Best Operating System for Geeks


by os geek - Date: 2006-12-12 - Word Count: 396 Share This!

Most wannabe geeks would say Linux, though it is just a kernel and not an OS. Some would answer Ubuntu or Gentoo depending on which is the 'in thing'. A few people would perhaps say MacOS X is the best. Windows, of course, is not the one geeks want to be associated with.

One more OS is making waves in the academia and business world and with serious geeks for the last yr or so, after it was open sourced. For all the right reasons. That is the grand daddy of all, the most popular Unix - Solaris OS. No other operating system, not even Linux can claim to have as much geeky meat as Solaris. Some of the mouth watering stuff in Solaris 10, especially for geeks include:

Zones - software virtualization feature which has no match in any other OS. I can't remember which technology in any other OS comes even close. BSD jails, perhaps.

ZFS - the ultra modern file system, again with no match. The only thing that comes close is VxFS but ZFS is free with source code in the open.

DTrace - again no match anywhere. The capability to look into each and every place into the kernel and other parts in a running system using DTrace is unparalleled. It has been winning accolades all over. SystemTap for Linux is still not complete and its design makes it unlikely to be able to compete with DTrace in the future.

BrandZ - It gives you the capability to run Linux apps on top of Solaris. For example, you can run a version of Linux like CentOS right inside a Solaris Zone. Say you want to play Quake or use Google Earth which don't have Solaris apps; just create a Zone in Solaris, install your Linux in the zone and play away with the apps which are available in Linux. How more geeky can one get!

Of course, serious business won't play games. For them there are other more serious features like:

Fault Management Architecture (FMA), Service Management Framework(SMF), etc.

Linux is a good Operating System and has the advantage of having more drivers. But in almost everything else, Solaris scores higher. Now that it is open sourced it should get people interested in creating drivers. The community and codebase of Solaris is called OpenSolaris. Looking at the number of posts and projects there, it really looks like a dynamic and vibrant group of geeks.

http://osgeek.blogspot.com/2006/12/which-is-best-operating-system-for.html


Related Tags: operating systems, solaris, linux

Software professional working on the Unix operating systems.

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: