“If you are about to take the plunge into converting from Solaris to Linux, or just want to see how easy it is to make the change, then take a look at this well written Solaris-To-Linux Migration technical roadmap. It gives you everything you need to get the job done the right way, the first time, and will eliminate all the quirks and gotch-yas that come with operating system migrations.”
Seriously, I use and love both Solaris and Linux, but the only articles I see urging people to switch all come from IBM. No independent websites, no groundswell of feeling that this is a critical move…
I like IBM, but their interest here has less to do with promoting open source and more to do with diminishing a rival’s market share.
Yes, that is very true. Every study I have seen on migrating from Solaris to Linux was either done by IBM directly or funded by IBM. In fact, I’d love to see a real comparision of RHEL 4 and Solaris 10 by a truly independent source.
In fact, now that the Solaris source code is available, one could really do an in-depth analysis/comparison of the two…
Cynics usually take the POV that IBM’s main interest in Linux is as a tar baby: Paint Solaris as a proprietary OS which ties you to Sun for life, compared to an open source OS that runs on cheaper hardware with a bright, shiny future.
After the migration, when the cracks in the system start to appear, put on your superhero suit and start offering service contracts to manage all these problems.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/solaris_vs_linux.shtml
The author cedes ground to Linux and the BSD variants where they are superior, but does his homework on the technical differences arising from Sun controlling the OS and the hardware (sounds oddly familiar, doesn’t it).
What’s so “interesting” about that?
If sun published an article about converting from solaris to linux, would that be any great surprise?
I think you meant to say “converting from linux to Solaris.” If Sun published an article about migrating away from their platform, yes that would be a great surprise.
What I’m getting at here is that sites like this draw attention to an article without critically evaluating the purpose of the article.
If the article were “A Quick and Easy Debian-to-Server2003 Conversion,” it’s safe to say the rank and file here would be questioning the motive of the author’s employers –and that of Thom for posting it.
A more interesting and useful article would be on what circumstances lead an organization which already owns the Sun infrastructure, trained staff, etc., to incur the expense of replacing it with RHEL/SuSE Enterprise on commodity PCs and retraining their staff. Following such an article with an IBM redbook like this one (IBM’s category for promotional sales materials, by the way) would make sense.
Bereft of that context, it’s slightly less responsible to post this article in the words OSnews did (implying that it’s a natural decision being made on a regular basis).
As the gaming world has learned bitterly, journalism without objective analysis is nothing more than advertisement in nicer clothing.
It is a well laid out and informative document, although I find it curious that IBM does not talk about Solaris 10 at all. Disk mirroring during ther installation (JumpStart install) is part of the Solaris 10 feature set.
I also have to agree with snozberry about IBM trying to pimp their stuff (both hardware and software).
IBM: leave the migration docs to people who actually OWN a Linux Distro (like Redhat, Novell, or Debian). Each distro is so uniue and your generic Solaris to Linux is of little use.
Given the recent improvements in Solaris and OpenSolaris, seems to me that the trend may be more of migrating from Linux => Solaris. However, the article in discussion is from the IBM press core and Linux runs on IBM hardware whereas Solaris doesn’t (sure there’s x86 but I would imagine this article is geared more towards older long time Sun SPARC customers. Yes I know they support Solaris now but that doesn’t mean they have to like it)
Given the recent improvements in Solaris and OpenSolaris, seems to me that the trend may be more of migrating from Linux => Solaris.
Despite what Sun advocates (and employees) would like to believe, there has been such reversal of trends yet (Sun management’s schizophrenic attitude towards Linux may be involved in this…). Perhaps it will, but I think that we’ll rather see both Linux and OpenSolaris grow (and improve) without cannibalizing each other.
there has been such reversal of trends yet
Err…of course I meant there has been no such reversal of trends yet. Sorry for the typo.
As often reported in the press and has been going on for some time; there are migrations in both directions. To claim otherwise is to be blinkered.
Tp.
Indeed.
IBM, show me your “AIX-to-Linux Migration Kit”… what?
You ain’t got none?? What?? Are you serious?? But… whait a minute… ain’t you truly deboted to GNU/Linux??
Yeah, I see….
You know I’d rather read a migration plan from Linux to Solaris now that this super OS is actually free for use for all of us and is truly a remarkable piece of work.
Even better, I’d love to see a “Linux local desktop migration to Sun Secure Global Desktop” document. I simply think people haven’t actually checked Suns offer lately, they really have some awesome offers pricewise for the technology you can get.
If I’d start an ISP tomorrow and wanna have a stable platform which is expandable and flexible, I’d go Sun day 1.
If anyone actually followed my commments on the “Linux on T1” article…well…as the subject says, I rest my case.
Funny how Linux does not support the advanced feature set and functionality that AIX does on the same hardware. Little secret..IBM generates most of its revenue by service and hardware sales. All they need is an in and low and behold you are locked into IBM for all your business needs. Don’t get me wrong IBM hardware and AIX is good stuff but fact is $1,000,000 goes a lot farther with SUN hardware the it does with IBM.
Exactly, and the point of IBM Global Services “taking over” a project has been brought up before numerous times. This happened at my last job where the project went from 100% Sun for the Unix variant to 70% AIX and 30% Sun. NetBackup was dropped for TSM, the monitoring solution was Tivoli, ftp was handled by MQ Series. About the only things that weren’t provided by IBM was Oracle and SAP.
Maybe if a few Linux users actually experience IBM first hand, their opinion might change.