If you can't beat Microsoft, join them [LWN.net]

If you can't beat Microsoft, join them

Posted Sep 26, 2008 14:50 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104)
In reply to: If you can't beat Microsoft, join them by robilad
Parent article: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed? (New York Times)

Actually, journalists tend to cite the most provocative parts and exaggerate things a bit. I reserve my opinion until Linux Foundation has a chance to explain its position directly.

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If you can't beat Microsoft, join them

Posted Sep 26, 2008 16:44 UTC (Fri) by mheily (guest, #27123) [Link]

Zemlin's premature obituary for Solaris reminds me of the Monty Python sketch "Bring out your dead" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs

I'm sure Zemlin can't wait to throw Solaris on the cart and have a duopoly of Linux and Windows. This guy is a marketing troll that just happens to be the head of a non-profit Linux advocacy group. Don't feed the trolls, especially if they claim to be your friends.

Solaris as a server operating system has some good features that Linux doesn't have yet. Linux has many other features that are better than Solaris. The whole idea of SuS, POSIX, FreeDesktop.org, et al, is that you can have multiple implementations of a Unix-like operating system that can interoperate. Innovations in one operating system can be standardized and adopted by other systems, so that all can benefit from the common pool of ideas. We are already seeing the best parts of OpenSolaris integrated into other systems; e.g. FreeBSD and MacOS have ported ZFS and DTrace. Equivalent Linux features (e.g. SystemTap, btrfs, cgroups) are not as good as what Sun already created and is giving away for free.

"Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it -- badly".