The ponytail versus the penguin (Economist)

The ponytail versus the penguin (Economist)

"He hopes that firms will opt for Solaris, because it requires less care."

Well, that's a good one. I'm responsible for a few Solaris systems as well as some linux systems. I must say that I patch the linux systems more often, but that's mostly because it's so effortless.

Patching a Sun system is _very_ hard work; having worked out what patches you need to download & downloading them, it's generally not safe to apply the patches without dropping down to single-user mode, whereas I've never had problems updating a live linux system. The Solaris patch process takes typically 5-10 minutes per patch, as opposed to 5-10 seconds for linux. With typically scores of patches to apply, that's a lot of Solaris downtime - and my time too ...

I reckon Mr Schwartz's argument should be turned on its head; dump Solaris, compared with linux it's a real pig to keep patched, and an expensive waste of sysadmin resource as well.