Solaris vs. Linux

[paul wheaton]

There seems to be something brewing between Linux and Solaris at Sun. Anybody know what the relationship is?

[Anonymous]

Linux is somehow similiar to Solaris.
I will talk about RedHat, since this is basical distribution I work with.
RedHat has similiar file structure to Solaris, I mean /etc structure and basical packages locations.
The second and very important thing - threads. Linux has thread library, that is compatible enough to Solaris'es one. (pthreads?) This make porting of Solaris's programs to Linux very easy. For example, java
Both Solaris and Linux are SYSV5, unlinke BSD. This make socket programs to be easily portable between Linux and Solaris too.

[Tim Uckun]

One other thing.
I think sun is giving away (or almost giving away) solaris. It's not open source but the OS itself can be had for what amounts to shipping and handling costs.

[Frank Carver]

I think the "something brewing" is that Linux is popular as the current "Anti-Microsoft" platform, and Sun are keen to be seen to push anything which might fight Uncle Bill :-)
Sun are also keen on getting Java the widest possible acceptance, and as a *huge* proportion of the world's server systems run Linux, they are keen to get Java properly supported and used on Linux. So Sun have anounced that future Java releases will be released on Solaris, Windows *and Linux* as official ports.
I also seem to recall an announcement that Sun are offering Linux on their Sparc boxes as an option to Solaris. I think the plan here is to offer an easy migration path from a small x86 machine running Linux to a big Sparc machine, so project managers will find it easy to specify Sun hardware.
I use and administer a variety of Windows, Linux and Solaris machines, and of the three, Solaris is generally more friendly to administer if the task is already in their excellent Sys Admin documentation, but a pain in the butt otherwise. With Linux, on the other hand, nothing is actually /easy/, but there's an almost infinite amount of support which makes nothing really /hard/ either. With Windows, of course there's no such thing as real system admin, almost everything is very hard or impossible.
Sun probably dream of the scenario where Joe Hacker sets up a small Linux system, puts some Java software on it which becomes very popular, so Joe needs to upgrade. Joe has two possible paths to "big system" performance - move the current Linux box to Solaris, to gain the advantage of a better tuned Java implementation, and then on to Solaris/Sparc for better system throughput - or move to Linux on a higher-performance Sparc box, and then maybe move to Solaris for easier Sys Admin training and support.
In either case, Sun wins, and Microsoft loses, as NT is nowhere in the equation.
Frank.

[Matt Midcap]

I did a little research and you're right Tim, Sun is giving away its OS for the price of shipping and handling.

[JD Childs]

Actually, Paul was the first to
tell me about the "free" Solaris (cost: $10)
There is a catch! There have been a number
of security updates to Solaris to fix
relatively easily exploitable REMOTE buffer
overflows...and most of those patches ARE NOT
free!!! You have to buy a support contract.
I had Solaris running on a machine at home for 3 weeks...but deleted it as soon as I learned I couldn't patch it w/o a contract. My biggest beef with Linux/Solaris is the huge number of security holes relative to *BSD flavors of Unix like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Digital Unix.

[Pawel Veselov]

Just a note. The all buffer overflow problems can be fixed with protecting the stack, and this patch is free. Solaris 2.6 actually has an kernel option for this ( though it is undocumented ). So, remote exploits are going to be just DoS, nothing more. Annoying - yes, dangerous - no.

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With best of best regards, Pawel S. Veselov ( aka Black Angel )

[Tim Uckun]

To JD.
Is freeBSD more secure or is it that fewer people are hacking away at it?
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"There are some who call me TIM?"

[JD Childs]

Sorry bout the late reply...
In my opinion the answer is a little bit of both...
The philosophy of FreeBSD has always been to develop more secure, faster, better performing *server* software for the PC at the expense of features (recently, because of perceived competition from Net/OpenBSD, there's been a push to develop for the Alpha and SPARC platforms). Thus, you won't find drivers for the latest hardware like you will for Linux. In addition, there are far fewer "official" developers for FreeBSD than Linux. In fact, nothing gets into the FreeBSD tree without consent of one of the "core" team members (I believe there are 12 people). The FreeBSD code base is scrutinized more thoroughly than Linux code before it's released to the public. I think that Linux's popularity is driving development at a quicker pace...thus sometimes patches are released which aren't security/regression tested as well as for other platforms.
I have no doubt, however, that if FreeBSD was as popular a consumer platform as Linux that the same thing would happen to them. Linux gets a lot of bad press regarding security simply because more people have it and are looking through the code for bugs...other Unixes get the advantage of being able to eliminate similar bugs before popular exploits are published among hacker groups For professional use, I recommend Open/FreeBSD exclusively because:

• It rocks as a server platform without the overhead of supporting every consumer-oriented feature under the sun


• It seems more secure out of the box...I have had to patch my Linux laptop 12 times since I installed it in October...my FreeBSD boxes have been patched twice...OpenBSD is especially good for this because that is the exclusive goal of its development...security
• 99% of "script-kiddie" exploits published around the 'net work for Linux or Solaris (or NT) only
• FreeBSD runs 95% of Linux binaries...the exception being graphic intensive games/applications which might exclusively use some of the newer video cards (I am running the Linux Version of Netscape Communicator 4.5 on my FreeBSD box to write this, and I have the Linux version of StarOffice 5.0, Linux Oracle, Linux WordPerfect, and yes...Linux Quake/Doom on my FreeBSD 3.1 box at work)

[JD Childs]

Bonus Point:
Who knows where (which University) FreeBSD 1.0 was first developed/posted???
Hint: Tim lives in the same state

[Tim Uckun]

I went to the freebsd site and read some of the docs. As far as I can see stability and predictability are the main selling points of FreeBsd. It sounds to me like FreeBSD is to Linux what Python is to PERL. Linux is fast wrapping the Nix world around itself and is well on it's way to being a "mainstream" OS. BSD seems to be lagging on the fringes still. This is not a bad thing in and of itself but like Paul said it could be a case of VHS vs BETA all over again.
I don't know if there ever will be a "standard" linux because most of the users in that community don't want a standard anything. They want infinite freedom. Thus they are willing to put up with all kinds of bother to keep the freedom. Most businesses on the other hand value stability more so BSD should take the time to push this virtue to the fortune 500.

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"There are some who call me TIM?"

[Matt Midcap]

Bonus Point Answer: Montana?