Solaris: The Most Advanced OS?

[Tshepang Lekhonkhobe]

On 11/4/05, Andy Streich <andy at rushyglen.com> wrote:
> On Friday 04 November 2005 09:11 am, Mike McCarty wrote:
> > On the whole, I'm happy with Linux. But in a side-by-side comparison,
> > IMO Solaris is superior.
> >
> > No flames, please.
>
> You are wise to include the "no flames" request.  As always this is as more of
> an emotional issue for many people than an intellectual or economic one.
>
> In asking what's best or what's superior you have to state for what intended
> purpose.  I think it would be hard to make a case for Solaris being the best
> OS to run on your workstation at home or your typical webhost when Debian
> GNU/Linux is available.  But if your company is doing high volume stock and
> banking transactions, Solaris may very well be the best.

My defintion of superior is what is more capable and in this case the
'high volume stock...'

> In both cases it's
> not just about the technical quality of the OS -- although that's critically
> important --  it's also about the available community support.  In the former
> case the community is the essentially the people on this mailing list.  In
> the latter, I'd much prefer to look to -- and pay for -- the community of
> engineers at Sun.

This is being too universal -- I like sticking to the 'technical
quality' of things. Not to say that those other things (support, etc.)
are not important.

> (One way in which Sun distinguishes itself is that it is
> still a company where engineers dominate, as opposed to Microsoft, as someone
> else mentioned, which is purely marketing driven.  Sadly the results can be
> seen in their stock prices.)
>
> I doubt many people on this list have much experience working in high-volume,
> financial transaction environments where minutes of downtime correspond to
> millions of dollars lost.  It's not reasonable IMO to expect OSS to serve
> that market -- yet.

Sounds like you are underrating FLOSS... Isn't Google using the Linux
kernel. Or rather aren't you saying that the corporates haven't opened
their eyes yet.

> As Mike wrote: No flames, please.  But I'd be very interested in what others
> thing about this.
>
> Andy