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I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but our experiences with Solaris at work seem to not be unusual. Over the past ten years Sun has NOT had their s

by iigs 18y ago

I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but our experiences with Solaris at work seem to not be unusual. Over the past ten years Sun has NOT had their story straight on the availability of Solaris x86 ISOs and support patches (formerly packaged as X_Recommended bundles). While I could download x86 and install it when I was considering trying it out for an important but non-funded project (replacing authoritative DNS servers for our domain), AFAIK the only way to install updates was to download individual patches from a FTP server and apply them one by one -- and there was no way to tell which applied or why. I think CentOS is saving RHEL's market penetration... if CentOS (or equivalent) wasn't available to cover all of those little cases that nobody would ever fund in a business, all of the Linux expertise would move on to other distros. I think Sun might have figured that out now (OpenSolaris), but if not they have an even harder road ahead as they continue to lose more market share.

briansmith 18y ago
RE: x86 support for Solaris: How recent was your experience? Re: CentOS: I agree, I am considering "upgrading" from CentOS 5.2 to RHEL 5.2 to get support for some servers. If CentOS didn't exist then I wouldn't probably went with Debian or Ubuntu on those servers when I set them up, and then I'd be looking to get support from Canonical.
- iigs 18y ago
  The specific moment I'm referring to was in 2007. I believe it's still the case that you can not download patch clusters without a support account. I'd love to be proven wrong about this, though. There was a previous time (circa 2002) when I was considering it for another company but they pulled the freely available x86 ISOs altogether. This lack of commitment on Sun's part means I can't trust the free stuff for test / low end, even if they started offering everything again today, because I no longer trust that they won't do the same thing again next week.

by iigs 18y ago

briansmith 18y ago

RE: x86 support for Solaris: How recent was your experience? Re: CentOS: I agree, I am considering "upgrading" from CentOS 5.2 to RHEL 5.2 to get support for some servers. If CentOS didn't exist then I wouldn't probably went with Debian or Ubuntu on those servers when I set them up, and then I'd be looking to get support from Canonical.

iigs 18y ago
The specific moment I'm referring to was in 2007. I believe it's still the case that you can not download patch clusters without a support account. I'd love to be proven wrong about this, though. There was a previous time (circa 2002) when I was considering it for another company but they pulled the freely available x86 ISOs altogether. This lack of commitment on Sun's part means I can't trust the free stuff for test / low end, even if they started offering everything again today, because I no longer trust that they won't do the same thing again next week.