lot of greatness if you overlook the bugs production systems have had (see: Joyent) to fix still (systems down for a week while they hand-fixed the FS - Yeah, fun stuff). Zones are cool, but has its drawbacks (and advantages) when compared to something like Xen. > "A lot of it is even installed by default; it just isn't in the default PATH." Uh, you know that when people talk about "Linux" they really mean "common GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/RHEL", right? You realize they mean more than gmake and gfind and gcc, right? Sorry, Solaris has absolutely nothing like the apt repositories available on Ubuntu (I know they're working on this, but that is still the not-so-stable-or-bug-free OpenSolaris, and it still isn't anywhere close, and we're talking about today, right?). Can I pull down svn, git, mercurial, bzr in a simple command? How about lighttpd, nginx, haproxy? What about a recent vim and emacs? Recent memcached, python/perl/ruby client for it? Those are all basic and well known, that isn't even the hard stuff. What about something a little more specific? PostGIS, GDAL, Proj? I can grab all of those on Ubuntu in a few seconds. And of those you can compile from source yourself on Solaris, you'll find many a quirk because the project maintainers tend to run either a flavor of Linux or FreeBSD. Yeah, Solaris is "better than Linux on servers", and my time isn't worth anything.
  - astrec 18y ago
    I can grab all of those on Ubuntu in a few seconds. You're absolutely right, but when it's time to do something serious - in the Cal Henderson, irony laden, finger quote sense - you'll recompile them just the same.
    - bretthoerner 18y ago
      I will? Sorry, I've never bothered to recompile svn or python or many other things that my Linux install comes with. And I've use them every single day. For money. To feed my face hole. Yes, when the time comes I can recompile anything on Ubuntu, but you know what? I'll take their already existing package, add patches, and easily create a .deb I can distribute among all the machines I use. Based on the existing package, with existing Ubuntu patches added that fix existing problems for me. Rather than going from scratch all alone in Solaris land.

gaius 18y ago

Server != web server. I think that's something that a lot of "Linux has won" people miss.

bbgm 18y ago
In the scientific computing world, the move away from Solaris was swift and comprehensive. It's not a question of what's better, but of what gives you the best bang for the buck at an acceptable level and Linux has more than delivered that.

briansmith 18y ago

On servers, Solaris is better than Linux. DTrace, ZFS, Zones, resource management framework, RBAC, service management framework, among other things, are all better. Solaris already has most of the Linux userland available. A lot of it is even installed by default; it just isn't in the default PATH. If you change your default path, you can get access to a lot of the inferior Linux tools that you are used to. Yum and apt-get are better at patching and package installation than Solaris tools. However, the experience on Solaris isn't so bad that the whole OS has to be thrown away because if it. Besides, when IPS is released Solaris's package management will be better than both Yum and apt-get.

bretthoerner 18y ago
> "Solaris is better than Linux." That's a very blunt statement of fact. Yes, DTrace is great. ZFS has a lot of greatness if you overlook the bugs production systems have had (see: Joyent) to fix still (systems down for a week while they hand-fixed the FS - Yeah, fun stuff). Zones are cool, but has its drawbacks (and advantages) when compared to something like Xen. > "A lot of it is even installed by default; it just isn't in the default PATH." Uh, you know that when people talk about "Linux" they really mean "common GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/RHEL", right? You realize they mean more than gmake and gfind and gcc, right? Sorry, Solaris has absolutely nothing like the apt repositories available on Ubuntu (I know they're working on this, but that is still the not-so-stable-or-bug-free OpenSolaris, and it still isn't anywhere close, and we're talking about today, right?). Can I pull down svn, git, mercurial, bzr in a simple command? How about lighttpd, nginx, haproxy? What about a recent vim and emacs? Recent memcached, python/perl/ruby client for it? Those are all basic and well known, that isn't even the hard stuff. What about something a little more specific? PostGIS, GDAL, Proj? I can grab all of those on Ubuntu in a few seconds. And of those you can compile from source yourself on Solaris, you'll find many a quirk because the project maintainers tend to run either a flavor of Linux or FreeBSD. Yeah, Solaris is "better than Linux on servers", and my time isn't worth anything.
- astrec 18y ago
  I can grab all of those on Ubuntu in a few seconds. You're absolutely right, but when it's time to do something serious - in the Cal Henderson, irony laden, finger quote sense - you'll recompile them just the same.
  - bretthoerner 18y ago
    I will? Sorry, I've never bothered to recompile svn or python or many other things that my Linux install comes with. And I've use them every single day. For money. To feed my face hole. Yes, when the time comes I can recompile anything on Ubuntu, but you know what? I'll take their already existing package, add patches, and easily create a .deb I can distribute among all the machines I use. Based on the existing package, with existing Ubuntu patches added that fix existing problems for me. Rather than going from scratch all alone in Solaris land.