Linux Vs Solaris

jinn · 2007-06-17 06:31:09

I have been reading lately about Solaris, and the articles say alot of good things about Solaris. More secure, faster better.. But I am not sure to believe this just like that.
I would like to know your opinions. My questions are also these:

1. Can I use drivers written for linux on Solaris?
2. Is the hardware support better in Solaris
3. What is the difference between the Solaris kernel and linux kernel (no paper, but some basic explanation of the benefits of both, and which is benchmarked better..)

If your also interested read these articles.

http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/so … inux.shtml
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/article/2 … d_kernels/

iphitus · 2007-06-17 07:01:01

jinn wrote:

I have been reading lately about Solaris, and the articles say alot of good things about Solaris. More secure, faster better.. But I am not sure to believe this just like that.
I would like to know your opinions. My questions are also these:
1. Can I use drivers written for linux on Solaris?

No.

2. Is the hardware support better in Solaris

No.

3. What is the difference between the Solaris kernel and linux kernel (no paper, but some basic explanation of the benefits of both, and which is benchmarked better..)

Don't bother looking for benchmarks, you'll find benchmarks which advantage both, or only hilight the abilities of one on a very specific workload and configuration. If you're hopeing that solaris will be amazingly fast and blow you away compared to linux -- it won't be, if anything you probably won't notice a difference.

Advantages? For the end user, Solaris doesnt offer anything more. ZFS is cool though, and if you're a developer, you'll probably have fun with dtrace.

Keep in mind bias, that second article was posted on the opensolaris website.

James

Kenetixx · 2007-06-17 07:06:47

Ive run Solarias for a while and we use it at my work. It is ok but hardware support is pretty poor IMO.
Majority or our servers at work run Solarias but on Sparc Hardware, which is what it is made for. I wouldnt recommend it for a desktop unless you are a developer.

pecan · 2007-06-17 07:23:30

I've been wanting to try nexenta, not exactly Solaris, but it uses the kernel. 'Apparently' hardware support is one of the main problems that a lot of people have currently. As for performance, in day to day applications I don't think you would notice a difference. Advantages, well I would love to try ZFS and I've also heard you can run 32 and 64 bit apps simultaneously without performance degradation. Someone would have to back me up on that one.

moustic · 2007-06-17 08:34:28

Solaris vs Windows ...

lloeki · 2007-06-17 10:15:53

I've also heard you can run 32 and 64 bit apps simultaneously without performance degradation.

is there any performance drop under linux? I never felt so.
besides, I heard that SPARC 64 hardware can't run 32bit at all, so is there support for it in the os, solaris? maybe I got things wrong...

pecan · 2007-06-17 10:45:43

Like I said, I can't back that up 100%.

Solaris is a 64-bit OS, so you get access to very large files, memory spaces, etc at no cost eg trickery with memory segmentation.
The ability to run 32-bit apps means you don't lose out on Flash and other such niceties.
Solaris Zones is a Server virtualization technology. As long as you just want multiple "virtual" instances of your main kernel, it is brilliant. You cannot however run Windows or BSD or whatever in a Solaris Zone. It just runs Solars. And it is an enterprise class tool, meaning it is stable.
Dtrace is tracing on steroids. Anything from bus traps to library calls, from network-tracing to CPU-traps. It's all there, and once you got your head arround its scripting language it is the greatest tool ever to find performance bottlenecks. And it is an enterprise class tool, meaning it is stable.
ZFS - makes magic of managing disks/storage. Creating a new file system is as easy as making a directory. Very easy to manage anything from adding mirrors to growing file systems to splitting off more file systems. Allows billions of small file systems or a single large file system to be created all with very little overhead. Oh yeas, there is self-healing and automatic data CRC checking and encryption and compression, etc. Just flick on the settings you want. And it is an enterprise class tool, meaning it is stable.
SRM: Guarantee response times op applications. Allocate minimum shares of CPU time. Free CPU still available to all other processes. Much more complicated than can be explained in one paragraph, but I'm planning on doing a talk on it in a few weeks time at the Cape Town Linux User's Group meeting. P.S. This too is an enterprise class tool, meaning it is stable.

Theres a pretty decent list of solaris features, got it from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? … ht=nexenta

Also I've never noticed a performance problem on my friends gentoo PC when he runs 32-bit apps on it, so I don't think linux has that problem either.

Last edited by pecan (2007-06-17 10:49:55)

jinn · 2007-06-17 13:03:28

according to this zfs performance is quite good. There seem to be work on porting zfs to linux .

http://zfs-on-fuse.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.sun.com/Peerapong/entry/so … erformance

pecan · 2007-06-18 07:37:53

But wouldn't ZFS have to be kept in userspace due to it not being GPL? And any performance would be lost if this was the case.

lloeki · 2007-06-18 09:35:42

well, ntfs-3g is rather well performing: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/performance.html

Mikko777 · 2007-06-18 09:39:45

pecan wrote:

But wouldn't ZFS have to be kept in userspace due to it not being GPL? And any performance would be lost if this was the case.

It's sad that every1 else seems to be moving to ZFS while linux needs a new filesystem "badly" and can't. Has to be that "fuse zfs" emulated thingy instead.

Well anyways wasn't solaris the slow as hell Javabased OS back in the days? (or am i thinking of a different os...)

rhfrommn · 2007-06-18 17:38:24

Solaris is not based on Java at all, it is far older.

On hardware support - yes, support for PC hardware is worse, but that isn't the main point of Solaris. Solaris is built by Sun specifically for their own Sparc processor hardware. From that point of view Solaris hardware support is the best you can possibly achieve. The OS is made *precisely* to support and take advantage of the hardware features you are buying with the Sun servers. Sun makes an x86 version you can install on a PC, but that isn't their main focus.

As far as the overall question, the main difference between Linux and Solaris is Solaris is a heavyweight commercial Unix OS. It is meant for running large servers in datacenters where you need "Enterprise" level stability and features. And if that is how you're using it you will pay lots to get it either through hardware purchases, support contracts, etc.

For the home or small office user, it is hard to think of reasons you'd prefer Solaris over Linux. For a medium to large company that spends millions on server hardware where your business depends on your servers being up 100% of the time it is hard to think of reasons you'd prefer Linux over Solaris . . .

Of course, most businesses I've seen use both - Linux on the smaller and/or less critical servers and Solaris on the larger and more important machines. All comes down to the right tool for the right job. Neither is always better or worse than the other. You have to know what you want your machine to do and pick the OS that matches the workload best.

lloeki · 2007-06-18 20:08:15

I think he was influenced by the so-called solaris desktop, which is some sort of half gnome-ish half windows-ish java DE for solaris.

jinn · 2007-06-20 08:28:10

nah.. What I was influenced of was the words nice words and cool features presented in the suns demo of solairs, examples: "10 performance records".. "zfs autohealing", "zfs outperforms ext3", "dtrace", "optimized tcp/ip stack", " MPSS" , "memory placement optimization MPO" among others..

lloeki · 2007-06-20 10:14:30

I was referring to mikko77 post.

after having read som stuff about zfs, yeah it seems interesting.

Last edited by lloeki (2007-06-20 10:14:55)

shining · 2007-06-20 10:43:58

rhfrommn wrote:

On hardware support - yes, support for PC hardware is worse, but that isn't the main point of Solaris. Solaris is built by Sun specifically for their own Sparc processor hardware. From that point of view Solaris hardware support is the best you can possibly achieve. The OS is made *precisely* to support and take advantage of the hardware features you are buying with the Sun servers. Sun makes an x86 version you can install on a PC, but that isn't their main focus.

I don't know if this thread is about solaris or opensolaris, but I found a comment from Theo de Raadt that is quite interesting in both cases (4th comment) :
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/one … e_is_fifty

N1ckR · 2007-06-20 11:01:04

I have a feeling that zfs is geared up for workstation/server use, and PROBABLY will not be noticably better (performance and stability and reliability) than any existing filesystem on your average PC spec hardware (especially as for general desktop use the filesystem (and hardware under it) is not a major bottle neck). Even JFS and XFS are geared up for disk intentsive use that you would'nt get from 10 home PC's chained together.

What I foresee happening is that JFS and XFS will not change (no need to), ext4 will catchup feature-wise with JFS/XFS and by EXT4.5 we will see SOME (not all) features from ZFS ported across that give good benifits (eg the checksumming, maybe not the virtualised disc management).

ezzetabi · 2007-06-29 21:32:58

My experience with Solaris 10... some days ago S10 arrives at the uni.

My professor wants install it in order to test the ppl...

The installation goes quite well... At the first reboot there is not mouse cursor, it is invisible. I heard that it is a problem with hardware mouse.
How can I start a terminal emulator? I seek in the menus, deep somewhere I find a terminal emulator... it starts an old version of sh without tab completation or arrows use to see the last commands. I start bash, it works, but with no prompt...
lovely eh?
I seek for xorg.conf... There is no xorg.conf but there is a .xorg.conf...
vim .xorg.conf
NO VIM!
vi .xorg.conf
It works, but it is really vi... I edit the .xorg.conf no effect. I copy it in xorg.conf, it works. Strange, was it only file for defaults? Really unclear.

The professor want to try the ppl... there is NO GCC... seek in the internet...
First result: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/1999-08n/msg01022.html
The EASIEST method is probably about six months long...

But we find a package inside the CD... the package manager is ugly but we manage to install gcc *3*... too old for ppl.
gmp? Go figure! it is nowhere.

In only few words... Solaris? If you know it you run from it and you download Archlinux.

Last edited by ezzetabi (2007-06-29 21:39:45)

cactus · 2007-06-29 21:59:11

ezzetabi wrote:

In only few words... Solaris? If you know it you run from it and you download Archlinux.

It sounds more like you have never used a non-linux unix before, than that you had any real problems with solaris.

For instance, the default shell is csh if I recall.

If are a bit more familiar with it, then solaris isn't too bad. You just have to do a bit of 'moving in' to get it to be more like *what I am used to* in a unix environment.
The same can be said of FreeBSD too.

*shrug*

ezzetabi · 2007-06-30 16:07:21

of course... this is what I was thinking until I understood there was not easy way to install gcc 4 and there is no gmp...
Anyhow, I do not say you should not use it.

ataraxia · 2007-06-30 16:25:16

To some extent, I agree with cactus, but I also think that Solaris takes the "backwards compatibility of setup by default" AKA POLA a bit too far. I mean, the default shell for new users is still /bin/sh when bash is included?

I'm a big fan of Solaris, but only starting from 10, and not for desktops or even small servers - only for big machines that have to have as little downtime as possible. You indeed have to do a lot of moving in, but you get a ton of high-availability-oriented features, and a level of commercial support and compatibility that's hard to beat.

Try HP-UX if you want a really obnoxious UNIX.

pecan · 2007-07-01 05:01:03

ezzetabi, all your complaints of solaris are only because your not experienced with it. I had similar concerns when I first swapped from windows to linux. I don't think anyone can comment on an OS until they understand it very well. So i shouldn't comment on any OS:P
On a serious note though, solaris defiantly sounds interesting and I'll have to try it one day properly.

EDIT: I didn't mean that post to be offensive ezzetabi, please don't take it that way.

Last edited by pecan (2007-07-01 05:02:47)

oli · 2007-07-01 18:09:32

pecan wrote:

ezzetabi, all your complaints of solaris are only because your not experienced with it. I had similar concerns when I first swapped from windows to linux. I don't think anyone can comment on an OS until they understand it very well. So i shouldn't comment on any OS:P
On a serious note though, solaris defiantly sounds interesting and I'll have to try it one day properly.
EDIT: I didn't mean that post to be offensive ezzetabi, please don't take it that way.

That's correct, but even Sun is aware of this matter and I can confirm most of the complaint. Solaris has got lot of "horse power" but it's at the same time a beast to tame.

XVampireX · 2007-07-25 00:41:26

I tried opensolaris, here's the answer:

1. short answer: No, long answer: Yes, if you can manage to PORT them.
2. Short answer: NO. Long answer: Look above.
3. You want benchmarks? On my old PC, OpenSolaris, well most of the distros, failed to boot because I lacked ram. On my new PC, OpenSolaris manages to get into tty, and not even, but not to X11... Probably lacks drivers for my geforce 8800 GTX... Now, on my old PC, ubuntu with gnome on livecd worked flawlessly, could get at least 2 applications working at the same time without much work. Now on OpenSolaris livecd, on my old PC (Since new one wouldn't boot), on xfce desktop, it would choke on running 1 app and then running another, I think it was some sound mixer, actually... pathethic.

roodie · 2007-07-25 22:34:54

I recently installed opensolaris in vmware on a Pentium 4, 3Ghz/2Gb memory machine. And it doesnt feel any slower than other vm's. What I did notice were the subtle differences between a linux unix and a solaris unix. Installation went rather smooth, I did have to give it more diskspace and memory above vmware-defaults though. It starts in a familiar gnome session. I recognize the theme and buttons, because I installed those once under linux. But configuring network is different. I ended up doing a sys-unconfig to get it to remember the netwerk-settings.
I am used to a history in bash, just type the arrow-keys to get previous commands back, and correct the typos or re-issue the command. Not in solaris.
I think that I am aa experienced linux user, who knows its way around in linux, but on solaris I felt very novice-ish. The home directory is not /home anymore. Installing software is different. Although mysql was installed, I had to run serveral init-scripts before it was actually ready for use. I suppose a linux distro adds those initialialisation to the install procedure. A weird experience, I thought I could use my linux knowledge on a unix machine, I stand corrected. But I probably have a head-start on window-users.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-06-17 06:31:09

Linux Vs Solaris

#2 2007-06-17 07:01:01

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#3 2007-06-17 07:06:47

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#4 2007-06-17 07:23:30

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#5 2007-06-17 08:34:28

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#6 2007-06-17 10:15:53

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#7 2007-06-17 10:45:43

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#8 2007-06-17 13:03:28

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#9 2007-06-18 07:37:53

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#10 2007-06-18 09:35:42

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#11 2007-06-18 09:39:45

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#12 2007-06-18 17:38:24

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#13 2007-06-18 20:08:15

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#14 2007-06-20 08:28:10

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#15 2007-06-20 10:14:30

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#16 2007-06-20 10:43:58

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#17 2007-06-20 11:01:04

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#18 2007-06-29 21:32:58

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#19 2007-06-29 21:59:11

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#20 2007-06-30 16:07:21

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#21 2007-06-30 16:25:16

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#22 2007-07-01 05:01:03

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#23 2007-07-01 18:09:32

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#24 2007-07-25 00:41:26

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

#25 2007-07-25 22:34:54

Re: Linux Vs Solaris

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