*BSD News Article 38724


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From: casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.unixware
Subject: Re: Unix for PC
Date: 1 Dec 1994 19:54:29 +0100
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
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Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <3bl655$skk@mail.fwi.uva.nl>
References: <199411210319.TAA18133@nic.cerf.net> <CHRISB.94Nov30100302@stork.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> <3bihms$5pf@decaxp.harvard.edu> <palowodaD04HqA.LAJ@netcom.com> <3bkt7c$b77@news.uni-c.dk>
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pd@kubism.ku.dk (Peter Dalgaard SFE) writes:

>Now this is malicious slandering if ever I saw it. Have YOU seen
>the patch list for Solaris 2.3 lately?

The patchlist is long, but the majority of patches need not be applied.
We've not applied that many Solaris patches and of the Solaris patches
that we did apply, there's only a very small number that we applied
because we were hit by a bug.  Solaris 2.4 can actually run on a umber
of systems w/o applying patches.  (Most kernel problems are related to
MP, which is a very difficult subject)

>Most of the problems with Linux and X come from newbies getting
>instantly promoted to sysadmins on a Unix system. Of course they
>get confused initially. Also, regarding X, the setup is
>admittedly a bit complicated, clocks and modelines and all that,
>but again this is mainly a matter based on PC hardware. Things
>are much easier if you only support only a limited set of
>framebuffer/monitor combinations. Once you get past this hurdle,
>things are no worse than on Suns (believe me, I've done both).
>In fact, Suns are sometimes more of a headache, because they
>insist on doing things in nonstandard ways. (Try getting imake
>to work properly, e.g.)

What do you think constitutes the majority of problems with
Solaris 2.x? The majority of migration headaches come from
people who decide that they need to upgrade one weekend and do so.
They're surprised at so many changes.

>As a sysadmin on both Suns and Linux systems, I can assure you
>that Slackware has been runnable at a level comparable to SunOS
>4.1.x for at least the past year. Remaining problems are nowhere
>near comparable to what we are seeing currently with Solaris!

We have have hardly any problems with any of our systems, whether they're
running Solaris or SunOS.  The machines are very stable.  We hardly
touch the SunOS machines, so they get 400+ day uptimes, but we keep the
Solaris machines current on patches so they get rebooted once a month.

Casper