NYCPHP Meetup

[Adam Fields]

leam wrote:
> Nyah, both Linux and *BSD are superior products. First, Linux has a much 
> better developer base and the entry point for contributions is much 
> lower. You only need low-end x86 hardware and you're off. Plus, Linux 

There >is< an x86 version of Solaris. It doesn't have quite the same 
level of hardware support as Linux, but for some things, it's vastly 
superior. It has a number of proponents that swear by it.

> makes a better desktop experience; more user apps are written for it.

For now, but this falls down in two ways - anything that's compiled can 
be cross-compiled, and there's no reason you can't add linux binary 
compatibility to Solaris, as some of the BSDs have done.

> NetBSD (my favorite of the lot) is a much cleaner code base and more 
> platforms, thus more places to use it.
> 
> Solaris really doesn't seem to offer any value in the low-medium end 
> server market or the desktop. It may be nice for a few high end uses but 
> I think it more likely that people will read the code and spend time 
> porting the concepts to Linux and *BSD than converting to Solaris.

I think it'll be some combination of the two, but I suspect that it'll 
be easier to port the user apps to Solaris than to incorporate the 
advantages Solaris has into the Linux kernel.

> With the push for web-based apps and db backends you seldom need bigger 
> boxes like the 8+ CPU models. And if you need 1, you need at least 2 to 
> provide uptime and redundancy. And if you need 2 you need 4; 2 for 
> production, 1 for developing code and 1 for heavy QA testing Better to 
> have 4-8 smaller boxes with a shared load. Although I admit admin'ing 2 
> boxes is easier than 8.  :)

I'm not familiar with the specifics, but I'd assume that some of the 
enhancements that Sun came up with for multi-processor support will also 
apply to distributed cluster implementations, and that Sun hasn't gone 
that way because up until very recently, they've had a vested interest 
in getting people to buy large SMP servers.

> You also need to look at the job market; most jobs are in small 
> businesses that can better justify a uniform platform provider like Dell 
> or Compaq/HP than some Sun and some x86. Your Linux skills are going to 
> find more opportunities. Of course, as this is a PHP list your AMP 
> skills will be more in demand everywhere and you just need to know how 
> to get the sysadmin up to speed on their particualr platform's support 
> of AMP.  :)

Well... MySQL on Solaris is currently less fun.