On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 09:54:10PM +0800, Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote: > > >> Didn't Ubuntu switch to something like Solaris' SMF? I actually like > >> SMF quite a bit and I imagine RHEL/Fedora will move in this direction > >> eventually.... > >> > > > > Speaking of Solaris - are any of projects like Nexenta usable yet > > (distributions with the OpenSolaris kernel and the same user userland as > > Ubuntu or other current distro)? If I have to learn a new set of admin > > commands, maybe I should at least get zfs in return. > > > > > > I don't know the state of Nexenta but I can live with Indiana. As a > desktop, it was nice to get Nvidia drivers bundled, a working > thunderbird + lightning plugin enabled, working sound (can I repeat > that?), pidgin, openoffice (needless to say), sunstudioexpress, gcc, > printer support, nice crisp looking fonts, compiz if that is your things > and later xchat, ekiga...but no mplayer/vlc (not initially anyway...have > to check with latest), no KDE (although there are packages outside the > repo available), had to download a mp3 plugin for gstream, and learn a > whole load of Solaris stuff unless you use dhcp. > > zfs snapshots are nice, a boot environment system coupled with zfs that > allows roll backs between upgrades, installations of software, alternate > boot environments for testing and a whole lot more all available with > just a few commands or even just one command... > > You get more than just zfs in return...integrated iscsi/nfs/smb sharing, > nfs4 acls, and also a real cold elitist crowd. > > Either way, it is worth looking at nexenta too. I had this thing for Sun > cc compiled asterisk so I dropped nexenta and moved to Solaris Express > and later Indiana. > > No flar or instantly install on thousands of servers support for Indiana > though. For some things, RHEL just stands on top. Maybe I should give > Fedora a try once again. We've tried to use Solaris 10 x86 and/or OpenSolaris a number of times at work for projects with various whiteboxes. Unfortunately we hadn't planned ahead real well (the boxes were assembled with other things in mind) and usually the SATA RAID controllers weren't supported. That's been my biggest annoyance. :) Other than that, no real issue with Solaris other than it's also rather annoying to set up over the network. I just want to be able to PXE boot into the installer and point to a remote tree where the OS Is and GO! Seems I have to do the whole JumpStart add_install_client junk though... grr. Fedora 11 Alpha/Beta is nice though. I like btrfs so far. It has a long way to go but looks real promising as a potential alternative to ZFS. I really hope they add block level data deduplication at some point.... Ray