LinuxQuestions.org
Help answer threads with 0 replies.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Other *NIX Forums > Solaris / OpenSolaris
User Name
Password
Solaris / OpenSolaris This forum is for the discussion of Solaris, OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana, and illumos.
General Sun, SunOS and Sparc related questions also go here. Any Solaris fork or distribution is welcome.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 08-29-2007, 08:19 AM   #1
kebabbert
Member
 
Registered: Jul 2005
Posts: 527

Rep: Reputation: 46
Solaris gaining momentum?


It seems that the number of solaris posts has increased lately, when compared to FreeBSD forum numbers? Or is it just imagination?
 
Old 08-29-2007, 09:28 AM   #2
MensaWater
LQ Guru
 
Registered: May 2005
Location: Atlanta Georgia USA
Distribution: Redhat (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, CoreOS, Debian, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, SCO
Posts: 7,831
Blog Entries: 15

Rep: Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669
This kind of comparison is specious. Number of posts in and of themselves indicate nothing. One person will assume that a high number of posts means a high number of users whereas someone else will assume it means a high number of problems.

I've seen this argument before about Debian vs Fedora.
 
Old 08-29-2007, 05:48 PM   #3
jlliagre
Moderator
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Outside Paris
Distribution: Solaris 11.4, Oracle Linux, Mint, Ubuntu/WSL
Posts: 9,788

Rep: Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492
Solaris used to be somewhat elitist when it was only commercial and closed source. Its market was at that time mostly "limited" to the professional so it wasn't a hot topic within the Free and Open Source Software community.

This started to change when Solaris was first made freely downloadable then gradually open sourced. The fact it supports more and more entry level hardware helps too.

It's no surprise more and more people visit and use the LQ Solaris forum.
 
Old 08-29-2007, 09:20 PM   #4
choogendyk
Senior Member
 
Registered: Aug 2007
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Distribution: Solaris 9 & 10, Mac OS X, Ubuntu Server
Posts: 1,197

Rep: Reputation: 105Reputation: 105
However, Solaris has been on x86 for quite a while. When I made the transition into Unix, my employer sent me to a series of 6 full week commercial courses. They had a classroom full of PCs that dual booted between linux and Solaris. We split our time between the 2 OS's for comparison and did installs of Solaris. My classes began in 1998, and they were pretty well established.

Solaris users have used open source software for a long time. Sunfreeware has been around all the time I've been using Solaris.

The transition of Solaris itself to open source is much more recent.

I've been on the Sunmanagers list for years. But that list assumes you already know a fair bit and aren't wasting anyone's time. It's a little hard to interpret reasons for traffic here on LQ. Could be Solaris people getting more cross platform and doing linux and or BSD as well as Solaris. Could be new people coming into Solaris and looking for a forum that is more receptive to beginners questions.
 
Old 08-29-2007, 11:30 PM   #5
rossonieri#1
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2007
Posts: 359

Rep: Reputation: 34
hmmm...
we have tried a bit harder to just promote the solaris system,
but still many of our reseller friends - still make the solaris os exclusive - especially the SPARC architecture, way too expensive just to knowing what is it. cant imagine that.

cheers..
 
Old 08-30-2007, 01:33 AM   #6
jlliagre
Moderator
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Outside Paris
Distribution: Solaris 11.4, Oracle Linux, Mint, Ubuntu/WSL
Posts: 9,788

Rep: Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492
Quote:
Originally Posted by choogendyk View Post
However, Solaris has been on x86 for quite a while.
Indeed, Solaris 2.1 was ported in 1992 to x86.
Quote:
When I made the transition into Unix, my employer sent me to a series of 6 full week commercial courses. They had a classroom full of PCs that dual booted between linux and Solaris. We split our time between the 2 OS's for comparison and did installs of Solaris. My classes began in 1998, and they were pretty well established.
Yes, that is what I mean by elitist. Commercial classes weren't for the mainstream hobbyist users. Solaris price used to be limiting its use by companies and almost not by individuals.
Quote:
Solaris users have used open source software for a long time.
Since Sun was created by BSD's main architect Bill Joy. SunOS was (one of) the preferred open source development platforms, especially the Gnu tools. Linux has taken the leadership in that position during the last 10 years or so though.
Quote:
Sunfreeware has been around all the time I've been using Solaris.
Yes, it was founded in 1994.
Quote:
The transition of Solaris itself to open source is much more recent.
Indeed, two years and a bit.
Quote:
I've been on the Sunmanagers list for years. But that list assumes you already know a fair bit and aren't wasting anyone's time. It's a little hard to interpret reasons for traffic here on LQ.
There has been several millions of free Solaris licenses distributed. This is obviously generating some momentum.
Quote:
Could be Solaris people getting more cross platform and doing linux and or BSD as well as Solaris. Could be new people coming into Solaris and looking for a forum that is more receptive to beginners questions.
I guess both of these reasons.
 
Old 08-30-2007, 01:38 AM   #7
jlliagre
Moderator
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Outside Paris
Distribution: Solaris 11.4, Oracle Linux, Mint, Ubuntu/WSL
Posts: 9,788

Rep: Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492
Quote:
Originally Posted by rossonieri#1 View Post
hmmm...
we have tried a bit harder to just promote the solaris system,
but still many of our reseller friends - still make the solaris os exclusive - especially the SPARC architecture, way too expensive just to knowing what is it. cant imagine that.
That's funny when you know SPARC is probably the only open architecture (Any chip maker can build a SPARC compliant CPU without risking to be sued) and very likely the only one with a GPL implementation (UltraSPARC T).
 
Old 08-30-2007, 07:08 AM   #8
MensaWater
LQ Guru
 
Registered: May 2005
Location: Atlanta Georgia USA
Distribution: Redhat (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, CoreOS, Debian, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, SCO
Posts: 7,831
Blog Entries: 15

Rep: Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669
SPARC lost a lot of its luster when the now infamous "cosmic ray" affected chips appeared in the (then) top of the line E10000 and other systems.

One large network gear maker I worked for had an SVP who stated rather emphatically he'd never use Sun again for the ERP/Data Warehouse side of the house. (Despite that we did have one Sun box for ftp purposes but I gathered it was just because that was the newest one we'd bought before the ban.)

Another pharamaceutical company I worked at had used E10000 for an interim solution and for an earlier solution and it was assumed they would use it for the long term solution as well but ultimately lost out to IBM due to the SPARC issues.

Sun didn't learn anything from Intel's Pentium fiasco of a few years earlier. They did almost the same thing. First they denied there was an issue, then they made people sign NDAs before they'd admit there was an issue, then when it was generally known they first tried to say you had to pay for the upgrade to the new Sombra chips and only at the end did they relent and say it would be free. Even then they didn't produce them fast enough so tried to limit one's ability to get the new ones all at once.
 
Old 08-30-2007, 07:30 AM   #9
jlliagre
Moderator
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Outside Paris
Distribution: Solaris 11.4, Oracle Linux, Mint, Ubuntu/WSL
Posts: 9,788

Rep: Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492
Well, we have already talked about it a couple of times and obviously you won't change your opinion so I will refrain to reopen this can of worms ...

Anyway, I have no doubt the UltraSPARC T and T2 are properly designed to resist cosmic rays damages.
 
Old 08-30-2007, 11:52 AM   #10
MensaWater
LQ Guru
 
Registered: May 2005
Location: Atlanta Georgia USA
Distribution: Redhat (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, CoreOS, Debian, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, SCO
Posts: 7,831
Blog Entries: 15

Rep: Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669
Even the Sombra modules they replaced the "cosmic ray affected" chips were OK. I wasn't stating that SPARC didn't have a place now but rather noting why it had lost some of its luster previously. I rather enjoyed working on the E10Ks. In fact it was my experience working on them that got me to the head of a line at the pharmaceutical when I was looking for a job during the tech bust of 2001. I knew people with far more Solaris experience that couldn't get an interview because they didn't specifically have E10K experience. Silly but true and to my benefit at the time. (Of course when they later went to IBM they didn't have a position that I wanted because the main server was going to be mainframe and I wasn't interested in just maintaining small AIX application servers so I guess I could count the SPARC as the reason the job went away.)

I still prefer HP-UX to Solaris but that's for entirely different reasons.
 
Old 08-31-2007, 03:59 AM   #11
jlliagre
Moderator
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Outside Paris
Distribution: Solaris 11.4, Oracle Linux, Mint, Ubuntu/WSL
Posts: 9,788

Rep: Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492Reputation: 492
By curiosity, what do you prefer in HP-UX or are you missing in Solaris ?
 
Old 08-31-2007, 05:30 AM   #12
nx5000
Senior Member
 
Registered: Sep 2005
Location: Out
Posts: 3,307

Rep: Reputation: 57
Thumbs up

Just to say that I'm working on a satellite constellation project and we are using an ERC32 (sparc v7 or v8 I don't remember) and it can resist a lot of things and is very reliable. That's basically the only one used in space field. It's now going to be checked for EMC tests, vibrations and others.
 
Old 08-31-2007, 09:55 AM   #13
MensaWater
LQ Guru
 
Registered: May 2005
Location: Atlanta Georgia USA
Distribution: Redhat (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, CoreOS, Debian, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, SCO
Posts: 7,831
Blog Entries: 15

Rep: Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlliagre View Post
By curiosity, what do you prefer in HP-UX or are you missing in Solaris ?
Some of my Preferences:
1) LVM out of the box (and no disk partitioning required). I like this better than Solstice disksuite which I thought was horrid. (This LVM is almost exactly like the one found in Linux but was there before the Linux one.) Of course VxVM is available on both but the difference is on HP-UX it's more a choice than a necessity to use VxVM.
2) Better integrated admin utility (SAM - does it all as opposed to admintool and various others on Solaris).
3) PA-RISC systems have ctrl-B to get to firmware/vfd etc... similar to crtl-A on SPARC systems to go to openboot - however ctrl-B doesn't suspend the OS like stop-A.
4) Device nomenclature
5) HP-UX doesn't have all the old berkeleyisms in it so the plethora of confusing paths and symlinks seen in Solaris just doesn't exist.

Note that in the above I call those "preferences". You'll probably argue that some or all of these things are actually strengths in Solaris. To me that will be your "preferences" which is just a way of saying we both have our own "opinions" about the way things should work.

Funny story on #3 - When I was at a telecom and we first switched our DB from Sybase to Oracle and used Sun/Solaris machines for that we weren't aware of this difference. On of my coworkers was looking at a machine's obp on a Friday afternoon when I told him about it. On Monday I got a call that the server was "down". Recalling our conversation I walked over to his cube (he wasn't in yet) and found the obp still showing in the console session on his workstation. Told it go and everything was fine.

P.S. One thing I did prefer about Sun over HP was training documentation.

Last edited by MensaWater; 08-31-2007 at 09:56 AM.
 
Old 08-31-2007, 10:22 AM   #14
Shadoglare
Member
 
Registered: Feb 2007
Location: Illinois
Distribution: OpenSUSE
Posts: 39

Rep: Reputation: 15
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlliagre View Post
Yes, that is what I mean by elitist. Commercial classes weren't for the mainstream hobbyist users. Solaris price used to be limiting its use by companies and almost not by individuals.
That, and the users were pretty darned elitist as well. I remember when I first started trying to learn it (several years ago, before it went open), although Linux forums have always been very helpful and friendly, the same certainly wasn't the case with Solaris forums,and I checked out several.
Pretty much any question asked would get you the "RTFM" response. Even if you explain you already did RTFM and it didn't answer your question.
The Solaris community is actually probably one of the main reasons I decided it wasn't worth my time.
 
Old 08-31-2007, 10:30 AM   #15
MensaWater
LQ Guru
 
Registered: May 2005
Location: Atlanta Georgia USA
Distribution: Redhat (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, CoreOS, Debian, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, SCO
Posts: 7,831
Blog Entries: 15

Rep: Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669Reputation: 1669
Funny - when I went to the Solaris Admin boot camp training (5 x 12 hour days for Syadmin I and II - for experienced admins) - many of the folks were already Solaris admins and they unmercifully tortured the one guy there that was an NT admin. IMO he had it coming though because the course was clearly labeled as "for experienced UNIX admins" and this guy was holding the rest of us back. He should have taken the regular two weeks of Sysadmin I and II which are aimed at new UNIX admins.

The main issue I had with the sun list was the volume of email compared to the HP-UX list. On every list you'll find people saying "RTFM" or "google is your friend" without ever seeming to offer any real help - I always wonder what kind of childhood abuse these folks suffered that they would actually subscribe to lists for people to ask questions then get annoyed when people asked questions.

Last edited by MensaWater; 08-31-2007 at 10:33 AM.
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
LXer: Why Open Source and Linux Are Losing Momentum LXer Syndicated Linux News 2 07-17-2007 04:42 PM
LXer: In Germany: Firefox, Linux, Mac OSX gaining further momentum, Microsoft losing marketshare LXer Syndicated Linux News 0 12-08-2006 12:54 AM
LXer: Mobile Linux gains momentum LXer Syndicated Linux News 0 08-17-2006 05:54 AM
LXer: MySQL Builds Momentum in Telecommunications Sector LXer Syndicated Linux News 0 06-15-2006 07:21 PM
LXer: Symantec's Really Bad Year Gains Momentum LXer Syndicated Linux News 0 05-27-2006 01:54 AM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Other *NIX Forums > Solaris / OpenSolaris

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 01:46 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration