It may be interesting and useful to know the out-of-the-box state of GNU packages for the upcoming Solaris 11.4 later this year. For Solaris 11.4 Beta we have:
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Solaris 11.4 Beta - 1st impressions
Following the availability of Solaris 11.4 Beta I decided to give it a try.
I do not even intend a very first review, perhaps just some very preliminary impressions.
The installation hasn't changed that much, except there's no live GUI option anymore, which isn't an issue anyway. The removed option was indeed more suitable to promote the system in the past, but that's not needed anymore. On the other hand, it seems that duration of the internal operations of the install process have become longer, not that much, but enough to notice.
Once installed I do have noticed that (at least this beta version) take considerably (perhaps almost twice) more time to come up online (on an idle system). I hope that this is indeed related to a lot of development hooks and assertions still present on this beta release. The shutdown on the other hand seems to be OK taking around 30 seconds (on an idle system).
Interestingly, the packages repository still points to the current public release of Solaris 11.3 GA and I think that this may cause undesired issues if not promptly avoided by installing a local Solaris 11.4 Beta repository which is a very very long download and install.
The system certainly needs more than the bare minimum of 4GB of RAM and more CPUs according to the intended workloads. But in general (even idle) it also seems to be very I/O bound and with this I would mean it should use SSDs for mostly everything. Trying otherwise will probably required too much patience for the impatient.
Once this initial hurdles are overcome and the system settles down it seams OK.
But, of course, one has to go on experimenting to get more first impressions.
In particular, I started by check the progress on GNU packages.
I do not even intend a very first review, perhaps just some very preliminary impressions.
The installation hasn't changed that much, except there's no live GUI option anymore, which isn't an issue anyway. The removed option was indeed more suitable to promote the system in the past, but that's not needed anymore. On the other hand, it seems that duration of the internal operations of the install process have become longer, not that much, but enough to notice.
Once installed I do have noticed that (at least this beta version) take considerably (perhaps almost twice) more time to come up online (on an idle system). I hope that this is indeed related to a lot of development hooks and assertions still present on this beta release. The shutdown on the other hand seems to be OK taking around 30 seconds (on an idle system).
Interestingly, the packages repository still points to the current public release of Solaris 11.3 GA and I think that this may cause undesired issues if not promptly avoided by installing a local Solaris 11.4 Beta repository which is a very very long download and install.
The system certainly needs more than the bare minimum of 4GB of RAM and more CPUs according to the intended workloads. But in general (even idle) it also seems to be very I/O bound and with this I would mean it should use SSDs for mostly everything. Trying otherwise will probably required too much patience for the impatient.
Once this initial hurdles are overcome and the system settles down it seams OK.
But, of course, one has to go on experimenting to get more first impressions.
In particular, I started by check the progress on GNU packages.
Thursday, February 8, 2018
Solaris 11.4 Beta - availability
Solaris 11.4 Beta was made available for (temporary) downloading!
I already downloaded the beta version to get very first impressions.
It continues raising the bar with many enhancements and new features.
This time it seems that focus is more related to security and simplification.
I expect advances towards a more modern userland experience.
What I mean is a more updated GNU subsystem, not any GUI stuff.
In fact, it seems Oracle is phasing out most of the GUI stuff.
Solaris is truly becoming more than ever the OS of choice for backing the Web.
The powerful and renewed capabilities of this solid OS fully supports this statement.
Not to mention the options of x86-64 to mid-range and high-end big iron SPARC systems.
I already downloaded the beta version to get very first impressions.
It continues raising the bar with many enhancements and new features.
This time it seems that focus is more related to security and simplification.
I expect advances towards a more modern userland experience.
What I mean is a more updated GNU subsystem, not any GUI stuff.
In fact, it seems Oracle is phasing out most of the GUI stuff.
Solaris is truly becoming more than ever the OS of choice for backing the Web.
The powerful and renewed capabilities of this solid OS fully supports this statement.
Not to mention the options of x86-64 to mid-range and high-end big iron SPARC systems.
Once more, since the beginning of this blog I can say:
If it must run, it runs on Solaris!
Monday, January 1, 2018
Welcome 2018
By the Gregorian calendar the year 2017 is over...
So, welcome 2018!
I wish you all a happy new year!
2017 was tough with respect to the 3rd world society I've been called to live at.
For many times I've wished to have been born at the 1st world.
But in many ways that wouldn't be the bottom-line solution.
What we should dream of is a better world for us all.
Science is good, but we ought to value & save our planet.
Our spaceship, our home is this lovely blue globe we exist, the Earth.
This year will shall be hearing of Solaris 11.4!
That's great news!
By the End Of Feature notices it seems that Oracle is focusing on the back-end.
Many GUI front-end stuff seems to be more clearly doomed after all.
Those that will live will see... :-)
And yes I still think that Solaris is the #1 back-end infrastructure OS of choice!
And I'd like that industry standards get stronger and simpler;
both for enterprises and for low-end consumers!
Thank you!
Take care.
So, welcome 2018!
I wish you all a happy new year!
2017 was tough with respect to the 3rd world society I've been called to live at.
For many times I've wished to have been born at the 1st world.
But in many ways that wouldn't be the bottom-line solution.
What we should dream of is a better world for us all.
Science is good, but we ought to value & save our planet.
Our spaceship, our home is this lovely blue globe we exist, the Earth.
This year will shall be hearing of Solaris 11.4!
That's great news!
By the End Of Feature notices it seems that Oracle is focusing on the back-end.
Many GUI front-end stuff seems to be more clearly doomed after all.
Those that will live will see... :-)
And yes I still think that Solaris is the #1 back-end infrastructure OS of choice!
And I'd like that industry standards get stronger and simpler;
both for enterprises and for low-end consumers!
Thank you!
Take care.
Saturday, November 18, 2017
The Firefox issue
The Firefox versions that were shipped on Solaris 11 Express (even across all of its SRUs) and Solris 11.3 GA (and probably across all of its SRUs as well) are, saddly, rather outdated (for Solaris 11 Express that's even worse). For Solaris 11.3 the version is 31.8.0:
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