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Ian Murdock Joins Sun

Posted by kdawson on Mon Mar 19, 2007 07:50 PM
from the long-time-admirer dept.
Software Sun Microsystems Linux
RLiegh sends us the second piece of news today featuring Debian founder Ian Murdock. In an entry on his blog, Murdock announced that he is joining Sun Microsystems as their chief operating platforms officer. As he put it in his opensolaris post, this "...basically means I'll be in charge of Sun's operating system strategy, spanning Solaris and Linux." In all likelihood one of his first priorities will be "closing the usability gap" between Solaris and Linux.
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[+] Ian Murdock: Debian "Missing a Big Opportunity" 330 comments
Natester writes "While Debian struggles to get its next release (Etch) out the door, the project's founder, Ian Murdock, has spoken out about politics, the lack of firm leadership, and Ubuntu's meteoric rise in prominence. Murdock believes that Debian is "process run amok" — nobody feels empowered to make decisions, leading to the sluggish rate of progress."
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  • What usability gap? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Creepy Crawler (680178) on Monday March 19 2007, @07:55PM (#18408883)
    Im not sure where Murdoch is coming from here.

    GNU tools are on one of the CS's that Sun ships, and I install gnu tools anyways. It's there and easy to use. Sun supports its SunOS well.

    Unless Murdoch is reffering to the wonderful "usability" of old and haphazardly done Debian packages, well erm.. let Sun take care of themselves. I like relatively new user-based programs (like, not from the early 90's).

    Typed on a Debian Testing machine. Debating to go with Ubuntu..

    • Re:What usability gap? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by good soldier svejk (571730) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:08PM (#18408987)
      I presume he is talking about package management. Do the current SunOS/Solaris versions ship with modern package management? Because the stuff that came with 2.8 and was crap.
      • Blastwave [blastwave.org].

        Blastwave is a collective effort to create a set of binary packages of free software, that can be automatically installed to a Solaris computer (sparc or x86 based) over the network. Blastwave has a substantial build server farm for the use of the software developers and maintainers in the Solaris community. All software is built and tested in a standardized build environment using Sun ONE Studio 8, Sun ONE Studio 10, Studio 11 tools as well as GCC.

    • Re:What usability gap? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by McFadden (809368) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:08PM (#18408991) Homepage
      Maybe I'm just a cynic, but when I read "In all likelihood one of his first priorities will be "closing the usability gap" between Solaris and Linux." - I genuinely wasn't sure which one was supposed to be ahead of the other,
      • Perhaps he is talking about the desktop?

        Maybe porting DBUS and HAL to Solaris... A recent KDE and Gnome wouldn't hurt either.

        • Re:What usability gap? (Score:4, Informative)

          by cheshire_cqx (175259) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:58PM (#18409331) Homepage
          Nexenta [gnusolaris.org].

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AaronW (33736)
          I am running KDE 3.5.6 on Solaris at work. It was painful to compile due to all the missing libraries, but I have most stuff working, including sound (video doesn't work well since the Ultrasparc system is way too slow). There are binary versions available for download for Solaris which are actively maintained.

          The Solaris kernel needs a *lot* of work. It has some cool features like D-trace, but don't expect anybody to be able to jump in and write stuff for it since it is very poorly documented. I don't

          • The Solaris kernel needs a *lot* of work. It has some cool features like D-trace, but don't expect anybody to be able to jump in and write stuff for it since it is very poorly documented.

            This guide sure seems like a good start on dtrace:
            http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/dtrace/ [sun.com]

            Not to mention that dtrace isn't a just kernel tool. It can obtain information from the kernel but it also does probes within user space programs and across programs.

            I don't think most Sun engineers know what comments are for. ... With the Linux kernel ... The code is fairly well organized and generally well documented.

            I've done a fair amount of kernel programming across major unix systems and they are all weak re: documentation and comments. The Linux kernel code is just not well documented. I would say it is slightly better than *bs

            • In general, the parts of the Linux kernel I have looked at are far better documented than Solaris. As for file systems, I took a quick glance through the EXT3, XFS, NFS and Reiserfs code in the Linux kernel and found that generally it is far better documented than ZFS, though Reiserfs and NFS seem worse than the others. Even where not well documented, the function names are often much more meaningful, making it much easier to pick up the code. Similarly, the networking code in Linux is generally very wel

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tiro (19535)
        That's exactly what I was thinking. I downloaded Solaris last summer and set it up for fun on a quad boot machine. Solaris systems administration definitely has a steep learning curve for nonprofessional Linux users like me. Murdock should try to catch up with OpenBSD. In oBSD the user isn't coddled as much as with say Ubuntu's gui admin tools, but the answers are always on hand with the great documentation. I'm sure Solaris is nearly well-documented, but not in an easily accessible form like OpenBSD. Just

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by cmdr_tofu (826352)
      I don't know too much about solaris 10 (although I don't think it's improved much), but whenever I
      get stuck on a solaris 8 machine, I get annoyed by some of the commands. tar xvzf does not work,
      I have to gunzip -c | tar xvf -. Why can't I "du -sh", or "df -sh", and what is wrong with bash?

      Bash is a great shell and it should certainly be the default over csh! Well I guess Solaris is rock
      solid and has a lot going over Linux (like easy ACL support over NFS), and certainly bash and other free
      software can be

      • Re:Replacement Gap (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ilgaz (86384) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:35PM (#18409167) Homepage
        You people are really confused. Solaris actual userbase are happy with their stable/established workstations and servers. An OS not installed at your geek neighbour doesn't mean it is "dead" or "eclipsed".

        You speak like Solaris Desktop was considered an alternative home desktop OS and Linux took all userbase.

        Solaris is alive and well doing number crunching/CAD/Medical/Military work around the World. It is just not too easy to see it running in neighbourhood.

        • You people are really confused. Solaris actual userbase are happy with their stable/established workstations and servers. An OS not installed at your geek neighbour doesn't mean it is "dead" or "eclipsed".

          Is it "eclipsed" if I install an open source IDE on it?

      • Re:Replacement Gap (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kymermosst (33885) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:38PM (#18409181) Journal
        Yeah, except I'd pick Solaris to run a mission-critical app over Linux any day.

        I started off as a Linux admin. Today I am a Solaris admin and I like it that way. Yeah, some of the user-land utilities could be improved, but overall Solaris is a solid operating system that handles some of our hefty applications admirably. Sun also has the best support money can buy. Our x86 vendor is a pain in the ass and there is nothing quite like your Linux vendor and your hardware vendor blaming each other while you wait to get your problem sorted out.
        • Zones, ZFS, D-Trace, real ability to use multiple cores and lots of RAM. Some awesome stuff there.
          • Oh yeah.

            I had the opportunity to be the first in our company to employ T2000s and Solaris 10. Awesome to work with and the performance with our applications running on them is incredible.

            I can't wait for the Niagara 2 processors... twice as many threads running in parallel and one FPU per core... that'll let us branch out to stuff that is more FPU-heavy.
            • And power efficient?
              • And power efficient?


                Did you know that some electricity companies are giving a rebate when you by a Sun T1000/T2000 server, because saving electricity that way is for them cheaper than building a new power plant.

        • Re:Replacement Gap (Score:5, Interesting)

          by geniusj (140174) on Monday March 19 2007, @11:09PM (#18410389) Homepage
          As an experienced admin with both OSes, I'll sum up what I think the biggest abstract difference is between the two.

          Solaris assumes you know what you're doing. Linux, to a much lesser degree.

          Linux has been open source since its inception, but as an admin on a Solaris box, the system definitely feels more 'open' to you. More is possible, more data is gatherable, more settings are tunable. A Solaris admin generally has more power over the system without digging into source code than the Linux counterpart. That's the major difference I've always seen. If you want both flexibility and stability, it's hard to beat.

          I will say though that Solaris' defaults are generally less reasonable than the enterprise linux distributions' are. There is more tuning and such to do before you'll have your Solaris system running the way you want it to. At least there's Jumpstart.
        • It's possible they eventually will. However, for now it's been rejected by the Solaris community board [cbronline.com].

          "There is little, if any, benefit to dual-licensing OpenSolaris with CDDL and the yet to be approved/upcoming GPLv3 license - aside from possible short term good press for the project," it continued. "There are significant downsides to dual licensing, including, but not limited to, license complexity, confusion and the possibility of long term bad press from any exception language that such a license wo

  • Didn't he recently talk down about debian?

    Not that he wasn't right, but being the founder... doesn't that say something about what we might expect of him at SUN?

  • Well that sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0racle (667029) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:24PM (#18409097)
    I was hoping for a Solaris 11 release in my lifetime.

  • Shoot for the stars (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Graham J - XVI (1076671) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:38PM (#18409183) Homepage
    How about closing the usability gap between Solaris and OSX instead? ;)
    • Yeah, and then Solaris will be good as a server OS like OSX is!
        • Obviously. However, I'm not sure who is trying to run Solaris as a desktop OS anyway.

          I have built and/or maintained hundreds of Solaris servers over the past year. If getting a pretty desktop with fancy widgets means any tradeoff on its strength as a server, then I'd rather Sun not invest in Solaris as a desktop OS.

  • Debian on Solaris? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dara Hazeghi (1076823) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:38PM (#18409191) Homepage
    As the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD [debian.org] project has shown, it is possible to port the Debian userland (including the excellent apt-get package management system) to other kernels besides Linux. I would like to see Debian/Solaris project come out of Ian's endeavors. If not that, then at least an upgrade of the current Solaris userland to make it more Linux-like.
    • There already is one. It's called Nexenta [gnusolaris.org] and it's a melding of Solaris with the Ubuntu userland. They have a LiveCD you can try out and everything. Worked pretty nicely when I tried it back in September.

    • Re:Debian on Solaris? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kindbud (90044) on Monday March 19 2007, @09:27PM (#18409579) Homepage
      If not that, then at least an upgrade of the current Solaris userland to make it more Linux-like.

      You mean it would have all the inconsistencies and inscrutability of the System V and BSD userland inherited from SunOS, PLUS all the additional inconsistencies Linux has contributed? I can hardly wait.

      Do I use a dash or a double-dash? Will the man page refer me to the info docs? Or will it refer me to the command line help? Or was that --help?

      One of the things I dislike about Linux userland is that it is such a bastard of every other userland out there. Cacophony cannot be emulated, it can only be shouted down.
  • Debian isn't the best model for usability for non-technical users; glacial release schedules and lack of desktop environment coherence to offset your stability is, well, what you get with Solaris already.
    Sun should poach Mark Shuttleworth if they want someone who can make a solid OS into one that you can give to random people to use without it blowing their minds.

    • Debian isn't the best model for usability for non-technical users; glacial release schedules and lack of desktop environment coherence to offset your stability is, well, what you get with Solaris already.

      Considering the fact that Ian Murdock isn't currently even a Debian Developer [debian.org] I don't know what Debian is currently doing (or according to you, not doing) has to do with him at all.

  • At least appears greener than Debian.

    I wonder if he'll be a capable exec though. The politics is rough and we don't know what kind of authority/reach he has. For example, budgets? hire/fires? or is it more.... Figurehead type meet-and-greeter. Every organization that can afford them has a stable of ponies just for this purpose.

    Good luck to him. I really hope it works out considering the disparaging remarks posted earlier today.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      He probably forgot that Apple still makes computers and operating systems.

      Like 97 percent of the rest of the computing world.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by kad77 (805601)
        They "rest of the computing world" would sure wake up to a cold shower if Apple Computer licensed a few reference designs and developed an "Office Suite" as high quality as OS X.

      • Re:Shooting too low, again. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by caseih (160668) on Monday March 19 2007, @10:32PM (#18410127)
        I think Sun should buy Apple and rename themselves as Apple. Then Mac OS X gets a much better kernel, and Sun gets all of Apple's nice unix userspace (Solaris 10's userspace is awful). Mac OS X server becomes Solaris 11 and all of apple's good ideas like OpenDirectory, their management GUIs for open source apps, etc become a part of solaris. Already technology transfer is happening. My local Apple rep said a lot of core technologies are being licensed from Sun including ZFS.

        It would be a clear win for both companies. Apple gets instant access to the enterprise, and Sun will make sure the acquisition means that Apple's technologies will get the enterprise-level support they deserve. Currently Apple's so-called enterprise offerings are really not very serious, although they have improved their support with Tiger. Sun can finally sell desktop machines sporting an amazing OS and desktop (under the Apple Macintosh brand) and have a server OS that's powerful and easy to setup and administer and with the better BSD userspace that Apple has.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jcr (53032)
          I think Sun should buy Apple and rename themselves as Apple.

          You're a couple of years late with that idea. Sun's worth $22.4 billion Apple's worth 78.54 billion.

          It would be a clear win for both companies.

          Nope. Sun's not what it used to be. If they have anything left that Apple wants, Apple can buy it for a lot less than 22 billion dollars.

          -jcr

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Coryoth (254751)

            What other Sun tech are they licensing?
            I don't know about licensing, so much as just using since it is open source now, but Leopard apparently has DTrace and Apple is providing a GUI tool to visualise data from DTrace instrmented code called Xray (scroll down to find info on XRay) [apple.com].

    • Re:Shooting too low, again. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ilgaz (86384) on Monday March 19 2007, @08:26PM (#18409109) Homepage

      He wants to make Solaris as useable as Linux? Um, what about shooting for the best usability in the industry, champ?

      -jcr
      Does Solaris userbase (real ones, the ones paying millions to Sun hardware or running mission critical) want "Usability enhancements" or do they want to race with Ubuntu or OS X? I know a genetic engineer who spends her life on Solaris, I didn't see her complaining about usability at all. In fact she lives actual problems on Windows XP desktop since she is not used to it.

      Same went for Debian, some actual admins spoke their mind saying they want peace of mind and a stable OS instead of Ubuntu racing, Digg headlining Desktop.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nicolaiplum (169077)
        If I'm going to run my company's mission-critical code on Solaris, I need to have the developers running Solaris too, which means I have to have a nice desktop environment they will want to use. If Solaris gives me that, my life is much easier. If I have to spend a lot of time making gnome-whatever, all the Java tools they love, etc, run on Solaris, then my life is much harder. If the tools aren't shipped for Solaris, I'm SOL.
      • Usability enhancements might mean making the Solaris /proc system as usable as it is on Linux, thereby cutting the size of the Oracle installation guide by an order of magnitute....

        Everyone always wants usability enhancements. They may not agree on *which* ones they want however.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cheshire_cqx (175259)
      Real apt-get with dist-upgrade for Solaris would be great. Blastwave seems like a stop-gap in comparison. Reinstalling from the DVD every time is a pain, and BFU isn't as comprehensive. In this respect OpenSolaris can learn usability from Debian, and I'd love to see it.
      • Yes, I'd love see Sun learn all they can from RPM, DEB, apt and yum, and come up with a package format and delivery system that blows the doors off of what's available at the moment.

        Heck, I'd love to do the job myself.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by kripkenstein (913150)
        Nexenta [gnusolaris.org] may be of interest to you, then.
    • He wants to make Solaris as useable as Linux? Um, what about shooting for the best usability in the industry, champ?

      And the difference is?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Valar (167606)
      In other words, democracy has given people exactly what they want. Oh no, boo hoo, the largest portion of the population is comfortable and happy.

      Who are you to say a football player is less important than a programmer? Typical geek chauvinism. Only our kind of talent counts. The world should bow to OUR agenda (witness the "you shouldn't be licensed to use a PC until you understand how one works crowd). And DAMN IT, Dr. Who is better than other TV, even if everyone else says otherwise. I say so, and I am so
      • There's a difference between having a democracy as a form of government and a democracy as a form of project administration.

        In other words, it works for the former and sucks for the latter.

        If Apple or Microsoft or the Linux kernel were run by democracies none of them would be as successful as they are today.
    • I ordered the media kit dvd on the 2nd and got it in the mail today.

    • I did about 5 or 6 years ago. I was running it on an old pentium pro machine.

      The server was stolen on Christmas eve, including an old keyboard and 14" monitor. The thief was so dumb, he did not notice the 2 new IBM desktop machines still in their boxes, or the 17" monitors also in their boxes in the same room and climbed back out the broken window next to the door that was not deadlocked.

      Must have been an exciting Christmas morning for some kid, getting a solaris server.

        • Here's what I'd like to see: A simple, elegant GUI with full 3d acceleration (perhaps beryl/compiz based) without gimmicky, useless eye candy. (Some gimmicky eye candy is useful)

          Enlightenement is cross platform and modular - you can turn the bits you don't like off and still keep the acceleration from the video card via evas.

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