[Sussex] Solaris Networking

[Steve 'Dobbo' Dobson]

Jon

On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 11:58:13AM +0100, Jon Fautley wrote:
> Desmond Armstrong wrote:
> >LINUX is our main purpose but since this is free download Unix and is 
> >also open I do feel that this is a reasonable digression from our main 
> >topics.
> 
> It's about as open as a can of beans that's been welded shut and placed 
> under a 50 ton weight.

The only issue I have with the license is that it allows Sun to use any
code you contribute to OpenSolaris in their commercial/propriety OS.  I
don't think that's that unreasonable.  After all you don't have to use or
contribute to the OpenSolaris project - I don't and I use to the a big
Solaris fan a few years back.

> I don't think you'd want to use Solaris (has to remember not to spell it 
> 'Slowaris' as I'm posting from a company address ;) as a desktop system. 
> There is a GNU/Solaris distribution that's basically the Solaris kernel 
> with the Ubuntu userspace layered on top. I installed it the other day, 
> and it seemed kinda interesting. And slow. But I was running it in VMWare.

It was a while back ~98 I was running Solaris 2.4 x86 on the same computer
as a co-worker was using Debian slink (IIRC).  Solaris was slower, the
computers were the same: same CPU, same clock speed, same disks, same 
memory, same supplier, same delivery day.

One of the reasons is slower, I think,  this that Solaris shipped with
only three binaries: one for 32-bit Sparc, one for 64-bit Sparc and one
for x86.  The same kernel supported both single and SMP systems.  As
Linux could (and was) compiled to best support the system it was running
on and Solaris couldn't there was a great deal of scope there for
performance differences.

I would be interested to see how a Linux compiled for SMP and the 486 would
compare (performance wise) with Solaris x86 on the same hardware.

Another reason is that Solaris 2.4 used the old Unix File System and that
is not very fast by modern FS standards.  If you needed IO speed on a
Solaris system you bought ReiserFS for it.

> If you're after more UNIX-like experience, and want to be even more free 
> and open than Linux, check out the BSDs.
> 
> Probably FreeBSD and OpenBSD. FreeBSD is 'user friendly'. OpenBSD is 
> secure and VERY minimal.

Don't forget NetBSD to complete the set.
 
> If you really want to learn hard-core UNIX/BSD administration, I'd look 
> at OpenBSD. It's only 50-odd MB to download, too.

But that doesn't give you much, you then enter compile mode and start
building all the other useful software you need.
 
Steve
-- 
                              Steve "Dobbo" Dobson
                                steve at dobson.org
                               SussexLUG Master
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BOFH excuse #252:

Our ISP is having {switching,routing,SMDS,frame relay} problems
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