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OpenSolaris vs. Linux, For Linux Users

Posted by timothy on from the give-it-a-whirl dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With Sun busy being swallowed up by Oracle, should Linux geeks pay any interest to OpenSolaris? TuxRadar put together a guide to OpenSolaris's most interesting features from a Linux user's perspective, covering how to get started with ZFS and virtualisation alongside more consumer-friendly topics such as hardware and Flash support."

1 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. No, Thank you! by omb · · Score: 0, Troll

    As I have already commented here SUN was fixated in repeating all DEC's strategic mistakes, so while Open Solaris might have been interesting in 1995, it is now just a footnote to OS history, and much of what is said about it is just false. To try to hype it up now is the clasic case of trying to 'polish a turd'. There are two major threads here, and the outlook is complicated by tools, eg GCC, and semi-conductor development.

    (1) SUN repeated DEC's mistake of giving the company to Marketing when revenue began its long fall. This never works and has been responsible for the demise of so.o.o much US industry eg GM. Marketing, since it works with Focus Groups, suveys ... and picks a biased group of responders, current customers, biggest first, _always_ gets the wrong answers, the company ceases to innovate and be the market leader and better engineered and more economic competitors start to eat their lunch, and further depress profitability eg Linux/86_64.

    (2) A consequence of (1) is the best leave. When second rank management & engineers gain control, often driving out the best eg Rob Gingell, the former Solaris Development manager, they begin to behave like politicians and develop 'talking points' which are exactly like emperors cloths. In spite of the fanbois that is exactly what Dprobes, ZFS and Java are. They are a money sewer, and if that were not bad enough, a combination of political correctness and stupidity quickly stifles any real innovation or rational business analysis while the sacred ideas continue unquestioned.

    SUN's undoing is entirely its own fault, and no-one should waste any more time on Solaris, open or otherwise. Both Solaris and Java were born and grew up in the Cathederal and their arrogant mid-wives (Dr. James Gosling) do not want their children in the grubby Bazar making money.

    Solaris, overmanaged like MySql and OOO can never catch Linux, because of weight of GOOD developers and mindset.