Ian Murdock says he drew a lot of puzzled looks from his colleagues in the Linux community when he joined Sun Microsystems in its newly created position of chief operating platforms officer. ‘What’s a Linux guy doing at Sun?’ he was asked. After all, Ian Murdock is the ‘Ian’ in Debian Linux, the distribution he created with his wife, Deb. Only eight days on his new job, Murdock spoke at a Software Developers Forum Tuesday in Santa Clara, California, where Sun is based. Murdock, 33, outlined what he thinks needs to be done in his new job in an interview with Robert Mullins.
Great, I would love to see a more desktop oriented and accessible version of Solaris. Yes, Solaris is a kick ass OS and yes, it’s got bucket loads of cool features (I should know, I’m a Solaris admin but as a desktop OS, even sometimes as a workstation OS, it’s kind of lacking in some areas. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the attraction to Motif (sort of and would certainly not want Sun to drop it but the time has come, IMO to get the JDS looking good enough to kiss.
Lets hope we get another driving train into the desktop platform wars. The more, the merrier I say!
I was a Sun outside consultant for a while and the great big shining spot on their lineup is Solaris. I think the big reason people have been favoring Linux over Solaris is the ease of installation and the ease of management. With RedHat or Suse you get easy to use package management and drivers that cover a lot of hardware. You can take almost any POS intel box and drop Linux on it and have a working DNS server or development web server, etc. With Solaris it seems like there’s always something that requires editing the system file, setting new values for IPC limits, or fishing around for a 3rd party driver. It would be a boon for Solaris if they brought it in line with RH or Suse in those respects.
And you’re right. CDE is a great window manager circa 1993. JDS is much better looking, very functional, and seems to be easier for most people to deal with. Now, just do something besides UFS as the filesystem for the primary boot disk, so you don’t have to fsck a server after every power outage.
How true! The main reason why I only install Solaris on Sparc! If I need a generic server, it’s always Linux first as frankly, the HW support is far superior. Of course, if we are talking “Bad-ass Java app server” then I’m gonna go Sparc at the mo (although I see that changing some time real soon).
As for file systems, the sooner we can have ZFS root partitions from install, the happier I’ll be.
How true! The main reason why I only install Solaris on Sparc! If I need a generic server, it’s always Linux first as frankly, the HW support is far superior. Of course, if we are talking “Bad-ass Java app server” then I’m gonna go Sparc at the mo (although I see that changing some time real soon).
You’d be surprised at how well Solaris 10 x86 works on many “generic” PCs. In fact, all three of the systems I have recently owned all work just fine with Solaris.
My Dell Inspiron 5150, a custom-built Intel Core Duo 2, and a custom built Athlon 64 system. They all worked, and a few years ago too.
Chances are, it will work, especially when it comes to relatively new hardware. In fact, Solaris worked on my Core Duo 2 before any Linux distribution did!
As for file systems, the sooner we can have ZFS root partitions from install, the happier I’ll be.
Coming very soon. It has been integrated into OpenSolaris, and will likely be available in build 62 (a few weeks).
When was the last time you used Solaris? With Solaris 10, if I want to install Oracle you no longer have to edit the /etc/system file or reboot the system as in previous releases of Solaris as shown in this example:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Unix/Solaris/Q_22075078.html
In a previous article posted here discussing Solaris, someone was complaining about not being able to get a Solaris machine on the Internet, it takes me less than a minute to accomplish this by editing the /etc/nsswitch.conf and creating a /etc/resolv.conf, that’s really hard!
Funny, I can take most vanilla PC’s and install Solaris without any pain. I have been doing this since Solaris 7 (1999). The argument that people used at where I work for not using Solaris x86 was difficulty installing it, that vaporized once I installed Solaris 9 and 10 on a HP DL360 and pointed out where the problems were (mostly with HP’s drivers).
I for one like Solaris right where it is, I don’t need a whole lot of “hand holding” in order to get things done. Is there room for improvement, yes. But what I don’t want to see is Solaris end up becoming a Linux distro in order to appease a few people who whine about “It’s too hard” or “You don’t have the (put audio player, video player, whatever here) that I want”. So Linux installs faster, so what. I use JumpStart and Solaris Flash, I build complete systems ready to deploy in minutes.
There are a lot of people trying Solaris who don’t know how to use it, and instead of availing themselves the opportunity to use the forums on opensolaris.org, where almost any question gets answered (I know, I am on their email distribution), or check various web sites, comp.unix.solaris or alt.solaris.x86 newsgroups, or docs.sun.com, they choose instead to bitch. What I find hilarious about this is that Linux users would give essentially the same advice to a n00b Linux user. So why is it so hard for a Linux user to figure out how to use Solaris? I have no problems navigating Linux, so why does Sun have to change in order to make Linux users happy. I think Linux users who want (or need) to use Solaris should actually start following their own advice and check out some documentation!
I really don’t know what ticked you off but you seem to be the one complaining here.
I administer a large, multi-platform network and although I enjoy working with Solaris, it just does not do it for me as a Desktop on x86 hardware. By all means, blastwave.org gives me access to all the bleeding edge of my hart’s desire but frankly, it’s no where near as polished or tightly integrated as a Linux desktop. As for servers, I would rather leave Solaris for the really hard core, enterprise situations as buying support from Sun does have a price attached.
Yes, I know of the existence of docs.sun.com (which Sun admin doesn’t?) but that hardly help when you don’t know the name of the app or command needed to configure your system. On the other hand, having a handy GUI present, with the icon or menu entry easy to find, is exactly what the end user wants for a desktop system.
Just because you know what information to input when editing your nsswitch file does not make your opinion more valid than that of the guy across the street who just spent 3 days crawling through news groups looking for the reason why he does not have any DNS resolution.
I’m sure that if you still want to change things by hand, Sun will let you do that but in the mean time, I say let Ian at it. Surely it can’t hurt to get a desktop orientated implementation out there.
Who knows, it might even steal Linux’s crown.
I don’t know about you, but I am more than a little tired of reading posts from people who apparently haven’t used Solaris in years dredge up issues with Solaris 9 or earlier and think they are present in Solaris 10 without actually using it. Is it really so much to ask to have people learn something about Solaris?
Solaris will probably never be my home desktop because I play games, namely Unreal Tournament and the like. At work I use Solaris 10 6/06 JDS on a Sun Ray, Solaris 10 11/06 on a Blade 100 and Blade 2000, and a Windows XP machine rounds it out. And for work, Solaris is just fine. I listen to security podcasts with an iPod Shuffle and Macally headphones, it’s just easier that way. Because of the environments I work in, the only Internet connected machine is my Windows box, so if I want to watch a webcast, it’s on the Windows machine.
Many of us slogged through FAQ’s and newsgroup posts for information about problems with various operating systems and applications, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
I just don’t think that Sun should be spending a whole lot of time trying to cater to people who want a home desktop, it isn’t their market. And let’s face it, Sun gets it on the chin on a regular basis about its lack of “desktop features”. Especially a market where most people expect to get their OS for free, that really doesn’t help Sun’s bottom line.
As far as easy to use GUI tools, I work for DoD where X is verboten. Of the 50+ machines the three of us manage, only two of them have GUI’s even running. I have no choice but to use CLI tools.
it takes me less than a minute to accomplish this by editing the /etc/nsswitch.conf and creating a /etc/resolv.conf, that’s really hard!
I have no problems navigating Linux, so why does Sun have to change in order to make Linux users happy.
I don’t think it is about making Solaris into Linux. And I don’t think Sun is trying to change Solaris to make Linux users happy.
You just described a bunch of Unix functions as easy, but I’d have no idea where to start when solving that problem. That means I cannot use Solaris without investing time and energy into learning the ropes and reading the docs. That means Sun will gain a potential customer if they make it easier to use.
So it’s not about turning Solaris into Linux, it’s about making Solaris a better operating system.
People who don’t understand the value of a simple and easy-to-use GUI are like pick-wielding miners who didn’t want drilling machines to take their jobs. Join us in the 21st century — I don’t have the time or inclination to pick away at server administration, and I don’t have the money to pay two experienced admins when two university grads and a GUI would do.
And where do you think I got my education on Solaris? By reading tons of documentation, by Beta Testing Sun products, and by being employed as a system administrator on Solaris, Linux, and AIX systems since 1998. It is the nature of the beast that you have to be informed about the products you are working with if you plan to go anywhere in the IT field, or for your own benefit. That education is an ongoing process, and if you don’t have the time, then why should the OS vendor make it easy for you?
I have mentioned this before, but what good is a GUI to me over a serial link (where a lot of UNIX/Linux system administration takes place)? Welcome to reality, where a PuTTy session is as good as it gets for the vast majority of system administrators (myself included). A GUI does not make up for lack of experience. AIX is possibly the easiest UNIX variant to learn through the use of smit (X) or smitty (CLI), but you can screw up a system in nothing flat by issuing the wrong command.
You are not the first one to think that an easy to use interface and a general knowledge of IT will get them by. This happens every day on networks throughout the world by people who make decisions based on dollars and not sense. These are the people who end up choosing Microsoft, because it is “easy to use” and look at where it gets them …
I don’t think it is about making Solaris into Linux. And I don’t think Sun is trying to change Solaris to make Linux users happy.
I disagree. I think Sun is trying to make Solaris look and feel just like the very best Linux distributions, and I think that this is a brilliant strategy. Ian alludes to this here:
But what people love about Ubuntu is not the Linux kernel but all of the stuff that lives above it. So, could we take all that stuff above Linux and put it above Solaris in a way that does not leave behind all of all the differentiating features of Solaris?
And here’s what I wrote about Ian moving to Sun in last week’s thread:
I speculate that what Ian has in mind for Solaris is standardizing on the “Linux” userland (including the GNU toolchain) and implementing the Linux system call interface. Essentially, make everything like a Linux distribution except for the kernel. A Linux-compatible distribution featuring a kernel with enterprise-class stability and functionality, including DTrace, Containers, and ZFS. I would not at all be surprised if Ubuntu winds up involved in some way, shape, or form.
I think Sun has realized that Linux is the de facto standard free software development platform. The easiest way to make inroads in free software is to make a better Linux. The best way for Sun to do this is to scrap the Linux kernel and build it on Solaris instead. It won’t be Linux anymore, of course, but it will seem like Linux to Linux-native applications and Linux-oriented developers.
Incorrect; look through the changes being made; they’re adding features to Solaris which exist within GNU userland – libc for example, has has received an update (can’t find the link sorry) which provides a feature which is available in the GNU libc.
Solaris doesn’t need to drop anything, what Solaris needs is to listen to developers, listen to end users and come out with a happy medium; if it means that new features should be added to their userland to improve GNU compatibility, and thus, make porting and compiling opensource applications to Solaris – instead of requiring re-writes of GNU functionality, then I say its all good.
For me, I don’t want it to be yet another Linux clone or want to be; I mean, if people want Linux, they can load on Ubuntu and be done with it. For me, I not only want Solaris to be the best server operating system, but the best operating system over all, regardless of what it is used for.
The problem as I see it, getting developers to start to use Sun compilers – if opensource developers start using Sun compilers, clean up their code, then one can start using some of the awesome optimisations which Sun has in their compilers; and the side effect of the code clean up, it should also mean compiling with the Intel compilers without any problems.
Edit: Just had a look: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/caselog/2007/
There is a sizable number of GNU tools that are being merged, hopefully that should make porting alot easier for all concerned.
Edited 2007-03-31 09:21
It’s my belief that systems get picked one of three ways. The first is a mandate from the CIO on down that all deployments occur on X and nothing that does not run on X will be considered. A system can percolate up from the bottom, when a “system” grows organically from a narrow role to a broader role. A third way is as systems are developed on a platform and the port/transition costs justify bringing in a new system.
The third way is very common and usually occurs because developers do it that way – just ’cause. Usually the just ’cause is expense and effort. The easier and cheaper it is to bring the box up, the better. While you appear to be a gifted solaris admin, most developers like me are not. If something gives us too much grief, we move on. So, if you want developer mind-share, don’t berate users about “whining that it’s too hard.” Instead, make your system easier to use.
My PC motherboard model is not in the HCL of Soalris. I tried installing Solaris 10 but installation freezes. Yes it is difficult for a Linux user but so is Linux for a Windows user. No new feelings for me
BTW I tried installing Solaris 10 on a PowerEdge1600SC but again no luck
Bad , bad HCL 
But I hope some day I’ll have the right hardware to install and enjoy it.
Just some minor corrections:
1) Solaris 10 has had journalled UFS for quite some time, and according to the latest ON information, ZFS Boot is available in Build 62 – the only downside is that the installer itself hasn’t been updated as to allow ZFS creation during installation.
With that being said, however, I am unsure as to whether it is possible to manually create a ZFS root, then load the installer, and instead formatting, using the existing setup for a Solaris installation, here is some information relating to it:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/on/flag-days/pages/20070328…
2) Hardware support is a direct biproduct of what developers, those who work at Sun, and those who volunteer, deem as to be important.
I’m trying to push through the marketing discussion group on OpenSolaris for bounties relating to the porting of *BSD licenced drivers to OpenSolaris – without much success unfortunately, to me, there seems to be a great divide between programmers and those who are trying to energise a community around fixing known deficiencies.
3) There seem to be a great divide betwen those who manage infrastructure (especially non-UNIX native people) and those who write the code, with their unwillingness to acknowledge that both options, the GUI and command line, should be on offer to the administrator.
The GUI isn’t about ‘dumbing down tasks’ any more than scripting being ‘for lazy people who can’t be bothered doing the hard graft’ – its about making setting up and maintaining infrascture easier, and as a result, reducing the likelihood for error during configuration.
UFS logging has been around since Solaris 7:
http://www.itworld.com/Comp/2377/swol-0922-supersys/
Like many things in Solaris, you have to turn it on by editing each mountpoint in /etc/vfstab and put logging as the last entry. For Solaris 10 it is enabled by default.
IIRC, wasn’t there a big performance penalty? then again, those that had mega sized storage tended to use tools from Vertias.
Like many things in Solaris, you have to turn it on by editing each mountpoint in /etc/vfstab and put logging as the last entry. For Solaris 10 it is enabled by default.
IIRC, wasn’t there a big performance penalty? then again, those that had mega sized storage tended to use tools from Vertias.
Truth is, I am too young to really remember those days, but I think as of Solaris 9, logging was/is usually faster due to faster metadata ops and general tuning.
Of course, there have been (at least) two types of UFS logging, the current implementation, that I know has been around since 9 and probably 8, and the older UFS+ external log which was part of the Sun volume manager that was a separate product back then. By today’s standards I think UFS+ external logging is a suboptimal performer, but it is also EOL’d I think.
In my experience, modern UFS with logging is pretty fast for an “old” fs
I have definitely seen it beat ext3 enough to “believe” it is usually faster, though I haven’t proved that.
On a side note, it’s a shame that Veritas only chose to release VxVM for free use once ZFS made it a lot less desirable for a lot of uses. I like the idea of using it on Linux, but I don’t like the distros they support
Actually sometime in Solaris 9 UFS performance was greatly improved and beats vxfs in performance. Also logging is default in Solaris 10.
Actually enabling UFS logging improved performance over that of a straight UFS filesystem. You also have some additional protection if the system lost power, in most cases you would not have to fsck your drives after an unexpected power down.
The big difference between UFS and VxVM and VxFS besides price is the tunable parameters, which is beyond what could be discussed here. Your best bet would be looking at Ben Rockwood’s Veritas Krash Kourse on cuddletech.com for more info on VxVM.
And logging (journaling) works great on ufs.
You can take almost any POS intel box and drop Linux on it
Is there a lot of “Point of Sale” software for Linux?
;}
Nice!!!
I use debian myself. But, I must admit, debian may not be known as the most user friendly linux distro.
Would Sun be better off getting somebody from Ubuntu?
I don’t know if you were trying to be funny, but your comment brought out a good laugh!
Maybe they should get Eric Raymond
http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/deb-ian
People who don’t understand the value of a simple and easy-to-use GUI are like pick-wielding miners who didn’t want drilling machines to take their jobs. Join
[i]
There are some of use that value efficiency, security, and simplicity. We’re not trying to protect our jobs or be curmudgeons. I don’t see the point of running a GUI on a *server* that in a room that I rarely go into.
[i]us in the 21st century — I don’t have the time or inclination to pick away at server administration, and I don’t have the money to pay two experienced admins when two university grads and a GUI would do.
I’m curious: if you “don’t have the time or inclination to pick away at system administration”, why do you care about Solaris at all?
As for college hires, I’ve worked with some college hires lately and I wouldn’t let them implement anything my company relied on, just like my boss didn’t let me implement stuff until I knew what I was doing.
You’re probably right in that situation, although I’d still prefer the option. However, there’s no way I would run Solaris on a workstation right now, and I imagine Sun doesn’t want Solaris just stuck in the server room.
Because Solaris has a bunch of really neat technology built into it. I don’t want to use Solaris because I want to “pick away at system administration” I want to use it because it is a great OS.
Edited 2007-03-30 16:47
I wonder if he will bring the Debian dpkg/apt packaging system comes to Solaris. Now that would really be something!
Well, you can always have a look at Nexenta OS in the meantime. They are doing just that.
http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki
Wow, cool! I knew about Nexenta but I didn’t realize it used dpkg/apt.
Question: It seems Nexenta’s main goal is to integrate the GNU and Debian stack into Solaris. If Sun does the same thing, will Nexenta lose its relevance?
for AMD/ATI to stop laughing at all us sorry bastards who bought a laptop with an ATI chip and instead provide some Solaris drivers for modern Radeon cards, what is the latest news on ZFS in Linux?
I do a little bit of programming myself and would love something like DTrace to track my programs. Is there any Linux program that for instance can track running processes and monitor/graph their memory use over time to find?
I have no idea how good SystemTap is, but it is supposed to be a DTrace ripoff for Linux.
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/index.html
With Linux, there is always the risk that ordering a new server will not always be supported completely by your favorite linux distro right from the get-go. Older hardware is probably a better bet, but when ordering new, you have to be careful and look at the HCL. Even then, you have to know specifically what chipset you are getting and whether any of the advanced hardware features are not available.
Anyway, when I come up with a solution that is not Windows based, I prefer Solaris+Sparc. The hardware I use (like a V120) is relatively inexpensive and I know that the OS will load on it with no problem.
Also, in my lab environment, I am able to mock up what I am doing in production pretty well event with lesser equipment and use their jumpstart server + flash archive techniques to quickly build test save and rebuild server environments. I can easily swap disks from one platform to another as the drive cages are the same (not so with PC’s in which each mfg has their own cage and bracket for the disks).
Basically, there are advantages to using hw+sw from one vendor, and this to me is a great reason to use Solaris when appropriate.
Now, x86 is nice to learn on, but at work, I stick with SPARC hardware + Solaris when possible.
Others like Linux, but meh, I don’t care for it at work personally.
With Linux, there is always the risk that ordering a new server will not always be supported completely by your favorite linux distro right from the get-go. Older hardware is probably a better bet, but when ordering new, you have to be careful and look at the HCL. Even then, you have to know specifically what chipset you are getting and whether any of the advanced hardware features are not available.
If you were going to purchase a server, why not buy one directly off Sun – their Opteron servers are competitive with whats on offer by other vendors out there.
What is it with people with their head up their ass thinking that Sun only sells SPARC servers, and all their systems are expensive? geeze, if I had employee’s *THAT* out of touch with the IT industry, I’d fire them on the spot, re-hire them, just so I can damn well fire them again! what a waste of oxygen and space!
The only thing I see as a let down is the lack of x86 laptops which all the hardware supported out of the box – but if you want a workstation, why go through the rigamarole? just go purchase an Ultra 20 M2 with Opteron, and if you want the latest and greatest software for Solaris, then download the latest SX:CE or SX:DE and be done with it.
Debian is more than just a Linux distro; Debian is a way of life.
Actually, Debian has never been exclusively about “Linux”, Debian is an OS on top of a kernel, it just so happens that the Linux version has had the most development and publicity over the years. There’s a Debian/HURD and Debian/BSD, just look here: http://www.debian.org/ports/ (bottom of the page). Theoretically you could have a Debian/WinNT.
I would love to see a Debian/Solaris, but since Ian isn’t really too involved in Debian anymore, I wonder if he’ll start on another direction instead of making a Debian port.
It’s really nice that Sun understands their weaknesses and trying to get solutions for, unlike the others who wish just to ignore it.
I have tested all of sun’s newest build numbers from 11.30 to 11.60 and found that sun is making a huge jump from their previous position, that no other manufacuturer was able to do in that short time.
Sun’s CLI is superior; but GUI tools has to improve very much more; and hardware support has to improve for broader acceptance.Registering solaris shouldn’t be mandatory for updates, and Current GUI tools and apps should be consistent over all available; and administrative tools must be carefully concentrated on and improved, and monitoring tools must be as good as linux if not better.
Overall I am very impressed about solaris and one day I might retire RHEL 5 and use solaris. Till then I will wish them happy programming!
yet both of which OS X 10.5 is adding. Linux has chosen to make the UI a priority to grow marketshare outside of the server industry; and to be more approachable like OS X it just makes sense.
SUN had the collaboration with NeXT and Openstep to learn about UI design. They bought Lighthouse Design and did nothing with the tools. They bought PencilMe In and did nothing with it.
SUN is either the worst at growing new markets after acquisitions or it can’t keep these talented people around, after buyouts, to grow the new markets.