> Rainer Heilke wrote: > >> It's unclear whether it will in fact need more > memory, but this > >> change has enormous other benefits that are much > more important to > >> Solaris and Sun as a whole. > > > > Hmm. I'm curious as to what these are, but that > could be for another > > day... > > Basically, it has to do with being able to decouple > software release > cycles from hardware release cycles; the current boot > architecture tends > to make those too much in lockstep.
Hmm, OK. While I may not understand the exact details, I can understand this core need. > One thing I try to be careful about is separating > OpenSolaris the code > based from Solaris the product. We'd like to make > the former flexible > enough to serve many markets, even if we don't > actually do so with the > latter. That's a good point; I tend to over-generalize the concept that what happens in OpenSolaris will get rolled back into Solaris. I see this as being more difficult for Sun as time goes on and the two diverge, but that is an issue for Sun as a company to address internally. You have some very bright minds; I'm sure a couple or three have thought of this already. :-) Pulling this back again to the installer, though, Sun may find it a little harder to reap the benefits of the OpenSolaris installer changes if Solaris (the product) requirements preclude much of a change to how the installer functions "under the covers". Sun would, essentially, have to duplicate the work already done on the one framework (the OpenSolaris installer) to make it work on the Solaris (the product) installer's framework, assuming they find the changes beneficial to the Solaris product. <shrug> I'll just repeat my statement that Sun will need to make it clear to the end users that Solaris will require X system hardware (memory, specifically) to install and run. Meanwhile, OpenSolaris will only require Y, and some distros will work and install with even less. As this moves forward, this could be hosted on OpenSolaris.org (maybe in the docs or distros area) as a table, letting potential adopters know minimum needs before downloading several Gigs worth of data. This table could then be managed by the OpenSolaris community, only needing the feedback from Sun as to what Solaris SPARC and Solaris x86/64 will need. If the various distro maintainers and Sun were willing to keep me in the loop, as a member of the docs community, I would be willing to maintain such a table. (However, Sun should also maintain the Solaris 10 requirements on the www.sun.com Solaris 10 page for those potential users that have not arrived there by way of the OpenSolaris.org path.) Rainer This message posted from opensolaris.org
