[sclug] [OT] Solaris vs. Linux

[Will Dickson]

Jon Masters wrote:
> 
> | 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 | than my x86 box, and Sol 9 has very recently been replaced by Sol 10)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.)
> 
> 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].

For more general values of "not entirely fair", then :-) I 
was being rude about how crude the UI felt, rather than 
performance - for sure, if I was running it on modern kit it 
would doubtless be much faster.
> 
> 
> The Sun compiler is probably ok if you like that sort of thing. I prefer
> using gcc and most other folks seem to agree.

Exactly my point. Especially at that price.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jon.
> 
> [0] Sun Management Console. Explicit evidence in the campaign to improve
> the efficiency of many Java programs in general.

There's been a lot of work done on that recently, and if you 
compare a given Java program running on the current JRE vs 
the same program running on an older version, it shows.

It seems a bit silly to write that kind of program in Java, 
mind you - if any app is going to need the low-level hacking 
access that C provides (and Java struggles with) I'd've 
thought that would.

Will.