Solaris vs. Linux: Ecosystem-based Approach and Framework for the Comparison in Large Enterprise Environments

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on Feb 19, 2007 2:28 PM EDT
softpanorama.org; By Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov
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It is important to understand that operating systems kernels are a side show of open source movement. Scripting languages and applications (especially scripting languages) are the key components of the movement.

So it's Apache, bind, postfix, Perl, PHP, Python, Postgress and MySQL that are flagships of the movement. Linux kernel is just a side show, a new "SuperBIOS" on which open applications run and from the technical standpoint it has all the attractiveness of the good old BIOS (which is another way to say that it's pretty boring). Moreover Linux is just one of many interesting open source kernels, which (for unrelated to its technical merits reasons) gets all PR ink. FreeBSD and other BSD kernels are equally important, less bloated and more technically interesting (FreeBSD pioneered jails -- a light weight virtual machine in 1999; OpenBSD pioneered integration of ssh and firewalls and defines the state of the art of secure X86-based Unix; NetBSD defines the standard in Unix portability). This article suggests that opening of Solaris as well as Sun efforts to put Solaris 10 on Opteron on equal footing with Solaris for UltraSparc further moved the pendulum from the Linux kernel on the technical side of the OSS arena.

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