Re: Solaris: The Most Advanced OS?

[Andy Streich <andy@rushyglen.com>]

On Friday 04 November 2005 09:11 am, Mike McCarty wrote:
> On the whole, I'm happy with Linux. But in a side-by-side comparison,
> IMO Solaris is superior.
>
> No flames, please.

You are wise to include the "no flames" request.  As always this is as more of 
an emotional issue for many people than an intellectual or economic one.  

In asking what's best or what's superior you have to state for what intended 
purpose.  I think it would be hard to make a case for Solaris being the best 
OS to run on your workstation at home or your typical webhost when Debian 
GNU/Linux is available.  But if your company is doing high volume stock and 
banking transactions, Solaris may very well be the best.  In both cases it's 
not just about the technical quality of the OS -- although that's critically 
important --  it's also about the available community support.  In the former 
case the community is the essentially the people on this mailing list.  In 
the latter, I'd much prefer to look to -- and pay for -- the community of 
engineers at Sun.  (One way in which Sun distinguishes itself is that it is 
still a company where engineers dominate, as opposed to Microsoft, as someone 
else mentioned, which is purely marketing driven.  Sadly the results can be 
seen in their stock prices.)

I doubt many people on this list have much experience working in high-volume, 
financial transaction environments where minutes of downtime correspond to 
millions of dollars lost.  It's not reasonable IMO to expect OSS to serve 
that market -- yet.  

As Mike wrote: No flames, please.  But I'd be very interested in what others 
thing about this.

Andy