Re: Solaris: The Most Advanced OS?

From: Tshepang Lekhonkhobe (tshepang_at_gmail.com)
Date: 11/07/05

  • Next message: Alexandru Cardaniuc: "emacs 21.4 and antialiasing" 
    Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 13:14:27 +0200
To: Debian User Group <debian-user@lists.debian.org>, Ubuntu Help and User Discussions <ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com>

    On 11/4/05, James Strandboge <jamie@strandboge.com> wrote:
    > On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 11:11 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
    >
    > > I used Solaris for many years for serious embedded development work,
    > > as well as an embedded operating system. I've used Linux for just
    > > about a year. All the GNU tools can be compiled for Solaris, and
    > > it has a few which Linux doesn't have. Many more vendors build
    > > versions of their software for Solaris than do so for Linux. I also
    > > found the Solaris kernel to be much more robust than Linux. I only
    > > *had* to reboot my Solaris machine (running on a Sparc) one time in
    > > 5 years. It was rebooted maybe one to two times per year for some
    > > sort of upgrade or new install, otherwise. I find that I have to
    > > reboot my Linux machine far more often, maybe every month or two,
    > > to clear up some strange state (though far less often than
    > > I have to reboot my Windows machines). I only saw Solaris crash
    > > two times in over five years.
    > >
    > Probably depends on what you are doing. I have servers running 2.4
    > kernels that only have to be rebooted for kernel upgrades. Otherwise
    > they are very solid. Not to mention, if you are comparing commodity
    > hardware to Sun's, then these issues you are having could very well be
    > hardware related (you didn't mention hardware, so I thought I'd toss
    > that out).

    Lovely defence... By the way I hear that loads of server admins tend
    to avoid the 2.6 kernels, implying that they regard the 2.4 series
    more stable. Can anyone confirm if it's actually so or if it's more of
    paranoia?

    > > That sort of weirdness never happened with Solaris. I've also been
    > > unable to umount the floppy, when I know there was no process using
    > > it, using Linux.
    > >
    > This is probably fam running in the background. This is a known issue
    > and many people just don't use fam as a result. gamin with an inotify
    > kernel is/will be much better.
    >
    > > Linux seems to be more of a hacker/fiddler's dream, while Solaris
    > > is more of a let's get the job done, it just runs sort of deal.
    >
    > Hmm... I use and rely on GNU/Linux in production for my day to day work
    > without incident, and am quite happy with it.

    That's among the first things I heard about Linux kernel anyways...
    stability. This means that McCarty provided an anti-climactic comment.

    > That said, I will say that I really do NOT like the 2.6 kernel
    > development model. With so much development happening on a 'stable'
    > kernel, you can't help but introduce new bugs (there were no less than
    > 12 'stable' patches to the 2.6.11 alone). Leaving it up to the
    > distributors is a disservice to them and users because backporting
    > security patches from the latest upstream to Debian's stable kernel is
    > hard since the 2.6 series is such a moving target. Of course, it is not
    > like this hasn't been discussed before....

    Where has this been discussed... I'd like to take a peek. Thanks for
    the reply...

  • Next message: Alexandru Cardaniuc: "emacs 21.4 and antialiasing"

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