I run Slackware Linux and Xubuntu on my laptop because I have a slow CPU with only 500 megs of RAM and Slackware doesn't have the checksumming overhead of ZFS (as well as the massively scalable multithreading capabilities of Solaris) to slow it down. But on my desktop where I have 2 gigs of RAM, I do a lot of multithreading, and I need a bulletproof, incorruptable file system based on ZFS software RAID where all of my data is checksummed several times over I prefer OpenSolaris.
Same thing for servers. For servers I prefer Solaris, FreeBSD and OpenBSD all the way even though I still prefer Linux as my primary laptop OS. In my personal experience, Linux runs much faster on small jobs (like word processing or using Firefox to surf the internet) whereas Solaris runs faster on huge multi-threading jobs (like running a giant database application that hundreds of thousands of people are connecting to at the same time). This is because there is more overhead in Solaris on the small jobs because Solaris is optimized to find the most efficient way to run hundreds of thousands of multithreaded processes on a Sunfire E25k (see link below): http://www.sun.com/servers/highend/sunfire_e25k/index.xml For me Slackware Linux is like a small, skinny guy who is nimble and can move fast whereas Solaris is like a huge Olympic weightlifter who can lift 500 pounds over his head. Sure the skinny guy is more nimble and can get up to the top of the stairs more quickly, but only the "Slowlaris" Olympic weightlifter can bench press the 500 pounds when you really need to scale up to that level. Or maybe if you want to go with a naval analogy, Slackware is like a small motorboat that can move fast through the swamps whereas Solaris is like a battleship that can take a lot of damage without sinking. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
