Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

Solaris vs. Linux: Framework for the Comparison

by Dr Nikolai Bezroukov


 

Prev Contents Next

2. Nine factors framework for comparison of  two flavors of Unix in a large enterprise environment

I developed the framework presented below for the comparison of Solaris and linux. But it is a quite general framework that can be adapted for comparison of any two Unix flavor in large enterprise environment.

While there are many similarities, there are also several important differences between large enterprises and small enterprises environments.

Of course there are exceptions to this picture but generally I think those three distinctive features are pretty typical.

The complexity of the modern OSes creates some kind of natural limit of the level of adoption and typically enterprises prefer one flavor Unix over another. At the same time other flavors typically exist as a result of mergers at least in minor quantities.

This makes the issues of proliferation of Unix flavors really important issue for any highly qualified system administrator who have multi-year investment in particular (favorite) flavor of OSes and rather good but less in-depth understanding of some other commercial flavor. If the organization have three of more flavors of Unix sysadmin naturally tend to limit themselves to one major and one minor flavor, ignoring everything else. That means that there is some natural specialization in the Unix group in large enterprises.  This natural tendency is probably connected with the limits of human capabilities to understand such complex systems as modern OSes: you cannot implant the second head to system administrator and it looks like there is only a space for just two OSes in a regular heads :-). 

To quote  Linux Torvalds, changing operating systems for sysadmins is not unlike “performing brain surgery on yourself”.  And the more qualified sysadmin is in particular brand of Unix, the more he/she tend to lose from switching.  For the next year or two  he/she will feel himself like a novice on the skating ring, not very comfortable felling...

Another factor is that administration is usually more formalized and governed by some procedures which are connected either with legal issues or with the security. For example, SecurID tokens are most common in large companies. Also some integration with Windows infrastructure, especially the ability to use Active Directory for identity management of Unix users tend to be important (and more common) for huge companies with many thousand of PC clients and diverse team of system administrators geographically dispersed in several sites

I would suggest the following  factors represent the most important differences between large enterprise and small enterprise (and non-enterprise) environments. This list definitely can be extended, but even in the current form it might provide a useful framework for the understanding the cost of introduction of a new flavor of Unix in enterprise environment. We will distinguish the following nine major areas of comparison of challenger and incumbent.  they are subjectively rated in the decreasing order of importance

We will postpone discussion of two  issues until later

  1. Good fit, or better synergy, with the major deployment areas (will be discussed later)

  2. Security issues (will be discussed later)

and discuss the following six areas:

  1. Unix ecosystem-related issues

  2. The cost of patching

  3. The cost of support

  4. The level of scalability
  5. Know-how costs
  6. Dangers inherent in development and business models
  7. Uncharted issues in intellectual property law

 

Prev Contents

Next



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

Disclaimer:

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Created Jan 2, 2005.  Last modified: March 12, 2019

</