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Packages: You're right, that is a weakness. However, the important stuff is there, and compiling other things is rarely a problem. OK for experienced admins, ba

Packages: You're right, that is a weakness. However, the important stuff is there, and compiling other things is rarely a problem. OK for experienced admins, bad for newcomers. Tools: Solaris has a strong history of standards compliance, so you've got the standards based tools, and the GNU tools. Different audiences prefer different tools. GNU tools are now the defaults to cater for people coming from Linux. Sun/Oracle: Yes, this is an issue, and the uncertainty over the future worries me somewhat -- you'll note Oracle only promised to spend more developing Solaris, and OpenSolaris was not mentioned. Linux is also dependent on big corporates for development, but there is more than one, reducing risk. However, the Solaris model does result in a very clear vision of where things should go, and I personally really like the consistent and stable result - no wondering whether the new scheduler causes performance woes. I'd also add Zones as well as ZFS as it's chief advantage, as the combination is absolutely wonderful for development and testing. Also see here http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/5917-The-impact-of-virtualisation.html http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/5917-The-impact-of-virtuali... about the performance benefits of Zones for virtualisation.

eleitl 17y ago
> OK for experienced admins, bad for newcomers. How difficult is to create Solaris packages from source? I must admit I never had the problem. > I'd also add Zones Well, Linux has VServer. > as well as ZFS I agree zfs is nice. Particularly, given L2ARC and ZIL on SSDs, with large SATA raidz2 or raidz3 behind them. However, btrfs is making the right noises. Whether they deliver on them or not is not yet known, but if they do Solaris needs quite a few more tricks up its sleeve by then. I hope Oracle doesn't drop the ball.
- bensummers 17y ago
  Solaris packages are easy to create, but getting things to compile can be tricky as lots of open source code assumes Linux-isms, so you have to port to standards. (BSDs have the same problem.) Zones are integrated into the very core of the OS, not bolted on. btrfs does sound like an improvement on ZFS in a few ways, especially in it's COW b-trees, taking advantage of a few more years of development. Competition will be good for ZFS, but right now, ZFS is probably the best shipping and stable FS.

eleitl 17y ago

> OK for experienced admins, bad for newcomers. How difficult is to create Solaris packages from source? I must admit I never had the problem. > I'd also add Zones Well, Linux has VServer. > as well as ZFS I agree zfs is nice. Particularly, given L2ARC and ZIL on SSDs, with large SATA raidz2 or raidz3 behind them. However, btrfs is making the right noises. Whether they deliver on them or not is not yet known, but if they do Solaris needs quite a few more tricks up its sleeve by then. I hope Oracle doesn't drop the ball.

bensummers 17y ago
Solaris packages are easy to create, but getting things to compile can be tricky as lots of open source code assumes Linux-isms, so you have to port to standards. (BSDs have the same problem.) Zones are integrated into the very core of the OS, not bolted on. btrfs does sound like an improvement on ZFS in a few ways, especially in it's COW b-trees, taking advantage of a few more years of development. Competition will be good for ZFS, but right now, ZFS is probably the best shipping and stable FS.