> Why is it though that it appears many gnu tools have > been adopted for > Opensolaris? Is it just to try to make a transition > for linux users a > little less painful or something to do with > licensing?
Somehow someone at Sun figured that they wanted to woo all the Linux developers over to Solaris and to build up user base. The flaw in that logic is that hardcore Linux developers WILL NOT migrate to SunOS, and the users that would migrate can't tell one from the other anyway, because they aren't technical enough; those should have been brought up to speed on System V, not given a crutch, AND generate enormous amounts of system engineering bringing GNU userland on top of SunOS in the process; those system engineering efforts could have been better spent elsewhere (like finally getting USB and volume management to work correctly!) Most of those users aren't technical enough to use the command line tools anyway, as is plain visible from many of the posts and questions here. Hence a severe logic flaw. Another reason for bringing GNU into SunOS is that much of the free open source software has been migrated from Solaris to GNU/Linux in the mid- to late '90s,, and now REQUIRE tools like GNU make, GNU AWK, and the GNU C Compiler to build. One of the reasons for this state of affairs is that for the longest time, Sun Microsystems did not release their professional compilers for free; another reason is that SPARC hardware was too expensive, and support for the i86pc platform was flaky. It wasn't until the community of Solaris (not OpenSolaris!) users and sysadmins lobbied and stood up, that Sun management changed its mind; otherwise, in their folly, they would have dropped the i86pc port completely. Ironically, because Sun hardware was (and still is) so expensive, it made one guy so angry, that he started writing his own UNIX-like operating system for i386; the OS he started back then is now known as "GNU/Linux". You might know this guy by the name of Linus Torvalds. > Its probably getting far off topic for the thread but > I wondered if > you might list a few of the major deficiencies of gnu > tools you are > referring to. I already mentioned some (:-) GNU stands for "GNU is not UNIX": tools implement other tools inside of them; the usage is inconsistent; no forward or backward compatibility guarantees (in fact, no guarantees in that respect of any kind!), no full POSIX compliance; deviation from accepted UNIX standards and practices, in the "we know better than professional engineers that have been doing this for the last 40 years" style. And the GNU tools are mostly inferior products in terms of performance: for example, GNU AWK is slower than System V AWK (this has been chewed into oblivion on the Usenet); or GCC generates slower code than any vendor's compilers (Sun Studio will trod GCC into the ground in hands of a person who knows what they are doing); or the GNU tar utility generating broken / incompatible tar archives (and implementing a compressor, something a Tape ARchiver is NOT supposed to do!), or GNU make breaking compatibility with regular System V make (GNU Makefiles cannot be processed by System V make as it stands right now). And let's not forget bash: a broken "we know better" replacement for Korn and Bourne shells. But here, then, is the real kicker: I with my knowledge of System V can burn and tear through GNU/Linux *anything* with ease; but someone weened off on the "GNU diet", is hopelessly lost on a System V system. And with knowledge of Solaris, I can use *any* System V UNIX (HP-UX, IRIX for instance) without breaking a sweat, since they're System V UNIX based too. What angers me the most is that such people perceive System V as deficient, while in reality System V can do anything GNU can, and then some (clue in the ACL fiasco again), provided one knows what one is doing. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
