Kernel Mode-Setting Coming To OpenSolaris

[etacarinae]

Their Boss, the guy who pays their salary. I don't know about game devs, but if IBM tells Sun employees to dedicate their skills toward improving Linux that would be wonderful.

Yes, because IBM is well known for being a charitable and open company, and all of their products are open-source and they like contributing back to the community so much, eh, what ? IBM would fire most of the team, reduce the salaries of the remaining engineers and would have them work on things IBM needs to make money rather than just "go ahead and improve Linux, make the world a better place".

As for etacarinae's claim that OpenSolaris devs simply won't work on Linux because they don't like it, I think that is naive. First of all the skill sets for kernel writing are the same. And secondly, by participating in Linux development, they'd be able to shape the technical aspects of Linux to better fit their idea of the "perfect" operating system.

First of all, I was referring to the community as a whole, not just the people hired by Sun. Secondly, you seriously think talented people work just for the money ? The process would be completely changed, the upstreaming would get much harder as it would have to go through people like Linus, who can get annoyed at anyone just because he can. Not to mention that there would be tons of architectural disagreements that Linus & co. would simply veto.

And you really think that those talented people after working so many years on Solaris/OpenSolaris, writing books about it, working hard to build a community, and so on, would suddenly without a second thought feel miraculously relieved to finally work on that next best thing called Linux ? Now this is naive, you, for some reason talk of Linux as if "everyone knows it's the best thing anyway" and the devs working on OpenSolaris are working on it just because they're forced to, poor chaps.

Yes, some people left to work for RedHat, some to work for Apple, and so on but those who remain are dedicated to OpenSolaris.

P.S. I hope you will not find my reply too offensive and/or aggressive, but try to understand how it would feel if someone were to tell you that "we should just take the best bits from Linux and port them to OpenSolaris, then ditch Linux altogether as it's useless" and expect the Linux community to just nod and be happy about the move. This is essentially what your comment means to me.

[alanc]

This duplication of work between FOSS operating systems, where all features have to be reimplemented because of Sun's choice to release OpenSolaris in a GPL-incompatible license, is getting annoying.

Who said anything about re-implementing? Kernel mode setting is a feature of DRI, which is maintained under a BSD license so the code can be shared between the BSD's and Linux, and yes, even OpenSolaris.

The interfaces with the rest of the kernel are different, but much of the code is still common between all three.

[susikala]

ill not find my reply too offensive and/or aggressive, but try to understand how it would feel if someone were to tell you that "we should just take the best bits from Linux and port them to OpenSolaris, then ditch Linux altogether as it's useless" and expect the Linux community to just nod and be happy about the move. This is essentially what your comment means to me.

This logic fails. You cannot possibly compare those two projects in size, length, distribution, acceptance... OpenSolaris is at best a marginal project that is only allowed to stay alive because of a few 'advantages' it has over Linux. But this will soon be history with btrfs etc., I don't think OpenSolaris has a real future.

[jadrevenge]

btrfs =/= zfs

trying to compare the 2 is like trying to compare apples and oranges; talk to the people who've looked at the difference and you'll see that they're not alike. Some guys have got ZFS working for Linux, with minimal code changes, maybe if you could get over the fact it's not GPL you could have it on your OS. (Tell me, which flash player do you use?)

What on earth makes you think Solaris is a "Marginal Project" ... maybe you think it's down to the amount of effort (man hours) it's had put into it, maybe it's the lack of money, maybe it's the fact that it's a new project, only started last year ...

Oh, no ... I forgot.

Has anyone bothered to read Wikipedia to find out how long this has been around?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system) note the link to SunOS ...

Linux will never be Solaris, Solaris will never be Linux.

For my money I prefer to use a more solid OS that has a worse Graphical interface, but then I use it for work.

[airlied]

btrfs =/= zfs

trying to compare the 2 is like trying to compare apples and oranges; talk to the people who've looked at the difference and you'll see that they're not alike. Some guys have got ZFS working for Linux, with minimal code changes, maybe if you could get over the fact it's not GPL you could have it on your OS. (Tell me, which flash player do you use?)

What on earth makes you think Solaris is a "Marginal Project" ... maybe you think it's down to the amount of effort (man hours) it's had put into it, maybe it's the lack of money, maybe it's the fact that it's a new project, only started last year ...

Oh, no ... I forgot.

Has anyone bothered to read Wikipedia to find out how long this has been around?
.

You do understand ZFS isn't under the MIT or GPL precisely because Sun didn't want it in the Linux kernel. They were asked about dual-licenseing it a few times and refused as they know it would destroy a huge chunk of Solaris userbase.

Closed source UNIX OSes are a dying breed, and "Open"Solaris is still firmly embedded in closed source ideals, try getting commit access or a patch accepted into the Solaris kernel. They even ship binary drivers for stuff that is open in other BSD kernels (Toshiba ACPI).

Dave.

[jadrevenge]

THe licensing model used by Sun is not to close the source, it is to allow Models and ideas, licensed to a company or individual to be used by the community.

I know that some guys reverse engineered the Intel network cards and Broadcom cards for Linux, but on Solaris the Intel network card drivers were written by Intel ... which would you have the most confidence in when using them in a high performance server environment.

Why won't bits be released GPL? ... Some have been, but Sun cannot release all it's code this way; It doesn't own the right to do that.

I guess you're the sort of person who if begging in the street and given a fiver would complain that since the guy was earning in excess of 30K a year he should have given you close to a ton.

[etacarinae]

This logic fails. You cannot possibly compare those two projects in size, length, distribution, acceptance... OpenSolaris is at best a marginal project that is only allowed to stay alive because of a few 'advantages' it has
over Linux.

The problem is, you haven't used Solaris/OpenSolaris extensively, so you have only heard of DTrace, ZFS, there are tons of other features that make it much better than Linux for me.

But this will soon be history with btrfs etc.,

Yeah, right "Btrfs is under heavy development, and is not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review.". Make sure to let us know when it will be ready for actual use with bootable clones, in four+ years or so.

[joffe]

Aren't you being a little bit harsh here? His suggestion wasn't all that bad; there's also a lot of duplication in *BSD community, for example.

It's the same deal as was with Compiz and Beryl. Sometimes the whole fork culture just turns the people who do it into a laughing stock. Just because you -can- do something doesn't mean you have to. Forks are more than not a matter of ego (see OpenBSD). I'm not saying competition is needless, but sometimes the reasons are not justified and quite ludicrous. Maybe the BSDs never managed to become a real competition to Linux because those people's talent is getting spread like butter over too much bread.

I personally think the suggestion wasn't all that bad. A few more developers joining the development of Linux wouldn't hurt (especially if they're specialised in ZFS etc).

Yeah, I'm sure all the people running the infrastructure, firewalls, and routers running on BSD instead of Linux would agree with you there.

The systems have their niche, and I don't see any problem with a little differentiation.

Besides, you all are biased. OpenSolaris CDDL code can be implemented (and has been implemented) in BSD-licensed systems like FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, and proprietary systems like Mac OS X. It could potentially be implemented in RTOSes, Windows, AIX, HP-UX, just about anything. Linux is the odd man out here with the restrictive GPL. Yet you guys are pointing at OpenSolaris as if that's the big bad wolf forking everyone.

[jadrevenge]

BSD-Licensing is completely compatible with the CDDL (not the other way around)

the CDDL is there to give the supporting companies confidence that their IP is not gonna be ripped off by any old person.

If you're talking 10Gb networking get a grip, OpenSolaris is the only OS to support it at full speed atm, a large part of that is down to the fact that Sun "collaborates" with the network card manufacturers, and that will produce code that the manufacturers will want to be at least somewhere that they can control.

[kraftman]

Besides, you all are biased. OpenSolaris CDDL code can be implemented (and has been implemented) in BSD-licensed systems like FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, and proprietary systems like Mac OS X. It could potentially be implemented in RTOSes, Windows, AIX, HP-UX, just about anything. Linux is the odd man out here with the restrictive GPL. Yet you guys are pointing at OpenSolaris as if that's the big bad wolf forking everyone.

Thanks to GPL 'we' don't support windowses or macoses. It's another advantage over Solaris and BSD's.

The problem is, you haven't used Solaris/OpenSolaris extensively, so you have only heard of DTrace, ZFS, there are tons of other features that make it much better than Linux for me.

There are tons of other features that make Linux much better than Solaris or BSD's for me.

Yeah, right "Btrfs is under heavy development, and is not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review.". Make sure to let us know when it will be ready for actual use with bootable clones, in four+ years or so.

Oh, it should be ready to use next year (maybe even in the end of this year). I wonder if OpenSolaris or BSD's will not die in four years? Many reasons why people use them are just habits or fear to try something new.