Re: Sun's support for Linux

I can comment as an ex-Sun employee who worked in this area.

[email protected] wrote:
> Hi lsb-discuss,
> 
> I found these links about a Sun press release mentioning support for 
> running Red Hat binaries on Solaris,
> 
> http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-11/sunflash.20051117.1.html
> http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?featureid=1989

This sounds like a release of the Janus technology tailored to run only in a Solaris Container, especially as its targetted as an OpenSolaris release of the technology.

> 
> At first I wondered, 'why Red Hat and not LSB?' thinking they had 
> re-implemented Red Hat's ABIs. But this talk of 'containers' indicates that 
> they're running a full copy of Red Hat in a virtualization environment. If 
> that's the case why not other (potentially LSB) distros? Is this just a 
> market driven thing?
The quick answer is yes. Red Hat's market share and the availablility of "Red Hat" applications means thats the way to sell the technology to customers.

I'm afraid although the LSB does good work and there are certified distributions  the question people ask is where are the LSB certified applications?

>From an engineering perspective to be able to be binary compatible with "Red Hat" to run "Red Hat" applications is differcult to ascert. All that could be claimed is that the solution is designed to be compatible. During my time and given my work in the POSIX/UNIX standards area I championed the use of LSB complience for the Janus technology due to the more measurable nature. Through running the testsuites and studying the specification although some issues remained Janus was quite close.

It will be interesting to see when the technology is released via OpenSolaris how the technology has developed.

Joanna


> 
> It would be nice if Sun comments were in support of the LSB ABIs rather 
> than explictly calling out Red Hat's ABIs. While they are sometimes 
> different they are supposed to be same most of the time (at least in 
> theory).
> 
> Any Sun people on the list want to comment?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- 
> Matt Taggart        Open Source & Linux Organization R&D
> [email protected]   Hewlett-Packard
> 
> 
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