Having spent many years in a variety of companies small, medium and a
multinational. Having worked for a software developer company for over ten
years, the platforms supported when I joined was DEC OSF/1, IRIX, Linux, AIX,
HP-UX, Solaris and Windows workstations. As time passed DEC OSF/1, IRIX, AIX,
HP-UX were all dropped as customers switched to Windows. Eventually only
Windows, Solaris and Linux remained, but in terms of sales Windows versions
were over 80%+ market share. Further support of Linux and Solaris was under
review due to the revenue generated.
For companies selling software on a variety of platforms volume reduces
development costs, a limited number of high value sales is not sufficient. The
eco system needs to be of a size, where sales exceed costs. Some institutions
have found to their cost that Windows is not reliable enough for large critical
systems. The UK Stock exchange replaced Solaris, with Windows server to reduce
costs and has now switched to Linux for reliability. The end result is Solaris
still loses.
I agree Linux overtook Solaris due its poor support of cheap x86 hardware, Sun
fumbled the ball at a critical point. Linux grew because of RedHat shipping
providing iso's of ready of usable software. This encouraged many people to
download, and develop their programming skills, look at how many linux focussed
applications have been developed.
However from children from 5 years until they enter University are exposed to a
Windows only environment, Linux is occasionally supported in some schools
before they enter university.
The average student may never come into contact with Solaris until they get a
job by that time it's too late. OpenSolaris has gone some of the way to
addressing this gaping hole in exposure, however poor device support is a major
stumbling block.
I want to install OpenSolaris on my company laptop but it did not support all
the neccessary hardware. I tried Ubuntu 9.04 it recognised every device;
however when I wanted to use tip to access the com1 port it was available to
access a management port on security appliance it was not there!
I would like to OpenSolaris instead of Linux, most of the security applicances
I work with run Linux as the host OS due to device support. For
OpenSolaris/Solaris to be around in 10 years time it needs to support cheap
x86/x64 hardware well, this is required to encourage development of new
applications and drivers.
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