On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:20 PM, Gary Bainbridge <[email protected]> wrote: > If I wanted to run a GNU/Linux distribution I would, but apparently the > decision is being made for those who like Solaris, to be made to run another > Linux-type server. > > Seriously, how long (how many years) and how much money is it going to take > to make OpenSolaris a replacement for Solaris 10? Is Oracle going to spend > that much money?
In my mind the key things that seem to be missing for it to be able to take the baton from Solaris 10 are: - Interactive text installer (apparently that came out in the last day or so) - Easy to configure automated installer. Some docs to go with the bootable AI iso would be a big help here. - The ability to host all of the media required on my own install servers - The ability to install software from a file - Speed improvements for pkg command, particularly on CMT - Package signing to ensure integrity of bits delivered. - Refactor package names - Integration with 800-USA-4SUN. Any OpenSolaris cases I have opened on a supported system have turned into redirects to mailing lists. Maybe this has improved in the past 6 months. - Stablization freeze and beta cycle Certainly, there may be other things that are missing from a Solaris 11 roadmap that no one has shared with me. However, those aren't necessarily things that keep it from being at least as good as Solaris 10. I suspect that if resources were increased to finish off the areas listed above that the beta cycle could begin with 3 - 6 months and a release could happen this year. By and large, I find that (after installation) OpenSolaris servers are nearly identical to Solaris 10 servers to administer, except when I need a feature that is unique to OpenSolaris. I generally find more value in the OpenSolaris feature set. Sure there are bleeding edge issues that crop up, but those are the things that get ironed out in stablization and beta. > To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is not remotely the best > engineering practice. Could you run Solaris 8 on a desktop? Sure. But why? > It wasn't practical. Could you use Windows 95 as a server? Probably many > did. But why? That wasn't its intended use. > > Now the OS is going to be retrofitted to make it an enterprise server? With > Solaris you can choose what you want to install. Not so with OpenSolaris. > You get what you're told. I see it just the opposite. On Solaris 10 if you are trying to create an image to work across all hardware platforms, the most supported way of doing this is to install SUNWCXall. Then you can start trimming away big things like Staroffice and the bulk of the desktop tools until you become afraid that you are going to break some application's unknown dependencies. For example, the Oracle installer never says that it needs to have X libraries (but it does if running in GUI mode) and some annoying J2EE app never mentions that it needs X fonts but it does else it can't render some text in images. Go figure. If you decide not to do flash archives on Solaris 10 and install via pkgadd instead (not nearly as painful after Casper's work on turbo charging), you can start out a lot smaller (e.g SUNWCmreq or SUNWCreq), but creation of a custom profile to bring in those annoying bits that you've learned are needed is quite a pain. If you guess wrong at install time, you will go through lots of iterations of pkgadd + error messages to try to add the other packages you need - once you figure out which uninstalled package delivers the shared library or font files that you need. In contrast, with OpenSolaris I can use AI to start out with a pretty small installation. Lots smaller than slim_install (live CD contents) - look to the packages installed in a zone by default (plus kernel bits) as a rough guide of the base install. Then add the packages that deliver the shared library or font that you need. The dependencies should automatically add the rest of the packages. I know this isn't perfect yet, but I think a beta cycle would raise the bugs and fixes for missing dependencies. If you miss something at install time, it is just as easy after the system is installed to add the required packages with automatic dependency resolution. -- Mike Gerdts http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
