[UFO Chicago] Seven ways Solaris can beat Linux

[Brian Sobolak]

Richard Lynch wrote:
> On Sat, January 27, 2007 8:58 pm, Brian Sobolak wrote:
>> I cribbed this from a recent email newsletter I got and thought it was
>> interesting.
>>
>> --
>> At a recent Sun Microsystems press event, Sun execs talked up plans to
>> market the company's Solaris Unix OS to startups and small-to-midsize
>> businesses. "Open source is what [customers] want to go after," said
>> Peder Ulander, Sun's vice president of software marketing. "It's not
>> so
>> much Linux. Linux just happens to embody open source."
>> -->
>>
>> That's an interesting question:  is your committment to open-source or
>> is it to Linux?  Would you consider using Solaris in place of Linux if
>> it were GPL?
>>
>> Is there something about Linux beyond the GPL that makes it
>> attractive?
> 
> In the past when I've had to use Solaris, I've been frustrated by a
> lot of minor things, such as:
>   arrow keys in vi never work right
>   window/text width is limited
> 
> There are work-arounds, if you can convince the SysAdmin (not me) to
> install them, though I never got the arrow keys to work...
> 
> More importantly, however, is that the sheer number of Linux
> developers currently makes Linux much more attractive simply for the
> wealth of software available in current stable usable out of the box
> with simple install/usage instructions online.

I hear you on this. One of the biggest problems was always that when you 
went to use one of the commercial distros, it never had bash which for 
better or for worse was what so many of us knew.  Or emacs.  Or a 
half-decent copy of vi.  etc.

But I wonder if they couldn't bridge a lot of this by making Solaris 
another build target for RPM.  Or heck, do what FreeBSD did and write a 
Linux emulation layer so 95% or Linux software "just worked" on FreeBSD.

I'd definitely be willing to try it.  My barrier of entry would to be to 
make it look pretty like Ubuntu, which is admittedly not Sun's forte, 
but might be a nice opportunity for a niche company.  (Solaris + GNOME 
== profit?)

brian