[Sunhelp] SGML tools on Solaris7 or non-GNUified Solaris

[James Lockwood]

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> Can you be more specific?  So far, the only thing that Solaris does better
> than Linux is the filesystem, which is far better.  I'd like to know where
> you see the Solaris kernel being superior to Linux.

Off the top of my head:

More robust FS including journaling.
Better (non broken!) faster NFS implementation.
Much better IP stack.
Finer kernel granularity.
Better kernel threading.
Fewer arbitrary limits (filesize, max open fd's, max memory, etc).
Stable driver interface (through the DDI).
Useful OpenGL/GLX (only on SPARC).
API's that don't change when you blink.

Some of these are tradeoffs at both ends of the spectrum.  The higher
kernel granularity in Linux is a win on one or two CPU desktop boxes and
still wins for syscall latency on big boxes (what the Linux crowd is
always bragging about) but syscall throughput is seriously affected.  Not
too much of a hit for a desktop box, but bad for a large database server. 

Since Solaris has been increasingly positioned as a server OS, the
tradeoffs have been made in the other direction.  It has a larger
footprint and more overhead, but scales better.

> How?  I'm a power user on Linux, but barely a normal user on Solaris right
> now.  But I still don't see big differences in those tools, except that I
> can't build SGMLTools with the versions that shipped with Solaris.  :)

This is the dark side of Linux and GNU.

There is little to no reason to require gcc or gmake or gtar to build a
software package. Nearly anything that they do "GNU style" can be done
portably. 

The problem is that there are a whole wave of programmers out there whose
only exposure to Unix has been through the free PC Unices, which tend to
use the same set of tools with the same extra features added.  They use
these extra features without regard to portability, and don't bother
testing their packages on other systems.  To many of them, a software
package is portable when it builds on both Redhat and Debian Linux.  Some
of the fringe groups might test on FreeBSD as well.

I don't know if SGMLTools is a victim of this trend, but I hope it isn't.
The GNU software packages are marvelous things and truly an asset to the
software community, but there has been some build environment 
fragmentation just as there was/is with Netscape and HTML.

Sadly, I see the same thing with some Linux software packages now as well.
Linux is another magnificent accomplishment and one of the culminations of
the free software movement, but many programmers neglect to take the
trouble to learn which API's are external and portable.  I have nothing
but respect for the Linux developers, but I have a considerable amount of
disdain for Linux "application programmers" who don't bother to learn how
to code to portable interfaces.

Those who do not remember Unix are doomed to reinvent it, poorly.

Sorry for the rant.

-James