[indiana-discuss] Nudge nudge

[Daniel Griffith]

Hi
Yeah, I'm that mythical creature, the Linux developer tentatively attracted
to OpenSolaris:)

2 years ago I wouldn't have touched Solaris with a 10 foot pole, OpenSolaris
popped up, I had a quick look, nah nothing there for me, but now AVS has
been thrown into to the mix.

Well...

I work at a company in the film industry, we run umpteen Linux servers, and
in the next few months will be starting a new company that will need a load
more – and the ZFS/AVS combo is very tempting. Before stumbling over Project
Indiana I was thinking Solaris proper, but for a user of a modern Linux
distribution that is a step back into the dark ages, so this looks like the
perfect solution, but I've got to say that the initial things here don't
look too promising.

1) People are blogging about basing the new distribution on one of the
existing ones. That would be a mistake, the new distribution needs a clean
start. If one of the existing OpenSolaris was amazing that would be one
thing, but none of them are.

2) Package management. My initial reaction was to wonder if some of the
people posting here have been down a hole for the last five years – but then
I guess they are Solaris users:) Look, the world has moved on from deb and
rpm files, oh and Elvis is dead and the Berlin wall is down too. Yum and apt
are OK on legacy distributions – hell they are stuck with them, but to use
them on a new one is simply madness!

There are a number of modern systems, one of the nicest is Paludis. There
should be a proper discussion and testing of the various options, not just
"Well we should use *** because I've been using it since '94 and it doesn't
suck so badly".

3) BaseLayout. /opt/csw/?? /usr/sfw/?? WTF????? Going by
http://ianmurdock.com/2007/06/08/where-do-i-download-opensolaris/ you want
to appeal to the average linux user, so I think it needs to be recognised
early on that some of the old skool ideas of Solaris simply are going to
have to go out of the window – wget and friends should be in /usr/bin. Etc
etc etc. Thats a painful thought probably for the pot bellied bearded Sun
sysop, but the war is over and you lost:

4) Live CD's and elaborate installers... I've seen these chew up an insane
amount of resources in Linux distributions and in the end there has never
been any solid proof that a livecd brought in that many more users. We need
an ZFS based installer that doesn't clobber peoples Windows installs, much
more initially is overkill.

I perfectly understand that a long time Solaris user would hate to hear what
a Linux weeny like me has to say above, but Solaris hasn't taken over the
world, OpenSolaris hasn't managed to stir the imagination of Linux devs, and
this new distribution has a real chance – if faces up to the hard decisions
on what it needs to be to be relevant.
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