IT Walks Out on Sun, chooses Linux

IT Walks Out on Sun, chooses Linux

I just had the "joy" of taking over and implementing Apache, MySQL, PHP4 and an existing PHP3 web application on a Sun box over at one of the big-named hosting providers (as a favor for a business friend). What a sad experience. (It says something about the aged, forsaken toolset in Solaris that Sun requires GNU tar to install Java on Solaris...) I can't believe how difficult it was to do this less-than-one-hour-task on any brand of Linux I've ever dealt with (or FreeBSD/Darwin for that matter) versus the weekend of tribulation with Solaris 8. I've never had to dissect Makefiles like I had to on Solaris 8 just to get basic web infrastructure running. Maybe it's scalable, but it ain't pretty. Besides, I'm struck at how many companies once they've MATURED their infrastructure on Sun migrate to Linux for long-term operation...

The industry is voting with its feet and ignoring such pompous self-serving dribble that those like Schwartz (and SCO ... very interesting) spew to the press.

(Yeah, I'm not a Solaris admin, but come on...this is standard stuff I'm installing. Then there was the surprise about vi's lack of large file handling when I edited a very large MySQL data dump to add a simple "create database" statement at the beginning. I had no idea that vi would crap out on a large file...until I experienced it and read the man pages relevant. Yeah, so I restored the truncated file and did it a different way -- I wanted to preserve the create db in the beginning of the file for later restoration and had never hit this problem with Vim on Linux or Windows. And where to Sun admins gather to share their experiences? On some UUCP-delivered list? Searching for info was frustrating versus finding how-tos and tips on obscure Linux issues...)