Tuesday September 28, 2004 Solaris x86 users, commend yourself
Recentely, my manager required me to read Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends & Influence People to improve on some of my people skills, and rightfully so. I often have a habit of being quick to critisize people for some of their weaknesses. And this certainly holds true for their use of operating systems. Especially should they not be using a superior operating system on their laptop or server, as me and many of my colleagues do.
As I started to read this book, it came to my attention that peole that do go to the trouble of using Solaris should be commended, rather than those who don't being ridiculed.
One of my colleagues (and friend), Jim Grisanzio, was recentely having me help him load Solaris which now includes the Java Desktop System on his laptop, and as he pointed out some of the weaknesses in comparison to the alternative operating systems. I immediately became defensive. As I think back on it now, Jim should be commended for going to the trouble of installing and using our product, as there are still a few shortcoming when using such a robust and power system on commodity based laptops in today's world.
It sometimes seem unimaginable to me that anyone would think that using Solaris on their laptop would have any room to complain, after all, it's come so far in the past year and many features are available to make our lives easier and allow more people to use Solaris in their environments. But we still can learn from our competition and we need to listen to the users more to make their lives not only as easy, but easier than the competition where possible.
I have helped countless people install Solaris on their laptops and servers inside Sun within the past year and a half that I literally can't count them. And I think this really shows that people are able to use Solaris in an enterprise environment and that it is certainly getting easier to use every day. These are people that previously were not using Solaris on their hardware in many cases, so compliments are in order to all of them. Sure, Solaris is not perfect, but neither are we as humans either. And as we continue to listen to the customers more and make the changes that they have been asking for over the past, the better it will be in the long run. It's really gratifying that Solaris has come so far over the past year and a half, and it's gonna get that much better over the next year and a half. If we continue to make it better, we won't need to ridicule our competition any longer, and the product will continue to speak for itself. The users will see the benifit of using and developing on such a great system, and our userbase will continue to grow. Unlike our competition who often ridicules our product for it's shortcomings, the time is here for us to turn that ridicule around and heed their advice on the shortcomings they see, and better our own product as we've been doing for past year and a half so intensely.
Reading some of the comments about Sun on some of the public online news sources can certainly make one want to take the high ground. However, our product has the features in it already, with more amazing features being added, that Solaris can stand on it's own ground without us having to defend it. Thankfully we do have such a great product that it can do that, and we should let the product speak for itself.
( Sep 28 2004, 03:18:44 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [5]
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First as a learning environment back in 1993 when I was making my first attempts to learn about computers. Then as a development environment for doing lab work and exercises. Finally, as the platform for my daily job. Somewhere in between, I spent a few years learning about Linux, I helped in my own way to improve the bits that I could improve and got used to having a Linux-like environment nearby. Then I started using FreeBSD and got enamoured so much with it that I eventually joined the documentation team of FreeBSD in 2001.
The x86 version of Solaris used to be almost unusable for me when I first tried it. It was Solaris version 8 at the time. Drivers were missing for many of the devices I had, the setup seemed a bit primitive when compared to the setup of Solaris on Sun machines, and I sorely missed some of the stuff I had become used to while working with Linux and one of the free/open-source BSDs for years. As you have most sincerely noted:
<em>Solaris is not perfect, but neither are we as humans either.</em>
This year, I tried Solaris version 9 on an x86 machine. I can definitely see that things have improved a lot. It means a lot, even if it eventually turns out to be only partially true, that Sun people have started writing about Solaris, about an open source version, about their plans to keep improving the system:
<em>It's really gratifying that Solaris has come so far over the past year and a half, and it's gonna get that much better over the next year and a half.</em>
I am currently using Solaris only as part of my job though; not at home or for learning new stuff anymore.
An open source version of Solaris would be a totally different thing. Depending on the quality of the resulting system, the detail and appropriateness of the available documentation (this is a point where open source operating systems like FreeBSD excel at the moment, even if one bears in mind the huge collection of documents available for free at docs.sun.com), and a few other factors that I have probably forgotten right now, I think that open sourcing Solaris is probably going to be the most important event of the year. Open sourcing Solaris for x86 even more so.
:-)
Posted by Giorgos Keramidas on September 28, 2004 at 07:06 AM PDT #
Giorgos,
If you think things were improved with Solaris 9, you're going to be very happy with Solaris 10. The open source version of Solaris is well on it's way to becoming a reality. Sun is really moving forward with this and you can see some pictures of the Open Source Summit that was held in Santa Clara recentely, farther down on my blog.
I think you'll find that an open source version of Solaris will still meet the same quality as it does today, and Sun will still build their own versions of Solaris and offer support for it. Hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more in the way of documentation, as you point out. Solaris x86 is becoming a great product and it's only going to get better.
Posted by Alan DuBoff on September 29, 2004 at 11:59 PM PDT #
Posted by Giorgos Keramidas on September 30, 2004 at 03:09 AM PDT #
Thank you for sharing all this great information, first hand, regarding Solaris 10. Giorgos' story is another vindication of Sun's plans to open-source Solaris !
Posted by M. Mortazavi on October 01, 2004 at 02:48 AM PDT #
When I read Bryan Cantrill's "Demo'ing DTrace" blog entry I immediately started downloading b63.
After one of the smoothest installations I've ever seen (in any operating system, although I'll admit that it may be a bit much for a non-UNIX person!) I am very, very impressed.
DTrace is all that it's cracked up to be, and more. This tool alone is reason enough for a developer to try Solaris 10.
Given that exposure to the system, I've started preparing a demo of DTrace to my team (and quite a few other interested parties at work), and the first thing I had to do was put b63 onto an ageing laptop (apparently quite difficult with previous Solaris x86 releases) - smooth as silk.
There's so much more to play with in the upcoming release, and I'm sure I'll continue to be as impressed as I have been to date.
Congratulations to all involved in Solaris 10 - this is shaping up to be a groundbreaking release.
Posted by Michael van der Westhuizen on October 15, 2004 at 03:52 PM PDT #