Goodbye Linux, I'm in love with OpenSolaris
I first installed Linux in 1996 or 1997. I even translated some pages in 1998. And I've been using Linux since then. Almost ten years now. I'm getting old, I assume.
By the time I was doing some research at the University, and I used HP-UX (9.05!) and Digital UX too, doing some PVM on top of Debian, HP-UX and DG-UX. Doing C++ templates in 1998 was a real risky thing, as there was no standard for C++ at the time.
I've seen Linux evolving during a great part of its lifetime. During these ten years HP-XU and DG-UX have died, and Linux has survived.
Linux 1.2.13
I don't know why I remember specially the Linux 1.2.13 release. Maybe because at the time it was a really usable Linux version, or maybe because I used it as a cheap print server for Macs, emulating an expensive LaserWriter with a cheap DeskJet.
The rise...
During these ten years I've installed Linux lots of times, even in weird environments (I once installed Linux emulating a network through the parallel port using 'plip'. That was fun!).
I've been a fan of slackware, redhat, debian, mandrake, mandriva and kubuntu. Using mainly KDE most of the time.
And I've enjoyed (and spread the word) all the time. It's been a fantastic decade.
Until now.
... and fall
I tried out the recently released Kubuntu 8/10, to find that KDE4 required too much an effort for me to adopt.
The fact is that KDE4 is not up to the task. Not jet. Take, for instance, the Konsole application. KDE3's Konsole can replicate text input to different tabs, making cluster administration a snap. But this (great!) feature of Konsole has been just removed in KDE4! I can't believe it.
And the kernel is not getting better at all either. At least not for me. Kubuntu 8/10 installation CD won't install on my laptop (I'm using an unexpensive, super-light LG E200), because the video card (ATI XPress 1250) is not recognized.
So I had to download the alternate CD...
... to find out that my wireless card is NOT recognized, and that I had to seek for a Windows ".inf" file to run ndiswrapper.
Enough.
OpenSolaris 8/11, a serious challenger
OpenSolaris 8/11 was not difficult to install (on a primary partition, though). My wifi card is working well with the "ath" driver (version 0.7.3). So is my ethernet port. Sound is very good.
And they have ZFS, and boot environments, and SMF, performance is very good.
But, best of all: there's a great community that is very helpful. And all the system is well documented in a central place. They even have robots compiling packages, and a well defined process for porting software.
Future blogging
Take it easy with me while the transition. I'm still migrating some stuff. As a bonus in the future I'll also blog about my experiences with OpenSolaris.
So good bye, Linux, and thanks for all.
Hello, OpenSolaris.
Ten years and now you get divorced? Be careful your wife does not read this entry! ;)
As good as always!
Cheers
My wife? Which one of them? :-D
Sorry, but this seems to be some kind of strange propaganda conversion story..
- you used all kinds of linux distro's, but stop using them if one of them fails to set the drivers right for your graphics card? (I've had problems too with my ATI card, but after finding info on some fora used a tool to set it right and now it works)
- you have 10 years of Linux experience, start using a minimal cd because of problems with your graphics card (which is pretty radical), but installing a madwifi debian package is a reason for stop using Linux at all?
- you always are a KDE fan, but when KDE fails, you don't even mention try switching to another desktop, but at once switch the whole OS?
- coming from Ubuntu, you praise the
You can say what you want but opensolaris doesn't support a lots of hardware and the kernel is really heavy, I use GNU/Linux and I won't change for a long time
I have been a windows users for years... But it changed when I got Ubuntu 6.06, I'm free since then.
I have now the last version of OpenSolaris and there is nothing new, nothing that really makes me say good bye GNU / Linux.
I have an Acer Aspire 6920, in Mexico it is a good model o laptop, I have some issues installing Ubuntu, Opensolaris don't, as you wrote it, even sound works out pf the box!!!
But I can get to work simple programs loke Gparted or Compiz on OpenSolaris.
It is a good start but there is a long way to go, I'll be waching you...
Reminds me of my story. Been a Linux user for over a decade and switched to OpenSolaris last year. Not because of GUI reasons (I really like KDE4 and where it's heading) but because of the underlying system. In the Linux world a lot changes without bringing real change to me as a user except for incompatibility and broken drivers that worked yesterday but fail today and maybe start working in a week again. When working with software and code i never want to miss dtrace again (tried systemtap and it failed in every way i could think of). ZFS is also great stuff for backups and data integrity and it's also available on Macos and Freebsd so i can move data between those systems without falling back to FAT. The documentation of the whole system is of unmatched quality.
There is still work to be done but things are progressing very fast.
I'm really happy with my new OS, took some days to really get used to it, but thanks to the docs I'm able to do things that were a pain to achieve in Linux but are easy as pie under OpenSolaris.
Regards,
Björn
So just because one distro was not very well polished, you abandon GNU/Linux as a whole?
*buntu has never managed to give me fully functioning drivers, you always need to poke around a bit. But support for atheros is in the linux kernel...
I'm also a fan of the new cool technologies in Solaris/OpenSolaris, but there is a lack of drivers for common hardware, like that OSOL has no support for synaptics touchpads. And that support for andvanced wlan crypto setup is not there yet?
I've found that Linux is the only kernel (apart from windows) that allows me to control the fan behaviour on my laptop.
I also can't live with Gnome, it's just to irritating for me. Take for example gnome-terminal: When having several tabs open and the rapidly switching between them using the mouse one tab always ends up detaching itself...
And what do you do when you want to watch a movie? Hmm, nothing in the repostory -> install from source ( not to much of a problem since I'm using Gentoo ) but kinda' irritating.
The next release may improve on things, but there is a lot of catching up still for OSOL...
¿Y cómo instala KDE en OpenSolaris?
Welcome to OpenSolaris. I am looking forward to your blog about transitioning from linux environments to OpenSolaris.
BTW, try the different distro's of OpenSolaris.
i´ve been using linux since 2005, now i´m in love with opensolaris 08.11 :D also
OpenSolaris has its own issues. I cannot install it on my *nix machine because it only recognizes the AGP variant of the Radeon 9200SE.
Why upgrade the card to an expensive NVidia (cause the PCI cards are expensive) when I won't be gaming or doing any type of CAD/Modeling or serious graphics work on it?
The Hardware Support is a huge shortfall for [Open]Solaris, since it does not run on systems that 99% of the Linux Distros + FreeBSD run flawwlessly on.
This angers me a little, because I want to install it, really bad, especially since they have a much cleaner approach than most Linux distros (no dev package polution, easier way to upgrade systems, ZFS, a clean developer toolchain and good
Hi,
Seems to me your that the majority of your issues is with the Window Manager and not the OS.
I'm pretty sure the Linux kernel supports a much larger hardware base than Opensolaris.
I'm also using Opensolaris on my work desktop, mainly for playing with ZFS. But I'm not sold yet.
Lloyd
...so just because of ATI 1250 and wireless card you trow-away Linux? remember Linux serving you for 10 years Man.... why don't you use both ? :)
Just as you, I love open solaris and would never go back to linux (should I say linux's :( ), but I can't say with a straight face that
Sorry, while OPenSolaris is a good OS, I'd have to forsake a tremendous collection o applications that are available to me.
HP-UX has died?
Or just it's dyslexic twin HP-XU ?
I do grow weary of the
wew, this man is falling in love ;)
i hope you don't need encrypted FS. This is why i switch back to Linux
I jumped the OSOL-wagon since the 2008.11 version after having grasped the integral relationships between ZFS + snapshots, IPS-packaging system, repositories, boot environment admin and SMF. Apache, Mysql and Glassfish can be set up to run as so called services on SMF on the root-zone or on separate sub-Zones (type of isolated OS inside OS). Everything is working beautifully. Best coverage of OSOL 2008.11 can be found from the newly published OpenSolaris Bible. Minimal *NIX- and network-experience is needed.
Haven't got much experience on Linux-distros, but somehow I can sense that the
I have been using Solaris since I bought my first Media-kit 10 years ago. It was the very first time UPS drove around in this neighbourhood and it was a small happening by it self. These days I am totally dependent on other OS because I am dependent on Matlab.
Umm...I use Centos 5.2 on my laptop..works great...it took some time to configure the wireless driver with ndiswrapper and b43-fwcutter...but it works great... I looked at Open Solaris, I wasn't impressed with the graphics or the desktop set up...wasn't as aesthetically pleasing...to each their own...
Ohhh this hash a definite potential for a flamer blog...
Hi,
What a wonderful story! I agree that Linux is not the holy graal in OS world and there is a lot to do. I also agree that people should try different systems (I used Windows, Macs, BSD's and Solaris too). But what you're saying about the reasons of your switch is a bit funny! Maybe you can tell us some differences in kernel architecture which make OpenSolaris better, some statistics about supported hardware (Windows is first, than goes Linux not Solaris - sorry)? Be honest.
Hi,
I tried using Open Solaris for a long time with very less satisfaction. I am a big admirer of Solaris 10. Its a great operating system. But, Open Solaris is not as good. Moreover Solaris was designed for really large systems. Open Solaris almost killed my laptop. I am looking forward for a more friendlier version of Solaris to try. (The bells and whistles in solaris are fun to play with, like DTrace and sunCC). But right now, with all its current changes, the new Linux kernel rocks!
Hi,
I agree, Solaris is great and I will change to it immediately after they made it possible to have users which are in more than 16+1(/32+1) groups.
Now you say you don't need this feature, but you will think different if you try to bind you system to a LDAP or Active Directory.
We talk about 17 groups per user. We live in Year 2009!!! This is a poor limitation. After breaking this limitation of ngroups_max (I don't mind if they have to break standards to do this) I'll admit that Solaris is the most advanced OS in the world! ;-)
Fregge
OpenSolaris could be great, and probably will be. The Sun employees on the forums are great. But I spent # MONTHS trying to make it work because I wanted ZFS. Oh, it worked, but every day was something else. for 3 MONTHS. Have to investigate, this does not quite work right, etc. etc. Sun is guilty of misrepresentation. OpenSolaris is only a work under development, they hype it like it is ready for production. It is far from.
I ran Suse Linux with KDE for 4 or 5 years. Suse 11.1 went to KDE 4. The KDE people have lost their way. It also supports KDE 3.5, so I reinstalled to that...great again... but there are many bugs and flakyness in Suse 11.1.
I tried Ubuntu (with Gnome). I am delighted. Not all of the GUI configuration things that Suse has in Yast, but a simple search on help.ubuntu.com comes up with a clearly written, concise set of directions for everything so far.
Linux works fine. KDE has gotton lost, and perhaps your distribution. LVM/MD is head and shoulders above ZFS in terms of capability (vacating disks, removing and adding disks, etc.), it just does not have the COW and checksumming. Which is huge. But you know, ZFS appears to be the only thing that DOES work well in Open Solaris. And ya just need the whole system or it is not servicable. Mysterious data changes are not all that common. I have had 2 or 3 in 30 years. I am uncomfortable, but I cannot spend my life looking up the Solaris Gotcha of the day.
Cut the hype, truth in advertising, and keep evolving it at the current rapid pace. People that want to live on the cutting edge will love you, people who need a system that works will track your progress and appreciate your candor. You will have happy instead of disenchanted users and a challenger for Linux in 1-2 years.
I am running OpenSolaris 2008.11, OpenSuse 11.1 and Fedora 9. Although OpenSolaris 2008.11 is now comparatively easy to install and stable, there is still room for improvement such as immediate self refreshing of the Apache home directory files after updating of the files by Bluefish editor. I prefer OpenSolaris 11.1 to Fedora 10 because I am still allowed to login as root in OpenSolaris 11.1 while Fedora 10 will not provide any alternatives upon setup.
I too have been closely looking at OpenSolaris as well as the usual Linux, and at the moment am using them both in xVM VirtualBox.
Been with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSuse, and Kubuntu was ok with KDE3, but KDE4 ruined it.
OpenSuse can handle KDE4 easier than the other Linux distros, but OpenSolaris is still compelling. But choose one over the other? Why do that when you can have both?
I've been using linux since 1994 (ouch I'm older than you :-( ). @Home and @Work. In the last 6/7 years I booted the win32 partition of my PCs 3 or four times. I don't know OpenSolaris but I'd never change my Ubuntu + Gnome (or icewm on the older machines) with anything else. Except the eternal doom of winmodems, I never had any problems setting up my working environment.
Cheers,
dcore
(Excuse my english)
Well, sincerely I've tried both systems GNU/Linux (Ubuntu) and Opensolaris (trying to avoid emotional points of view). I can say that for every advantage I founded in Opensolaris compared with GNU/Linux (really there are some ones), I founded 3 disadvantages.
For now I think GNU/Linux is far away ahead from Opensolaris, but this one has in interesting future.
Para efectuar su instalacion de KDE en OpenSolaris, download BeleniX OS (OpenSolaris con KDE y XFCE preinstalados) o siga las instruciones en solaris.kde.org
Hi, Linux Inside. 14 years with Linux.
I have also found difficulties with many hardware in opensolaris as in linux.
I have a rule, buy only hardware supported by linux kernel. I hope with that vendors will learn the lesson.
I have been using Linux for 11 years now.
I am one of only 180 in the world who has a master level certification on the Linux Operating System...I am an RHCA.
Linux is a toy in many ways compared to OpenSolaris.
I've tried Opensolaris 8.11. It looks and feels very solid but it seems to be very memory hungry (almost 1GB of RAM used just to use package manager without anything else running). Ubuntu 9.04 runs at 402MB with package manager, system monitor and firefox with 4 tabs open.
With such high system requirements, I can only run OS 8.11 on my 2GB Sony Vaio laptop - It would be simply impossible to run it on my old desktop PC (1100Mhz AMD, 512MB RAM) which runs Ubuntu 9.04 acceptably.
Also the packages available do not seem to be as upto date as the Linux equivelants that I am familiar with.
I think that Open Solaris has great potential, but needs more work and needs to loose weight and be more streamlined.
Stupid consideration. OpenSolaris is good but not that way linux is bad!
Even Ian Murdock a Debian (Ubuntu roots) founder has changed Linux kernel for Osolaris kernel.
He knows that using Solaris was a closed source not customizable but not better kernel than Linux, now he joined opensolaris development abandoning Debian, he exlpains:
http://ianmurdock.com/sun/joining-sun/
If he changed from Linux to OSolaris why don't you?
Just give a try their live CD/USB, you have from compiz(not slowaris anymore, forget the fat kernel), ips a synaptic like tool, lot of package repositories, Nvidia graphic drivers from nvidia, flash, and the best 64bits with 32 bits compatible in the same booted kernel, and old support that remembers Sparc 32 to 64bits migration compatibility ;)
Review the technologies like Containers, Crowsbow, ZFS (ext4,brtfs just a joke), Dtrace, SMF, and a lot of advanced tool even compared to other advanced Unix like HP-UX, AIX, SGI ...
You'll really find Linux like a toy
;)
Nice one! OpenSolaris is awsome!
After some years waiting ZFS on Linux (booring licence questions)...
I just switched my home NAS server with two raid disks from Gentoo Linux to Opensolaris!!
Now i'm happy with ZFS (main reason to switch) and same old services SAMBA,ddclient,SSH,VirtualBox...
Nice to see that more people are switching to OpenSolaris. Linux is good but not great.
I really like this news :)
opensource-sweden.blogspot dot com
Interesting NAS benchmark :
http://napobo3.blogspot.com/2009/10/opensolaris-is-best-platform-for-out-of.html
Hey there,
I have to say this post seems a bit off in some of its theory. I use both OpenSolaris and Linux, and have been using Linux since about 1997.
Your comparisons between the two are not terribly accurate.
You don't like KDE 4? Well, OpenSolaris does not even offer it as a supported environment. (Sure there is Kornoa, but it has a ways to go and is unofficial.) Also, Konsole in KDE 4.2 once again has multicast input to numerous tabs again, under Edit, copy input to.
Hardware detection is generally better in OpenSolaris that with various flavors of Linux? That is just not even remotely correct. OpenSolaris has pretty limited (but growing) support for typical PC hardware. And for servers it lacks common RAID card and even network card support for a surprising number of devices.
And if for some reason a Linux kernel does not support a device, your chance of finding source and compiling one for Linux is MUCH greater than for OpenSolaris - at least at this time.
And let's face it, the OpenSolaris installer has a LONG way to go. RAID 1 at install time? Partition management during install? Modify install time packages? Drive encryption? Nope. Do it all post install.
Now, don't get me wrong - I very much like, and use, OpenSolaris. But if we REALLY want to win more Linux users, then valid points should be used AND the migration to OpenSolaris must be made far easier. For example, a Linux user installs OpenSolaris only to discover there is no built-in read / write support for their Ext3 partitions? Not too impressive for