Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!dataphone!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!news.belwue.de!news.uni-ulm.de!borchert From: borchert@turing.mathematik.uni-ulm.de (Andreas Borchert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.osf.osf1 Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6 Date: 13 Dec 1996 08:31:20 GMT Organization: University of Ulm, SAI, Germany Lines: 76 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <58r48o$t7q@arktur.rz.uni-ulm.de> References: <32986299.AC7@mail.esrin.esa.it> <58ma5l$kb2@abyss.west.sun.com> <58mnvu$h27@web.nmti.com> <58n5q1$9ci@arktur.rz.uni-ulm.de> <58pdbt$mjv@web.nmti.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: turing.mathematik.uni-ulm.de X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.0.0 (BETA) UNIX) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.solaris:92409 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1804 comp.unix.internals:11604 comp.unix.osf.osf1:17035 On 12 Dec 1996 16:54:21 GMT, Peter da Silva <peter@nmti.com> wrote: > In article <58n5q1$9ci@arktur.rz.uni-ulm.de>, > Andreas Borchert <borchert@turing.mathematik.uni-ulm.de> wrote: > > On 11 Dec 1996 16:37:18 GMT, Peter da Silva <peter@nmti.com> wrote: > > > I've got a bunch of reasons for disliking Solaris. That it's based on System > > > V isn't one of them. I've got far more experience with System V than BSD. > > > Would you please so kind to enumerate some of your reasons? > > What, again? Again? I'm still missing technical points! > (1) It's a very large and complex system. > (but it doesn't do much more than simpler systems) Agreed. But this seems to be a common property of all commercial UNIX directions now. Once upon a time, there was a simple UNIX system named UNIX Edition VII. > (2) It doesn't provide good System V administrative semantics. > (but it uses System V commands and files) Could you please more elaborate this? You have, for example, System-V-init, pkgadd and many other System-V-goodies which work. > (3) It doesn't provide good BSD administrative semantics. > (but it does use some BSD stuff as well) What are you missing here? > (4) It's harder to port System V software to Solaris than to other > System V boxes. > (that's UHC, Intel UNIX, Unixware, and Xenix software) I do *not* believe this -- I've even ported huge amounts of software (coming from System-V and from BSD environments) to early Solaris releases as Solaris 2.1 with nearly no problems. > (5) BSD software ports pretty well, but you have to make sure to set > your paths right to make sure you don't get the System V environment. > (Watch out for /usr/ccs/bin) Indeed, this is a little trap which can be easily avoided :-) > (6) On the same hardware, it doesn't perform as well as SunOS. > (Of course SunOS doesn't perform at all on the new hardware. Sigh) The new releases perform well even in comparison to SunOS 4.1.x provided you have enough memory. It is quite a natural thing that new major releases are slower than older ones (SunOS 4.0.3 was slower than SunOS 3.5, for example) and that performance issues get solved on later minor releases (there were significant improvements in 2.4 and 2.5). > Now, some of these have apparently been fixed in 2.4 and 2.5, and of course > porting System V software has become less of an issue... I've done my ports, > and new software that uses the System V interfaces tends to be written for > the Solaris environment now. But Solaris gave me a pretty bad time for a > pretty long time, and I'm not much interested in renewing my acquaintance > with it. To my experience it was always fun to port software to SunOS [34].x releases as well as to Solaris 2.[1-5]. Because we had the sources of all software we needed, we were not bothered by the the unsufficient binary compatibility of Solaris 2.1 and 2.2 -- we ported and recompiled simply everything. Andreas. -- Andreas Borchert, Universitaet Ulm, SAI, Helmholtzstr. 18, 89069 Ulm, Germany E-Mail: borchert@mathematik.uni-ulm.de WWW: http://www.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/sai/borchert/ PGP key available via ``finger borchert@laborix.mathematik.uni-ulm.de''