[geeks] Sun is developing a new LINUX desktop!!

[Jonathan C Patschke]

On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 03:27 PM, Mike Meredith wrote:

> But there's still going to be plenty of stuff that isn't so easily
> compiled. And when it's as simple as assuming that libz is around,
> there doesn't seem any harm in adding to Solaris.

Some of the libraries already are.  For example, libz is included in 
Solaris 9.  I think that mucking about with libc or the position of any 
critical administration or configuration file, just to comply with LSB 
is a Bad Thing, though.

>> But then, I've been spending my spare time over the last eight
>> months porting nearly 300 software packages to IRIX, so I might be a
>> bit biased towards developers getting their act together.
>
> Is this work available anywhere ? I'm slowly rebuilding stuff on my
> Octane, and I'm not allergic to cheating :)

It's in a state of flux.  I had a FUBARed compiler environment[1] the 
first time I went through and did the ports, so I'm combing through it 
again, also making everything 64-bit clean.  I don't have any sort of 
automated system yet like the BSD or fink folks have, but I'm working 
on that.  What I do have is a fairly large text file containing 
explicit instructions on how to build everything, what depends on what, 
and what patches you need to make to certain files to get things to 
build happily.  So, it's far from being ready for prime time, but if 
you can deal with having an editor window open next to your shell 
window for cutting-and-pasting, it works.

Oh, it also assumes you're using MIPSpro instead of GCC.  I don't have 
GCC installed on my workstation.  I'll go back over the whole thing and 
mess with GCC once the MIPSpro ports are done, since the GCC ports will 
be a lot less work (a lot of the bugs I'm fixing are just gross typing 
errors and variable initialization errors that GCC will gleefully 
compile).  I just object to compiling the lion's share of the code I 
use everyday with a compiler that lets so much crap through.

If you're really interested, I'll see if I can get anonymous CVS access 
to work like I want, and I'll post the relevant information here.

> Obviously they should avoid making changes that would break Solaris
> applications and even stuff that makes Solaris less Solaris-like, but
> many if not most of the changes don't appear to be anywhere near that
> fundamental. As an example, would it really cause that much pain if
> /sbin/shutdown was a symlink to /etc/shutdown ?

That's not the point.  Either you're compliant with $standard or you're 
not.  LSB, as much as it is a steaming pile of fetid dingos' kidneys, 
is a standard.  Personally, I think it's a bad one, but to claim to 
adhere to it and not really adhere to it is a really bad idea.  It's 
also a major pie in the face for a company like Sun that has preached 
"Open Standards" since its inception.  To adhere to the LSB and break 
existing applications is an even worse idea because it alienates people 
who have invested real money and mindshare in the Solaris platform.

The best possible scenario for everyone is for Solaris to agree to 
disagree with the greatly-fragmented Linux community, include whatever 
3rd party libraries are feasible to satisfy the dependencies of most of 
the relevant software out there, and NOT modify any of the existing 
Solaris libraries or file locations.  If the developers feel that their 
software, written with Linux/x86 in mind, will greatly benefit the 
world by running on SunOS/SPARC, the door is there for them to 
painlessly[2] walk through.  The ball is in -their- court, and no 
dedicated Solaris users get bent out of shape.

One exception, though; GNOME should be an -optional- install.  I don't 
want to be forced to install that bloated beast like I'm forced to 
install Perl, Java, and so many others.  It's almost getting to the 
point that Solaris is an unacceptable platform for simple services 
(DNS, mail gateway, etc.) unless you really over-budget for disc space 
to house all the extra crap that gets bundled with the OS.  It's not 
horrible yet, but if it gets to the point that GNOME and OpenWindows 
are implicitly intertwined, bloating the minimal X-capable install[3] 
by 200MB or so, that's out of hand.


[1] Something I had installed made autoconf really unhappy and it 
wasn't properly detecting things in header files.  As a result, 
there're a lot of extra patches in the list.
[2] Well, maybe not painlessly, if you've still got x86 inline 
assembler code in your routines "for speed".
[3] No, I don't run X on my simple servers.  But I did have the X 
client-side libraries installed on quite a few servers at my last job, 
since more than a couple Java configuration tools required it.
--
Jonathan C. Patschke
Celestrion Information Systems
Thorndale, TX