[SunRescue] How FAST is a SUN IPC

[Dave McGuire]

On July 7, Paul Theodoropoulos wrote:
> What I don't understand is why folks run anything other than 
> Solaris on SPARC hardware? It goes without saying that Solaris is 
> finely tuned to the SPARC architecture. I've been running Solaris 
> for years, and I just don't see the shortcomings in it that people 
> constantly refer to (e.g. "Slowlaris").

  Uhhh...

   1) I don't much like SysV.  Pure personal preference here.
   2) Source code isn't free.
   3) My favorite SPARC OS, NetBSD/sparc, kicks its ass in terms of:
     a) Performance, especially networking.
     b) "Modernness" (native ipv6, built-in raid, etc etc etc)
     c) Hardware support (when Sun's marketing department arbitrarily
                          decides that they no longer want to sell a
                          particular board, they deny ever having made
                          it and remove the drivers from Solaris)
     d) Platform independence.  Some of us run more than just Sun
        hardware on our networks.  My home network is a mixture of
        several different platforms, each chosen, built, and tuned
        to its specific application.  With two exceptions...SGIs
	running IRIX (because that's what they do) and a Cray running
        Unicos (because...well, that's what they do), they ALL run
        NetBSD, regardless of whether they're a sparc, an alpha, a
        Cobalt MIPS box, or even one lowly PentiumIII.  Consistency,
        both in terms of environment and in terms of performance,
        gives me a woodie the size of a California redwood.  And I
        settle for nothing less.  The consistency, that is.
     e) Reliability.  The shit Just Works.  And in those rare
        occasions in which it doesn't, I get better and faster
        support out of the NetBSD mailing lists than I EVER could
        out of Sun, even when I was buying hardware for one of the
        largest commercial customers they've ever had.
   4) Software support by the free software community.  Like it or
      not, the software that *really* runs most of the Internet
      (with the exception of Cisco router firmware) is free stuff
      like GNU goodies, Apache, sendmail, etc...not the commercial
      profitware that Sun (and others) push in magazine ads for
      newbie admins to drool over as they sit in front of their
      little Windows boxes wearing their little ties and following
      their little rules.  Now, admittedly, it's getting much better
      with 7 and 8...but in earlier Solaris releases, try getting
      ANYTHING to compile correctly.  Their headers and libraries
      were so damn bastardized I'm surprised they shipped a working
      "ls" with some of those releases.
   5) I don't like the way Solaris, in its early NEARLY COMPLETELY
      UNUSABLE FORM around the early 2.x releases, was utterly FORCED
      on the Sun user community by Sun MarketingSystems.  During
      that time, I was responsible for nearly a thousand sun
      machines, some of which just weren't supported by Solaris.
      Sun pulled the rug out from under me by discontinuing
      maintenance on their perfectly acceptable and very popular OS,
      forcing me to steal a copy of the source code and continue
      its maintenence my damn self.  We had a great deal of SunOS4
      experience, and we had VERY finely-tuned machines and
      networks...pouring an entirely different OS on the thing would
      have put Digex out of business before we ever went public.

  Now, I admit, I've warmed up to Solaris quite a bit as of releases 7
and 8.  But I've already switched to an OS that didn't suck in the
first place.  Too late.

> I'm not anti-Linux (or xxxBSD for that matter) either. I just don't 
> see the point of linux, at least not on SPARC hardware, when 
> Solaris 8 is "free" and runs like a bloody bat out of hell.

  I'm not anti-Linux either...I think it's ridiculous that they've
[all but against Linus' wishes] tried to port the damn thing to
everything under the sun (so to speak) but I do like the OS for the
most part.  It's got personality.  But until you hand me a CDROM
containing the source code for Solaris8, don't you dare call it
"free".

  Another point...I make a LOT of money with SS1/SS1+/SS2 machines.
Solaris8 won't even run on those machines, will it?  Arbitrarily
dropping support for hardware that is older but STILL USEFUL just to
try to force people to buy more hardware is BOGUS.


  Anyway...I hope I've given you a few points to think about.  It's
different for each of us, our companies (and home networks) all work
in different ways...this is where my experience has brought me.

            -Dave McGuire