Solaris 10 launch event

[bascule]

Sun is launching Solaris 10 today. The launch event will be starting shortly (12:30 PST) if you are interested in watching it

[dev_zero]

Have anyone tried solaris here? I'm thinking of setting up a small server in my home, not a big machine just a pentium 3 as a server. Is solaris a recommended os? Would you recommend it as a server os, which is going to have a nfs server, web server(apache probably), ftp server and probably some other things like a ssh server?

Thanks in advance.

[Clp727]

I downloaded the Solaris10 beta release. I like it alot! I do, however, feel that they are a bit lacking in the desktop wallpaper selection. On the other hand, I really like the task bar. The beta version has all the server options, (if I'm not mistaken) that RedHat offered in their last free version. I installed it within MS Virtual PC 2004. All of the drivers that I needed were included. They offer other hardware drivers if none are suitable for your hardware.

[skroo]

Is solaris a recommended os? Would you recommend it as a server os, which is going to have a nfs server, web server(apache probably), ftp server and probably some other things like a ssh server?

Generic reply

Seriously, though... There are a lot of OSes that'll do that. Asking this question is like asking how long a piece of string is.

[octalpus]

it isn't called 'slowaris' for nothing.

Spoken like someone who hasn't tried the new one. Seriously.

[murakami]

Spoken like someone who hasn't tried the new one. Seriously.

Has anyone been running it on server class hardware? I would like to hear your opinion. I have a duall-opteron that needs an OS.

[bascule]

You obviously have never played with Sun hardware + Solaris.

Solaris is quite snappy on all our Sun hardware here, ranging from Ultra 60s to Blade 2000 workstations. The "Slowaris" moniker applied only to previous versions of Solaris/x86, perpetuated by angsty Linux zealots who have never seen enterprise caliber hardware trying it on their home PCs and being frustrated by the previously poor quality of the port.

It's even worst on x86, a snail.

And again, further proof you haven't tried Solaris 10. The performance of IA32 has been substantially improved, and Solaris now runs natively on AMD64. Hardware compatibility has also been substantially improved, as well as the installation process. While the CLI and WebStart installers are both fairly frustrating, Solaris 10 will ship with a new installer when its general release occurs in January.

Anyone using Solaris on a workstation will definitely want to install Solaris 10. Not only is it substantially faster, but it brings the full richness of the Java Desktop System along with it. I installed it on our Blade 2000s here, and the users were quite happy to be rid of CDE.

Also, check out the power of DTrace, probably the most powerful profiling utility ever conceived. There's some crappy Linux equivalents to this (i.e. dprobes, kprobes) but they have about a tenth of the functionality.

[TheCotMan]

The "Slowaris" moniker applied only to previous versions of Solaris/x86, perpetuated by angsty Linux zealots who have never seen enterprise caliber hardware trying it on their home PCs and being frustrated by the previously poor quality of the port.

First time we encountered the name "Slowlaris" was *wayyy* back in the day, when we had been running SunOS 4.x on older sun hardware and seeing the effect in responsiveness when we upgraded to Solaris.

Perhaps Linux zealots used this as well, but we used it to compare Solaris to earlier versions of SunOS.

From my experience:
Linux is faster and more efficient with limited hardware. However, when there is serious contention for resources, Linux has not been very graceful. Considering a "stock" system (without any kind of profiling, quotas, etc) a single process can easily ruin performance of others.

Solaris has a larger requirement for operation, and needs more hardware, but seems to work better at not letting single processes monopolize system resources to the starvation of other processes.

Linux is to Solaris as prostgres is to Oracle's SQL Server.

[murakami]

Linux is to Solaris as prostgres is to Oracle's SQL Server.

I think you meant:

Linux is to Solaris as PostgresQL is to Oracle. (SQL Server being a MS product).

[TheCotMan]

I think you meant:

Linux is to Solaris as PostgresQL is to Oracle. (SQL Server being a MS product).

Oracle has a few products. I wanted to be specific on which product. Saying "We use Oracle" is similar to "We use Blackboard."

MS has tried to take ownership of service names before, like when they called MSIE "The Internet".

Limiting scope of a name like "SQL Server" means that postgres does not have a SQL Server and mysql does not have a SQL Server...

This seems silly since each usually ship with a SQL Client. ;-)

[bascule]

First time we encountered the name "Slowlaris" was *wayyy* back in the day

Nope. The moniker was applied by an older generation of geeks, just revived when Sun ported it to x86.

You two are misconstruing my statement, so let me reword it. The "Slowaris" moniker is no longer applicable to Solaris 10 on any platform. It hasn't applicable to the UltraSPARC platform for at least a decade (certainly not to any UltraSPARC II+ hardware), but has continued to be perpetuated by Linux zealots trying out the x86 version on low-end hardware. Suffice it to say that Solaris 10 is a better performer than Linux on SPARC, IA32, and AMD64...

[octalpus]

You two are misconstruing my statement, so let me reword it. The "Slowaris" moniker is no longer applicable to Solaris 10 on any platform. It hasn't applicable to the UltraSPARC platform for at least a decade (certainly not to any UltraSPARC II+ hardware), but has continued to be perpetuated by Linux zealots trying out the x86 version on low-end hardware. Suffice it to say that Solaris 10 is a better performer than Linux on SPARC, IA32, and AMD64...

Thank you bascule, you beat me to it. The new Solaris easily matches the high standards for performance you are accustomed to. The x86 version is no longer a half-assed port of a substandard OS. It was developed expressly for the use on x86. There are certainly ups and downs to any OS, but please consider the merits of the *current* version, rather than applying outdated monikers.

[skroo]

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried it on a laptop yet? I remember 8 being pretty useless on the Hitachi I used to have; just wondering if compatibility has improved at all. There's something rather appealing about running an industrial-strength Unix on the Toshiba.

[allentrace]

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried it on a laptop yet? I remember 8 being pretty useless on the Hitachi I used to have; just wondering if compatibility has improved at all. There's something rather appealing about running an industrial-strength Unix on the Toshiba.

Dells runninng Nvidia cards have problems with the drivers. And your right Toshiba makes the bests laptops, in my opinon.