__/ [ Lawrence D'Oliveiro ] on Friday 22 September 2006 08:39 \__
> In message <7169602.PibDg3T9Yo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Opinion: I have had short correspondences with and have been following
>> Google for a long time. They love Linux and they are happy with it. The
>> code repository is too reliant on Linux. Why change? There is only a lot
>> to be lost (dependencies on a company, for example).
>
> I have heard it said that OpenSolaris scales better to lots of CPUs than
> Linux (currently) does--more fine-grained parallelism in the kernel.
Based on what I once read, performance-wise and under certain scenarios,
Solaris/SPARC seems to give more for less (energy, not necessarily a
monetary investment), which is particularly important in data centres, which
in the case of Google, are more like data villages, or plants. These
machines work at full capacity 24/7 unlike Web servers that /might/ be
idle/underworked at times. You see, with crawling, assuming the bandwidth is
there, there is /always/ work to be done. Later on in the day I thought
further about GFS and other projects that would (hypothetically-speaking)
require porting. This could be perceived as a long-term investment though.
Maybe the intent is to have a separate new fleet of OpenSolaris machines or
a hybrid of operating systems. Diversity can only lead to gains. And Google
is now a wealthy company, so it's premature to discard that speculation
altogether.
All in all, I think that Google has shown many times in the (recent past)
that it is willing to betray Linux, Free software, Web standards, and free
speech (censorship). It would not at all surprised me if it followed its
investors' desire rather than its priciples, mantra, and 'heart'.
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