28th Feb 2008 by Mark Turansky
Linux is killing Solaris
Filed under Engineering This just in from the “duh, obvious” department… Linux is killing Solaris.
Search Google for “htop on Solaris.” You’ll probably find the very page you’re reading right now. There were plenty of hits for solaris, top, and htop, but none for solaris and htop together. (Editor’s note: not 5 minutes after publishing this article, Google has this very page as the first hit for ‘htop on solaris.’ See comments.)
We got used to htop’s color-coded bars in a console for our messaging system, and then we deployed to a datacenter on Sun hardware without htop. prstat just isn’t quite the same.
What’s htop? htop is a little command-line tool for Linux that’s similar to top but shows CPU and Memory usage visually in simple text format. It’s not flashy or whiz-bang. It’s a simple yet effective way of seeing what’s going on inside your OS at a quick glance.
So, what does this have to do with killing Solaris? We couldn’t find even a single person interested in running htop on Solaris (besides us). Other programs (like pound) have either been ported to Solaris or at least talked about somewhere else on the internet. We couldn’t even find a discussion about htop on Solaris. There’s just no interest.
I admit this is a specious argument at best, the thinnest of strawmen. But more subtly, an entire generation of Linux geeks are getting used to GNU tools that are similar but not quite like their non-GNU Unix counterparts. For example, I’m frustrated that I can’t simply type “tail -n 200 <file>” on Solaris. The -n argument is not the same. Add up enough of these little differences and I find myself wanting to work in a Linux environment where I’m more familiar. Linux captured the low-end of the market, revitalizing the old PCs people had lying around the house. The next generation is cutting their teeth on GNU/Linux, not Solaris. Sorry, BSD.
But like I said, this is from the “duh, obvious” department. It’s not particularly insightful. I’m merely a consumer reflecting on my choice of server OS. But if I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that we’re not as unique as we think we are. There are probably other people thinking/feeling/experiencing the same thing you are. You might be part of a larger trend.
Happily, we’re only temporarily deploying to Solaris. Our company is in the middle of a move to a larger data center with a lot more capacity. We’ll have shiny, new blade servers to deploy to. They’ll be running Linux, naturally.
What's next?
Leave a comment
Digg it
Save This Page
Post Script: Not 5 minutes after publishing this article, Google returns this page as the first search result for the query “htop on Solaris,” which includes the text of my prediction that you’ll see this very page.
+1 - agree with your premise wholeheartedly!
I too find myself irritated at a Solaris command line when I realize that half the things I normally do don’t work the same way - or that tools I normally use are missing.
(And, BTW, I’ve a die-hard htop user too for several years now. Great little tool!)
Found myself sitting in front of a SCO box a few months back and thought I was back in the stone age. Nothing I knew how to do worked!
A Solaris sales dude told me that an upcoming version will have Gnu or Gnu-like tools out of the box. In the meantime, you can compile most of them for Solaris. In the not too distant future, Sun may advertise Solaris as a “better Linux than Linux”.
Seriously, how hard is it to build htop on solaris?
If it bothers you so much, port it, I don’t think it take more than an hour or two.
Nexenta works nicely, unfortunately sun has no interest in it.
Gosh, that sounds sooo familiar! At work, we have quite a large number of solaris boxen, both Solaris 8 and 10, and I find myself constantly running into a wall when trying to accomplish the mundanest of tasks but forget that I’m not in my beloved Linux environment.
Solaris feels evil: Behaving and looking similar enough to suggest being what you know and are used to, but then throwing your “du -h” or “ps axvf” right back into your face in the worst of moments
I admit this is a specious argument at best, the thinnest of strawmen.
At least you admit you’re full of shit.
What about Nexenta, it’s Solaris with the GNU userland. Thats the thing that you mistakingly refer to Linux. Nexenta is free etc. Seems like the best of both worlds to me.
[…] recent post “Linux is killing Solaris” is surpisingly controversial, if you could infer that by reading the comments on Reddit or […]
BSD how I do love thou, I think. I’ve been trying to use BSD for a while but it’s pitches a bitch on *every single machine I’ve tried to use it on*. On the other hand almost EVERY of the 10+ linux distos I’ve tried (full installs/live cds) have worked on those same systems.
BSD = epic fail.
Which is a shame because I’m a security nut so I’ve been dying to give it a whirl.
Wait wait, I know someone out there is about to feverishly bang on their keyboard in an attempt to correct me, so let me do this again.
BSD has failed to become workable on every machine I’ve tried it on.
Conversely I’ve successfully setup Linux on those exact same machines.
This isn’t simply because I don’t know how to vi the shit out of xorg.conf (er whatever).
To get more software onto Solaris, I use pkgsrc http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/. It’s the automated build system for netbsd, but it also works natively on Solaris. The install takes an hour or two then you conveniently get most of netbsds package collection for solaris.
pkgsrc has most of the gnu stuff now, so once I get it installed, it feels like home.
and yeah, I wish Sun would pick up Nexenta. Sun seem to have a talent for overlooking the best projects like that
Oh noes, hasn’t been ported, that makes it official, is dying!!
I’ve found PC-BSD and Desktop BSD to be extraordinarily easy to run with a few minor problems ( adding the emu10kx drivers and buying the right printer solves these ) . Solaris on the other hand is a dinosaur . I’ve tried for years to install it and ran into every sort of problem from crappy installers , no DHCP support , to hardware detected by Linux and FreeBSD for years not being detected . They are talking about heading in the right direction , the proof is in the putting .
SUN will find some partner in the Linux business world (probably Ubuntu than Novell or Red Hat) and squeeze in GNU and probably GNOME (KDE guys are just too hard to control) into Solaris.
So you will get Subuntu or Solarubuntu (or something like that).
The marketing machine of these 2 will kick in and markets what Paul Prescod had said earlier, “better Linux than Linux”.
Hopefully than Linux will be killed off or sidelined as a geek toy, just like Ubuntu squeeze Debian into a little corner. ( Poor Debian, sold out by your downstream and sold out by your “x-leader:
It’s pathetic what people will do for getting more influence and more money, sad but true !
It seems nobody here has ever heard about Project Indiana….
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/indiana/
So, let me understand this, GNU/Linux is killing Solaris, becase you’re more familiar with GNU/Linux? That’s some great logic. By your reasoning, BSD is killing GNU/Linux because everytime I touch a Linux machine, I wish I had my BSD userland tools.
@Jimmie,
That’s right, and I suspect there are a LOT more people like me who have learned Linux because it was readily available to them at home or quick/cheap development environments.
I’ve got an old (P3 450Mhz) machine under the desk I’m sitting at right now. It runs my cvs server and various small utilities I use at home. It’s running CentOS, not Solaris. Why? Because there was no free Solaris for x86 when I set the server up.
Multiply this by millions of people who could suddenly run *nix at home and you’ve got the next generation of architects and developers familiar with Linux, who want to run Linux, and who eventually get to make influential decisions in professional environments.
So, yeah, I think Linux is killing Solaris because *I* am more familiar with it, and I’m not alone.
[…] Linux is killing Solaris […]
Thanks, I never heard of ‘htop’ before and just installed it vis CL, I am impressed.
BTW, I have heard of Project Indiana, DL’d the ISO and tried it out in vmware, I was unimpressed. Looked just like any other ‘nix desktop I have seen. I promptly deleted it.. it looked just like a spitting image of some of the other popular distros out there.
D.
I’ve tried Project Indiana also . That was a joke right ? Neither my Dlink , Linksys nor onboard gigabit ethernet were detected . Sound card and onboard sound not detected . I’m far from alone in my experience . It was a waste of bandwidth and time .
Hey DOUGman, why on earth are you paying for vmware when VirtualBox is free?
Half of the comments here are a joke. Sorry, but that’s the truth.
You guys are talking about Sun “squeezing GNOME into Solaris” when it’s been included with the OS for four and a half years. GNU userland tools have been included for a similar length of time, located in /usr/swf. If you need more than the included set of tools and applications, you can get apt-get style package management in the ten minutes it takes to download, install, and configure pkg-get.
It’s not rocket science, people.
Besides, Linux will never have a ZFS kernel module. That, my friends, is the very definition of epic failure.
@DOUGman: “Looked just like any other ‘nix desktop I have seen” - what a nightmare for you! I tend not to choose my OSen depending on the hue of the splash screen and the timbre of the login jingle.
I started off on Linux because it was free and ran politely on my existing desktop computer. Once I started running production systems I moved to Solaris for its reliability, stability and for features such as zfs and zones. Yes it requires some learning and getting used to - isn’t that the case with most worthwhile things?
C
An OS that has trouble detecting lan cards and sound cards every other OS on the planet has dealt with for years requires learning - no shit . No obvious way to set up DHCP internet like every other OS and it’s supposed to be remotely useful on a PC that connects via DHCP ? As far as the eye candy comments go , I’m sure the posters merely pointed out the fact that Solaris couldn’t even bother to make a professional and distinctive user interface , again something every other OS worth a grain of salt has done . Solaris is pretty much like the large butcher knife I have lying in the Kitchen - it’s very secure and absolutely useless for any home computing needs .
“No obvious way to set up DHCP internet”
Well, yeah, no obvious way other than telling the installer that you’re using DHCP. Also, DHCP is not a kind of “internet”.
“Solaris couldn’t even bother to make a professional and distinctive user interface,”
Sun. You mean Sun. And what makes a user interface “professional and distinctive”? I don’t bother with GUIs on my servers, but the standard GUI in Solaris is GNOME, and I’m pretty sure that GNOME isn’t unprofessional. I don’t see why “distinctive” would matter at all for a GUI.
“again something every other OS worth a grain of salt has done”
Like MS Windows? Really, do you think that having pretty buttons to click on and windows that swoop around the screen matters one bit? If you do, you’re not qualified to join this discussion.
A lot of the gripes here do sound awfully like Windows users talking about Linux - if you really want shiny buttons and iPod connectivity then use Windows, or one of the glitzier Linuxes; but people who have to maintain highly available workhorse servers over years will find Solaris has been engineered for this purpose. And they will be taking home a chunkier paycheck at the end of the day.
C
I’m a little remiss to jump into the fray here, but as someone who’s been a sysadmin for Linux, BSD, and Solaris (and other Unices) for more than a dozen years, here’s my take
1) Solaris x86 is crap. It’s like Solaris, but then you realize it sucks and every time something seem to be going well, you find out you’ve discovered yet another edge case and whatever you were working on comes to a standstill. I don’t know why, that’s just the way it is.
2) Solaris (real solaris), is an amazing OS. Incredible tools (Dtrace, ZFS, etc.), real scalability (beyond 2, 4, or 8 procs), stability, etc. Problem is, no one but dinosaurs run it anymore. You need to spend money and you get tools that are outstanding. For everyone of you Linux lovers whining about Solaris, can you put /boot on a mirror yet with Linux or is it still a bunch or crappy hacks (like everything else in Linux)? Been in Solaris for more than 10 years. Once in a while Linux catches up to what Solaris has been able to do. Too bad no one runs Solaris anymore but banks and people who would be dumb enough to run AIX.
3) LInux, a bunch of crappy hacks. I run Linux everyday. My servers, my desktop at home. Use it all the time. Everytime you need to get something done it’s a frustrating mess. The documentation is crap, the solutions on the Internet are all from 13 year olds who’ve written yet another bash script as the way to put the correct nameservers in resolv.conf when you really just have an error in your dhcpd.conf file. Of course, this is how I make my living, so it proves Mark’s point. Linux is winning. I’ve even tried the king of the Linux desktop, Ubuntu. I have a wireless ethernet card and the only network I ever want to connect to is my home one. Why doesn’t it work unless I’m on a “roaming” profile? I’m not roaming, this is a desktop! I messed with wpa_supplicant, etc. never got it working. Switched back to roaming. Works fine. Must be because I don’t know anything about Unix. Right.
4) BSDs are for people who love Unix. If you don’t love BSD, you don’t love Unix. You love Linux. Linux is not Unix. When you move a shell script from a BSD or Solaris to Linux and it works fine, then you move a script from Linux to BSD or Solaris and it bails because a bunch of people decided they absolutely had to write their init.d scripts in freaking Bash (and I love bash), then you know you are running Linux and not Unix. BSD is every bit as good as Linux, it’s just not a pervasive, so it doesn’t get the attention, and therefore tend to require more fiddling. It’s not for your grandma.
5) As someone pointed out, if you are justifying what is good/bad based on paint, then you are not qualified to join this discussion. Yes, all those window managers, and X, and buttons and crap are just paint. You can compile them on any OS. They are just paint. They have nothing to do with how good an OS is.
6) If how many users use something was a definitive sign of technical merit than Windows is the best damn OS there is.
Cheers.
Better? HOW!?
At 14 I was cutting my teeth on GNU/Linux, not Solaris, there were just too many barriers. In CS I learned to value the BSD and Solaris machines because they never crashed and were never “closed for updates” (unlike BeOS,RedHat,WindowsNT). I even had BSD at home for a while, but found that I simply had to know more in order to do everyday things, and my poor little brain was maxed out with school. Finally in the workforce, I got my first exposure to managing a Solaris box, and found it was just like BSD–only more so. More work, more stable, more typing, more design, more difficult to learn, more instead of less =).
And that my friends was when I think I finally got it. Mac OS, Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, they all serve different requirements. For example Solaris is (was?) built to run a long time on big expensive hardware with a very high degree of confidence. So what if the sys guys have to type more, so what if they have to know more, so what if they have to be highly trained experts in their area, those are all good things for the systems Sun is (was?) targeting. GNU is Not Unix, and is (primarily) for small systems with different cost/benefit wrt training costs, design time, and meticulous administration.
Unix/Solaris/BSD provide some awesome solutions, unfortunately, most of then are to problems I don’t have on my little systems, and the problems I do have, they don’t solve! So before you reply X is/isn’t better then Y, try to understand (oh no!) what is meant by “better”.
(I found this blog while looking for a technical reason why Solaris grep has no -q, since I’m trying to give this OpenSolaris for the desktop (SEDE) a chance to grow on me.)
I find this amusing for a few reasons:
1) Project Indiana (Hello, headed by the Ian in Debian), is tasked with addressing exactly these issues. It will shortly be the Solaris for the Linux cry-babies. Yes, they’re only up to prototype 2, so it sucks. While being developed by some very competent engineers they’re not psychic, so if you feel passionately about a particular feature, let them know.
2) You damn kids have no idea how good you have it. I cut my teeth during the Unix Wars. Google “UNIX Rosetta Stone” and be thankful, very thankful. At one time I had the damn thing laminated to carry around to prevent CLI schizophrenia.
3) x86, Microsoft, Linux, and C have become a monoculture. Recognize that this is not healthy and learn something new. If you really want to stretch you mental muscle make one of ‘em Fourth.
4) Linux is a hacked together Science Project with some for-pay support available. Solaris is ENGINEERED. You can only truly appreciate the difference that makes at 3am when it’s all gone pear shaped and your and several hundred other people’s jobs are on the line. Engineer’s suck at user interface design, true. Rumor has it that Sun has actually been hiring graphic designers and the like. The mantra is alleged to be that GUI’s must not only look good and be consistent, but also “add value” to make them worth using. As someone who uses a GUI when it makes my life easier and abandons it the instant it gets in the way, I heartily approve.
5) Solaris has been engineered (there’s that word again) over the years to run on “Big Iron” Linux has not and is trying to play catch-me-up. Trouble is, thanks to those nice people over in Hardware Land “Big Iron” now fits in a desktop, and shortly laptop with prices to match. This sisn’t make the fundamental scaling issues go away. For a proof point I offer one word: Scheduler.
6) ZFS and Dtrace are like Sex was (is?) when you’re in High School: Those who’ve tried it know why it’s good and some of the risks. The Virgins don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
7) If you insist on sticking with your toy OS, me and me compadres will run your application, your desktop or whatever in a container, compatibility mode, or worst case: VM when the time comes to put things into production and when real money is on the line. Just like the Windows Weenies.
9) For the record I use several OS’ on a daily basis, the right tool for the right job.
10) DHCP, WiFI, yada, yada, check out NWAM.
11) Solaris has not so much risen from the grave as jet-packed out of it, cued up “The Monster Mash” and the world is invited to the most outrageous Halloween Bash. This is insanely annoying for the gathered vultures who are on their 3rd or 4th prediction of it’s death.
12) I like htop. Unfortunately it’s insanely heavy on system resources for what it does (again this is a production thing, you wouldn’t understand). I’m sure a DTrace guru could whip up an equivalent in short order, suggest it.
13) SunRays today do Windows/RDP6, Linux, 3d, and Virtual machines and “just work”. Schwing!
14) Solaris is a dinosaur much like that 20 foot crocodile eyeing you and wondering if you’re worth the effort to hunt down for dinner is a dinosaur. Except imagine if that crocodile was a raptor…
15) Much have you to learn young Padawan!
(Please no “sad devotion to that ancient religion” counter quotes. Been There, Done That, Designed the T-shirt.)
And so Solaris brought out their new version of Solaris 10.
Doesn’t that look like a gnomish desktop with a lot more java.
Now why isn’t there are PGI for solaris and what about Matlab…
I have been a Solaris admin for more than 12 years. I have also use Linux. What is killing Solaris is not Linux itself… It’s the lack of drivers and the lack of applications compiled and running under Solaris Intel. Sun might be very old however all commercial application was compiled for sparc… a too old arch with slow CPU. now Sun sparc achitecture is almost dead. Sun went to AMD or Intel… so all CAD vendor (for example) did not waited for Solaris 10 to be ready for Intel… They needed better CPU than SPARC so the decided that it needed to be recompiled somwhere, so Intel was choosen and the only largely available OS with suffisent driver was Linux and especially Red Hat.
You normally stick with an OS because your apps run on it. We aren’t stuck with microsoft because it great… it’s only because of lots of apps commercial or not can be found for windows.
Well it’s the same with Solaris for very long we where stuck with old version of it cause it was compiled for it… vendors compiled for linux RHEL3, so we can’t even update to the latest Linux because apps won’t work. OS war is actually driver by the needs for performance and software availability. This what is killing solaris.
also HTOP cannot be compiled on Solaris because the /proc is not Linux-compatible /proc filesystem…. this is a shame. I like the tool on linux, I would like it on Solaris too.
What’s the problem with Gnome and Solaris… it’s geat, it look great and again I don’t choose a OS for it’s desktop but for it’s capacity to run what I want it to.
PS: apps like Matlab does run on all Solaris and Linux.
Cheers !
Umm yeah, are these comments even from 2008? Go download OpenSolaris and enjoy. Solaris x86 can pretty much do anything Ubuntu or the rest can do. You can stop gnashing your teeth, and go learn and enjoy my choice for the “baked for 20 years to a golden perfection” unix.
MORE OS’es FOSTERS INNOVATION, FEATURE CATCHUP, CROSS-PORTING AND MASS BORROWING. Thank you Linux, for making a better Solaris. I hope to return the favor someday, if you’re not dreaming of ‘murdering’ the competition.
Oh and I found your page because I was looking for HTOP for Solaris. Hardy Har har.
update: I spoke with the developer of htop on sourceforge and attempted to compile it for Solaris 11. htop relies upon the specific implementation of /proc in linux; which of course /proc exists but differs in Solaris. Developer said “patches welcome” if you want to port it.
I might as well write my own version! I have some ideas. That’s the unix way…
- Main reasons why Solaris is currently not for me
(Solaris)
* When an OS that claims to be reliable and stable causes all on-screen rendering to grind to a halt when copying files from a CD I know it’s a crap OS - even after playing with scheduling to try and make it work the way I intend
* When 20 or so ports are open by default on a DESKTOP install, it’s not secure
* Virtual terminals where art thou!?
(OpenSolaris)
* When a distribution of an OS has a graphical LiveCD installer, I know it’s not what I want
* Did I order Ubuntu? No I didn’t, why is this system trying to become something I hate?
* When the distribution pretty much forces GNOME down my throat it’s not something I want
* Who needs ZFS on a desktop? I sure don’t, remember the LiveCD desktop thing?
This was based on my evaluation of both Solaris and OpenSolaris.
- What I enjoy most about my GNU/Linux experience
* I get a distribution (ArchLinux) that supports me and lets me do things my way as opposed to the way of the vendor
* I get a system I can customise 100% from the ground up, which uses the latest stable versions of software provided by the upstream project developers
* I get the choice of compiling from source (with custom configure options, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, patches) or using up-to-date binaries
* If I want to use an older version of software, I can and no fuss is made by the package manager
* I get a system which will let me run with or without multilib, as standard
* If I don’t like a “feature”, I remove it and the system will continue to run as I intend
* If I choose to add a “feature”, I add it and the system will support it until I say otherwise
Most importantly:
* Rolling release - no more upgrades. I set the system up the way I want and it runs that way long into the future =]
- In summary
I’m no Windows-loving Ubuntu newbie, I do learn other systems provided they fit in with what I want, until Solaris does what GNU/Linux currently does for me and many others it will slowly die off. GNU/Linux is adaptive and flexible and has proven more general-purpose than the competition, until Solaris can do the same it will never gain market share.
[…] a line from Mark Turansky’s blog in a piece Linux is killing Solaris The point being that minor differences and lack of what in the Linux world might be considered mid […]
Slowlaris is old and crappy piece of software. It’s almost dead and Open Solaris is even worse. Code gets only little audience when comparing to Linux, it’s dog slow and it suffers from horrible latency. If someone want to make your desktop computer slow just install open solaris. You can hung entire system for ten or more seconds just by clicking on Firefox icon. You’ve been warned! Many people are excited about ZFS. Yeah, it’s good, but not for desktops (makes slowlaris even slower…) and for other environments there’s better file system comming - Linux’ BTRFS.
i really cant believe what people are saying here, im using open solaris 2008.11 and i really like it.
i have used ubuntu (7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10) by upgrading for a year or so on my desktop - and i love ubuntu really.. we have nearly 20 servers, most of them are ubuntu, and some are debian, and im happy with them. my tv is connected to an other ubuntu installed machine, i use it for torrents and playing music etc…
i thought i would never to switch to another os for life time, but that was before i installed open solaris to my laptop, im using it for 2 weeks or so, and i use my laptop for 12-14 hours a day. im a developer and open solaris gives me what i really want.
zfs is great, actually it blowed my mind, who the hell doesnt want to take a snapshot of a partition under a second. its performance is great, yes i know because im using netbeans with 10 or more projects opened everyday. opening netbeans is under 30 seconds, it was minutes under ubuntu - hell yes i dont like closing my projects.
zones are great too, something between a virtual machine and a jail. i can reboot a zone in 2 seconds, which is isolated from my operating system. im using apache/php5/mysql for some projects, and using nginx/mongrel/memcached/mysql for others. i create different zones for each project. so never get bloated with complicated setups, and i can clone them in about 5-10 seconds. i can hardly believe any developer doesnt want that, and yes i can take snapshots of them in seconds.
and yes there is dtrace, and it really rocks, its like a revolution to me.
if thats not enough, there is the service management facility, have you ever tried using monit on linux to restart your services when they crash - mongrel perhaps. with smf its just out of the box, you dont have to do anything to make it work, and you can even say, dont start mongrel unless nfs started, just wait for it.
and for those folks that complains about dhcp stuff. when i booted my laptop for the first time with live cd, open solaris connected me to internet without any configurations - yea it asked me the password of my router. - and yes ubuntu does this too. btw, i use two monitors, and configured them in 10 seconds or so.
and about the installer, i actually couldnt use a live cd, installed virtual box, used live cd image to boot open solaris, then made an bootable usb installer and installed it.
so my question is have you really tried using it or just talking ? its like the best operating system i have ever used - and i used many including irix and nt40 to windows vista.
btw, im writing these lines from an asus laptop with 2gb ram running open solaris with firefox - which uses a year old profile copied from linux, and with firebug, firefox is opening in 3 or 4 seconds without hangup.
/usr/xpg4/bin/tail -n 200 /var/log/syslog
*facepalm*
>>Add up enough of these little differences and I find myself wanting to work in a Linux environment where I’m more familiar.
>>The next generation is cutting their teeth on GNU/Linux, not Solaris. Sorry, BSD.
>>But like I said, this is from the “duh, obvious” department. It’s not particularly insightful. I’m merely a consumer reflecting on my choice of server OS. But if I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that we’re not as unique as we think we are. There are probably other people thinking/feeling/experiencing the same thing you are. You might be part of a larger trend.
s/Linux/Windows/ then
s/Solaris/Linux/ or s/BSD/Linux/
Do you like it when a Windows admin gives the same shallow assessment of Linux that you have of Solaris here?
Won’t find any sympathy for Linux failing on the desktop here.
The problem with Solaris.. and Linux.. is that they are not Linux, and Windows respectively.
It’s the lack of open minded people. This is even worse though, because I can understand why a Windows user wouldn’t want to invest their time into learning a complex UNIX knockoff like Linux, but when Linux users do this and shrug at Solaris, BSDs, or even OS X? Turn in your geek card and go stand in the corner. You’re an IT professional too… that’s just sad.
I am at this moment a Solaris Senior Systems Engineer.. That’s fancy name for a grey beard admin.
I have used Unix in it’s many forms since 1982, from SYSVR3 through to openSolaris. I have admin’d for SYSVR3, SYSVR4, Ultrix, Digital UNIX, Tru64, SCO, Unixware, Linux (from SLS to openSuse), SunOS 4 to Solaris 11, BSD3 to OpenBSD and touched slightly on AIX, HPUX and Xenix.
Each has their place in the IT world, Each has done the job required of it. It’s actually rather silly dumping on any OS, when it boils down to it, even windows has done a reasonable job for what it is.
Solaris is not being killed by Linux or anything else. In fact it is doing very well at holding its own, the inception of OpenSolaris has helped the hardware support issues immensely, as has the Javadesktop (gnome) inclusion. But in reality its strengths lie in the big back end arena. The addition of the Niagara architecture has bought the hardware level virtualization to Solaris (LDOMs). and now that Oracle have bought SUN out, it promises a great future for large scale database back end integration.
I wouldn’t start digging Solaris’ grave just yet.
I to0 would love to see htop on Solaris, it will come eventually and I can wait.