OpenSolaris: Your Opinions

I've been using the 2009.06 livecd as a hardware detector and tester. When there is 1gb+ ram and the hardware is supported everything works well. With 512mb the system is a slug, even installed on the bare hardware.

The main issues were poor support for generic hardware and annoying multimedia configuration/installation. Once installed everything worked well.

My main gripe was a truly trivial one, lack of scrolling on a touchpad.
 
Another thing that I do not like about OpenSolaris is the IPS and its 'Linux focus'.

I once considered OpenSolaris as my main system, later only for a laptop, now after FreeBSD replaced all my OpenSolaris installations I start to think, why I wasted all that time trying to use OpenSolaris Package Manager called IPS, also comments on this blog sums a lot about it: http://cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=1115#comm

... like these:

"Ian Murdock has taken a superb enterprise O/S and turned it into Linux circa 1998."

"Maybe i’m old-fashioned, but shouldn’t core O/S tools be written in C? If you can’t code in C, I don’t want you writing my O/S."

I do not want to bash OpenSolaris (from which we have great ZFS for example), OpenSolaris just wants to be Linux too much (like taking Ian Murdock for the job).

PS. 1. Draft of "What's New in OpenSolaris 2010.03" is available here: http://cr.opensolaris.org/~gman/opensolaris-whats-new-2010-03/ I have read some rumors that they are rebranding 2010.03 from OpenSolaris to Oracle Solaris Express.

PS. 2. Solaris will not be free to use anymore: http://www.osnews.com/comments/23077
 
>OpenSolaris just wants to be Linux too much

No they do want the plethora of Linux users to gain momentum. Well, everyone needs to sacrifice something to survive in a Linux world. Have a look at FreeBSD and its expanding Linux compat layer (applications, Flash, webcam/dvb-drivers etc.), some people already have got an almost complete Linux next to their FreeBSD installation.
 
@oliverh

Its just linux_compat which can be disabled (or should I say not installed as its not enabled by default as in NetBSD), and You can do everything without it, it would not be needed if only pricks at adobe would release at last flash for FreeBSD, OpenSolaris does not have that problem.

OpenSolaris in contrast incorporated whole GNU coreutils into its 'base system' and hired Debian creator to make the job the Linux way.

For example, I use linux_compat ONLY for flash, nothing else.

Other thing is that as FreeBSD is binary compatible with Linux, some nice things can happen, like creating "The Matrix" movie under FreeBSD with tools/applications in linux_compat instead of 'native' Linux because they were running faster under linux_compat on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.org/news/press-rel-1.html
 
>Its just linux_compat which can be disabled

Yes I can, but that's not the point. For most users it's the only possible solution to get certain technologies, so it is indeed a must nowadays.

>For example, I use linux_compat ONLY for flash, nothing else.

And you have to install a bunch of Linux software to do so.

>like creating "The Matrix" movie under FreeBSD

... resting one's laurels so to speak ;-) Btw. if you want some more documents of a great past: http://desktopbsd.net/wiki/doku.php?id=doc:useful_information ( I gathered some of those documents while working in the DBSD team).

>OpenSolaris in contrast incorporated whole GNU coreutils into its 'base system' and hired Debian creator to make the job the Linux way.

Well, I would be happy to see Murdock even today developing Debian - it would be a way better distro in my opinion. Apart from that, we shouldn't cast the first stone as long as we aren't free of Linux ourselves - have e.g. a look at OpenBSD, they're working hard to get to this point.

I don't have a problem with OpenSolaris or some Linux tools, it's just a pity to see the "last UNIX" die in vain.
 
I don't know if I would say Solaris is dead yet. The problem is that the linux media started spreading rumors that Oracle was killing Solaris when they said they that they would be only allowing it for a 90-day period. So I went to look at the license agreement and it's a little confusing. On one part it says:

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/licensing/policies.xml
In order to use the Solaris 10 software for perpetual commercial use, you must obtain the Entitlement Document. The Entitlement Document is delivered to you either with a new Sun machine, from Sun Service as part of your service agreement, or via email when you register your machines through the Sun Download Center. For this reason, ensure that you have the correct email address in your Sun Download Center account before trying to register your Solaris 10 machines. If you do not receive the Entitlement Document, you are only allowed to use the software for 90 days of evaluation usage.
Click to expand...
But on the d/l page it says:
Please remember, your right to use Solaris acquired as a download is
limited to a trial of 90 days, unless you acquire a service contract
for the downloaded Software.
Click to expand...
So, which is it, a service contract or an entitlement document? Also, Oracle doesn't mention what happens when you go beyond the 90 day trial period. Does the operating system stop working as with Windows XP and WGA, or does it give Oracle the right to sue your balls off?

Personally, I think what's going to happen is that Solaris/OpenSolaris is going to follow the RHEL/Fedora model. The new technologies go into OpenSolaris and the stable, enterprise level operating system will become the next version of Solaris. Keep in mind that Sun wasn't doing a good job turning in $$$ with this, so considering that Solaris was already targeting the enterprise market, this will only affect the hobbyist group who's probably already running OpenSolaris anyway. Oracle could do a better job at giving out more info on this and cleaning up the license agreement instead of leaving it up to media speculation, but I think that OpenSolaris is still going to be around. I don't think it would be in their best interest to kill it since it gives Oracle a more all-in-one package to sell (hardware, software, support, and the OS).
 
The 90 day trial only refers to Solaris, not opensolaris. Last time that I checked, Sun offered a Solaris free trial for 60 days. I don't know if Sun had increased that before the Oracle announcement. Opensolaris is still a free download.
 
I use OpenSolaris on my laptop, it works fairly well. The main advantage it has over FreeBSD and OpenBSD is that Xorg works at a decent speed. With Free/OpenBSD I can't it any faster than vesa-driver speeds with the intel driver (Drawing xterms can take seconds!).

Native flash and VirtualBox is also nice at times. (Although FreeBSD also has vbox support now, not sure how good/fast it is though?).

When you pop the hood, it does have a sort of "Windows/Linux" sort of feel to it at times though ...

OpenSolaris just wants to be Linux too much
Click to expand...

Some might say the same about FreeBSD ;)
 
(Although FreeBSD also has vbox support now, not sure how good/fast it is though?).
Click to expand...
I've used VirtualBox on both OpenSolaris and FreeBSD, and VirtualBox performs much better on FreeBSD. Resource usage is too high on OpenSolaris.

Personally, I think what's going to happen is that Solaris/OpenSolaris is going to follow the RHEL/Fedora model. The new technologies go into OpenSolaris and the stable, enterprise level operating system will become the next version of Solaris.
Click to expand...
That seems plausible except for the fact that I've read where Oracle states that some technologies from Solaris are not going to be included in OpenSolaris; meaning Oracle will be developing Solaris independent of OpenSolaris.
 
davidgurvich said:
The 90 day trial only refers to Solaris, not opensolaris. Last time that I checked, Sun offered a Solaris free trial for 60 days. I don't know if Sun had increased that before the Oracle announcement. Opensolaris is still a free download.
Click to expand...

That is grossly inaccurate statement!

Solaris 10 was absolutely free until couple days ago when Oracle announced their decision. You must have checked 2004 or 2005 if you claim that SUN was giving it away only for 60 days.

OpenSolaris looks dead to me. The last time I checked the final release was re-scheduled for 03/26/2010. As we all know there is no new release as of now and to my knowledge nobody knows if and when OpenSolaris will be released. The only thing I noticed is bunch of posts on OpenSolaris mailing lists in which people are talking about their experience in installing FreeBSD and OpenBSD (I have not noticed anybody talking about NetBSD).

The only good news in all of this is that it seems that Oracle has decided for now to keep Solaris alive. On another hand until I see announcment for Solaris 11 release my working
assumtion is that Solaris is going belly up.
 
From what I can find is that 2010.03 is delayed for technical reasons
Click to expand...
They've had serious technical problems since build 129. Apparently they decided to delay the release to fix them, although I question why they were never addressed earlier. Some have been around long enough they should have been fixed in later development releases.

For example, the warning about "no randomness provider for /dev/urandom" has been around since late 2007 and supposedly going to be fixed in build 89, yet it still exists in build 129 and forward.

http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=38
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=13547
We'll pick this up when we resync with build 89.
Click to expand...
Since this looks similar to bug 38, I'm reclassifying to match that bug.
Click to expand...

My usb ethernet device doesn't work in OpenSolaris although it works with FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and OpenSolaris also doesn't recognize my wireless adapter. VirtualBox uses too much CPU and memory on OpenSolaris. Although I really like the network virtualization with Crossbow and their Zones implementation. Installation is very slow, you really need to go do something else while it grinds away ever so slowly (but it isn't any slower than Solaris!). If they would ever fix the building of Zones so they don't need to download from a repository, but instead are built from the global zone (like Solaris 10) I'd be very happy.
 
Looking over the news reports from 2007, that looks like the free 60 day trial was for sun hardware with Solaris. I'm not sure what the situation was then for Solaris updates+support.
 
Gave OpenSolaris another try with the current dev build and it lasted one day. I'm back to FreeBSD on that server. The current dev build was slower than the last stable dev build and still has bugs. It just seemed like too much work, so I gave up on OpenSolaris.
 
Milax-0.5, livecd based on opensolaris, worked well on a system with limited ram and seemed snappy overall. That means opensolaris can be much more responsive and use less resources.
 
I also find Milax very light and snappy in contrast to 'default' OpenSolaris, but that does not solve lack of packages problem (comparing to ports/apt/yum).
 
IPS is very memory consuming. OpenSolaris build 134 also has a problem when the screensaver is activated, simply moving a mouse doesn't bring up the login screen. I just started typing the password blind on a blank screen, unaware if the machine was actually running, and the desktop came back. Was also unsuccessful in disabling the graphical login even following Sun aka Oracle developers 'svcadm disable gdm' advice, and, alas, no text. I'm also unsure how to tweak xorg in OpenSolaris because Sun developers say the xorg.conf isn't used (and I can atest to that).
 
vermaden said:
I also find Milax very light and snappy in contrast to 'default' OpenSolaris, but that does not solve lack of packages problem (comparing to ports/apt/yum).
Click to expand...

How to use IPS pkg

Use alternative repo
http://blastwave.network.com:10000/ (Blastwave IPS repo, has at least 1000 packages)
http://pkg.sunfreeware.com:9000/ (Companion project IPS repo, currently 686 packages)
http://pkg.opensolaris.org/contrib/en/index.shtml
http://blogs.sun.com/frontline/entry/using_opensolaris_extras_support_repositories
http://ips.homeunix.com/?q=node/35
and any http://www.google.com/search?q=opensolaris+repositories ;)
 
@f-andrey

A lot of things are missing even with all these additional reposirotires (I used them when I was on OpenSolaris).
 
Some of those repositories have old software (Blastwave) and additionally, there are times when repositories are unavailable. Why this occurs when OpenSolaris forces you to use their network repositories is unknown. There have also been times when one has been unable to create Zones for a day or two because Sun had some problem and you can't build. Of couse, Zones are built from downloads from Sun repositories (assuming you don't build a local repository).

OpenSolaris as a VirtualBox guest needs 768MB of memory which is amazing, considering that OpenBSD uses 64MB and FreeBSD can also work on 64MB.
 
vermaden said:
OpenSolaris in contrast incorporated whole GNU coreutils into its 'base system' and hired Debian creator to make the job the Linux way.
Click to expand...
I just noticed this post. In contract to what? NetBSD and OpenBSD? As far as I know FreeBSD uses GNU tar, GNU diff and path, GNU grep, GNU Troff. This list goes on and on.

As you know even NetBSD and OpenBSD still use GCC. Even if the PCC was capable of replacing
GCC the GNU binutils can not be replaced by anything else. Actually PCC will include assembler but at this point only guys from AerieBSD are working on the new linker.

Unlike BSDs, Solaris does have a complete non-GNU tool chain. It has GUI as well (CDE) but it lacks wide software base.
 
Oko said:
I just noticed this post. In contract to what? NetBSD and OpenBSD? As far as I know FreeBSD uses GNU tar, GNU diff and path, GNU grep, GNU Troff. This list goes on and on.
Click to expand...

FreeBSD has used bsdtar for a couple releases now. GNU tar has been relegated to the ports tree. (And bsdtar is now available in Debian repos.)

GNU grep is about to be replaced by a BSD-licensed grep. There are patches available for testing that replace gnugrep with bsdgrep in 8-STABLE. It might even make it into 8.1-RELEASE.

GNU diff is being worked on. It should, hopefully, be ready to replace GNU diff in 9.0 if not 8.1.

A handful of other GNU tools have BSD-licensed replacements under development.

As you know even NetBSD and OpenBSD still use GCC. Even if the PCC was capable of replacing GCC the GNU binutils can not be replaced by anything else. Actually PCC will include assembler but at this point only guys from AerieBSD are working on the new linker.
Click to expand...

ClangBSD is now self-hosting, bringing us one step closer to a GCC-less BSD. :)

IOW, the days of GNU userland tools in BSD systems are numbered. :D
 
gpatrick said:
OpenSolaris as a VirtualBox guest needs 768MB of memory which is amazing, considering that OpenBSD uses 64MB and FreeBSD can also work on 64MB.
Click to expand...

FreeBSD - rootFS on ZFS and Gnome work on 64MB? you seriously? ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top