Dial ''Sun'' for Unix. Review on Sun Solaris 8

Dial ''Sun'' for Unix

Preview:Solaris is a unix flavor from Sun Microsystems Ltd. Primarily aimed at businesses and other server centric applications, this operating system offers a robust, reliable, secure option for most of today's business and educational needs. Although not a completely free/open source OS in the real sense of GNU/FSF/GPL, it is still in the same league though some caveats may apply. But it is still a small price to pay for the reliablity that it offers. It is available in the Sparc and Intel editions though the later distribution is not known to be in the same league as the former for a simple reason being that the Sparc version is tailor made for hardware from Sun, which are not easy on the pocket. I have worked with Solaris for almost three years now and in my opinion it is a fair and a consistent operating system though the learning curve may be a little on the steeper side.

Availability:Solaris 9.0 can be ordered from the Sun website, which includes a DVD, three CDs, and a software companion. Prices vary depending on the usage and the number of installations. (While this is a loose term, there is a restriction based on the installation for particular applications. Make sure you abide by the restrictions).

Installation:While installation may not be as easy as that of the popular Linux variants especially Mandrake, it is still manageable. After all Solaris was not aimed at a beginner and a fair knowledge of systems and unix is essential to get ahead with the installation. Installation may be performed with the DVD/CD or from a network as with most variants. Both command line and “Web-start”, a Java-GUI installation options are available. Installation is mostly smooth if performed on Sparc based machines, though I have never attempted to do it on intel machines. As expected, hardware is automatically detected in most cases since they belong to Sun anyways. However, while making the choices, make sure you do not always stick to the defaults suggested by Sun as this can lead to a very messy configuration.

Post-Installation:After the usual installation procedure, it might be ideal to download and install other softwares like perl, gcc, gnu make, gnu tar, openssh. Solaris does not install these components automatically and while the default installation does have some of them installed, for core development the gnu tools are definitely recommended. Software support for this is very good. Binaries for most tools are available though I would recommended that building from the source is often the best way. If you are used to the rpm way of looking at things, this might be a yard tougher but in the end it all seems to be worth it.

Usage:The default installation includes the 'Common Desktop Environment (CDE)' from Sun, but installing GNOME or KDE environments are a breeze and results in a better working experience in my humble opinion. Most unix professionals prefer using the shell commands to the fancy GUIs and in the long run you will discover that it often helps if you get used to these things early, especially if you are stuck with a system that refuses to behave normally and you have to resort to the shell to fix the nuts and bolts. It is not that such things happen knowing the reliability of Solaris, but you never know when it would start raining.

Administration and Patching:Most patches for Solaris are updated on a regular basis at any of the sunsites/mirrors and it definitely helps if you keep your system updated. I prefer to download the entire set of patches and running the install script. It is faster and consumes less brain power. Package management is simplified and it is as good as rpm once you get to know it better. Administration requires a definite know-how about unix and detailed knowledge of the filesystems, tools and the likes. You can be in hot water if you try to do things with partial knowledge. Unix is good to friends and mean to the rest. Atleast know someone you can call on incase something goes wrong.

Documentation : Sun is among the market leaders when it comes to documentation. The ideal sites are sunsolve.com and docs.sun.com. You can pretty much find anything and everything you need to read about on these sites. In addition a couple of books on System Administration might be in handy if you are planning to spend a lot of time on Solaris, but for most the documents from Sun should suffice.

Inference:I do not intend to make this review too technical. So, there is no point in delving into the technicalities of the product. I have been administering this operating system for over two years now and while it was too intimidating in the beginning, you slowly begin to love it once you begin to understand it. The best part is it is truly consistent and for a linux user, with a few changes adapting to solaris shouldn't be such a big deal. It definitely recommend it with a warning that hardwares from sun come with a price. If Linux can do the job, maybe for small businesses it might not be worthwhile to take the plunge, but for a relatively large enterprise, Solaris is definitely an option to be considered seriously.

--damo--

If you are interested to read about the differences between Solaris 8 and 9 please refer to https://.sun.com/software/solaris/fcc/fcc.html