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Date:      Thu, 24 Feb 2005 03:01:39 -0800
From:      "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
To:        <jpeg@thilelli.net>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?
Message-ID:  <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNMEIEFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>
In-Reply-To: <53269.145.248.192.30.1109240527.squirrel@webmail.thilelli.net>

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Julien Gabel
> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 2:22 AM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: questions@freebsd.org
> Subject: RE: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?
>
>
> > That doesen't mean of course that it's impossible to do it -
> you can for
> > example use Solaris for a small company server - but the
> effort required
> > to go against the grain is much higher. Solaris for example
> comes with no
> > compiler and you must compile by hand all the applications
> you need, and
> > often you must recompile the complier just before you can even start
> > doing that.  It takes days - whereas the FreeBSD ports
> system takes a few
> > hours for the largest and most complex packages.
>
>
> Just as a side notes here:
>
> 1/ Solaris does come with 'gcc' on Compagnion CD as can be
> seen on a fresh
>    Solaris 10 installation:
>    # pkginfo -l SUNWgcc | egrep "PKGINST|NAME|ARCH|VERSION|VENDOR|DESC"
>       PKGINST:  SUNWgcc
>          NAME:  gcc - The GNU C compiler
>          ARCH:  sparc
>       VERSION:  11.10.0,REV=2005.01.08.05.16
>        VENDOR:  Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>          DESC:  GNU C - The GNU C compiler 3.4.3
>
> 2/ You can always use the pkgsrc (the NetBSD Packages
> Collection) as the
>    FreeBSD ports system replacement for use on Sun Solaris.
> We do it here
>    already for some software for Solaris 2.6, 8, 9 and soon for 10.
>

What possible benefit does that give for Solaris which already has
it's own package manager?  Your certainly not advocating using the
NetBSD presets for compiling packages on Solaris?

> I don't say i disagree with your global point of view, just
> that the last
> two points may be slightly... moderated :)
>

Solaris 2.6, 8, 9, 10 don't run on EISA.  They also got rid of the
alt-F keys for the multiple consoles.  I think they were looking
for ways to be degenerate. ;-)  2.6 also included it's own perl,
and I think later versions did too.  Blech on that if you needed
a later version of perl on the system.  It also didn't help that
Sun for several years was FUDing the industry claiming they
wern't going to support the Intel 64 bit chips.  And check out the
lack of /dev/random, /dev/urandom on 2.6 and 8 if I recall -
problem for OpenSSL even though a Sun patch adds them.  Although
the Sun-supplied random devices blow chunks when running ENT
or other PRNG testers.  I kind of expect crappy entropy from
a hacked up ripoff of the linux random driver, but I really
expected a lot better entropy from a driver distributed from
the maunfacturer.  After all, Sun can look at interrupts at the
network card and all kinds of other icky nonportable but
highly unpredictable fantastic randomness sources - just what
the heck are they doing in that driver of theirs?  Calculating
pi?  Unless perhaps the NSA got to them and told them they
better not release a decent random device because they want to
keep spying on all of us.

Seriously, the later versions of Solaris after 2.6 were big
disappointments,
It took years and years for hardware to catch up.  Big, poky and slow.
I don't know what they did but a 2.51 or 2.6 system on the same
hardware kicked the crap out of 8 even with full patch sets
applied.  And the Companion CD didn't start supplying gcc for Solaris x86
until Solaris 8 I believe.  These Solaris versions were fine for
big companies with lots of money to buy brand new Sun boxes (which
ran them well)  They were hideous for not so big companies that
didn't want to have to throw perfectly good quad Pentium 200 servers
with EISA hardware raid controllers and big SCSI arrays on them
in the garbage.

And try building something like ImageMagik on Solaris 10 I will bet
that at least 1 of the collection of libraries that this conglomerate
program requires will not build without tweaks.

We do use Solaris, it's stable, runs well, nice UNIX os.  But what
a time sucking bitch to setup.  At least you get a Motif, that's
worth something.

Ted



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