Linked by Will Senn on Tue 26th Apr 2005 20:14 UTC
Wow! With Solaris 10, Sun Microsystems has done a marvelous job of bringing Solaris fully into the x86 world. Gone are the days when Solaris only runs on Sun hardware or when it only runs well on Sun hardware. Solaris 10 comes with greatly expanded off-the-shelf x86 hardware compatibility and a license that is hard to beat. It's a binary right to use and Open Solaris, the open source version is soon to come. IT Managers that have been wanting to bring a stable, scalable Operating Environment into their network infrastructures, but who have been unwilling to commit to the Sun hardware platform, for various reasons, are now free, pun intended, to bring Solaris on board and to run it on the hardware of their choice. 
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Those of you who have used Solaris inasmuch as you did an install and then wiped it cause you were too lazy to figure out how to do it correctly should not post lame messages about how you couln't get a NIC to work. If this is how I did my thing at work, I would get fired (in fact, I would fire myself for being lame). Go get a cheap supported NIC (3C905) and use that if you REALLY want to try Solaris. If you quit the first time something does not work, then adios, muchacho's. Sure, x86 support is not where we would all like it, but it's getting better. No OS is different here. Shall I give examples of where Linux sucks comared to Solaris? No, I won't cause each has its strong and weak points.
I've been using Solaris for quite a while, just a bit longer than Linux. There is a lot of stuff in there, under the covers, that you can't possibly know about until you read up. And I have to admit, Sun has some of the best technical documentation out there available for free as I have seen from any vendor. I much prefer that than having to search for Linux doc, which is pretty much chaotic, at best. Flame me if you disagree, but for Solaris stuff, I know where to go, and it all looks professional.
As for using Solaris, I am finishing a deployment of a large project (32 servers so far) that I chose to use Solaris on Sun hardware. Did I consider an x86 box and Linux? You bet. But, the price of similar hardware came in more expensive (go figure). Besides, I knew 100 percent that if I bought the Sun gear (Sunfire V120 1U rackmounts) that I would have no problem with OS compatibility. Next, the app only ran on Windows 2000 or Solaris (Sparc only) or HPUX. Just to show you that yes, Solaris is still being used, but you just don't hear about it as much. There were no os licensing issues as it came with the hardware. Made that part of my job easy.
Linux is nice for home and hobby, to be sure, and in other respects, but in some cases, it can't be used in the enterprise. It's just that way. If others disagree, then you probably don't have enough info available to come to the same conclusion. Linux is OK, I like it, but it's not the best for everything.
You can criticize Sun if you like, but nobody is forcing you to work there, or buy their stuff. It's your choice. I hope they continue to provide Solaris and products, and continue to work at making Solaris Open Source. For those that whine about why it's not ready yet, can you not find anything else to focus your energy into? They said it was being open sourced, and it will be. Is this not a huge win for the OSS camp as far as a vindication that OSS is viable and works? Why slam Sun for trying to change it's ways?
I don't work for Sun, so I'm not a fanboy or anything, and I hope that they can continue to provide a solid real UNIX OS. I think it has its place, and this place is expanding now that it is free (without support). I think it's wise to let people try it (that truely want to try it, not install and then complain as soon as they login). As long as the hardware choices are expanding (x86), I think it can only be a good thing because enterprises can run a real UNIX on hardware of their choice and decide to get support, if they need to, from Sun.
The more UNIX, the better.
Oh, and finally, people slam Solaris vs Linux, but this is really funny, because the same group also does this between 1 Linux distro and another. This is getting real tiring. I guess their perfect OS world is their 1 Linux distro of choice. Meh.
/rant