[sclug] [OT] Solaris vs. Linux

[Dickon Hood]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 00:25:49 +0100, Jon Masters wrote:
: Will Dickson wrote:

: | I recently acquired an old SPARC (thanks, Alan P :-)

: | After a looooong install process I've got Solaris 9 on it.

: I found the requirement for a 4GB SCSI disk was a little annoying when I
: installed Solaris 9 at home on a SPARC.

: | Now, it's not an entirely fair test (the SPARC is hugely less powerful
: | than my x86 box, and Sol 9 has very recently been replaced by Sol 10)
: | but if the Solaris desktop guys aren't scared of penguins, they ought to
: | be. (Solaris may well still be better on big iron OTOH.)

People generally don't run Solaris on the desktop, unless they're using a
SunRay terminal or somesuch.  I'm one of those that does (at work) and
yes, it's not exactly quick, but works well enough.

: That is completely unfair. Solaris runs like a dog on my SPARCstation
: (but it does run and it can just about play mp3 files without skipping)
: but it is running on much older hardware and I just accept that is that.
: However I do get annoyed with Sun that there is no GNU/Linux SMC[0].

Er, you actually *use* SMC?  Virtually nobody I know does...

: | Oh yeah, and Sun? Giving me Solaris on the grounds that I'm a developer
: | is a cool thing to do, and displays an insightful enlightened
: | self-interest. But then trying to sting me for $995 (!!?!) for the C
: | compiler so that I can actually *do* some development... isn't. And
: | doesn't. And since there's this little thing called GCC, I'm afraid your
: | scam isn't going to work, either. Nice try.

: The Sun compiler is probably ok if you like that sort of thing. I prefer
: using gcc and most other folks seem to agree.

Forte CC is vastly better at producing code than GCC ever will be.  OTOH,
lazy developers write gcc-specific code, which can make compiling
annoying.  Most packages don't, though.

-- 
Dickon Hood

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