Is Solaris worth the hassle ?

[hamei]

History : been running a honkin' big IBM server for a couple of years on Solaris 10. Not big in the way that an O3200 is but way bigger than we need. Four slot2 Xeons and triple redundant power supplies of electricity and noise big, to give you an idea why it's time to change. Getting Solaris running was not enjoyable but ever since then it's been absolutely trouble-free.

So I grabbed a V100 for cheap since that's all we really need. No root password of course, so went to grab a CD image of Sparc Solaris - 10 or 11, may as well get 11, might be slightly better (hope springs eternal.)

Register ! Register ! Register ! Okay fine, why the hell I have to go through this just to get a bunch of spam I have n0 idea but anyway ... register, confirm registration with email, login with the confirmed user name and password,

Code: Select all

Error

System error. Please re-try your action. If you continue to get this error, please contact the Administrator.


With no indication anywhere of where or how to "contact the Administrator," of course. I should go to church and pray, maybe. Will the voice of Larry speak to us from the tabernacle ?

This is Oracle, the biggest, baddest, most elite force in high-tech computing. And they can't run a fucking website. What kind of braindead ignorant useless pieces of shit are these people ?

Which brings me to the question : Solaris wasn't that bad to run. Blastwave had what I needed, I got it easily, the thing gave me no trouble at all. I could ignore it entirely for years (considering how pleasant Solaris is to use, that's a good thing.) But if these useless lobotomized knuckle-draggers can't even run a website, I'm tempted to tell them to go fly a kite (or words to that effect.) Is it worth putting up with their stupidity to run Sun software on Sun hardware ? I'm not keen on the alternatives but Oracle seems to be about as incompetent as they come ... if I have to put up with stupidity and hassles I may as well go the kumbaya route. Hey Sky ! I thought "professionals" knew what they were doing? It seems like if you go to the trouble of using obsolete hardware, you should stick with the obsolete software that it was designed for but these guys are not making it pleasant ? or even tolerable ... any thoughts on the subject ?

[PymbleSoftware]

run "Is Solaris worth the hassle ?" through translate.google.com enough times and it comes back as "I'd like to start an O/S flame ware, lets start by bashing Solaris"...

Solaris isn't even Solaris any more... its Solaris Express, OpenIndiana, OpenSolaris... or that joke thing they wanted to play with where I used to work.. Solaris/x86 everything with Linux Kernel, ran for almost 5 minutes before crashing... Had some kind of marketing department behind it too..

I've been stuck at OpenIndiana where I used to work or Solaris 10 update 8 on the v440 and Blade1500s at home, because I don't need to update things to the latest all the time.. I have other things to do.

R.

[hamei]

run "Is Solaris worth the hassle ?" through translate.google.com enough times and it comes back as "I'd like to start an O/S flame ware, lets start by bashing Solaris"...

Actually, that's not what I meant. This is Sun hardware, I have no complaints about Solaris (once you get it installed and configured) but these imbeciles at Oracle can't even run a website. I could grab Open BSD or Loonix (yuck) in five minutes and have the thing running before Monday morning.

The question was more, Is it worth hassling with the losers at Oracle just to get Solaris ?

Sorry if it didn't come through clearly, that kind of total incompetence mixed with avarice and the mad-scientist need for microcontrol pisses me off. Thoroughly.

[skywriter]

The question was more, Is it worth hassling with the losers at Oracle just to get Solaris ?

i don't think you even get to do that. you didn't pay any money to larry, so nobody will talk to you.

[SAQ]

If you buy high-end software support they'll get it working for you.

If not then they don't care if it works for you.

You pays your money and you takes your choice. There's always the Penguin or the Dark Side if you want to try something different.

There's also a chance that Oracle runs their ship like HP runs OpenVMS sales. You have to prove yourself worthy by performing a quest before they will deign to offer to sell you their software. The Worthy Ones will complete the quest and have the opporitunity to purchase the software.

And just in case you're wondering I don't think the quest involves bringing them a shrubbery. Although eMGee - have you tried that yet? You never know - it might work.

[zmttoxics]

I love solaris. S11 is a whole new monster just like 10FCS was, but I still like it.

For a v100, I would stick to solaris 10 with a UFS root. You only need to register if you have a support contract, otherwise hit no and move on.

[skywriter]

Although eMGee - have you tried that yet? You never know - it might work.

The Ministry of Truth erase his existence. Doubleplusgood!

[kev009]

Wait, I thought S11 didn't run on anything older than sun4v (aka UltraSparc T1)... did I miss something?

[zmttoxics]

S11X and OSOL work on USII. Has anyone actually tried S11 on USIV or under yet?

[hamei]

I love solaris.

I don't love it, but it does work reliably. That's worth a lot ...

For a v100, I would stick to solaris 10 with a UFS root. You only need to register if you have a support contract, otherwise hit no and move on.

Thanks. I just realized I can get the whole set of CD's for about five bucks, delivered. So I'll go that way, partially to thumb my nose at Larry. Maybe I should put Oracle on there too, just for kicks

[Hakimoto]

hamei, I stopped bothering with Solaris when it went Oracle. Shame, was a brillant OS. Now it's just a pain the way they've set things up. I don't run it anymore, anywhere. Period.

[hamei]

hamei, I stopped bothering with Solaris when it went Oracle. Shame, was a brillant OS. Now it's just a pain the way they've set things up. I don't run it anymore, anywhere. Period.

That was exactly my feeling last night ... but now that I see I can get the entire set (10 and 11 are both available) for five bucks, it's going to be kind of fun to run it without having to put up with the Ellison bullshit. And if he wants to put a stop to that he'll have to do without the hundreds of cheap developers up in Beijing. Like that will ever happen in this brave new world of highly paid knowledge workers, hahahahahah !

I may even scan the cover art and send him a copy by snailmail

[Titox]

S11X and OSOL work on USII. Has anyone actually tried S11 on USIV or under yet?

Tried in a Fire V120 and Blade 1500. The installer says NO

[jimmer]

Your mileage will surely vary, but in my opinion: No, Solaris isn't worth the hassle.

[smj]

I haven't had my hands on Solaris in ages, but I still think of it as a fine production OS. So thumb your nose at The Larry, load up Sol 10, and enjoy life. (I haven't been thrilled with the direction the installation and admin tools have been taking since the "everything in Java" theme started back in, what, Solaris 8? But that's a different discussion...)

My colo and home datacenter needs have been met admirably by FreeBSD on Xeon-based hardware. And I'm enjoying using ZFS on that platform, even if it isn't the latest version that you'd find in Solaris 11 - I'm running mirrored ZFS roots as well as the expected storage pools... Package and patch systems aren't where I'd like them to be, but at least nobody's refusing to give me something because I don't have a support contract.