[ILUG] Sun Solaris..

[John P. Looney]

On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 12:23:04PM +0100, Matthew French mentioned:
> Sure, Solaris has its own fairly average package management system. But I
> only look at package management as a fairly small part of a system (unless,
> like Debian, it really is the system).

 Average ? It's cack. Complete cack. And try an build a solaris package. I
dare you. I double dare you. And I'll knock up a redhat or debian one in a
tenth the time.

> On the other hand, you get the same utilities on Solaris as you do on Linux.
> Bash, bind, sendmail, apache etc as standard, and you can download gcc,
> samba, kde, gnome and most of your other favourite Linux applications.

 Bah. And it still uses sh as standard :)

> Which brings me to another point about the hardware debate: the cost of
> hardware is often only a small part of the cost of a solution. Given that a
> consultant can cost EUR700 a day, and that they may have to spend several
> extra days debugging strange Intel/PC issues, then a Sparc solution can pay
> for itself.

 Takes a helluva lot of €700 consultants to pay the difference between a
pair of eight-way sparcs & a pair of eight-way Xeons.

> The reason I ask is that web servers these days are often overspecced for
> something that will distribute a low volume 10Mb web site, and I would
> rather have something that can run cheaply and reliably without getting hot
> than worry about performance. (Incidentally, this is a purely speculative
> question at the moment.)

 Indeed. Cobalt Raq2's did most of what they were needed to do.

Kate