[UFO Chicago] Solaris 10 vs. Linux: Get the Real TCO Facts (fwd)

[Neil R. Ormos]

Jay F Shachter wrote:

> As a followup to yesterday evening's
> conversation, here is an electronic mail (or, as
> some of you young people say, an "e-mail") which
> I received by sheer coincidence just a couple of
> hours before our UFO meeting:

>> Dear Jay Shachter,

>> [...] Get all the facts about the long-term
>> cost of ownership of Solaris 10 OS versus Red
>> Hat Enterprise in a free white paper by Crimson
>> Consulting Group.

>> Get the details when you download "The Solaris
>> 10 Advantage: Understanding the Real Cost of
>> Ownership of Red Hat Enterprise Linux".

>> Download the White Paper. [...]

Here's a "White Paper" download link that doesn't
ask for contact information:

  <http://www.sun.com/software/whitepapers/solaris10/solarisvs_linux.pdf>

On the other hand, the "White Paper" reads as
though it was written by Sun's marketing
organization. In addition, the White Paper is
directed to a comparison of the costs of using
Solaris and Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a large
corporate environment, and deals with technology
differences principally as they may impact cost.
The White Paper does not answer the question of
why would individual users want to run Solaris
instead of Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X.

What nobody's been able to explain, either at the
meeting or in the prior thread, is what should
motivate an end user who now uses Linux, BSD, Mac
OS X, or the like, to try Solaris for their
personal computing, and what pitfalls and missing
links should such user expect to encounter.  An
example of the latter might be a missing class of
applications, such as media players, or some such
(but I'm not suggesting that there is in fact a
lack of such applications for Solaris).  Although
I'm sure I could do a few hours of research and
find out, if there were features with significant
end-user benefits, someone familiar with Solaris
should be able to offer a list of them with a
brief explanation of those benefits.
  
Interestingly, at last night's meeting, the only
feature mentioned for which end-user benefits were
claimed was DTrace, and its proponent failed to
offer a usable explanation of those benefits.
Also DTrace is aparently no longer unique to
Solaris.

--Neil