First of all, let me say that I think it's great that you're using MySQL, regardless of the underlying operating system. What I'm currently looking at is when might it make sense for MySQL users to give Solaris or OpenSolaris a try. In that process, something that would be helpful to know is why do so many existing MySQL users deploy on Linux? Is it familiarity, what's available in their environment, known to work, licensing model, cost, etc? Do you have other reasons? I'd like to know. Please share your comments. Thanks.
- All
- Personal
- PlanetMySQL
- Sun
The workbench are availabe today for windows, and will be available soon for liux and OS X.
The gui tools to admin the DB are available for windows, linux and OSX
The server download page has lots of options for linux (NDB, client libs, etc).
Solaris? yeah, the server source will compile on it and you can get packages for the server, but that is it. When I needed the client libs for a php install, had to grab the source and build it by hand. If I want to run the gui dba tools, i need to find a linux box (i'm a sunray on solaris user), etc.
It just feels like I'm trying to jam a square peg in a round hole to use mysql on anything but linux. Given enough will power, it can be done... but it is not the easiest of options.
Posted by John on October 16, 2008 at 02:22 PM PDT #
Linux distributions have really, actually, completely integrated those important tools into their package management system. OpenSolaris is a great start, but even its package management system suffers from the Sun NIH syndrome and requires numerous little-known hoops to jump through to get things like MySQL to actually work, which doesn't bode well. Compare to user-built systems like Linux, where you just say "apt-get install mysql" which takes care of everything.
Posted by Mikael Gueck on October 16, 2008 at 02:56 PM PDT #
There is a very long list of reasons why I pick Linux and really wouldn't think of using anything else.
1. Finding Linux admins or people with Linux experience is far easier then finding Solaris or BSD experience.
2. Constancy in environments, everything else is Linux why would I introduce something else.
3. Linux is tried and true, finding help or software is a no brainer.
4. Been using Linux for many years now, it has always performed very well for me and is rock solid.
5. Dunno what hardware is required for OpenSolaris, but Linux runs on just about anything. Nothing special required.
6. When buying hardware, finding compatibility with Linux is a snap. Lets say I need a new SAN, our current provider doesn't have drivers for Solaris.
7. License and cost is a huge reason, Linux and MySQL are open and free. If that ever changes, there are other options I would consider.
8. Never heard a complaint about recommending Linux for something.
9. There are many Linux distros, all have a different use. I like to leave my options open. Going from distro to distro is generally pretty painless.
10. Like the previous poster mentioned, package management is a big reason.
This is just a quick list off the top of my head.
Posted by Joseph Engo on October 17, 2008 at 04:32 PM PDT #
@Mikael, there are a number of reasons why we designed IPS rather than use one of the existing package management systems. That said, I'm curious of what issues you've had with it. Installing MySQL 5 should be as simple as "pkg install mysql5". If it isn't, I'd love to hear what's missing.
@Joseph, many of the things you've mentioned are true for traditional Solaris but are not so for OpenSolaris. The latter has a much wider hardware support matrix (and if you're interested in actual support from a vendor as opposing to rolling your own, Sun tends to support more platforms than Red Hat on the x86 side).
OpenSolaris is adopting the GNU environment has a first-class citizen - in fact, the default environment is a GNU one. And of course, OpenSolaris is free just like Linux is. The source is available via an OSI-preferred license, and there are several distributions including the Sun supplied one available from http://opensolaris.com. It has a free RTU on any number of systems, doesn't require registration, etc.
Posted by David Comay on October 19, 2008 at 12:19 PM PDT #
@David: This description of installing MySQL on Solaris isn't as smooth as it should be: http://izoratti.blogspot.com/2008/10/tip-of-day-installing-mysql-coolstack.html
Yes, it was the coolstack bundle and not directly from an OpenSolaris repository.
MontyT on the other hand gives a good example of why you're likely to stumble a lot if moving from Linux to OpenSolaris (but not MySQL related specificly):
http://mysql-ha.com/2008/08/01/opensolaris-epic-fail/
Tip: at least on the Linux dpkg/rpm systems you can create "compatibility" packages where a common name depends on the real package. (Example: create a package called "pico" that is empty but depends on "nano". Then user can install pico just fine even if it doesn't really exist.) If you insist on naming a lot of packages SUNW-something, at least provide a compatibility package just named "something" so that mere mortals will be able to install stuff easily too.
Posted by Henrik Ingo on October 20, 2008 at 05:16 AM PDT #
@Henrik, thanks for the reply. We're very much aware that the legacy package names are a problem and we intend to resolve that after the upcoming 2008.11 release (we didn't have enough time to resolve this before that and we didn't want to have a mixture).
That said, we do have a number of compatibility-like packages - for example, for Web developers who want an AMP stack, they can simply do a "pkg install amp" (for strictly run-time) or "pkg install amp-dev" (for development and run-time) which includes among other things, MySQL 5
Posted by David Comay on October 20, 2008 at 09:22 AM PDT #
I use linux and debian because of the package management. I dont have to do a wierd dance to get stuff to work.
Solaris is a fail when you install it the first time and all of a sudden, all the utils have a different set of syntax and common utils are missing. This could be solved by having an option to make solaris "feel" like linux.
Another reason is it took sun until solaris 10 to allow for vi to work in term widths of more than 80 chars. THat just illutrates the attitude.
Posted by George on October 21, 2008 at 11:32 PM PDT #