| |||||||||||||
Inaccuracy and further commentInaccuracy and further commentPosted Nov 18, 2004 4:57 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341)Parent article: Solaris 10
Another feature that Sun is touting is Solaris Containers. ... This is, of course, nothing new to Linux users who have already discovered User-Mode Linux or any of the other virtualization solutions available for Linux. Solaris Containers are not comparable to UML. From a technical standpoint, UML has the overhead of running a full kernel in userspace (and, typically, using PTRACE to trap the processes it runs, which can slow). Solaris Containers is a single-kernel, very low overhead solution, the Linux Vserver project is probably closer in concept. From an administrative POV, Solaris containers are quite integrated with the rest of Solaris. When you boot Solaris, your zones boot automatically, if you upgrade the 'global' zone, you can if you wish have zones automatically upgraded too. The level of integration with the system as a whole is possibly the most immediately noticeable advantage to Solaris containers. The company is also making much of binary compatibility with Solaris 10 -- promising customers that older Solaris applications will be able to run unchanged on Solaris 10. AIUI, Sun has always made much of binary compatibility for Solaris userspace. This hasnt changed for Solaris 10, AIUI. According to Sun's executives, Solaris 10 will be open source. However, the company has not yet announced a license, whether the license will be OSI-compliant I believe top Sun executives, and others, have already on more than one occassion that Solaris will be released under an OSI compliant licence, and that they are talking to OSI about this. A more ominous possibility exists: Sun could release its code under a license which is not only non-free, but which creates problems for any free software developers who look at that code. If Sun's fortunes continue to decline, there is a definite possibility that the company could look to litigation for its salvation. This possibility should be kept in mind by anybody who contemplates going anywhere near the Solaris code. This paragraph is utter FUD, sorry. Firstly, no one should ever look at code without being aware of the licencing implications, regardless of what that code is. Secondly, as above, the publically stated intent is that Solaris will be released under an OSI-approved licence. If the Solaris 10 license is GPL-compatible, many of Solaris 10's interesting features will no doubt find their way into Linux. It seems unlikely that Sun would choose that path. On the other hand, if Sun chooses a less friendly open source license, it will have a tough time creating a community that will drive Solaris development or adoption in the same way that the GPL has driven Linux. Either way, Sun seems set to lose with its open source ploy. Many of Solaris' interesting features are already in Linux. From a kernel POV, things like the slab cache were described by Sun engineers in USENIX papers many many years ago. Sun made RPC and NFS freely available specifications many many years ago. Sun are a supporting member of and active contributor to X.org (eg X input stuff most recently, that I can yhink of). From a system POV, if you run a Linux desktop you'll likely be using open-source applications which Sun contributed to the development of, or even made possible in the first place (GNOME, OpenOffice). etc.. And of course, Sun's engineering staff often are involved in and contribute to a variety of standards bodies. Like it or not, Sun are an important contributor to the Unix ecosystem. "They wont embrace Linux, the evil b?$tards!!" or "They settled their lawsuit with M$, the b?$tards!!", imho are not a good reasons to not like them, even sillier reasons to spread FUD for. Competition and cross-polination is good, and its exactly what makes Unix (inc Linux) in its totality the healthy ecosystem it is today, and to that end Sun at least deserve some credit.LWN is a high-quality read. Its sad to see it publish an article which, IMHO, is so devoid of the usual high-quality technical analysis and objective reporting which we've come to expect from LWN. The (scant) technical details given are in parts wrong, or at least show the author has done little technical research for this article, and the rest of the article is sprinkled with idle speculation if not outright FUD. NB: I'm a (Linux and Free software loving) Sun employee, who absolutely does not speak for Sun in this post. Opinions are my own, and I held the above (general opinion at least) before ever joining Sun.
(Log in to post comments)
Inaccuracy and further comment Posted Nov 18, 2004 9:13 UTC (Thu) by jhs (guest, #12429) [Link] Agreed. This article seemed a little more guided by philosophical or emotional motives than technical motives.
> Sun lacks the momentum that Linux has gained
Sun still has an *enormous* global deployment much larger in scope and importance than Linux deployments. In almost every medium-to-large company in the world, Sun is there, to various degrees. The same cannot yet be said about Linux. Indeed, it is Sun, not Linux, that has the momentum.
The author probably meant that Linux-the-OS has much more potential than Solaris, which is at this point pretty apparent.
Inaccuracy and further comment Posted Nov 18, 2004 23:14 UTC (Thu) by edgewood (subscriber, #1123) [Link] In physics, momentum is the product of mass and velocity. So the installed base of Solaris, its "mass", is indeed crucial to the question of whether Solaris has more momentum. But just as crucial is its "velocity". How big is the Solaris installed base compared to last year? Probably about the same size. Compared to five years ago? It might have been bigger then, at the height of the dot.com boom.
Linux's installed base is indeed smaller, but it's bigger this year than it was last year, and huge compared to what it was five years ago. That "velocity" can give it the higher momentum, and I think it does.
Momentum Posted Nov 19, 2004 19:23 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] You seem to be taking rate of growth as velocity. That ruins the analogy, because in physics, velocity isn't the rate at which the mass in increasing.I don't see any way to break down OS momentum into analogies of mass and velocity. But I don't think rate of growth is any part of an OS' momentum. Momentum is the tendency of a moving object to keep moving. An object with great momentum doesn't speed up or get larger. It just doesn't come to rest easily. I see Solaris as having great momentum. Longtime users give an OS momentum. I can't tell how much momentum Linux has. New users are often easily switched to something else.
Momentum Posted Nov 20, 2004 7:23 UTC (Sat) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Now, black holes and OSes, there's an analogy. ;-)
Inaccuracy and further comment Posted Nov 18, 2004 18:17 UTC (Thu) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link] While I could agree it is debatable whether Sun as a company is in a tenuous position, I think from a technical point of view Solaris is without question an outstanding achievement, and Solaris 10 is arguably the most advanced operating system for business/mission critical operations. What I would hope to see in editorials on LWN is recognition and celebration of the technical excellence of Solaris as a whole and of its several features and aspects which are arguably better than in any comparable operating system. Larry
Inaccuracy and further comment Posted Nov 20, 2004 3:59 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] I dont think Sun is in a tenous position, it has a large customer base, a large and skilled engineering staff (NB: I'm obviously quite biased in saying that ;) ) and it has (from what I know of *public* Sun financial information) cash reserves. What Sun possibly does have to do is adapt to new market conditions (eg the commoditisation of core OS functionality by Linux and the rise of open source). Adapting to new conditions is something every company has to do to, and I think Sun can do it, I dont see why not. As for Solaris 10 being the most advanced OS, or Solaris 10 versus Linux on a technical basis, well when i saw the article headline of "Solaris 10" i thought "great, now i'll get an informed, technical, objective, 3rd party view of Solaris 10 and how it stacks up" - I didnt get that, that's what disappoints me.And btw, my job at Sun involves working on Free Software (least it has to date).
Inaccuracy and further comment Posted Nov 20, 2004 7:30 UTC (Sat) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Paul, you're on a Linux site, so any non-Linux OS review is here for a specific reason. Maybe you should read the article like that, to me it sounds like we've been reading different articles. Also, don't forget that you are probably much more informed than the average public, which might skew your perception.
|
|||||||||||||