Notice: No flames please ! I'm not interested in starting any debate about your favorite OS or why you like Debian distribution or any other Linux based distro.
I would like to share my ideas about Linux based distributions and why I keep using Solaris. More and more folks are talking about Linux showing its merits. There is no such operating system like Linux, but instead is just a kernel developed by a group of people which are publishing their work under: www.kernel.org. Some of these folks are working for different organizations and companies: OSDL, IBM, RedHat, Novell etc. A kernel cannot be very useful without the entire collection of tools and utilities around it: the distribution, or simple the distro. Such distros are: Fedora, SLES, Gentoo, Debian etc. Behind these distributions are individuals or even commercial companies hiring people doing the work. Example being here: RedHat, Novell. Some of these distros have guys working in QA by testing their bits in some other cases nobody does that. So a very diverse and big community around Linux.
I do believe Linux based systems can easily coexist with Solaris and other systems: OpenBSD, Windows, NetBSD, FreeBSD etc. However I hear more and more talking and saying: just replace this with Linux. It would just make your life so easy and solve all your problems... etc. Hm, why everyone should convert from OpenBSD or Solaris to Linux based systems !? Sometimes some IT magazines are presenting similar message out there: convert or die ! Why not sharing and coexist ? Torvalds believes Solaris users should die: "A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die,"Well I hope they will do just fine. I never understood his aggressive politic against Solaris... Is Torvalds afraid ?
However I have to say my point of view on this matter, about the Linux based systems. I had some experience with such systems since 1997, in Romania, when I was finishing my degree at www.ugal.ro. I had access to Linux at that time and tried the system at home. It was kind of an experiment and it was running on my home PC. Soon I have invested my money in some CDs from Pacific HiTech Inc. distributing applications, the kernel, X11, kernel patches etc. Kind of fun! At the same time at school I had access to Solaris 2.5. After I left Romania, in 1998, to Finland my contact with Linux was kept by using SuSE and RedHat sometimes. At some point in time around 2000 I have totally gave up on Linux based systems. I have tried several times for curiosity Debian and Fedora too.
At the moment I do run OpenBSD, Solaris, and Windows XP. I do like Solaris and starting with Solaris 10 an entire new world has just opened: www.opensolaris.org ! Check it out ! Thanks to all Sun managers making this possible !
I do like Solaris more than Linux based systems and I consider Solaris much advanced and mature than any of distros. Some points before converting to Linux:
What distro ? Fedora, SLES, RedHat Entreprise Linux WS, or AS or maybe ES because Oracle recommends that or maybe Gentoo to stay cool or maybe Debian to get lot of packages or Ubuntu etc etc Blah!. A lot of options. Nice. But why RedHat had to make 3 or 4 versions of their based Linux distro don't know. Same thing for SUSE, currently Novell. The same thing what Microsoft does with Windows... I would like to have the choice of having one distro called RedHat Linux. As simple as it is. Is there any Solaris AS, ES, WS , A1, B2, Solaris Entreprise ... nope it is just Solaris ! Dude get a life !
I like what Eric Schrock mentioned in his blog about Solaris vs. Linux: Reliability, Serviceability, Observability and Resource management. Try to read the blog and think clear, don't fall on any of the sides
A stable ABI does it matter !? I do believe that having a stable ABI would help vendors like nVIDIA and others develop things which will stay stable. Someone will say but hey, everything should be open sourced and it is just a matter of a recompile ... Everything ? Still waiting to see Oracle database server source code... Well I bet there will be always something which will not be open sourced so get along with it. So coming back having a stable ABI: Linux kernel does not follow this principle instead it does suggest that this is bad. Interesting point. I would be glad to see from RedHat, IBM or any other distro vendor a white paper on this mater: why having a stable ABI is bad and what are they recommending about that !?
I try to stop now, the list could go on but I do think there is space for all OSes out there so nobody must die :)
1 comment:
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