http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/solaris_vs_linux.shtml
Copyright
2005-2008, Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov. This is a copyrighted unpublished
work. All rights reserved.
Notes:
-
Readers
with strong allergy to grammar and syntax errors should probably avoid
reading this paper until later, supposedly more polished, versions. The
current version is pretty raw. English is not the native language for
the author. Treat it is as a preprint
-
This
is not a scientific comparison per se but more of an attempt
to formulate (and for the author to understand himself the issues
involved ;-) the framework for comparison of two complex and successful
OSes. This framework might be used by future researchers of this
problem as well as business decision makers.
-
Please
pay attention to the version posted. This paper covers results of the
research in progress. If you consider a particular part of the paper
biased/incorrect please provide feedback.
Opinions of the author change as he deeper understands issues involved
in the process of this complex research. The topic is too complex and
some errors are inevitable in a paper written by a single author.
Actually the fact that a particular person is interested in the theme
to the extent that he/she wrote such a paper is a strong argument
against his/her depth of knowledge in one or both OSes that he/she
tries to compare ;-).
-
As
large enterprises are slow adopters of new technologies and as the
paper is a volunteer effort it can be substantially behind the curve
and most results are applicable only to enterprise versions of OSes
that were current in 2006-2007. This was the time when the bulk of the
paper was written. Amount of time that the author can devote to
research of the topic is currently very limited and things are moving
slowly (but they are moving). As of July 2008 some parts of the paper
looks already outdated (the success of Oracle Linux as another
enterprise edition with its own ideas (port of Suse YAST, BTRFS
filesystem, etc) is not reflected in the paper; Solaris 10
developments after the acquisition of MySQL are also not fully
reflected in the current version of the paper. Advances in hardware
which increased the value of ZFS (solid state disks) are also missing.
They might speed up widespread adoption of ZFS as new enterprise-class
filesystem.
-
The
paper was written with the explicit goal to serve as an antidote to
primitive reviews on Linux self-congratulation sites styled like "I
found old PC in the closet, dusted it off, tried to install Solaris on
it; my God what a crap Solaris is in comparison with Linux". Such
reviews are not only misleading, they disorient open source enthusiasts
(especially among staff of large companies) conditioning them against a
more stable and in several areas (virtualization is one; Java
applications performance is another) more advanced server OS that has a
lot to offer. The role of paper as an "antidote" to overselling of
linux in enterprise environment somewhat influenced the style making
the paper more polemic, then it probably should be. Please note the
author consider Linux and Solaris to be two best enterprise OSes out of
for variants available, the tandem which can replace other enterprise
Unix cocktails ;-)
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