wearing dev,sysadm, architect hats running these platforms since 1999. i had the most consistency and general usability with freebsd. freebsd is easier to maintain and learn its features, docs are great. choose the one that you need to learn the least to run, install and maintain. yes i am somewhat biased to freebsd based on my own experience. the past say about 5 years solaris gave me many headaches like library dependecies, package management. freebsd, linux have good package managements. solaris has solid reliability and performance. all things considered, go with freebsd. freebsd security is easier to learn than selinux.
Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#22wearing dev,sysadm, architect hats running these platforms since 1999. i had the most consistency and general usability with freebsd. freebsd is easier to maintain and learn its features, docs are great. choose the one that you need to learn the least to run, install and maintain. yes i am somewhat biased to freebsd based on my own experience. the past say about 5 years solaris gave me many headaches like library dep…
Interesting...
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#23Whatever you choose, stay clear of Solaris. Especially OpenSolaris (that's a dead-end). If you're unfamiliar with both, Linux systems are easier to get used to, in my experience.
So how come many "big" companies are using solaris with much success?
Historical reasons. Solaris was the definitive platform circa the late nineties. I used Linux back then, but it was definitely not ready for prime time yet. Many enterprises were built around Solaris. Today, Linux is a better alternative today for most use cases, but only marginally better. Until a year ago, it was not worth the cost of a switch.
Why a year ago? Oracle bought Sun. Sun was very good at creating open, useful platforms, but was very bad at making money off of them. Sun was bought by Oracle. Oracle isn't very good at building software, but is extremely good at selling it and maximizing profit from it. Oracle needs to make back the 7+ billion dollars it made on Sun somehow. How? We have part of the answer in the Google suit: by milking Sun's customer base.
Java has 10 million developers. To make 10 billion (there's a fair bit of risk in buying Sun -- if Oracle wants a 3x return, that's 10 billion each for Java, hardware, and Solaris), it needs to make $1000 per developer. How? I don't know how, but I'll run one possible scenario.
Step 1: Cut off competing JVM implementations with patent and copyright suits. This is already starting to happen.
Step 2: Release new versions of Java in two versions. The first is a free Java Express, which is okay for student use, but has no JVM, and omits many of the more enterprise-centric libraries. The second is a full-fledged version, and costs $1000 a pop. Developers would, of course, free to use the old, bit rotting version as well.
Most Java developers cannot switch platforms -- most are working on enterprise systems with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of sunk costs. Java immediately becomes a legacy platform, but even if only 50% of developers buy into it (even if only during the transition period), Oracle makes a cool $5 billion, almost paying for the rest of Sun.
Where does this leave Solaris? I don't know, but I suspect similar things are afoot. Oracle will want to make more money, and Oracle's customers will end up paying more. Oracle is already beginning to move in this direction with the death of OpenSolaris.
Aside from that, Oracle is incapable of attracting good developers. Former Sun employees are leaving as quickly as they can find new jobs. Will Solaris continue to have a technological advantage in the long term without Sun's brainpower? I seriously doubt it.
I know this is a lot of FUD, but with good reason. I am afraid, uncertain, and doubtful about the future of Java and Solaris. While I'm certain that Oracle will continue to develop Solaris so long as it continues to make them money, I don't know what they'll charge for it, or how well they'll develop it. I really wouldn't want to base my business around it.
(A secondary, technological answer is that Solaris advantages are much better suited to the climate of the nineties than of the teens. In the nineties, we tend to rely more on big computers with many CPUs, massive amount of memory, and many hard drives. In the teens, the trend is much more towards big arrays of cheap, unreliable, redundant boxes. Solaris' advantages are much more pronounced for the former than the latter.)
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#24Wow, this is a question that can really fracture a community.
My two cents, from pretty extensive linux experience and one short Solaris experience: do what aligns more with your IT admin's philosophy.
My feel for Solaris is that everything is managed -- there are daemons to watch daemons whose job it is to make sure certain apps don't go down.
Linux is a bit less monitored -- "Oh, your apache process shouldn't have gone down? Shit you shoulda had something watching it."
Personally, I like the more ad hoc feel to linux. But pick whichever your sysadmin prefers. Solaris, to me, felt like I was being handcuffed.
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
CentOS is binary compatible with RedHat, so it's for people who need the enterprise-ness of RedHat, but can't/won't run RedHat. An example I've heard is running RedHat in production for the support, but CentOS for devs and stating. The reason to run RedHat is usually something like needing to run Oracle or a number of other very complex software suites (the keyword is complex, not better or faster) that are only supp…
What distribution do you recommend? (which is stable enough...) I wanted to choose CentOS because I know RedHat are saying they do lot of tests to their distribution before they release... so I wanted something that is fully tested and reliable.
It's been a while since I've had any responsibility over servers, but Debian has always treated me well.
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#26If you are unsure of which to pick, perhaps it's indicative that you're going to have other problems ahead: maybe you should hire someone to advise you and help you out.
At the very least, the OP should talk to someone in person or on the phone about this. There are simply too many possibilities to adequately answer this for a production deployment.
Some questions that I (as a former SysAd) would ask:
1) How many is "many servers"? 10, 100, 1000, 10000?
2) What exactly is "performance for ... multi-cores multi-sockets, high IO & CPU & Memory & Networking"? This basically covers everything ever created. The high-performance for TeraGrid (sci. apps) is very different than E-Trade (financials) and very different from Amazon (e-commerce).
3) Is "low-cost support" $0 and 1 week of searching online forums? Or $100 and a phone call?
4) Do you like "port", "apt", "yum", "emerge", or "make"?
5) Do you need to have multiple versions of the same app available at the same time? E.g., gcc-2.97, gcc-3.2, 3.3.2, and 4.4.1?
6) Did you not know the answer to any of these questions? If so, I highly recommend you hire someone like @davidw says.
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#27Why can't you deploy whatever you've been developing and testing on? That would make most sense to me.
For me, that would mean OpenSuse, but that seems to be a minority choice these days.
Anyway, I would advise against OpenSolaris after Oracle (paid for Solaris might be OK) - see the recent leaked emails etc. When I use CentOs I am always frustrated that they are using such old software versions (Python 2.4!), but that may just be the clients I have. For stability and security a BSD is not a bad idea, but again check for versions of the software you need.
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#28I'd use FreeBSD.
OpenSolaris is officially dead. Solaris isn't low cost for sure. FreeBSD gives you a high performing io/network stack plus extras from Solaris world, like DTrace & ZFS, plus a focus of maintainers on just these features you seem to need most. This is contrary to many Linux distros, even commercial ones like RedHat, where the focus seems to drift to different directions over time, as they are trying to please different groups of users/donators/customers.
If you decide Linux anyway, I'd recommend Debian instead of CentOS. Contrary to common belief, RedHat/CentOS distros are "enterprise-oriented" maybe in the aspect of supporting typical Java development, but when it comes to production operations their enterpriseness does not necessarily shine, esp. when things break. YMMV.
These recommendations change a lot if you must deploy Oracle databases on the machines.
Well many people want to give their 2 cents in this thread; while this is excellent, I'd like to point I'm a sysadmin of various Unices since 15 years so I claim to know what I mean and not just promote personal prefs when saying something about OSes (if it was my personal bias I'd use Slackware forever). If you had further questions and wished to ask them privately, you'll find contact links on my profile.
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
What distribution do you recommend? (which is stable enough...) I wanted to choose CentOS because I know RedHat are saying they do lot of tests to their distribution before they release... so I wanted something that is fully tested and reliable.
It's been a while since I've had any responsibility over servers, but Debian has always treated me well.
Ubuntu which is derived from Debian is a good choice for servers, especially the LTS editions.
Re: Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?
#30I've used Solaris on Sun SPARC hardware and it is a very strong environment for heavy duty enterprise applications, especially if you have to use Oracle and/or Java. But very expensive solution. With Oracle now owning them, I don't think the cost of ownership is going to be coming down, but the quality of support might.
If you are using FibreChannel and SAN attached storage, then Sun might still be a good option. But seriously I'd look at HPUX and AIX as well.
My experiences with OpenSolaris on x86 (non-Sun) hardware has been disappointing. Maybe I had high expectations due to the SPARC experiences.
These days, I only use Ubuntu Server LTS editions. APT and the Debian infrastructure meets my needs well. Also use PostgreSQL rather than Oracle RDBMS.