[ILUG] Differences between Solaris and Linux

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 02:21:12AM +0100, Braun Brelin wrote:
> I'm looking for a good guide to the differences between Solaris and Linux.
> I'm specifically looking for differences from a system administration
> point of view,

There's no real way to answer this. I'm not trying to be annoying, but
Linux is just a kernel and has no inherent System Administration
capabilities beyond sysctl and /proc really. 

Compared on kernel level features it's certainly possible to say that
Linux is generally more configurable (but this may not be a good thing)
and that you usually don't have to reboot to apply kernel-level tunables
(unlike Solaris, where for many - you still do).

It's also possible to compare various parts of the implementations
feature for feature, like filesystems and so on. For example Solaris
supports genuine filesystem snapshots, linux offers only crude
block-level snapshots. Things like that. 

The linux kernel has a *lot* of features you won't find in the Solaris
kernel, but they may or may not be of use to you.

But from a system adminitrators point of view, the major differences are
between *distributions* and Solaris. Based on experience, I prefer
Debian/Ubuntu to Solaris, but I prefer Solaris to RedHat. So how does
that "Solaris V Linux" comparison work out?

Also there are other external factors; for example a Solaris box will
typically have a hardware PROM/OBP, which is a huge plus over a Linux
box which doesn't.  So it's a complex area to measure. There are no
simple answers, and you'll really have to make your mind up based on
what you want to do.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net