OpenSolaris?

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red-e-made
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OpenSolaris?

Post by red-e-made »

Look who else is hopping on the bandwagon.
OpenSolaris will challenge Linux says Sun

Sun seeks to apply the lessons of Linux and turn open source Solaris into an operating system to rival Linux and to be as commonly used as Java.

Sun Microsystems has ambitious plans for the commercial and open-source versions of its Solaris operating system, hoping to achieve for Solaris the kind of ubiquity already enjoyed by Java.

"There's an enormous momentum building behind Solaris," said Ian Murdock, chief operating platforms officer at Sun. He joined Sun in March after serving as the chief technology officer of the Linux Foundation. Murdock is also the creator of the Debian Linux distribution and is keen to take the lessons he's learned in the Linux community and apply them to Solaris.

Sun is preparing to release OpenSolaris binaries early next year in a distribution code-named "Project Indiana" that will be similar to Linux distributions. The work, which is getting under way in the OpenSolaris community, is aimed at creating a single CD installation of the basic OS and desktop environment, giving developers the option to install additional software from network repositories.
More in the link. It's a pretty interesting story.

Thoughts?
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scorp123
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Re: OpenSolaris?

Post by scorp123 »

red-e-made wrote:Thoughts?
SUN's hardware is really really nice. But guess what: We run Linux on it :lol:

Why oh why do all those once great hardware makers such as SUN and/or HP believe they should do "more" but great hardware? Nope, instead they try to mimic Dell (e.g. HP tried that ... and failed) or Apple (looks like Sun is going that route??), or they dream of "replacing" Linux with OpenSolaris ... muhahahaha. Dream on. :lol:

As for OpenSolaris ... Is it really as "open" as they want to make us believe? I doubt it ... unless they release it under the GPL and really allow "us" (= the community) to tinker with it. But their "Sun CDDL" (the original license OpenSolaris was released under) is not really "open" and as far as I have been told it is incompatible to the GPL. So for the time being, the OpenSolaris kernel still will be from Sun, e.g. a modified Solaris kernel. It will probably run great on Sun hardware and similar server hardware of other vendors ... but as far as consumer hardware support is concerned, it won't be able to beat Linux for many years to come. Maybe this will change one day ... but not today, tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. In five years maybe, depending on how well they're progressing.

For comparison: Look at the BSD's ... they started around the same time Linus mentioned his "meaningless private little project" on the Internet for the first time ... and now please look where that "meaningless private little project" is (= in the server rooms! running on multi-million $$ hardware!! On corporate desktops! In embedded devices! On most web servers of the world .... !) and now look where the BSD's are (fringe group! Even more exotic and rare than Linux!) and look where the commercial UNIX vendors are and what they did with their 1970's head-start and "advantage" they long enjoyed over Linux -- they're almost extinct now!! Linux isn't killing Windows ... it's killing HP-UX, AIX and Solaris :lol: (and rightly so!)

And no, I don't count Apple's Mac OS X as being a "BSD". They changed so much stuff that MacOS X is hardly recognisable as a UNIX-like OS. So even though MacOS X is based on BSD, it's a totally different animal now.

And nope, I am not anti-SUN. I will give SUN the credit for being a truly innovative company (TCP/IP, NFS, opensourcing of StarOffice = birth of OpenOffice.org ... ) .. but they should stop fighting Linux and instead come to terms with it. Their continued anti-Linux propaganda ("OpenSolaris is the better Linux than Linux ...") is such a waste of time and energy. That's what really makes me sad about Sun.

But I shall forgive them if only they continue to produce amazing server hardware on which Linux runs so smoothly :D
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