Oracle Might Be Canning Solaris

[bridgman]

I'm showing my ignorance here, but what advantages does Solaris have over other Unix-like operating system families? I use both Linux and BSD and can see ups and downs to both of them, but I really have no idea what Solaris offers that the others don't. OpenZFS works well for me on FreeBSD, although it seems to take a performance hit on Linux (even ignoring license issues). Does ZFS work even better in its native operating system than it does on BSD-based OSes? Is there some other feature Solaris has that I'm not aware of that makes it worth using?

Aww, don't go there - this is the Ford vs Chevy religious war of the *nix world.

[ldo17]

Seems like every OS that gets to call itself “Unix” is either dead or dying ...

[starshipeleven]

no more SPARCs and machines based on them?

I doubt anyone would miss them.

[TheBlackCat]

No wait, I've never seen anyone offering support contracts for CentOS. I was under the impression that the ones needing support would choose RHEL.

I think the point was that people who run CentOS but need support contracts can easily switch to RedHat. Keeping CentOS up-to-date and largely the same ad RHEL makes such a switch easier, and thus helps RedHat.

[starshipeleven]

I think the point was that people who run CentOS but need support contracts can easily switch to RedHat. Keeping CentOS up-to-date and largely the same ad RHEL makes such a switch easier, and thus helps RedHat.

Ah ok, makes sense.

[Mystro256]

No wait, I've never seen anyone offering support contracts for CentOS. I was under the impression that the ones needing support would choose RHEL.

I'm not sure what else Red Hat has to gain from pumping money into CentOS. Perhaps it's an easy gateway into RHEL, or more shared security patches between the distros? Or perhaps it allows them to make sure CentOS stays compatible with RHEL, so they can push support for other products, such as their middle ware.

Edit:

I think the point was that people who run CentOS but need support contracts can easily switch to RedHat. Keeping CentOS up-to-date and largely the same ad RHEL makes such a switch easier, and thus helps RedHat.

Indeed that's another way to look at it.

[RahulSundaram]

I'm not sure what else Red Hat has to gain from pumping money into CentOS. Perhaps it's an easy gateway into RHEL, or more shared security patches between the distros? Or perhaps it allows them to make sure CentOS stays compatible with RHEL, so they can push support for other products, such as their middle ware.

The plans have been public for a long time

http://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-reveals-centos-plans/

[Chewi]

We use CentOS at work. I think Red Hat is just taking the traditional free software approach. People who know what they're doing probably don't need the additional support but they may contribute back, if not to the OS itself, then to the wider ecosystem. I don't recall doing much for RHEL itself but we've spent countless man hours working on Chef cookbooks that support it.

[andre30correia]

at least they continue to maintain virtualbox

[Delgarde]

I think the point was that people who run CentOS but need support contracts can easily switch to RedHat. Keeping CentOS up-to-date and largely the same ad RHEL makes such a switch easier, and thus helps RedHat.

Pretty much. That's what we do at work - development machines run CentOS, while testing environments (and the clients) run RedHat with a support contract.

I suspect that from the RedHat perspective, it's a useful branding split. The actual product is more or less identical, but it's clearer to distinguish "free CentOS vs commercial RedHat" than it is to distinguish "RedHat with or without a support contract".