To sum up above answers. The following has been stated by comrades rlhamil and oninoshi. 1) Solaris is stable binary-compatible platform (and they, IMHO, wanted to note that Linux is very evolving). 2) Linux soft often doesn't obey standards. 3) OS may be patched once or twice a year for free...
1) Yes, Solaris 10 is binary compatible. But, for example, RedHat/Cent OS is binary compatible in scope of one major version too. 7 years of support is quite good :) 2) Ok. I think, that standards is good. And as a system administrator I like soft which obey them (and I can use that soft everywhere: on FreeBSD(our base server platform)/Solaris(several terminal servers)/Linux (my notebook). But as OpenSolaris and Linux user I consider that benefit is not in obeying standards per se, but in ability to launch most of the applications). This is why after having a OpenSolaris desktop for half a year I'm quite troubled. There is nothing similar to diversity of ports collection in OpenSolaris. SFE/Jucr repository is good enough, but doesn't have a lot of necessary applications. Even popular /contrib applications are sometimes quite outdated... And to compile some applications on Solaris from sources is really time-consuming task. So, I would advise to choose not so standard-obeying, but more supported OS (FreeBSD for server, Linux for desktop/server for commercial soft). 3) Having patches for basic OS services very seldom prevents you from using this OS, for example, for database server or SMTP server. In FreeBSD I receive security patches for sendmail in one week. And I can without a lot of work to modify port to build new version of postgresql (and this patches likely to be submitted to FreeBSD port tree quite fast). When I use RedHat or Solaris I have to pay for something free in other projects. So I'm running FreeBSD/CentOS for servers instead of RedHat and Solaris. P.S. I really like Solaris. And I wished to try OpenSolaris on some new servers, e.g., database server (ZFS, Zones and Comstar are quite tasty :) ) . But without free patches it's not really an option now. I can't answer even to myself "Why I need it?", and of course, can not answer to this question to my chief. I just don't see so great Solaris technical advantages as it is usually spoken. There are interesting technologies in it, but Oracle strange decisions (e.g., on support) and insufficient interest from programmer's community to OpenSolaris IMHO are going to make second AIX from this platform. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
