"Paul Floyd" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:slrng1pfnq.lr.root@tryfan.orange.fr...
> On Fri, 2 May 2008 22:25:30 -0700 (PDT), James Tabak <jamej12@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On May 2, 3:44 pm, "santiago...@yahoo.com" <santiago...@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Shares are down 20% this morning. I see all around migration from
>>> Solaris to Linux, but have yet to see the reverse. Usage of Solaris
>>> x86 seems to be confined largely to enthusiasts, much as OS/2 and
>>> BeOS. Most young computer savvy people I know love Linux and despise
>>> Sun.
>>>
>>> Every indication is that Solaris is moribund :-(
>>
>> - I seriously think Solaris 10 is the best general purpose OS out
>> there. Microsoft stumbles more and more and offers weaker
>> technology. I haven't run Linux for several years. I'm simply not
>> impressed by Linux, especially as it compares Solaris w/ ZFS. Solaris
>> also has the best documentation. Add to these considerations -
>> Hypervisor and Solaris really should be growing at a pretty steady
>> rate. I don't see a better alternative out there.
>
> I agree with your sentiments concerning the technical merits of Solaris.
> But there is still one problem, and it's a biggy. In a word - mindshare.
> I've been using Solaris at home on my PC for the best part of the last
> 10 years. At work, we mainly use Linux and Solaris SPARC. Most of our
> engineers only ever experienced Solaris 8. So the impression that most
> of them have is that Solaris is antiquated, and the hardware that it
> runs on [workstations] somehow manages to be dog slow AND 2 or 3 times
> more expensive than a vanilla Dell Linux workstation. Most of them don't
> even know that Solaris exists on x86/64. We don't exactly have customers
> beating our doors down demanding Solaris x86/64 versions of our software
> either.

Perhaps if you produced a version of your software for Solaris x86 they
might come... I say this as I hear you. Solaris, while being a great OS
does not seem to be making it into x86 acceptance. Me, I have used Solaris
x86 professionally and at home since Solaris 7. And where the applications
are available, I use x86.

SPARC is dying. First off, a modern day dual/quad x86 has the same or more
compute power than many a SPARC, and SPARC costs are not liable to come
down.

Which drives most people to Linux. Which of course I run also.