Sun begins open-source Solaris era

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OpenSolaris is unique...: OpenSolaris is going to be a great addition to the current open source OS offerings. I myself primarily run Linux, but I've been patiently waiting for the open-sourcing of Solaris. I'm very curious to see how well it will be received by the OSS community. Though Linux is great in its own right, here is why I think an open-source Solaris is more attractive for most businesses:

1) OpenSolaris has patent and copyright protection. Yes, the whole SCO thing is a joke, but there may be some businesses who will not take the plunge into Linux because of preceived (or actual) legal concerns. Solaris is free and clear of any legal risks.

2) Solaris has had a stable ABI (application binary interface) for over a decade. A stable ABI means that a device drivers written today will work with a future version of Solaris years from now without the need to recode or even recompile. Linux has a major problem with this. The Linux kernel API (and obviously ABI) change frequently. If you're using a device driver (or any kernel module) that is not part of the official Linux source tree, chances are it will break from one kernel release to the next. This is frustrating and keeping many 3rd party vendors from supplying Linux drivers.

3) Solaris is unified and consistent. Though all *nix systems are about 90% the same, there do tend to be differences from one flavor to the next -- some are minor and some are major. Someone who is a wiz at administrating a Debian Linux environment may find herself searching google a lot when working with SLES. So when you want to hire someone with a "Linux" skillset, it's not as perciese as looking for a "Solaris" skillset. Additionally, I'm sure the codebase will be well organized and well commented. It will be held to development standards at Sun. Some sections of the Linux codebase are great and well documented, but much of the kernel code is confusing and has no documentation or comments at all.

4) Though Linux has IBM as a very powerful partner, you have to admit that Solaris has a much more intimate commitment from Sun. Sun (and others now that it's open source) will commit major software engineering resources to Solaris from now until forever. OpenSolaris will most likely have a more diffined road-map of features and enhansements.

5) Solaris is fast on common hardware -- no hardware vendor lock-in. Solaris 10 (which is the codebase for OpenSolaris) is currently faster than Linux (or all other OSes for that matter) on AMD Optron hardware (and obviously on SPARC hardware).

6) Solaris has great system level tools. The ZFS file system, Zones, DTrace. There are simillar tools/features in Linux, but they aren't nearly as good. JFS/XFS/ReiserFS are great, Xen is much better than UML, and strace is better than nothing, but obviously Solaris has a better offering.

I'm not a cheerleader for OpenSolaris (hard to belive huh?), I haven't even rolled Solaris out to my boxes -- I'm still running Linux. But I'm just recounting the bennefits I've eye-balled when considering the two OSes. It seems that most in the OSS community aren't sure why they need another free UNIX to consider. "Hey, we have Linux, what else do you need?" Well keep an open mind and consider the points I've listed above as unique features of Solaris/OpenSolaris and answer your own question.

-Bryan; Posted by: prime21 Posted on: 06/14/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use