Обсуждение: TurnKey PostgreSQL: new installable live CD optimized for easy of use

Hi everyone,

I am one of the developers for TurnKey Linux, a new opensource project
that develops a family of lightweight installable live CDs optimized for
various server-type tasks including LAMP, Ruby on Rails, Django, Joomla,
Drupal, MediaWiki, and others:

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/appliances

This type of pre-integrated, ready-to-use system is typically called a
software appliance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_appliance

Our project's goal is to build software appliances that are easy to use,
easy to deploy and free. In a nutshell, we believe everything that can
be easy, should be easy!

We just released TurnKey PostgreSQL, an easy-to-use, lightweight,
installable live CD of the PostgreSQL relational database engine that
can run on real hardware in addition to most types of virtual machines.
It features a Mac OS X-themed Web management interface and a Python
configuration and installation console. It is based on Ubuntu 8.04.1
Hardy LTS, and is designed to provide users with a pre-integrated,
automatically updated, turn-key operating system environment that is
carefully built from the ground up with the minimum components needed to
run PostgreSQL with maximum usability, efficiency, and security.

Key features:

* auto-updated daily with latest security patches
* MacOS X themed web management interface
* easy to use configuration console (written from scratch in Python)
* packaged as an installable Live CD that runs on real machines and VMs
* minimal footprint (152MB) - includes only minimum required components
* based on Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy LTS

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/appliances/postgresql

Check it out and tell us what you think!

Cheers,
Liraz

--

Website: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~liraz-siri

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 7:06 AM, Liraz Siri <liraz@turnkeylinux.org> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I am one of the developers for TurnKey Linux, a new opensource project
> that develops a family of lightweight installable live CDs optimized for
> various server-type tasks including LAMP, Ruby on Rails, Django, Joomla,
> Drupal, MediaWiki, and others:
>
> http://www.turnkeylinux.org/appliances
>
> This type of pre-integrated, ready-to-use system is typically called a
> software appliance:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_appliance
>
> Our project's goal is to build software appliances that are easy to use,
> easy to deploy and free. In a nutshell, we believe everything that can
> be easy, should be easy!
>
> We just released TurnKey PostgreSQL, an easy-to-use, lightweight,
> installable live CD of the PostgreSQL relational database engine that
> can run on real hardware in addition to most types of virtual machines.
> It features a Mac OS X-themed Web management interface and a Python
> configuration and installation console. It is based on Ubuntu 8.04.1
> Hardy LTS, and is designed to provide users with a pre-integrated,
> automatically updated, turn-key operating system environment that is
> carefully built from the ground up with the minimum components needed to
> run PostgreSQL with maximum usability, efficiency, and security.

This sounds great.  If I wind up with a big machine to test it on I'll
tell you how it goes.

Are you familiar with this bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/linux/+bug/245779

It's the reason my latest db servers are running Centos 5.2, sadly.
By the time I'd found the suggested workaround of setting a boot
option of NO_HZ=y I was already migrated off ubuntu for db servers.

> This sounds great.  If I wind up with a big machine to test it on I'll
> tell you how it goes.

Thanks, though you don't necessarily have to wait for a "big machine" if
you just want to give the appliance a go. A little machine or even a
virtual machine should do.

> Are you familiar with this bug:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/linux/+bug/245779
>
> It's the reason my latest db servers are running Centos 5.2, sadly.
> By the time I'd found the suggested workaround of setting a boot
> option of NO_HZ=y I was already migrated off ubuntu for db servers.

No, I wasn't familiar with the bug. Very strange. I've been using Hardy
with that kernel for a few months and have yet to come across it...

Cheers,
Liraz

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Liraz Siri <liraz@turnkeylinux.org> wrote:
>> This sounds great.  If I wind up with a big machine to test it on I'll
>> tell you how it goes.
>
> Thanks, though you don't necessarily have to wait for a "big machine" if
> you just want to give the appliance a go. A little machine or even a
> virtual machine should do.

Oh, I'll definitely try it on smaller machines. but...

>> Are you familiar with this bug:
>>
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/linux/+bug/245779
>>
>> It's the reason my latest db servers are running Centos 5.2, sadly.
>> By the time I'd found the suggested workaround of setting a boot
>> option of NO_HZ=y I was already migrated off ubuntu for db servers.
>
> No, I wasn't familiar with the bug. Very strange. I've been using Hardy
> with that kernel for a few months and have yet to come across it...

Well, it only seems to show up on certain high performance hardware
setups, i.e. many cores, heavy access, etc.  At least for me.  We run
pgsql on a number of different boxes on ubuntu 8.04 and 7.10 with no
real problems.  but on that one machine with 8 opterons and 16 disks
on a fast raid controller, it shows up within a few days of heavy use,
stealing one CPU at time until the machine locks up.

On Mon, 8 Dec 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote:

> Are you familiar with this bug:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/linux/+bug/245779
>
> It's the reason my latest db servers are running Centos 5.2, sadly.
> By the time I'd found the suggested workaround of setting a boot
> option of NO_HZ=y I was already migrated off ubuntu for db servers.

Don't want to drag Liraz's thread completely off-topic, thus the new
subject.

The response to that bug demonstrates one reason why I get a bit worked up
when people suggest using Ubuntu for any serious server work.  Even when
bugs get fixed, it's far too often only via installing a newer kernel,
which puts you back to square one as far as testing goes.  Ubuntu puts
minimal resources into back-porting kernel fixes into any earlier version,
LTS or not, because they're consumed with constantly churning out new
versions.  The usual cut-and-paste response appears in your thread same as
it does in all the similar ones:

"The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the
upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would
appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel."

A good eye-opener if you don't believe who I'm characterizing things is
take a look at the location your bug ended up being parked at (and may
very well die at):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-kernel-team/+assignedbugs

There you can gauge for yourself how concerned they are with fixing bugs
in older versions.  You can't support yearly long-term support releases
and aggresively back-port fixes without way more resources dumped onto the
kernel team than Ubuntu has to apply.  Even RedHat, who has a lot more
kernel engineers, doesn't even try.  That's part of the reason why it took
more than two years between RHEL4 and 5.  They were busy that whole time
backporting kernel fixes into the stable kernel, with major update drops
to it every six months, rather than just plowing ahead only worrying about
the newer ones.

I love Ubuntu on the desktop, but you combine its aggresive releases and
limited kernel fix backporting with how much general kernel testing
quality keeps going down and you get a grim combination.  I've realized
this is just an unavoidable consequence of how much change the Linux
kernel is going under every single day.  Nobody seem to care anymore about
focusing on any individual kernel version long enough to squash its bugs
right anymore; those will all get fixed in the next version, right?

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

Greg has a good point. Ubuntu is a bit of a moving target. In contrast,
Debian has a much slower release cycle than Ubuntu and is thus
considered by many people to be preferable for production server
applications.

This is one of the reasons we plan on releasing appliances that are
based on Debian in addition to Ubuntu in the next few months.

Cheers,
Liraz

Greg Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Dec 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
>> Are you familiar with this bug:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/linux/+bug/245779
>>
>> It's the reason my latest db servers are running Centos 5.2, sadly.
>> By the time I'd found the suggested workaround of setting a boot
>> option of NO_HZ=y I was already migrated off ubuntu for db servers.
>
> Don't want to drag Liraz's thread completely off-topic, thus the new
> subject.
>
> The response to that bug demonstrates one reason why I get a bit worked
> up when people suggest using Ubuntu for any serious server work.  Even
> when bugs get fixed, it's far too often only via installing a newer
> kernel, which puts you back to square one as far as testing goes.
> Ubuntu puts minimal resources into back-porting kernel fixes into any
> earlier version, LTS or not, because they're consumed with constantly
> churning out new versions.  The usual cut-and-paste response appears in
> your thread same as it does in all the similar ones:
>
> "The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the
> upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would
> appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel."
>
> A good eye-opener if you don't believe who I'm characterizing things is
> take a look at the location your bug ended up being parked at (and may
> very well die at):
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-kernel-team/+assignedbugs
>
> There you can gauge for yourself how concerned they are with fixing bugs
> in older versions.  You can't support yearly long-term support releases
> and aggresively back-port fixes without way more resources dumped onto
> the kernel team than Ubuntu has to apply.  Even RedHat, who has a lot
> more kernel engineers, doesn't even try.  That's part of the reason why
> it took more than two years between RHEL4 and 5.  They were busy that
> whole time backporting kernel fixes into the stable kernel, with major
> update drops to it every six months, rather than just plowing ahead only
> worrying about the newer ones.
>
> I love Ubuntu on the desktop, but you combine its aggresive releases and
> limited kernel fix backporting with how much general kernel testing
> quality keeps going down and you get a grim combination.  I've realized
> this is just an unavoidable consequence of how much change the Linux
> kernel is going under every single day.  Nobody seem to care anymore
> about focusing on any individual kernel version long enough to squash
> its bugs right anymore; those will all get fixed in the next version,
> right?
>
> --
> * Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

On Tuesday 09 December 2008 19:43:02 Liraz Siri wrote:
> Greg has a good point. Ubuntu is a bit of a moving target. In contrast,
> Debian has a much slower release cycle than Ubuntu and is thus
> considered by many people to be preferable for production server
> applications.
>

Another option for folks is to switch to another operating system thats a bit
more stable *cough*solaris*cough*bsd*cough*

:-)

--
Robert Treat
Conjecture: http://www.xzilla.net
Consulting: http://www.omniti.com

Robert Treat wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 19:43:02 Liraz Siri wrote:
>> Greg has a good point. Ubuntu is a bit of a moving target. In contrast,
>> Debian has a much slower release cycle than Ubuntu and is thus
>> considered by many people to be preferable for production server
>> applications.
>>
>
> Another option for folks is to switch to another operating system thats a bit
> more stable *cough*solaris*cough*bsd*cough*

Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer Debian/Linux for
the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of dependence
on any single company.

Besides Sun Microsystems hasn't been a financially healthy organization
for quite a few years, as evidenced by its rather dismal stock performance:

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=java

Cheers,
Liraz

Liraz Siri wrote:
> Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer Debian/Linux for
> the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of dependence
> on any single company.

OpenSolaris?

--
Guy Rouillier

2008/12/10 Liraz Siri <liraz@turnkeylinux.org>:
> Robert Treat wrote:
>> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 19:43:02 Liraz Siri wrote:
>>> Greg has a good point. Ubuntu is a bit of a moving target. In contrast,
>>> Debian has a much slower release cycle than Ubuntu and is thus
>>> considered by many people to be preferable for production server
>>> applications.
>>>
>>
>> Another option for folks is to switch to another operating system thats a bit
>> more stable *cough*solaris*cough*bsd*cough*
>
> Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer Debian/Linux for
> the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of dependence
> on any single company.
>

But in the other hand, solaris platform has got  a really good deployment in
clusterization for Open Solaris and Solaris (visit
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5578/cacjgdbc?a=view or
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/postgresql_opensolaris.jsp )
Zfs in combination with PITR could be  am exelent way too.
Too many people think in Sun +Mysql but in fact, Sun still works on Postgresql.

> Besides Sun Microsystems hasn't been a financially healthy organization
> for quite a few years, as evidenced by its rather dismal stock performance:
>

Big companies are in these ways... But i long time measures the have constant
growings and mores stable numbers.

> http://finance.google.com/finance?q=java
>
> Cheers,
> Liraz
>
>
> --
> Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
>



--
      Emanuel Calvo Franco
Syscope Postgresql Consultant
     ArPUG / AOSUG Member

Guy Rouillier wrote:
> Liraz Siri wrote:
>> Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer Debian/Linux for
>> the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of dependence
>> on any single company.
>
> OpenSolaris?
>

I think it takes more than a license to make a true community opensource
project. You need significant buy-in from a large consortium of diverse
interests. Sun dominates Solaris/OpenSolaris development and IMHO it is
unlikely Solaris would survive as a viable long term option if Sun
dropped support for it. Solaris has a single point of failure. Linux may
still be behind Solaris in a few areas but I'll wager Linux will catch
up and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not too distant
future. Sun opened up Solaris too late. It has no future outside of tiny
specialized niches and legacy installations.

But thats just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Cheers,
Liraz

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 6:00 AM, Liraz Siri <liraz@turnkeylinux.org> wrote:
> Guy Rouillier wrote:
>> Liraz Siri wrote:
>>> Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer Debian/Linux for
>>> the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of dependence
>>> on any single company.
>>
>> OpenSolaris?
>>
> I think it takes more than a license to make a true community opensource
> project. You need significant buy-in from a large consortium of diverse
> interests. Sun dominates Solaris/OpenSolaris development and IMHO it is
> unlikely Solaris would survive as a viable long term option if Sun
> dropped support for it. Solaris has a single point of failure. Linux may
> still be behind Solaris in a few areas but I'll wager Linux will catch
> up and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not too distant
> future. Sun opened up Solaris too late. It has no future outside of tiny
> specialized niches and legacy installations.
> But thats just my opinion. I could be wrong.
> Cheers,
> Liraz

I understand and accept that this is just your opinion, but its sheer
dripping passion tends to highlight its lack objectivity!
"and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not too distant future".

For what it's worth ..
1. Solaris and Linux are both fine pieces of technology
2. In the most general sense, I suspect Solaris (in general) will
survive longer than your next Ubuntu instance, so you would be safe
using Solaris instead of Ubuntu.
3. Sun is struggling, but it is made up of profitable and unprofitable
areas. The Solaris and Server areas would seem to be relatively
profitable, so even if Sun as a whole failed, the profitable areas
would likely march on into the future.
4. As anyone with a little life experience could tell you, things
don't just disappear. That is true in computer or other areas of life.
Cobal aint going away. Baddies aint going away. Religion aint going
away. There are plenty of Solaris fan boys to keep Solaris going.
Even if all your friends tell you it is bad and as god as dead.
5. Ubutu is generally an excellent choice for a desktop, and Solaris
is generally an excellent choice as a server.

Did I tell you I currently use MS-Windows exclusively! Not because of
the technology, but just because all my customers do.

All the best
-Damian

2008/12/10 Liraz Siri <liraz@turnkeylinux.org>:
> Guy Rouillier wrote:
>> Liraz Siri wrote:
>>> Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer Debian/Linux for
>>> the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of dependence
>>> on any single company.
>>
>> OpenSolaris?
>>
>
> I think it takes more than a license to make a true community opensource
> project. You need significant buy-in from a large consortium of diverse
> interests. Sun dominates Solaris/OpenSolaris development and IMHO it is
> unlikely Solaris would survive as a viable long term option if Sun
> dropped support for it. Solaris has a single point of failure. Linux may
> still be behind Solaris in a few areas but I'll wager Linux will catch
> up and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not too distant
> future. Sun opened up Solaris too late. It has no future outside of tiny
> specialized niches and legacy installations.
>

Just look at the last improvements about new technologies of Sun
(Solaris -Os)  versus Linux and you will see that Solaris is more alive
than everytime.

You said Solaris will be obsolete. I think you must read about the
new projects of Sun and the community inside (Open Source Community).

In fact Sun, sponsor the Open Source (adding Postgresql).
At the end, the projects more care are from high-end companies.

In other hand, in the year 2000 several people saids the same things
about Linux, but the prophecies was wrong.

In fact, Windows still leading the statistics and linux don't have
too much numbers than we could think.

I'm not Sun fan-boy. I'm linux sysadmin. But i'm tired of hearing that
Linux is the best, when there are serious bugs in some developments
and most of the real high-servers are in Unix platforms.

in other way, we must think in aviability of Postgres to run better in
every platform and do not underestimate the benefits of each platform.

sorry for my poooooor english :)

> But thats just my opinion. I could be wrong.
>
> Cheers,
> Liraz
>
> --
> Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
>



--
      Emanuel Calvo Franco
Syscope Postgresql Consultant
     ArPUG / AOSUG Member

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-general-
> owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Emanuel Calvo Franco
> Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 11:27 AM
> To: Liraz Siri; General PostgreSQL List
> Subject: Re: [GENERAL] The future of Solaris?
>
> 2008/12/10 Liraz Siri <liraz@turnkeylinux.org>:
> > Guy Rouillier wrote:
> >> Liraz Siri wrote:
> >>> Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer
Debian/Linux
> for
> >>> the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of
> dependence
> >>> on any single company.
> >>
> >> OpenSolaris?
> >>
> >
> > I think it takes more than a license to make a true community
> opensource
> > project. You need significant buy-in from a large consortium of
> diverse
> > interests. Sun dominates Solaris/OpenSolaris development and IMHO it
> is
> > unlikely Solaris would survive as a viable long term option if Sun
> > dropped support for it. Solaris has a single point of failure. Linux
> may
> > still be behind Solaris in a few areas but I'll wager Linux will
> catch
> > up and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not too
> distant
> > future. Sun opened up Solaris too late. It has no future outside of
> tiny
> > specialized niches and legacy installations.
> >
>
> Just look at the last improvements about new technologies of Sun
> (Solaris -Os)  versus Linux and you will see that Solaris is more
alive
> than everytime.
>
> You said Solaris will be obsolete. I think you must read about the
> new projects of Sun and the community inside (Open Source Community).
>
> In fact Sun, sponsor the Open Source (adding Postgresql).
> At the end, the projects more care are from high-end companies.
>
> In other hand, in the year 2000 several people saids the same things
> about Linux, but the prophecies was wrong.
>
> In fact, Windows still leading the statistics and linux don't have
> too much numbers than we could think.
>
> I'm not Sun fan-boy. I'm linux sysadmin. But i'm tired of hearing that
> Linux is the best, when there are serious bugs in some developments
> and most of the real high-servers are in Unix platforms.
>
> in other way, we must think in aviability of Postgres to run better in
> every platform and do not underestimate the benefits of each platform.
>
> sorry for my poooooor english :)

Reminds me of the quote:
"The reports of my death are somewhat exaggerated."

Operating systems ebb and flow and die {if ever} very, very slowly.
If a tool works for a business, they will keep using it for a very, very
long time.

We have customers running on 1985 VAX hardware using RMS and Rdb 4.x
which is absolutely ancient.  But if it fully accomplishes the mission
it needs to fulfill, why change anything?  I think Sun is getting
smarter and smarter (from what I have seen) and I guess that they are
going to do very well.  But our guesses don't matter.

The brilliant strategy of PostgreSQL is to have as open an architecture
as possible so that it compiles anywhere.  So if Linux takes the world
by storm, everyone can have PostgreSQL on Linux.  Or if Windows
dominates, then fine -- PostgreSQL on Windows.  If Apple should suddenly
go nuclear then we can have PostgreSQL on our Macs.  And if Sun blooms
into a fireball in space then our rocket ships can all be powered by
PostgreSQL.

People are always predicting the demise of operating systems and
programming languages.  And you know what?  Most of the lines of code in
the world are *still* written in COBOL <gags>.  Maybe COBOL is not as
active for new projects any more, but all of that COBOL is not just
going to go away.  And with a million or so Sun boxes sitting around in
IT centers, Sun is going to be here for a good, long while too.

So my advice is -- don't worry about it.

what is this single point of failure?

have you submitted the bug to a JIRA or bugzilla to address this?
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0552/gbfdy?a=view

If the patch was not in latest distro
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0552/apa-sparc-23587?a=view

then when will it be scheduled in?

thanks,
Martin

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> Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:00:11 +0200
> From: liraz@turnkeylinux.org
> To: guyr-ml1@burntmail.com
> CC: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
> Subject: [GENERAL] The future of Solaris?
>
> Guy Rouillier wrote:
> > Liraz Siri wrote:
> >> Solaris is awesome (dtrace rocks!), but I still prefer Debian/Linux for
> >> the same reasons I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL - its lack of dependence
> >> on any single company.
> >
> > OpenSolaris?
> >
>
> I think it takes more than a license to make a true community opensource
> project. You need significant buy-in from a large consortium of diverse
> interests. Sun dominates Solaris/OpenSolaris development and IMHO it is
> unlikely Solaris would survive as a viable long term option if Sun
> dropped support for it. Solaris has a single point of failure. Linux may
> still be behind Solaris in a few areas but I'll wager Linux will catch
> up and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not too distant
> future. Sun opened up Solaris too late. It has no future outside of tiny
> specialized niches and legacy installations.
>
> But thats just my opinion. I could be wrong.
>
> Cheers,
> Liraz
>
> --
> Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

---

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Damian Carey wrote:

> I understand and accept that this is just your opinion, but its sheer
> dripping passion tends to highlight its lack objectivity!
> "and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not too distant future".

For what it's worth, I really like Solaris. I wish Linux had dtrace
(last time I checked systemtap still had a long way to go).

> For what it's worth ..
> 1. Solaris and Linux are both fine pieces of technology

No doubt.

> 2. In the most general sense, I suspect Solaris (in general) will
> survive longer than your next Ubuntu instance, so you would be safe
> using Solaris instead of Ubuntu.

Well, the way I see it Ubuntu is really just a specialized version of
Debian. If it were not for Debian, Ubuntu would definitely be weaker
than Solaris in terms of long term viability. Not to mention it would
suffer from the same centralized point of failure. Debian on the other
hand is a different story. It's been around for 15 years and I'll wager
it'll still be alive and kicking 15 years from now. I'm not sure you can
say the same for Solaris though...

> 3. Sun is struggling, but it is made up of profitable and unprofitable
> areas. The Solaris and Server areas would seem to be relatively
> profitable, so even if Sun as a whole failed, the profitable areas
> would likely march on into the future.

The trouble with Solaris is that it's fleeing into the high-end while
Linux is constantly eroding it's position from below. Sure, Solaris
still has a profitable edge in some high-end applications but there is a
huge amount of momentum behind Linux, which seems to be catching up. In
other words, even if Solaris is profitable now that doesn't necessarily
mean it will be profitable 5 years from now.

> 4. As anyone with a little life experience could tell you, things
> don't just disappear. That is true in computer or other areas of life.
> Cobal aint going away. Baddies aint going away. Religion aint going
> away. There are plenty of Solaris fan boys to keep Solaris going.
> Even if all your friends tell you it is bad and as god as dead.

I agree. "Old" technologies never seem to die off completely, but many
of them do seem to retire into archaic pockets of isolated, neglected
obscurity.

> 5. Ubutu is generally an excellent choice for a desktop, and Solaris
> is generally an excellent choice as a server.

No argument.

> Did I tell you I currently use MS-Windows exclusively! Not because of
> the technology, but just because all my customers do.

Network effects will do that to you. :)

I'm thinking maybe it was a mistake to bring up the subject. It's
certainly off topic, and I suspect continuing the discussion will
generate more heat than light, so let's just agree to wait and see.

Putting my intuitions aside, I personally would very much like to see
Solaris survive over the long haul. It's always been a source for
technical excellence and innovation in the "boring" systems space and
having competition will be good for our ecosystem.

(That wraps it up for me)

Cheers,
Liraz

Robert Treat wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 19:43:02 Liraz Siri wrote:
>
>> Greg has a good point. Ubuntu is a bit of a moving target. In contrast,
>> Debian has a much slower release cycle than Ubuntu and is thus
>> considered by many people to be preferable for production server
>> applications.
>>
>>
>
> Another option for folks is to switch to another operating system thats a bit
> more stable *cough*solaris*cough*bsd*cough*
>
> :-)
>
And don't forget about BSD.

On Wed, 2008-12-10 at 15:55 -0500, Eric Schwarzenbach wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
> > On Tuesday 09 December 2008 19:43:02 Liraz Siri wrote:
> >
> >> Greg has a good point. Ubuntu is a bit of a moving target. In contrast,
> >> Debian has a much slower release cycle than Ubuntu and is thus
> >> considered by many people to be preferable for production server
> >> applications.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Another option for folks is to switch to another operating system thats a bit
> > more stable *cough*solaris*cough*bsd*cough*
> >
> > :-)
> >
> And don't forget about BSD.

BSD is dying.

>
--
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On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> BSD is dying.

We all are, sooner or later ;)

--
Guy Rouillier

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Liraz Siri wrote:

> Linux may still be behind Solaris in a few areas but I'll wager Linux
> will catch up and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not
> too distant future.

Great, free money is even better than free code; how much would you like
to loo...er, wager on that?  Could use a new sure thing now that there's
no more money for me to make shorting SCO stock.

I've been hearing this particular refrain constantly since 1996, when I
first switched to working full-time mainly on Linux systems.  Every year
seems like it's finally the year for Linux, even on the desktop, yet
Solaris is still here.  In fact, it's better than ever.  Solaris has been
aggressively closing the gap with Linux the last few years in the things
it was most behind on, while keeping a lead in some areas.

As for things it's ahead on, ZFS is still way better than any Linux
filesystem, with potential challenger Btrfs so far off from being
enterprise quality that there's a ton of redunant work going into ext4
just as a stopgap measure.  (You could easily argue that new features like
"Time Slider" suggest Linux has actually been falling even further behind
this year).  DTrace is doing wonders for people every day, while potential
Linux competitor Systemtap seems to have completely missed the point that
the idea is to make it easy to instrument things safely.

And the biggest thing that used to keep me away from Solaris, how painful
the packaging made it to get a functional system with the usual GNU tools
all installed, has been getting better fast lately, and looks almost
completely cleaned up as of last month's OpenSolaris 2008.11.  The thing I
think a lot of people miss is that most of the value of a Linux
distribution is not from Linux itself.  Remember:  Linux is just a kernel.
Combine a Solaris kernel with the rest of the usual GNU and other tools
you see on Linux distributions, and most people won't even notice the
swap.  There will be less supported hardware, and it will be a bit slower
at some things, but at least the kernel will be stable moving forward.

Which brings me to...the primary thing that really bugs me lately is that
Linux kernel development is increasingly not focused on stable releases,
it's all about rapid innovation at any cost.  And the anti-business
politics of some key contributors is really getting in the way of
pragmatic adoption.  Check out this great rant from Theodore Tso about how
badly things are broken in that area:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.file-systems/26246/focus=26492

The part I like is "sometimes people have suspected that some changes made
had benefits that were so marginal that it seemed that the main
justification was to screw over externally maintained
drivers/filesystems".  That's sure how it feels to me.  I have some
closed-source bits and some things that compile outside of the core kernel
that I rely on, and every new kernel point release I get breaks one of
them--often for trivial improvements and with *zero* regard even for the
transition periods promised by the kernel team itself.  Here's the last
one I got personally burned by:  http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/2/17/319
Planned deprecation period?  "sadly it was untenable".  And people wonder
why I stay as far back from the current kernel as feasible.

> Besides Sun Microsystems hasn't been a financially healthy organization
> for quite a few years, as evidenced by its rather dismal stock
> performance:
> http://finance.google.com/finance?q=java

Bah, Google Finance makes it hard to refer anybody to a specific chart.
Stupid AJAX.  How about we stare at these three for a minute:

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=JAVA#chart1:symbol=java;range=5y
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=rht#chart1:symbol=rht;range=5y
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=novl#chart1:symbol=novl;range=5y

Wait, which one of those was the weak one likely to fail?  They all look
pretty poor to me.  Despite its recent fall, Sun still has the largest
market cap of the three.  You say it's been going badly for "quite a few
years", but the only serious divergence from its competitors was only this
year.  Sun would be doing better right now had they not decided to light
$1B on fire back in January, that's where their stock really accelerated
its dive downward.

RedHat is actually by far in the best financial shape of the three, at
least they make more money than they spend.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

Greg Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Liraz Siri wrote:
>
>> Linux may still be behind Solaris in a few areas but I'll wager Linux
>> will catch up and make Solaris completely, utterly obsolete in the not
>> too distant future.

I shouldn't have posted this comment. It's flamebait.

> Great, free money is even better than free code; how much would you like
> to loo...er, wager on that?  Could use a new sure thing now that there's
> no more money for me to make shorting SCO stock.

Sorry, I lost all my betting money in the stock market.

> And the biggest thing that used to keep me away from Solaris, how
> painful the packaging made it to get a functional system with the usual
> GNU tools all installed, has been getting better fast lately, and looks
> almost completely cleaned up as of last month's OpenSolaris 2008.11.
> The thing I think a lot of people miss is that most of the value of a
> Linux distribution is not from Linux itself.  Remember:  Linux is just a
> kernel. Combine a Solaris kernel with the rest of the usual GNU and
> other tools you see on Linux distributions, and most people won't even
> notice the swap.  There will be less supported hardware, and it will be
> a bit slower at some things, but at least the kernel will be stable
> moving forward.

I like the Nexenta approach. Debian GNU/Solaris makes so much sense...

>> Besides Sun Microsystems hasn't been a financially healthy
>> organization for quite a few years, as evidenced by its rather dismal
>> stock performance:
>> http://finance.google.com/finance?q=java
>
> Bah, Google Finance makes it hard to refer anybody to a specific chart.
> Stupid AJAX.  How about we stare at these three for a minute:
>
> http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=JAVA#chart1:symbol=java;range=5y
> http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=rht#chart1:symbol=rht;range=5y
> http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=novl#chart1:symbol=novl;range=5y
>
> Wait, which one of those was the weak one likely to fail?  They all look
> pretty poor to me.  Despite its recent fall, Sun still has the largest
> market cap of the three.  You say it's been going badly for "quite a few
> years", but the only serious divergence from its competitors was only
> this year.  Sun would be doing better right now had they not decided to
> light $1B on fire back in January, that's where their stock really
> accelerated its dive downward.

You have to admit that Sun/Solaris is a different relationship than
Redhat/Linux, or Novell/Linux. The Linux vendors cooperate at the same
time they compete. Much of the work done by engineers from one company
finds its way upstream to the benefit of all vendors. Furthermore, the
failure of any of the largest vendors would be detrimental to Linux
development, but the rich network of vested interests around Linux is
much stronger than any single vendor. It's more messy than the more
cathedral style development of Solaris (which has some obvious benefits
too), but for the same reasons I think it is less likely to fail. If Sun
doesn't make it, or decides that continuing its heroic development of
Solaris no longer makes any financial sense I think Solaris is in a
different situation.

I admit that reality is many orders more complex than the toy-like model
of it I have in my mind, but thats always the case. In Hebrew (my native
tongue) there's an apt phrase - prophecy is given to fools and children.
I imagine if we come back to these posts 10 years from now we'll realize
we were both right and both wrong somehow.

Cheers,
Liraz

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 3:54 AM, Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Liraz Siri wrote:
>
>> Besides Sun Microsystems hasn't been a financially healthy organization
>> for quite a few years, as evidenced by its rather dismal stock performance:
>> http://finance.google.com/finance?q=java
>
> Bah, Google Finance makes it hard to refer anybody to a specific chart.
> Stupid AJAX.  How about we stare at these three for a minute:
>
> http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=JAVA#chart1:symbol=java;range=5y
> http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=rht#chart1:symbol=rht;range=5y
> http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=novl#chart1:symbol=novl;range=5y

I hate to break the news to you guys, but both are using flash, not ajax...



--
GJ

> Could use a new sure thing now that there's
> no more money for me to make shorting SCO stock.

That really was easy money, wasn't it?

;-)

--
Scott Ribe
scott_ribe@killerbytes.com
http://www.killerbytes.com/
(303) 722-0567 voice