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Sun's Linux Killer Examined
gnaremooz is one of several users to mention Thomas Greene's look at Sun's supposed 'Linux Killer'. From the article: "If Sun gets very serious about Solaris 10 on x86 and the Open Solaris project that it hopes will nourish it, Linux vendors had better get very worried. That's because, in the many areas where Linux is miles ahead of Solaris, Sun stands a good chance of catching up quickly if it has the will, whereas in the many areas where Solaris is miles ahead, the Linux community will be hard pressed to narrow the gap." However, he goes on to describe many more difficulties with an install of Solaris than I seem to remember having with just about any recent Linux install.
Unix has been around since Linus Torvalds was in short pants.
Yeah, and Solaris x86 has been around since 1992. Hasn't killed Linux yet.
Sure you can, you just can't do it through strangulation like SCO is trying.
Sun could kill Linux with starvation. If Sun could promote Solaris in a way that Geeks would start a mass sendoff from Linux to Solaris, then Linux would simply run out of developers, and thus, die.
Only, that will never happen. Where Sun is the only company behind Solaris, Linux has hundreds of companies supporting it; Redhat, IBM, and Novell being the big contributors.
If Sun decided to open Solaris about 5 or 6 years ago they would have had a chance. Now they've virtually assured that Solaris will die from the same starvation as above (Sun won't pay anyone to work on their platform if they can get people out of the company to do it for free, now would they?).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
- Solaris 10 and Open Solaris (which you build and install on Solaris Express) are both very nice, Linux-like operating systems.
Linux is no longer "Unix-like", people. It's Unix that is "Linux-like".