"Chuck Carson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The only reason linux is so popular is it is free and most of the
> software is free. Solaris has a far more robust kernel
I beg to differ. Solaris has a huge bloated inefficient pig of a kernel
as compared to Linux. They do wacky things like allow interrupt handlers
to sleep() by automatically forking new threads. I suppose that's great for
making device driver writing and kernel hacking easy. I expect they'll start
writing kernel code in C++ any day now (if they haven't already). Sun's
kernel team must have way too many fresh college grads who've learned all
sorts of clever CS theory and have no experience writing tight efficient code.
And calling the Solaris kernel robust is a joke. I can't count the number
of different poison packets and christmas-tree packets that I've discovered
that will cause it to reboot. They've gotten better about it over the years,
but it still isn't as robust as Linux. Heck, it isn't as robust as
SunOS 4.1.
Personally it's far more important to me that I get high performance from the
kernel, than how many clever new theoretical constructs it uses. If that
means that driver writers and kernel hackers need to think a little about
how to write their code, instead of using inefficient safety nets, so be it.
> and their C/C++ compilers are unparralled in performance and ability.
The Sun C/C++ compilers didn't seem so great to me. I've seen cases where
they choked on perfectly legal ANSI C code, and other cases where they
compiled illegal code without so much as a warning, let alone an error.
I'll take GCC over Sun compilers any day.
I didn't really set out to slam Sun, but when you get right down to it, I
honestly can't understand why any sane person would buy their equipment.
Except maybe for the same reason that people once said "nobody ever got fired
for buying IBM."
Cheers,
Eric
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