“Sun’s primary focus continues to be on Unix — the Unix product portfolio,” says IDC research director Al Gillen. But that may be a risky strategy. “As Linux grows, if Sun’s not riding that wave fully, they leave themselves open to losing part of the market.“. The article is at NewsFactor. We recently wrote a related editorial about it too.
Showdown: Solaris vs. Linux
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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As the article mentions, this is not primarily a war between Linux and Solaris. Even if Sun could position Solaris to dominate the intel Unix market, it ain’t gonna help their bottom line significantly. Sun doesn’t make nearly as much money on Solaris as it does on hardware.
So yeah, its a war between Sun and Intel. It doesn’t look like SUN saw this coming, so they’ve done really badly facing up the Intel competition. Clearly, intel will be the winner.
Linux, hopefully, will help maintain some competition in the Server market, by making sure MS doesn’t completely fill the gap created by SUN’s demise.
I would advise all current Linux users to switch to Solaris x86. It is much better and unencumbered by obviously stolen code. By supporting Sun, you ensure that a commercial organization puts effort into developing a quality OS. The Linux development community does not guarantee this.
I like Sun. I wish they’d fire their execs and find a new direction that will keep them profitable. I don’t like the way they’ve been headed these last few years.
Linux is different. I love Linux. And its here to stay, I am very sorry to say, because I understand its license.
Anyone who understands the GPL knows that any software licensed with it will continue to improve forever or until a better replacement is available with a GNU/OSS license.
I would advise all current Linux users to switch to Solaris x86. It is much better and unencumbered by obviously stolen code.
The same is true for the various *BSDs.
By supporting Sun, you ensure that a commercial organization puts effort into developing a quality OS.
The same is true for Apple’s Darwin (which could be counted as another BSD, except for its kernel)
The Linux development community does not guarantee this.
Whether this is true remains to be seen.
Apart from that, SUN (so far) regarded Solaris x86 more as a ‘take a peek at our OS’-version of Solaris/SPARC.
We’re an all-Sun shop at work, and yes, Solaris is great if you need an enterprise-strength server operating system. Linux will match it one day, but for now, Sun deserves to own the 8-64+ CPU big iron space.
But at the low end, Sun’s economics are pitiful. 64-bit or not, those $10k Blade 2000 workstations are smoked into the ground by our lone $2.5k dual Athlon running Linux. And Solaris is a clunky, outdated and slow _desktop_ operating system.
The crappy desktop environment makes everyone clamour for Windoze, which is horribly ironic when Linux would actually give them the best of both worlds at the lowest cost.
> I would advise all current Linux users to switch to Solaris x86. It is much better and unencumbered by obviously stolen code. By supporting Sun, you ensure that a commercial organization puts effort into developing a quality OS. The Linux development community does not guarantee this.
Hey, you’re the same troll that made that stupid comment about (OSS software == Al-Qaeda) earlier.
Nevertheless, since I like being trolled, here’s a rebuttal:
You’re damn right that the Linux development community does not guarantee that a commercial organization puts effort into developing a quality OS. Linux’s methodology is just the opposite. I personally consider it much better. Linux code is not stolen. Even (a far stretch!) granted that SCO is right, you’d better believe that the kernel will be un-encumbered very quickly. I use Linux on my desktop. What, you want me to switch to Solaris? Pah (ah yes, I tried FreeBSD. It attempted to assassinate my monitor after taking hours upon hours of interactivity to set up. Debian–tab around for a couple of minutes, set KDE etc to apt-get, take a nap, done.). Also, what if Sun dies or stops supporting Solaris? The risk is always there. Linux code will remain open and ready for development forever.
>>>Solaris x86
By Generation Movement (IP: —.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com) – Posted on 2003-05-30 23:12:25
I would advise all current Linux users to switch to Solaris x86. It is much better and unencumbered by obviously stolen code. By supporting Sun, you ensure that a commercial organization puts effort into developing a quality OS. The Linux development community does not guarantee this.
**********************************************************
If you want to persuade people, perhaps you should use FACTS.
You are just another fan boy who will post anything. Your tone is pathetic.
(a sysadmin, and enthusiast using FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE, Redhat 7.3, OS X Jaguar, and XP)
> I would advise all current Linux
> users to switch to Solaris x86. It
> is much better and unencumbered by
> obviously stolen code.
Actually, it is quite possible that Linux and other opensourced OSes contain the least stolen code. Since the code is open for all to see, most people would probably make good effort to do original implementations. On the other hand, how can you tell what a proprietary system contains? It would be interesting if SCO, for example, would open up their entire source code to all the eyeballs that would be eager to see just how much of its code is original.
Come back on earth man.
While solaris/sparc is really a good unix, solaris x86 is way behind linux on alomost every points. It’s a very bad port which is slow, lacks a lot of drivers and almost all commercial apps for solaris are sparc only.
bala bala portocala…
While solaris/sparc is really a good unix, solaris x86 is way behind linux on alomost every points. It’s a very bad port which is slow, lacks a lot of drivers and almost all commercial apps for solaris are sparc only.
Which just proves my point that SUN never intended Solaris x86 to be anything but a “check it out”-version.
same blah blah…linux is cool, get over it!
Saolaris does shine on the SPARC. The Linux port to the SPARC isn’t anywhere near as good as Solaris on the same hardware. I got x86 preinstalled a computer I got on Ebay and it was sad. Slow, kludgy and mostly worthless.
You actually believe that. There isn’t one thing to prove that and there are 100 other things saying the opposite.
In fact, SCO so far has nothing publically available to strenthen its posisition but a whole lot of lies which make their case even weaker. Even in interviews they forget their lines and I remember reading that they said ALL operating systems outside of redmond use their code. LOL, BEOS and Amiga for example ner touched their code.
I hav read at least 10 articles on the SCO hase for both sides and its looking extremely dim for SCO and I’m quite convinced they are going to lose.
A particularly good read is here: http://opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html
I like Sun, their servers are unmatched inr eliability and performance is great too, price is their only problem ebcause unlike Intel they can’t mass produce.
Sun IMO still has the best server OS and hardware.
I’m curious if anyone has real ideas for Sun. I suspect they’ve run the numbers, know that they spend a lot on R&D, and are afraid to gut it. The fear is because right now the market is in a lull, but if a killer app comes along requiring Sun’s machines and their R&D is dead, they won’t be able to take advantage of it.
Plus, consider if they became a Dell. They’ve transformed themselves into a boring market with stiff competition.
I don’t see a way out. Maybe the only problem is wanting to please shareholders with growth, because they have an ok business quietly selling things.
I love reading these “Solaris x86 is slow” posts, especially from people who (1) have never used it or (2) don’t know how to configure it. Fortunately I do, so does Philip Brown (www.bolthole.com/solaris) amongst others (alt.solaris.x86).
As far as Linux being better than Solaris let’s see, can you make flash archives (Solaris Flash), upgrade the OS while in operation (Live Upgrade and Alternate Boot Environment), perform ufs snapshots (fssnap). Can your Linux box be made TCSEC C2/Common Criteria EAL4 secure, no. Solaris no problem. Almost every feature Solaris Sparc has, Solaris Intel has and this plays into Sun’s N1 initiative (http://wwws.sun.com/software/solutions/n1/). There is no Linux equivalent for N1.
My experience with Solaris x86 was great, and Sun has to have the most optimized IDE drivers around. The box I had was a dual processor Celeron rig with 1 GB of RAM and two 20 GB 5400 RPM Maxtors. It was just fast, now it didn’t start that way. As long as you configure the disk drivers to support DMA transfers and adjust the blocking factor, you are good to go. Driver support is an issue, but as long as you use what is on the HCL it will work (and most problems with getting Solaris x86 to work is because of a device (usually a NIC or video card) that is not on the HCL). Apps is also an issue, and that is not easily corrected.
Now that Oracle is throwing their support behind Solaris x86 again, I could see a small company putting together some nice boxes to run Oracle on.
Solaris was never meant to be a desktop OS, so the argument that Linux is better is a waste of time in my opinion. But if I needed an 8 way server I would use Solaris x86 over Linux.
Ditto
I’m sure its quite dandy, but I have yet to successfully install it. It would help if the damned HCL list was updated for Solaris 9, but it is not. Most benchmarks (in so far as what I’ve seen) show that, in general, Linux is speedier and quite spritely. TCP/IP throughput has been higher since the 2.2 days and response time seems quite kickass. Sure, the story changes once the load increases – but the Linux folks aren’t sitting on their thumbs. Wait until 2.6 is out, that will be an interesting match. I do respect Solaris for what it can do and I rather like Sun as a company, stupid recent decisions aside, but Solaris is – ultimately – a deadend. Every other Unix vendor (SCO notwithstanding) knows this. I’m sure you’ll want evidence for my performance claims, I’ll do some googling and see if I can back up my memory. Is Solaris slowlaris? I dunno first hand, can’t get it to install. But based on what I remember seeing, no its not. Slower under most loads? Sure, but its no slouch either.
It is amusing that every time a Linux v Solaris article crops up there are half a dozen people who have tried it once on a PC and declared it sux compared to Linux. Even worse are the people who declare all Solaris sux compared to Linux. These people are all amatuers judging an *enterprise* OS by how easy it was to rip an MP3 or something.
OTOH, I have installed it to a desktop PC and it was a bit of a pain to make work, and desktoply for me, is not as good as FreeBSD.
However, I’ve done some crude comparisons with Solaris/Sparc and Linux/PC clusters on top500.org and the SUN machines are more bang for less MHz. Oh, and it works fine on my Sunblade 100 too.
all of you clowns got trolled
re: Ian
If this is in response to my post, no where did I say “Solaris Sucks.” I just view Solaris x86 in the same way I view Linux Sparc, cute – but kinda pointless unless you really, really want it. Hey, for some situations – like an all-sun shop – it surely makes good sense. But given the raw difficulty of install (no, not the install app – while archaic, is not “hard”), piss poor hardware support, lower performance under most loads, and more I don’t see how non-sun entrenched people would want it. Hey, maybe I’m wrong. This is, after all, only my view.
I just view Solaris x86 in the same way I view Linux Sparc, cute – but kinda pointless unless you really, really want it
I disagree .. I ran debian/sparc on my SS5, and frankly, I find it way better than solaris *on this box*. On the other hand, my Ultra-60 has Solaris on it … it depends on your needs / hardware support.
I actually have installed Solaris, and I did not like it for these reasons:
– It does not support my SiS 6326.
– As my Sis is compatible with the ET 4000, I tried the ET 6000 driver at installation. Result: system crash.
– Installed Grub. Then rerun installation of Solaris. Copies files, reboots, displays GRUB. installation does not continue.
– Reformat HD with Solaris, install again. Now I choose Standard VGA.
– I choose DHCP – system crash.
– I choose not to configure networking – installation continues and finishes.
– After installation I start the CDE terminal. No history, no command line editing… ^[[A^[[A, ^H^H^H^H^H, well, ^H^H^H only on the console, not in X.
– I want to try DHCP again. So I click the System Administration tool, a black window without titlebar appears. Nothing more.
Conclusion: with my PC, Solaris seems to be quite unusable. But why not install XFree86? From source? Maybe that can make it usable, as I guess the Sysadmin problem was that Java cannot run in 16 colors?
Not me.
SAP business software and SAPDB run better on AIX 🙂
If SUN charged $50 more and went into overdrive providing native drivers for their Xsun server rather than the shonky XFree86 ones (which are a nightmare with CDE), made available all the features that are available on the Sparc version such as openGL (plus there is a neat feature that was mentioned in the x86 mailing list that isn’t available on the x86 version), and increased hardware compatibility on all fronts, bundle their complete iPlanet software line up with it, I could see Dell selling x86 servers with Solaris Server Suite ( Solaris + complete iPlanet line up ) and SUN making a boot load of money.
As for UltraSparc, there is nothing wrong with their hardware, they just need to cut prices. Look at IBM, as soon as they lowered the price of their Power4 based AIX machines, they zoomed ahead in the performance benchmarks. SUN need to get over their Texas Instrument addiction and start outsourcing all their hardware assembling and actually start getting UMC and TSMC making the bulk of the Sparc line up instead of the token amount, aka, Ultra Sparc IIe, which they outsourced to UMC and TSMC.
Both UMC and TSMC are VERY capable companies and could easily provide SUN with the economies of scale to cut down the per-unit price. If the can get the price of their CPU’s down to something equaling that of the Xeon SMP pricing (maybe slightly higher), then things would start to get interesting.
The version of Solaris x86 I recently test drove was pretty damned fast, alot faster than Linux on the same box (Duron 650MHz, TNT2 video, 384MB RAM). The X interface was fast and efficient (if not the friendliest), and the system actually felt like Linux *used* to feel like. Linux, with it’s zeal to hit all targets with one kernel, has become big, cumbersome, and slow. Not to mention that Linux still doesn’t respect the user anymore than it respects apache running in the background in current stable kernels shipped in distros (no foreground boost in RedHat, and I don’t know if this feature is even in a 2.4 kernel — isn’t 2.5 devel??).
Before someone calls me to task on this with no data, what are some benchmarks I could run for you that can test the OS? I would estimate that Solaris 9/x86 could win 7/10 of almost any matchup (unless you pick synthetic benchmarks that Linux excels at anyway).
I really think most of the “know it all” college kids (as usual) here are comparing Solaris 7/x86. Solaris x86 has come a long way since then…
ChipSlush
That sounds right, from my experience anyway. The SUN X drivers are VERY good, however, once you throw on the XFree86 ones, prepare for a disappointment. From what I have heard, however, there is a reason. The XFree86 porting kit is only meant to be a “half way house” and that the drivers are meant to eventually be ported natively to Xsun. IMHO, SUN should egt their act together and first of all port the Matrox drivers to Xsun. That would help ALOT of workstation users right now who the majority use Matrox graphic cards because of their awsome stability, multi-screen capabilities and down right awsome colour accuracy.
I’m sure its quite dandy, but I have yet to successfully install it.
Is there more than one [email protected]? The reason I ask is because on Feb 10, 2003, you (or someone posing as you) joined my Solaris x86 list and troll-ed it with (an unsubstantiated) “Slowaris” crap post.
But contrary to what you now claim, back then you claimed to have successfully installed Solaris 9 x86:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/43816
“I’ve only just begun to play with Solaris …”
Most benchmarks (in so far as what I’ve seen) show that, in general, Linux is speedier and quite spritely. …
That also contradicts what you said previously:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/43853
“My own tests thus far show little to no performance
differences for what I’m doing, …”
You also claimed (but never provided proof) that somewhere you had seen benchmarks that showed SMP Linux performed better than SMP Solaris x86. Have you found those benchmarks results yet? Or were they a figment of your imagination just like your claim that you couldn’t get Solaris x86 to install?
BTW, if you couldn’t install Solaris x86, then how come you’re still a member of my Solaris x86 list and are still signed up to receive “Individual Emails”? The traffic on the Solaris x86 list isn’t horribly large, but it seems to me that you got 1000+ emails per month that are of no use to you if you’re not actually using Solaris x86.
[i]I would advise all current Linux users to switch to Solaris x86. It is much better and unencumbered by obviously stolen code.[i]
[i]The same is true for the various *BSDs. [i]
Although I don’t want to give the SCO FUD any credence, this is not the case for the *BSDs. *BSDs based on 44bsd-lite have a court settlement saying that their code base is unencumbered by AT&T/USL/Novell Unix code. (I’m not sure why you brought up the BSDs, unlike their earlier OS “SunOS”, based on an encumbered BSD, Solaris is basically System V. Besides, Sun has always had Unix licenses directly from AT&T so this is not an issue for them at all.)
Considering the nature of Linux and the free BSDs this is not really an issue for them either; I’d say they have a better future ahead of them than SCO, who’s entire profit margin this quarter comes from their ability to spread FUD; FUD, in the age of the net, is not a long-term business model. 🙂
Oops, sorry about the previous comment, only the first two lines should be italicized as they aren’t mine.
Even brilliantly managed companies with great products go broke when times change. Sun may simply fail regardless of any action it takes.
Yes, its the same guy – but I hardly think this, or my past post constitutes “Trolling.” In the mailing list I *asked* for peoples opinions on the matter, stating that I heard the whole “Slowlaris” line like everyone else. Is that trolling? Here I also stated repeatedly that I rather like Sun and Solaris, I admire its technical achievements. Trolling? No, I hadn’t yet gotten it installed and its frustrated me to no end. From my angle it seems like a really rough port, like how Linux PPC was four years ago.
Me thinks theres a difference between trolling and opinions.