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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!xinit!newsfeed.tip.net!sn.no!online.no!hydro.com!news From: Birger Wathne <Birger.Wathne@nho.hydro.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.osf.osf1 Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6 Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 18:26:24 +0100 Organization: Norsk Hydro Lines: 65 Message-ID: <32B04040.68FD@nho.hydro.com> 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: bgedsu02.nho.hydro.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4m) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.solaris:92331 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1793 comp.unix.internals:11591 comp.unix.osf.osf1:17019 I don't want to start a flame war, just comment on a few things. Peter da Silva wrote: > (1) It's a very large and complex system. > (but it doesn't do much more than simpler systems) It seems very complex, at least when you come from the Solaris 1.x (or SunOS 4.x) world, as I once did. But after a while you start to see and understand the logic, and after a few years, you mostly see the same kind of beauty that you see in the older Sys V OS'es. I have used Solaris since 2.0 beta, so I have had some time to adjust. > (2) It doesn't provide good System V administrative semantics. > (but it uses System V commands and files) What do you mean here? It usually adheres to System V rel 4 semantics, but some of the SVR4 things are terrible. Especially printing. I have never used older System V's, but I have used some other SVR4 based operating systems, and Solaris doesn't stand out more than the other ones. > (3) It doesn't provide good BSD administrative semantics. > (but it does use some BSD stuff as well) Administration should be SVR4'ish. > (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've never had to port from older System V. I have compiled many PD packages, and in the 2.0 - 2.2 days I had to modify some code to get things to compile. Not too hard for the things I compiled. Compiling for the Sys V environment on Domain/OS is *much* worse. As you note, most packages are rewritten to support Solaris these days. And mostly, that means rewriting to SVR4. It shouldn't be neccesary to have special tricks for Solaris. > (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) Never had any problems here, but if any piece of software supports SVR4, I use that when compiling. I seldom have to use BSD compatibility these days. > (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) Hmmmm. When did you last try Solaris 2? > Now, some of these have apparently been fixed in 2.4 and 2.5, and of course Oh. Thanks for answering that question. Solaris 2.3 was the first stable production release, but it was very slow. If you haven't tried Solaris since 2.3, you should take 2.5.1 for a spin. 2.4 and 2.5 have been mostly bug fix and tuning releases. 2.6 will be a major 'new stuff' release again. A few old platforms may go slower, I don't know. But with enough memory, most systems should go faster with Solaris 2.x than with Solaris 1.x. My personal recommendation is 32MB for a workstation that runs X. Even my old IPC was faster with 2.x than 1.x. > </peter> -- Birger Wathne Birger.Wathne@nho.hydro.com | These addresses may *not* be Birger.Wathne@sdata.no | used for unsolicited mailing