Re: Solaris: The Most Advanced OS?
On Friday 04 November 2005 02:24 pm, Andy Streich wrote:
> 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.
...
> As Mike wrote: No flames, please. But I'd be very interested in what
> others thing about this.
>
> Andy
I just wanted to add -- I've seen at least one post questioning whether this
is on topic. It may not be exactly on topic, but that begs the question: if
Debian and Linux overall is part of the discussion, when does it go off
topic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who learns a lot from discussions like
this.
On a related note, with some background first: I am busy starting a new
company. Someone in another post mentioned about the phone switches and the
maker shutting them off. In my business, I mine data. There is one source I
use that is open to the public that was very helpful, and without it as a
source of data, I could never have gotten my business going. Almost exactly
a year ago, they discontinued the data, and I thought it was all over. While
I knew of other sources, I did not have the time or resources yet to develop
them before I would have gone broke. Fortunately, after a few weeks, they
started re-supplying the data. (Luckily that source is now handled by the
state and must be kept online by law!)
So what does that have to do with this? I always knew I was taking a chance.
If that data source were cut off before I had time to adapt to new ones, I
knew I'd lose everything. The people controlling that source controlled my
business. With one single permanent shutoff of a breaker for them, they
could kill my company. I was reminded of this in another post, where someone
talked about the access level his company had to the phone switches, and how
the maker shut them all off and hosed the company. I refuse to depend on
Windows, which could play any games you can imagine with auto-updates, or
with forced upgrades and a forced obsolescence that is intended more to make
profit than to help customers.
It was over time, as I realized that on Linux nobody controlled me, and all my
choices were made out of what worked, not out of cost or from reacting to
another company's policies. I have heard good things about Solaris, but I
never would have considered it for my business until it was made FOSS.
I'm lucky -- I started at a time when Linux was easy to use and learn for
someone with business goals in mind. By the time my business gets big enough
to worry about things like batches of financial transactions or similar
problems/blessings, Linux and other FOSS tools will likely be able to handle
it (or I can always use Solaris now, since it is FOSS).
I know people are using Debian for different reasons, like stability,
philosophy of software licensing, pricing, interest, and exploration of a new
OS. I think, as long as discussions stay away from flame wars, topics like
his are a help to many people as we learn more about the open source world.
(And, besides, didn't I read somewhere that Debian is working on a distro for
Solaris?)
Hal
Reply to: