afusion Posted August 8, 2008 Share Posted August 8, 2008 I'm interested to know what Linux users think of Open Solaris. Does it have potential? Will it achieve Ubuntu Popularity and dominance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fix-this! Posted August 8, 2008 Share Posted August 8, 2008 honestly ive never heard of it, but if it's anything like ubuntu, im sure ill digg it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afusion Posted August 8, 2008 Author Share Posted August 8, 2008 honestly ive never heard of it, but if it's anything like ubuntu, im sure ill digg it. Well it does use the latest Gnome like Hardy does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
night_stalker_z Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 Open Solaris looks a lot better than Ubuntu IMO. Haven't used it since it won't install on my system as it requires a minimum of 768MB RAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rson451 Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 I'm sorry, but judging a *nix OS by looks is very superficial since all can be made to look like each other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
night_stalker_z Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 I know. The only other thing I can is that it requires much higher specs than other *nixes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PL_ Veteran Posted August 9, 2008 Veteran Share Posted August 9, 2008 I couldn't get this to work under Parallels on OS X :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowstick Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 (edited) I know. The only other thing I can is that it requires much higher specs than other *nixes. No it doesn't. Does it have potential? Will it achieve Ubuntu Popularity and dominance? It's geared towards stability, self-healing and doesn't have a license nor rabid community that wants every thing under the sun open source or not be looked at (i.e. the driver vs. patent situation a la NVidia). The focus on the kernel is entirely different than in Linux. The 2008.05 release should still be considered beta, tho. The problem here is momentum and driver support. Ubuntu has way more momentum, and OpenSolaris' driver support isn't the best, but also not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. See my sig, that hardware's run without problems. If Sun's giving it an effort, it can make it a very attractive option, primarily for enterprise first, tho. Things needed to make it more popular would be finally starting the stable repository (the current one gets updated biweekly with the newest bits*) and filling it with third party applications beyond what's delivered with Solaris Express. (*: Which shouldn't be a problem, since they're operating on a production code quality mentality. Means public bi-weekly bits are close to production quality. Wonky features won't hit the main gate until they're stable. Similar to BSD development.) Edited August 9, 2008 by Tom Servo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunny155 Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 I ordered a free Open Solaris DVD. I installed it in Virtual Box and its very slow in VM even after allotting 1 GB of DDR2 RAM. Installation took more than 2 hours. Open Solaris is not Linux, its Unix and its meant for Software Development for Solaris Platform especially in Laptop (as the documentation says). I think you should try Solaris 10 i didnt installed it but i know it low in requirement than Open Solaris. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowstick Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 VM performance isn't indicative for real hardware performance. Going by that, DragonflyBSD would be really ****, since it crawls like hell in VirtualBox, yet flies on real hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowstick Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 I guess I have to repeat this here, too, after posting it in the other thread. The situation with Solaris is going from an Apple-esque only on Sun hardware situation (mostly SPARC) to the broad x86 world. Subsystems have to be put in place, drivers have to be created, the kernel adapted, and so on. Considering how Solaris, like BSD, is designed (especially since enterprise is a target) and not hacked and patched, this takes a while. For instance, power management is a big one. On SPARC, it has stellar support for power management, on x86 it's still ongoing work since x86 is only an accepted platform at Sun since the release of AMD64. In short that means that you shouldn't expect wonders at kernel level. The userland is practically the same as with any other *nix. Though in the case of Solaris, you still have to compile a lot of things from source (and witness how so-called portability proves as bull****) until there are OpenSolaris IPS repositories with third party stuff (coming). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Budious Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 Though in the case of Solaris, you still have to compile a lot of things from source (and witness how so-called portability proves as bull****) until there are OpenSolaris IPS repositories with third party stuff (coming). If they can make the process similar to FreeBSD's /usr/ports and "make clean install" then I don't mind compiling from source repositories. I'll get OpenSolaris a spin when they get those features in place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glowstick Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 They're not going the ports way. For Project Indiana, they've written this package repository from scratch, integrating ZFS functionality (ZFS clones for system updates, rollback for botched installs, etc). If at all, it'll be binary packages all the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmd3x Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 It is a great idea, awesome, worth a try and... ZFS is sick! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afusion Posted August 10, 2008 Author Share Posted August 10, 2008 wish they had a x64 version, maybe sometime next year Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisj1968 Posted August 10, 2008 Share Posted August 10, 2008 I guess I have to repeat this here, too, after posting it in the other thread.The situation with Solaris is going from an Apple-esque only on Sun hardware situation (mostly SPARC) to the broad x86 world. Subsystems have to be put in place, drivers have to be created, the kernel adapted, and so on. Considering how Solaris, like BSD, is designed (especially since enterprise is a target) and not hacked and patched, this takes a while. For instance, power management is a big one. On SPARC, it has stellar support for power management, on x86 it's still ongoing work since x86 is only an accepted platform at Sun since the release of AMD64. In short that means that you shouldn't expect wonders at kernel level. The userland is practically the same as with any other *nix. Though in the case of Solaris, you still have to compile a lot of things from source (and witness how so-called portability proves as bull****) until there are OpenSolaris IPS repositories with third party stuff (coming). this has been adapted with the linux'esque "Nexenta" OS. the opensolaris OS with Ubuntu's Gnome desktop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mouldy Punk Posted August 10, 2008 Share Posted August 10, 2008 Looks like linux. And yes. I did mean to sound as vague as I could with that :p I think it'd be impossible to judge it without trying it. And to be perfectly honest, I cannot be bothered to try it. I've been using linux on and off for a few years now, and it's come a long way on the desktop scene. Using Open Solaris just seems like a step back into the days where things were less friendly. The days where you had to manually hunt around the web for tutorials and articles to get even the most basic hardware working to some degree. Now, like I said, it'd be impossible to judge it properly without trying it - I'm just going by what I've heard from other people's experience with open solaris. The general jist seems to be, it's linux 3 years ago with a bit more gloss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran Posted August 11, 2008 Veteran Share Posted August 11, 2008 Looks like Gnome. Oh, yes, well that was the desktop I got when I tried it. It's cool, but I couldn't get a few things running, and when I tried to find support online (free advice), I couldn't, for my needs at least. So I went back to Ubuntu, which works on my machine (with a couple of easy-to-find internet-provided tweaks). OpenSolaris is cool though, and I wish it luck. Sun is cool too for being such good supporters of free software. :yes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrunkenMaster Posted August 11, 2008 Share Posted August 11, 2008 I ordered a Solaris developer DVD (it was free). It took one hour to install (comparable Slackware or Windows install is under 25 minutes on my computer). I don't know about OpenSolaris, but X was so buggered up that I couldn't fix it after first install and configuration. IMO, there's not much in "userland" to distinguish BSD from Linux from Solaris. XFS is pretty cool though from end-user perspective. And if they all decide to open-source their development efforts and desktop customization, you can end up with mostly the same desktop environment anyways. For most of use desktop users, the APPS make the OS work or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealexweb Posted August 11, 2008 Share Posted August 11, 2008 It wasn't as fast as I thought it was going to be, won't run well unless you have at least a 1GB of ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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