SmartOS vs CoreOS

What do you think of SmartOS vs CoreOS?

Both have simple one syllable names in front of the OS part.

I haven’t heard much about these Linux versions, but they are really being hyped.

SmartOS is around 40 in Linux distributions, while CoreOS is not even in the top one hundred distributions. Obviously neither is doing a particularly good job of marketing itself.

I didn’t even know there were over a hundred Linux versions.

Linux developers are like cats, difficult to herd, eager to go off on their own. Linux versions like Slackware are maintained by a single person or small group and often die a slow death.

SmartOS has ZFS, Dtrace, Zones and KVM.

Dtrace is so standard it is even used by other database tools. KVM is a good virtualization tool.

SmartOS scales up as high as you want.

Linux is regularly used to run servers.

SmartOS has a service management facility to let you recover quickly from failures., too.

I think it is only the ultra-lean operating systems like Puppy that don’t have tools like that.

Puppy Linux is so lean you have to install additional software to finish a remote desktop connection. But I really need to compare it to CoreOS.

CoreOS is designed for data centers, as well. CoreOS is free.

So are most Linux versions. CoreOS has some interesting features like a Fast Patch system for managing rolling updates for the operating system.

Whether rolling patches and updates are an improvement or not depends on your dependence on never having to shut down and reboot and the difficulty of rolling back patches.

CoreOS has a docker for packaging applications.

That’s a matter of opinion for the system admin.

Why aren’t you in favor of CoreOS?

CoreOS is so new it hurts. They only released an ETCD backed overlay network for containers in August of 2014, which is something standard for full data center operating systems.

It is licensed to use Apache 2.0.

Microsoft has used that forever. In Contrast, CoreOS was still receiving angel funding and early investments in July of 2014 to even get to market.

Century Link and other data center companies are investing in it.

So they get the free data center software first, which is a modest cost savings if they are still using Windows server management software.

Microsoft makes a lot of its remaining income from enterprise wide server support these days.

Only because so many companies entered decade long contracts back when every PC seemed to have Windows except for a few artists’ PCs.

If you want to beta test a Linux system, go get Fedora, since they release a new version every 12 months and only finish fixing it before putting out a new one. But for your data center, get the older, more reliable Linux versions that you know work.

Whether that is SmartOS is still to be seen.

[spraguedc]

FYI SmartOS is not a Linux Flavor, do some research and you will find it comes form the Solaris/BSD world. This should not be confused with just another Linux, because it is not.

[jeffsutch]

This isn't right. It's not even wrong.

[AlainODea]

I got 1:40 in out of desperation to find a shred of redeemable in here. There just isn't.

SmartOS is an Illumos distro NOT a Linux distro. It is radically different in meaningful (and security-enhancing) ways. Illumos descends from the last open source revision of OpenSolaris.

This video is bad and it should feel bad.

[OsimheninMaskesindekiÇivi]

Neither SmartOS nor CoreOS is linux. And its called 'distro', not 'version'.