OpenSolaris Or FreeBSD? 405
Norsefire writes "I am in quite a predicament. I decided a while back to branch out and use a new operating system (currently running Debian). After a bit of searching (trying Gentoo, Gobo and Arch along the way), I decided to use something that isn't Linux. Long story short: I narrowed the choices down to OpenSolaris and FreeBSD, but now I'm stuck. OpenSolaris is commercially backed by Sun, has nice enterprise-y tools in the default install, and best of all, a mature implementation of ZFS. FreeBSD is backed by a foundation, has a minimal default install and a rather new (but recently improved in the 8.0 release) implementation of ZFS, however it offers the Ports Collection (I quite like the performance boost due to compiling from source, no matter how small it might be) and a bigger community than OpenSolaris. That is just a minimal mention of the differences. I would be interested to see what the Slashdot community thinks of these two operating systems."
Dual boot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why pick just one? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you just have to pick one, I would wait on this decision until the Oracle-Sun deal is through and see what Oracle does. I don't think either is likely to go away any time soon, though, and if OpenSolaris is really open source it *would* be forked if Oracle tried to close it.
Given that you've already tried three different Linux distros, though, why not try both? You're going to be the best judge of what your requirements are.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-FreeBSD-committer, so I have a dog in the hunt.
They're both good. What are you doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're looking to learn something new, OpenSolaris is the way I'd go. Lots of commercial enterprises use Solaris, so you're learning a skill that is of direct to a great many businesses.
Of course, that's not to say that Solaris is the only Unix out there - I'm certain that FreeBSD is used in commercial enterprises as well, just not at as high a level as Solaris is. And, ultimately, learning the idiosyncrasies of more than one Unix environment means that you're well placed to adapt if (for example) you find yourself maintaining an AIX or HP-UX host - you've already had the pain of dealing with the differences between FreeBSD/Solaris and Linux, so the next step won't be quite so difficult.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why switch operating systems due to it's own sake? (Score:3, Insightful)
You didn't say what's your specific need. If you are just testing out different systems and doing some studying, then the correct answer is probably "Both". If you have specific need then would have been nice if you outlined that. FreeBSD is more towards a desktop, Solaris is more for servers, but you already know that. So if you aren't just doing this out of academic interest, would sure help to know your requirements (and why didn't the Linux flavors work out?).
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely it depends upon what you mean by "support?"
OpenSolaris is backed by one of the big UNIX developers and is a true, direct lineage UNIX. You can also pay Sun for full enterprise OS support, which could include getting their programmers to fix a particular kernel or core OS bug for you within days.. if you're rich enough to afford the Platinum Support.
Nobody will probably help you (Score:3, Insightful)
because you forgot to write down the most important part of your question: for which purpose is this server intended.
Article is trollbait (Score:1, Insightful)
Goddamnit, is this /g/?
> gentoo, gobo, arch
You have been trolled.
> compiling from source no matter how little performance boost it gives
Still trolled by gentoo -O flag weenies, aren't we?
> using Debian
This is a good choice
> Switch to OpenSolaris
No, just no, not unless you have a specific reason to. As a desktop? They don't call it Slowaris for nothing, y'know.
> Mature ZFS
Well, it is Sun, after all. They did write the bloody thing. But don't forget that ZFS has its own overhead, so if you don't have a use for it, you're wasting your time and your system resources.
> FreeBSD
Why? Not unless you have a specific reason to. You're already running a stable operating system that works on your hardware. Have you looked to see if the drivers you want are available? If it supports your hardware, go for it. If not, why put yourself through hell?
> Corporation vs not-for-profit
Doesn't make any difference, bro, unless you are trying to start a flamewar. It either does what you want or it's crap.
8/10, would rage again.
--
BMO
Re:Go the whole hog... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that they look outdated for at least a decade, and that their paradigms also are outdated.
I wish someone would come up with something new, that combines all good ideas of all OSes into a new basic architecture, after understanding that, creates some new, modern paradigms, and then re-builds all those good ideas from scratch into those new main paradigms.
Which should in itself already result in a load of new possibilities. But some new functions of top, and you have a certain winner.
The only problem is to get the resources to be able to pull something like that off. Because it is certainly possible. Hell I could do it, if I had the budget to hire the right people.
Re:self-compiling not such a black/white matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Or you could use Debian and accept that your distribution hasn't been compiled with -Oevery silly little option for a fraction% improvement.
Re:Performance boost? (Score:2, Insightful)
so you finally figured out how to enable the overlay mode after rebuilding everything? nice job
Re:Why? (Score:0, Insightful)
"Looks like this is "just for fun" or to learn new, interesting things. A good reason, if you ask me."
Yup, that would be a good reason to do BSD/Solaris.
But that's not a good reason to post it on slashdot, is it.
It would be like asking "I want to have fun. What does slashdot think I should do?" It's not as if he can't do both or that slashdot would know better which one HE would enjoy more, is it.
So, "Why".
Why ask slashdot?
BSD trolling.
What the emacs operating system needs... (Score:1, Insightful)
...is a good lightweight text editor.
Depends on what you are looking for (Score:2, Insightful)
Therefore if we are to restrict our options to OpenBSD and FreeBSD i would lean towards FreeBSD simply due to the large no. of apps available through ports.Also i believe driver compatibility is a little better in FreeBSD, especially recently with nvidia cards.
However as another poster said, the best judge is you. therefore install each and try them out and see which works best with your hardware. you may also want to compare desktop responsiveness with Linux, as I believe that recent linux kernels have received further optimizations for desktop performance.
If its a server OS you are looking for then it depends on what you are using it for (LAMP, file server, DB host etc.). If you are looking to run commercial DBs like Oracle on it, a certified OS like RHEL/Solaris may be a better bet if u plan to ask for support. Thats a totally different ball game all together and is something on which one can write pages on.
Good luck on whatever you choose to use.
Re:Debian GNU/kFreeBSD (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no mod points, but this is exactly what I was going to suggest... Get the best of both worlds.
Re:self-compiling not such a black/white matter (Score:3, Insightful)
What are your goals??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Without that information, all you'll get is a bunch of people suggesting their own pet projects.
Even if you just want to learn and play you might want to have a goal. Do you want to learn to administer ZFS? You seem to be fixated on it.
Re:Go the whole hog... (Score:3, Insightful)
What problems are you trying to solve? Re-writing code for the sake of rewriting code to make it look shiny or do shiny type things is all well and good, but if there is no real world problem to mitigate you're basically putting effort into a non-problem - effort that could be put to better use solving problems we do have - such as improving existing code.
Its easy to look at the current platforms out there and think that you could do better if you had the resources, but you're starting from so far behind. And with coding, you can't always just throw more programming hours at it. This is what Microsoft has done with Windows and look where they're at - it works, but no one knows how exactly (including coders within MS - hence the big project for minwin).
I guess my point is this: re-inventing the wheel for the sake of reinvention (eg, the linux way of "not invented here!" for many things) is wasted effort. Think long and hard before going down that path, but if you do - good luck with it. Many talented and intelligent people have tried and just added yet another fragment to the software universe.
Re:Go the whole hog... (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? And what kind of hardware does Solaris run on? What kind of hardware does HPUX run on? What kind of hardware does AIX run on?
Now what kind of hardware does Mac OS X run?
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Restrictive (copyleft) licensed software like the Linux kernel and the GNU toolchain indeed follows a communist philosophy that fails to see the value of free market competition, and instead relies on government force (see gpl-violations.org).
No it doesn't.
It raises the bar for competition. It allows everyone to start from a more advanced position, the whole "Shoulders of Giants" thing.
We are very lucky to live in a world with GPL software. The GPL has succeeded in allowing real progress to flourish where monopolies have stifled progress in an unregulated "free" market.
The Windows Interix subsystem could have evolved into a great UNIX server platform, but socialist governments (especially in Europe) place severe restrictions on what Microsoft can include in their products, which is the only thing holding them back.
The double-speak of a Microsoft apologist.
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
If this weren't moderated as interesting, I'd be afraid to answer for fear of feeding stupid trols, but since it is, lets go ahead.
There's a certain stupidity in modern "soundbite" thinking that seems to think that by labelling something you thereby make it bad. This leads people to stuipdly stretch those labels as far as they think they can make them stick. Here is a perfect example. The GPL requires certain actions to avoid restrictions in copying. Microsoft's licenses restrict all copying with small exceptions. The FSF occasionally goes to court to try to get organisations to follow their license. The BSA, Microsoft's enforcers, regularly carry out military style raids on their customers searching for violations, let alone what they do to actual pirates. If you believe that this makes the FSF, the free software movement or whatever communist then you must believe that commercial software producers are all ultra communists and Microsoft is Comintern [wikipedia.org] its self. If you really did believe that and weren't just making a debating point, you could easily find yourself being declared clinically insane.
Interix was created solely for the reason of destroying UNIX; I think you will find that the "open source community" is completely rational for not working on it. Your complaint is like a person wanting to know why turkeys don't do volunteer work to spread the thanksgiving message. However, there is nothing they could do to stop the Windows community from doing the port. The reason it's not happening is because Microsoft and Microsoft collaborators aren't interested in becoming helpful collaborating members of the community.
Which leads to the question why didn't Microsoft just go ahead and fix it. Answer; because then it would be difficult to kill it later. Interix might be a sane choice for an organisation which was trying to eliminate old UNIX installs and just had a few applications which were difficult to rewrite at the current time. It's not something anyone sane would base their future on.
This is the funniest and most ironic statement of your entire post. Stallman never claimed to be an economist and from the beginning said "do this because it's the moral thing even though it will lose you money". The irony comes from the fact that he was wrong. In fact the GPL is an excellent choice as part of a commercial strategy. Either dual license model for sofware with narrow developer interest or through the free (as in beer) software + expensive support model.
Some of the other systems you mentioned should be, logically, looking at their design and historical position before Linux really took off and the number of products developed from them which could have contributed to their develomement dominating the market. However they have failed. The reason is simple. Every time someone comes up with a product based on a non copyleft system (OS-X; JunOS, Microsoft's TCP/IP stack, IPSO etc. etc.) the community divides between those working on the product and those working on the OS. This leads to continual weakening of the community. Compare with
Re:FreeBSD ZFS kernel panics? (Score:2, Insightful)
If ZFS is the main motivation to choose the OS, you should use Opensolaris regardless of what happens in FreeBSD.
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:1, Insightful)
anti capitalist? maybe the floss crowd doesn't want to help a for-pay software stack when they themselves don't get a piece o fthe pie. In the floss world, they are 'paid' with the contributions of others. If they were to work with 'interix' they gain nothing except a more powerful competitor who wants to crush open source.
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:0, Insightful)
Put down the lynching rope, I'm not a Microsoft apologist! I'm a free market apologist, and my software paradigm of choice is permissively-licensed FLOSS. You're free to use GPL, and I'm free not to.
Old BSD shall rise again! Yee ha!
((Gallops into the sunset.)))
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know if it has been fixed today, but when I last tried and tested OpenSolaris as a replacement for my Linux, I ended up ditching it because of lacking support for Bluetooth.
While this particular feature isn't vital to a server, other features may be. So my general advice to OP would be first to make clear what the requirements are, and put priority to the corporate support vs. license question. Since OpenSolaris and BSD are what's left to decide between, I would guess the license isn't that important.
So if OpenSolaris supports all the hardware and features needed for the task, I would go for that in a corporate environment, because of the posibility of corporate class support. If the company already have plenty of experienced un*x admins to provide a 24/7 3hr support on its own, I'd say go for FreeBSD, because development is more agile than OpenSolaris, new features and hardware are supported quicker on this platform, and given you have these skillfull admins already, the new stuff could be made to work easily.
Re:Article is trollbait (Score:4, Insightful)
> Switch to OpenSolaris
No, just no, not unless you have a specific reason to. As a desktop? They don't call it Slowaris for nothing, y'know.
Way to keep the troll alive. I know you are just trying to get a rise out of people, but come on, digging up a term from like 1995 isn't very convincing. I personally run Solaris (and production systems at work) because there is nothing in the space that scales like it. Even for single thread applications (and only one of them) with no memory requirements it is just as fast (now at least, early x86 versions of Solaris didn't perform as well as their SPARC counterparts) as FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, etc.
I could go on to bash Linux et al but, but what would be the point? What ever suits your needs the best is the best OS. Oh, I remember, this is slashdot, we make uninformed, brash comments here now. In 2000, this was a forum for killing FUD, now it is hear to spread FUD.
To the original poster, I think, if you want a better debate, you should take it to serverfault.com
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm completely with you. And I think there's some truth to the theory that corporations shunning GPL is going to hurt it. Sure, if your goal is to forever be a countercultural niche player, you can always thrive in that narrow space without corporate backing, but the GPL projects that have succeeded in a broader sense have almost invariably done so with *massive* corporate backing.
Take GCC, for example. If you've ever tried to fix bugs in GCC, it's a dauntingly large piece of code, and unless you work for a company that needs a fix, chances are you won't have the time or the inclination to delve into something that large, much less sufficient understanding of compiler concepts. As a result, I suspect if you took the statistics, you'd find that nearly every contribution to GCC in the past year came from someone fixing it as part of his/her job.
Without those contributions, the code would almost certainly stagnate; the "us versus the corporations" mentality is childish and self-destructive.
Re:self-compiling not such a black/white matter (Score:3, Insightful)
False. Most distributions attempt to deal with this problem in this way, but unless the program uses a pluggable (not just dynamically loaded) architecture it can't actually be packaged this way. The UMN mapserver is a prime example; code might not be used if you don't turn on a feature, but there's no loadable module support so you have to build in support for everything you think you might ever use. This is the problem gentoo was truly created to solve, and so far there is no solution whatsoever other than custom compilation. Programs like Apache which permit you to build modules independently and load them are, of course, different; but then, they don't have this problem to begin with.
No, it isn't. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've read the GPL and I haven't seen anything relating to the redistribution of wealth or any quote from Das Kapital. You just throw buzzwords like "communist philosophy" out there because a) you're american (yours is the only country where anyone would take you seriously with rubbish like that, due to a cultural meme that has no base in reality) and b) you're hoping to excite the masses, i.e. troll the forums. I don't have mod points today, but you would get a -1 Troll if I did.
Re:Why pick just one? (Score:1, Insightful)
behind Java, Solaris is the crown jewel for Oracle. They have wanted their own OS to compete with AIX for a long time. Now having an open one they can adapt it to the vertical stack that they have talked about for 2 decades now. I would expect Solaris and OpenSolaris to get a significant shot in the arm by Oracle.
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely the BSD lawsuit [wikipedia.org] had something to do with Linux taking off instead of BSD?
I rather doubt it, the timelines don't fit. "USL v. BSDi was a lawsuit brought in the United States in 1992 [...]. The case was settled out of court in 1993 [...]."
Meanwhile, Linux didn't hit version 1.0 until March, 1994. Yggdrasil, the first distro, was released in November, 1992, and Slackware in June, 1993, but they were strictly for hobbyists. Anyone looking to do something commercial would have wanted to use a more mature OS, and as I recall there were lots of commercial solutions during that time frame that were based off of BSD derivatives.
IMHO, Linux beat the BSDs for the same reason it beat Minux. It provided meaningful work for outside contributors. To be meaningful, work has to provide autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward. The first two are easy, they are practically inherent to the software development process. The last one is the winner. Wikipedia had the same property, and look at how it grew. Now it seems to be getting harder to make meaningful contributions, and participation seems to be falling. It took a while for people to discover that the iPhone App Store never had this property, but now even the commercial developers are leaving. Especially in the early days, Linus accepted other people's contributions with very few strings, so people got rapid positive feedback. As Linux has grown, it has gotten harder to keep doing this, but Linus seems to try harder than his "competitors". This is the core of the success of Linux.
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow...
First, GPL software is hardly "communist", nor is it anti-free market. If a commercial software developer can't compete with free, that's just too bad.
Second, it doesn't rely on "government force" either. It uses exactly the same copyright laws that commercial software uses. It just uses them differently - it covers purely redistribution, and imposes no limits at all on use (or modification, if you don't distribute those modifications).
As for Internix... That was never included in anything but the high end business versions of Windows, and typically only the server versions. It was intended to move businesses off of Unix onto Windows NT, and to allow Windows NT to gain FIPS 151-2 certification (which requires a POSIX implementation). It was entirely commercial until 2004, when one version was released for free, but only worked on Windows XP Professional. Subsequent versions only work on the server or high-end business versions of Windows (Ultimate and Enterprise, as of Windows 7). Considering that it relies on an insanely expensive version of Windows that most people won't have access to, required a lot of extra work to install, and until very recently only provided limited capabilities, is it any wonder that hardly anybody pays attention to it?
Microsoft was never prevented from including this in Windows. They just chose not to - it provides absolutely no benefit whatsoever to most of their user base, while providing an incentive to not write native Windows applications - what's the point if the same application could otherwise run on Windows (via the Unix subsystem), Mac OS X (which is Unix), Linux (which is almost Unix), and any commercial Unix system they cared to compile it for?
It also wouldn't have been possible without some GPL-licensed code, most notably GCC.
Re:Go the whole hog... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that they look outdated for at least a decade
The upright bicycle has essentially used the same design for over 100 years, and nothing has come close to replacing it. Sometimes you just hit a sweet spot in design, I think UNIX is one of those spots. Sure some places need polish, but the underlying system is very capable and doesn't suffer much for being based on 30 year old ideas.
Re:They're both good. What are you doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
The subject line has it right. Without knowing what you plan to use the system for and in what kind of environment it will be in there is absolutely no way to advise you. Indeed the article itself reeks of flamebait.
That said, I can say that I am extremely happy with FreeBSD, but I haven't played with OpenSolaris so I can't make any claims that FreeBSD is better. One of the reasons that I moved to FreeBSD (from Linux) was the more coherent administration. Every Linux distribution that I tried always tacked on a set of system administration/configuration tools that could do 90% of what I needed, but not the rest. But if I tried to do things by editing configuration files manually, sometimes the system tools would step on what I did. With FreeBSD it's pretty much all done by hand editing configuration files (except for user management, where one should let pw(1) edit the files for you). So I find that much easier to maintain.
As mentioned, the ports system is great. I find this the best package management system I've used to date. And it is easy to add a port when needed; so if I need something that isn't in ports, I can create my own port for it (which will deal with dependencies for me) and submit it.
ZFS is now fully supported in FreeBSD8. I haven't used it. I was disappointed that ZFS was not developed for OS X because I was hoping to have a truly native common filesystem I could use both on my servers and desktop. (OS X can cope with UFS, but only in a limited way).
Another things that is nice about FreeBSD (and is presumably true about OpenSolaris as well) is that the base system and the kernel are maintained by the same team. That is, these are full operating systems instead of just a kernel in need of a distribution.
The parent provides some good argument for using OpenSolaris. I'm not disputing those, but the choice depends on your particular needs
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
You ask as if I was accusing Microsoft of being especially evil. This isn't another big secret like the the way they carefully arrange APIs to disadvantage other companies that develop for Windows [groklaw.net]. In fact let's just ask them.
from an MS press release>: [microsoft.com]
It allows users with UNIX environments to take advantage of the benefits of the Windows environment without having to rewrite critical applications. In addition, users can immediately use the full Windows-based application development environment to develop native Win32® API-based applications.
In other words we'd like UNIX customers to move to Windows and abandon UNIX.
from the same MS press release:
Interix 2.2 brings Microsoft customers one step closer to its vision of a single desktop computer for all uses by providing a complete enterprise platform to run all Windows-based, UNIX and Internet applications.
In other words, we'd like you to only use Windows.
In fact there is nothing wrong with this as such. The normal way the free market works is by competition in which one company tries to destroy another companies products by getting people to use their own. What could easily be wrong is if they were, for example, ensuring some of their own software in a market where they had used illegal tactics to become a dominant player were only available on their own platform so that their competitors could not try to do the same to them.
It interests me why the MS astroturfers are so touchy about this topic? Could it be that MS has something to hide on this topic?
People who are neither working for the good of the "Open Source Community" nor Microsoft? Possibly, in part, Useful idiots? People who would be better to spend their time improving Debian or CentOS? Is Microsoft contributing or not? I know little of this and would be honestly interested to analyse it.
Agreed.
That is what many people say. However the SCO probably lawsuit hasn't really had that much influence on Linux. I'm not convinced that it's true. Certainly this doesn't apply to Minix or many of the other BSD situations. It certainly doesn't explain the success of Mozilla (copyleft) over Mosaic (not).
The source they do provide means that any major feature they implement in Linux its self is available to others. That's key. That means that competitors who release features into Linux can do so with the knowledge that major improvements to their features will be available to copy back.
As far as the binary module thing goes; this is an exce
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
I abandoned the moderation system when they replaced the meta-mod system with the current thumbs up or down one. People abuse the moderation system now with impunity. If you criticize an example of piss-poor moderation, they slap you with Off Topic or Troll.
Save yourself the frustration. Just browse at -1 and ignore the troll-mods.
Re:I have a PROBLEM. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:[picking a fight over a socialist sig] (Score:3, Insightful)
Mafia theft... err... "taxes" don't "pay for civilization", civilization comes from voluntary cooperation between self-interested individuals that occurs in the free market!
Show me an existing or past successful and prospering civilization which is based strictly on voluntary cooperation, with no single organizing entity with an ultimate mandate to use force (i.e. government) and no forced taxation, and then I'll agree with you.
Until then, my political views are guided by the same reasoning as my software choices - "use things proven to work". Which is why I support a society based on regulated capitalist free market, and a "safety net" of a welfare state.
Re:Performance boost? (Score:3, Insightful)
i686? A lot of distributions are still compiled for i386. Ubuntu comes to mind, but the same with others like Debian. I suppose it allows for them to run on just about any PC built in the last 20 years, but how many people are trying to run modern, full featured distributions like Ubuntu on anything slower than a P2 nowadays?
Re:Go the whole hog... (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, some of you Mac people are annoying twits. First of all, if you did a little Googling yourself, you might find out that NeXTSTEP is based upon BSD. It's not a bad thing, but you're basically carrying forward a bunch of baggage that's decades old. Hardly the redo-from-scratch the OP was talking about.
Secondly, OSX has carried several things forward since the original Mac OS from the 80's. The most obvious thing is the menu bar at the top of the (main) screen, something that worked great on a 9" monitor but doesn't make sense in the days on multiple 20"+ screens. Other annoyances (for me at least) is applications that stay open even when you close all the windows and lack of a maximize feature.
So what I'm saying is that OSX is not something created new, from scratch, under some new paradigm using what we've learned from the past 50 years of computing, despite what you might think. It's actually quite the opposite - Apple turned to some tried-and-true technologies after their attempt to create something new from scratch (aka Copland) didn't work out for them.
Re:Only copyleft is "commie", BSD isn't. (Score:3, Insightful)