With all due respect, rgb, you're somewhat out of date with respect to
(Open)Solaris. I don't think anyone would argue that Solaris x86 wasn't a
mess prior to Solaris 10. However, it took a massive step forward in Solaris
10 once Sun really started pumping out Opteron servers. Additionally, it's
changed a LOT in the last year and a bit. On the one side of the fence,
there's still the same Solaris that people either love or hate, it'll still
run the same way as it always has, and it'll still probably be able to use
obscure binary drivers from the late 90's (seriously, I have a data capture
card from the mid 90's where the most recent drivers are for Solaris 7, and
it works flawlessly on my Ultra 2 running the most recent update of Solaris
10).
On the other side, there's Sun's official "OpenSolaris" distribution, which
is confusingly named the same as the OpenSolaris project, which is somehow
related to Solaris 11, and then there's Solaris Express, which doesn't exist
any more ... yeah, I don't understand the naming either. In any case, the
OpenSolaris-the-distribution is a lot more Linuxy. It uses an apt-like
packaging system with online repositories, finally replaces the old
closed-source installer, and symlinks /bin/sh to /bin/bash since that's what
world+dog expects now. If you want the full GNU userland experience, there's
also Nexenta, which basically is the GNU userland with the OpenSolaris
kernel.
Just a couple of specific points:
Does Solaris support dual boot? I don't know, but I sort of doubt it.
Only if I install grub from linux or use MS's multiboot manager -- maybe
then.
Dual boot works fine. Solaris/x86 uses (a fork of) grub nowadays. I've not
tried to dual-boot Solaris/Sparc with anything else, since the only
non-embedded Sparc system I have is an Ultra 2, and Linux doesn't support
half the hardware in it.
Does Solaris support a free network install mode?
Solaris 10: Free as in beer, yes (Jumpstart), free as in open source, no.
OpenSolaris: Yes for both definitions (Caiman).
But let's move on, back to the question of why
would I WANT to install Solaris? Is there one, single thing that I can
expect to do on Solaris that I can't do better -- far better -- in
Linux?
While I don't want to incite OS wars on the list, there's quite a lot of
things that (Open)Solaris does that Linux either doesn't do or doesn't do as
well (eg: ZFS, DTrace, zones), and also vice versa - for example the
supported hardware list is much larger for Linux, multimedia stuff tends to
work a lot better, and most open source projects are GNU-centric so break
when they're not in a GNU userland. My HTPC runs Linux, but my main storage
server runs Solaris. And my development system is running (suffering?) Vista
right now, because I need to debug some DirectX 10 code. The best tools for
the job and all that.
And if you must compete on the CPU front do it
with an Intel compatible general purpose CPU, not a proprietary, single
source, non-commodity (and other flaws not worth mentioning) failed
architecture that everybody but Sun has known was toast for over a
decade now.
Interestingly, while the x86 patents would have been preventing Sun from
making an x86-compatible processor, IBM has (AFAIK) an x86 license. Whether
it's up-to-date enough to be useful I have no idea, but it's now at least
somewhat possible. On the other hand, efficient x86 decoders and schedulers
are massive at the hardware level (and very power-hungry), which would
completely defeat the whole "pile on the cores" approach of a chip like the
T2. For that matter, the T2 at the time of release was far from being toast
performance-wise for the markets for which it was aimed - database,
back-end, web serving, etc. Things have possibly changed with Nehalem -
it'll be interesting to see some decent comparisons with Nehalem for things
like Oracle. It certainly links up well with the current virtualization
hype, in any case :) The SPARC64 VII etc are more or less in the same
position as the Itanium, but without the FP oomph - if you need a huge SSI
mainframe-esque system, then x86 (or rather, the current x86
implementations, since instruction sets aren't the limiting factor) won't
do. But I doubt that market is large enough to sustain an otherwise
uncompetitive processor.
Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with domain-specific
processors. Cell, ARM, Sparc T2's, etc all have a certain market which they
are suited to and work well in, but are pooly suited for workloads outside
that market. There's no point in burning massive amounts of die space on
floating point units in a processor that's going to be doing SQL searches,
and similarly not a whole lot of point burning space on hardware crypto
acceleration for desktop chips, where pure software implementations are fast
enough in nearly all situations. Whether a different ISA is required for
each chip is more debatable. While Intel is doing their best to make x86
work in everything from low-power cellphone chips to GPUs, all indications
are that it's not really working out for them. Whether this is the fault of
the x86 instruction set, which is notoriously complicated to deal with, or
whether it's simply trying to cover too much ground with one ISA it hard to
say, since noone else has (AFAIK) tried it. It's basically the standard
tradeoff between economies of scale and efficiency - if chip A is only half
as efficient by some useful metric as chip B, but can be produced in
sufficient scale such that it only costs a third as much to buy, then it'll
win.
Finally, I wouldn't agree that Sparc is proprietary in any way. In fact,
it's about the most open architecture I know of. It's a fully open
royalty-free standard (though I did a quick search to make sure, and
apparently there's a one-off $99 "admin fee" if you want to use the SPARC
trademark, but that's it), with multiple independant implementations. I can
even download a GPL'd Verilog version and use it as an embedded processor in
an FPGA if I want, without paying a cent.
[...]
an operating system that -- "open" or not -- is PROPRIETARY.
Perhaps it's a terminology issue here, but how is OpenSolaris any more
proprietary than any of the Linux distributions?
Cheers,
Michael
_______________________________________________
Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
