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OpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resignsOpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resignsPosted Aug 29, 2012 16:53 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)Parent article: OpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resigns If I wanted a non-Linux I'd use a BSD (in fact I probably will install one on my work machine, fairly soon). FreeBSD has both ZFS and Dtrace. Dragonfly BSD has a very impressive filesystem of its own, Hammer. Both have active and enthusiastic communities behind them. Meanwhile, Linux, whatever its faults, is rock solid and runs for months without a reboot (it would be years, but I upgrade to the newest distro now and then) -- and supports pretty much all the hardware out there. Why would I want to try OpenIndiana or any other variety of Solaris? The (ex-)OpenSolaris folks should try to answer that question first, before turning on members of their own community.
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OpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resigns Posted Aug 29, 2012 18:38 UTC (Wed) by alan (subscriber, #4018) [Link]
The digs at Linux seem to be mostly architectural and academic. Alasdair acknowledges that while he thinks some features in linux are fundamentally flawed in their design, they work. Working code can be fixed. Bad design can be fixed or replaced with a solution that accounts for the lessons learned. A system that values idealistic perfection over working code cannot be fixed, because the realities of working code will always be less than perfect.
OpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resigns Posted Aug 29, 2012 23:22 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] I for one would much prefer some concrete examples of "bad design" (to think over and perhaps fix or justify) than some vague handwaving. Oh, well.
OpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resigns Posted Aug 30, 2012 12:07 UTC (Thu) by mabshoff (guest, #86444) [Link]
> I for one would much prefer some concrete examples of "bad design" (to think over and perhaps fix or justify) than some vague handwaving. Oh, well.
Yep, the same applies to a lot of the BSD folks' attitude too, i.e. 'Linux is a mess', etc, and I have yet to see a list of specific issues in the kernel. You see criticism for udev and systemd, but to be honest they fix real issues and while they might be not the most beautiful design in some people's eye they get the job done. And no one forces you to use those two for example :)
Another point the descendants of Solaris seem to miss is that despite the open sourcing of Solaris 10 starting in 2005 it has not reversed the trajectory Solaris had. Many of the project participants will tell you that without the bureaucracy of Sun things would have turned out differently, but I have my doubts it would have made that much of a difference. Illumous and its derivatives are doing well as the basis for storage systems, but that does not magically turn it into a general purpose OS. If you look at their mailing lists you see development for ZFS/dtrace, storage and network drivers, but little else.
And Oracle seems to be most interested in milking the revenue stream from the install base of Solaris on one hand and at the same time move toward an application model with all the Exa* systems. And that certainly will not help more software to be supported on Solaris, i.e. the mongo DB reference made in the original email. And as the Solaris markets shrinks less and less commercial applications will be supported. Oracle seems to do ok with Sparc hardware development, i.e. see today's T5 hot chips talk, but it is pushing it into the massive DB server direction it profits from the most while its use in other sectors of the enterprise market is limited. And I am sure Oracle is making money on Sparc and will do so a long time into the future, i.e. I would not be surprised to see them selling T-somethings in a decade. Ironically most of the CPUs used for Exa* systems are x86-64.
If the rise of Windows as a server operating system to nearly 50% revenue of the server pie and Linux to 25% teaches us a lesson it should be that 'good enough' and 'familiarity' are potent forces. And while the time when Solaris was superior to Linux in every regard has passed a long time ago, any advantage Solaris might have today (i.e. ZFS, dtrace) is temporary as Linux equivalents mature. Btrfs is getting the needed enterprise hardening now while perf and LTTng 2.0 are really not behind dtrace any more imho. So give it another year or two for btrfs, time is on our side.
'Good enough' has killed many better alternatives, otherwise we would all be talking about OpenVMS :).
Cheers,
Michael
OpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resigns Posted Aug 30, 2012 12:59 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
To state the same thing, but shorter:
People don't give a crap if the file system is better unless they are using their system as a file server.
It's vastly more important for a system to be usable then better. Users using their applications are the #1 most important thing a OS has to well and everything else pales in comparison. Better 'usability' can come from better design, better familiarity, better compatibility, or a accident of history. Linux is more usable then Solaris for most people so most people are going to use Linux if they are required to make a choice. Linux does a lot of things terribly, but the massive work people put into it pays off in the end.
The 'Good Enough is better' mantra comes from people looking at software from a upside down perspective: Concentrating on technical differences first and user using applications second.
:)
Solaris innovations ported to Linux Posted Aug 30, 2012 8:33 UTC (Thu) by CChittleborough (subscriber, #60775) [Link] ISTM that Alasdair was criticizing the ports of various Solaris innovations to Linux, not Linux itself:... some of the core features of Illumos are becoming less and less important ... the Linux equivalents suck in one way or another, some are completely and fundamentally broken by designI think he has a point. Something equivalent to DTrace, for example, would be wonderful to have on Linux — but it would require an enormous amount of work. Instead, the Linux developers are incrementally adding facilities which over time may well approach DTrace's functionality. It's a cathedral/bazaar thing. (Personally, I'd like to see a Linux implementation of Doors, an IPC mechanism in the old-fashioned Unix style: powerful, efficient, rather minimalist. Full disclosure: I started that Wikipedia article.)
Solaris innovations ported to Linux Posted Aug 30, 2012 11:31 UTC (Thu) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]
Dtrace for Linux is a reality, from Oracle no less: https://lwn.net/Articles/483107/
The caveat is that it appears Oracle is playing games with licenses.
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