> Yes. This is another reason to switch to Linux. On this platform most > applcations for Unix-like systems will be supported. And on Solaris when you > need some program not from top 100 list ( for example, fsvs, a lot of user > applications), you more often should dance with tambourines and dig into > application code to make it work...
That is true because the development of those apps is Linux-centric and making them work on anything else is an afterthought. Therefore, the greater availability of apps is also not free of trade-offs. Such a development approach will have more stability problems, as well as tending to lock you into the platform. The open-source-must-rule GPL-is-the-best-license Linux-is-all-that-matters crowd always considers themselves morally superior to Microsoft, but if the effect either way is lock-in, I personally think that's still a problem. If their engineering discipline and compliance with platform-neutral standards were better, I'd say that at least their ideology didn't cause other problems, although I'd still find it impractical - what do I care if someone wants to add a little functionality to open-source software and then call it a proprietary appliance? My _printer_ (Ricoh CL3500N) runs some flavor or another of BSD rather than Liux for that reason, that they didn't want to fool with how much of their proprietary bits they might have to open. I admit I wish they had, but I don't really need them to have had. The problem I have with them is that they're horrible about providing advanced info on how to do stuff like upload fonts, forms, and the like to an internal disk, since they only provide a tool for that which runs on Windows. All they'd have to have done is released some info on how to _use_ the printer fully, that's little different from what it would be on similar printers from a competitor. That's also another example of why I think being open about standards, formats, protocols, and communication is even more important that the source code being open. Most people just want to _use_ the darn thing, or maybe sometimes write a tool that will interact with it in reasonable ways, for platforms that don't already have such a tool. I'd enjoy OS hacking if I really had time to get into it, but most people would rather be able to take the OS for granted. > I would consider Solaris/OpenSolaris for new > deployments if it had free updates. Otherwise for me > it is unnecessary waste of money for support (at > least, at campus). One can still just upgrade once or twice a year for free; there are overall updates roughly that often. (give or take whether the license for Solaris allows you to use it in the capacity that you want to use it for) OpenSolaris upgrades to new builds (as opposed to fixes to an existing build) are also free, right? A support contract gives you patches to an existing build in addition to overall updates. It also gives you some assurance that someone will at least acknowledge, and perhaps even constructively respond to, any bugs you may encounter. On Solaris, if you plan for it by having enough space (easier with zfs root), you can use Live Upgrade, such that you can (a) create a new boot environment from the existing one, (b) update the new boot environment with either patches or an upgrade, and (c) reboot into the new environment, still having the option to revert to the old environment. Not sure the present status, but a somewhat similar capability is said to be in the works for OpenSolaris as well, last I heard. Patches (or individual package updates) to an existing build are mostly an issue for systems one wants to keep not so much bleeding edge as stable and secure. Security alone could be achieved with upgrades (free) instead, except that they may not be timely enough. So it depends on what model you want, and what sort of support you consider sufficient. With most Linux distros, even if you didn't have to pay for anything, you'd effectively have to do more work yourself (in terms of tracking issues and determining what updates were stable enough to use, even if not in terms of building anything) than you would with a good support contract. Nothing is ever truly free; consider the cost of having additional bodies of your own to handle keeping track of everything one has to with a distro where both the distro and all updates are free. I don't know about BSDs in general, but the sort-of BSD derived Mac OS X XNU kernel (Mach + in-kernel BSD code) has MacPorts, which is a bunch of common Linux+BSD applications in source form, using the "ports" packaging approach originating on (some flavor of) BSD. Problem is, it's source-based, so if there is some combination of builds and/or build options that doesn't work or doesn't satisfy dependencies, you're out of date on some things until that gets resolved (and building everything yourself from source is _slow_, even when it's painless). Other than that (wanting the option of binary apps and updates, in known-to-work-together combinations), personally I'd prefer FreeBSD to Linux, depending on what my needs were (i.e. driver and apps support), due to BSD sharing more recognizable lineage with Unix, zfs, and that I'd have less problems with the ideology that comes with FreeBSD than that which Linux tends to be burdened with. (I like the BSD license better than the ideological baggage of the GPL, and I think the BSD developers come from a more disciplined tradition - more like engineers than like a bunch of very talented but largely self-taught people that are perhaps short on concepts like standards, interfaces, layering, and the like.) And last I heard, Linux SystemTap was nowhere near what DTrace can do, although if one takes into account whatever limitations of DTrace on FreeBSD may be, perhaps the difference isn't quite as great. At one time it was the case that you'd pay more for RedHat support than you do for Solaris. Right now, it doesn't look that way to me, but the situation may not necessarily have finished changing yet. Companies that have to pay salaries can't give away both the software _and_ the maintenance, they've pretty much got to charge for one or the other. Solaris is meant to be stable; some things get backported, but not everything. OpenSolaris is (or at any rate has been, I don't know to what degree anyone is 100% comfortable with what Oracle might do) where the development takes place. It's much more leading edge than Solaris, but you definitely have to be prepared to have a test system _or_ to wait with upgrading to the latest build until you hear how it's doing before throwing it willy-nilly onto "production" systems. Not that it can't be used on production systems, some places do; but it would require great care and wouldn't be appropriate for all sorts of production systems. Whatever you do, expect to re-evaluate in maybe six months to a year. (IMO) Sun mostly seemed to "get it" when it comes to the value of being in an educational setting, namely that if they interest people there, they're likely to have a foot in the door with the next generation of paying customers. OTOH, Sun did have some trouble making a profit. Whether Oracle figures out how to achieve a balance that puts (Open)Solaris where it will be likeliest to be adopted and flourish, while still being able to have it (and associated hardware perhaps) make some profit, I think remains to be seen, and needs periodic re-evaluation. Right now, I think a lot of folks may suspect that Sun gave away too much, and Oracle gives away too little (in the free as in free beer sense, since AFAIK Oracle hasn't changed anything in terms of the free-as-in-open-source sense, except for being a lot more closed when talking about future developments). I _know_ that there are benefits to be had by separating specification and standards from implementation; but a lot of those benefits are more long-term than a lot of people care about. I _think_ there are benefits to be had by having a _loose_and_flexible_ relationship between the usage model and how development and maintenance is paid for, but I admit I'd have a harder time arguing that one. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
