On Thu 06/01/06 at 09:45 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> "Solaris is a better Linux than Linux" ?Marc Andreessen
>
> You know what...that ticked me off. I love Sun but such viral marketing
> campaigns?
>
> Anyways, here is a response on that topic
> http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/55094/index.html
I rarely follow this sort of link, since I inevitably end up rolling my
eyes and sighing a lot. I'm not sure why I did this time, but I found that
this response:
- takes issue with the claim that ZFS is superior to Linux
filesystems. He lists 4 Linux filesystems, but doesn't explain
how any of them come close to matching ZFS.
- Admits that Linux doesn't have containers, but makes the silly
suggestion that UML is more or less the same.
- Claims that Linux is somehow "more free" than Solaris because it
uses the GPL instead of CDDL, without offering any explanation of
why GPL is preferable. Both are approved Open Source licenses.
- Says something about proprietary software and interoperability.
I can't figure out what he is trying to say, or what he is
responding to, but he certainly doesn't offer any evidence (even
anecdotal) that Linux is more interoperable than Solaris.
- Quotes a reader who has a friend who "has been a Senior Engineer
at Sun for well over a decade" and claims that we had "completely
rewritten the kernel" for Solaris 10. Anybody who has even
glanced at the source available on opensolaris.org would know
that one or more of these people are simply making stuff up.
- Has some fair, if typically overstated and blustery, criticism of
our installer, which tails off with a complaint about CDE. Since
we have been shipping Gnome for years now, this last bit seems a
little silly.
- And my favorite: "[Since 2004...] Linux has matched Solaris
almost feature for feature." So Linux now has the functionality
offered by zones, SRM, Predictive Self Healing, SMF, ZFS, and (of
course) DTrace? C'mon. This doesn't even pass the laugh test.
These "responses" would be much more effective if the authors would just
stick to those areas in which Linux actually is superior - because they
certainly exist. Comparing Ubuntu's installer to ours makes that
blindingly obvious. Hardware support is generally another area where they
win - although I can use wifi on my Ferrari under Solaris, but not Linux.
Instead, they seem to spend most of their time and energy vigorously
handwaving away the areas in which we have the advantage. Since this
inevitably requires listing all the cool stuff available in Solaris, they
are really making our case for us.
Nils
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