I just received my “Guide to Open-Source Operating Systems” comparing Solaris with Linux from Sun’s marketing department. Here are some of the facts that made me cringe due to blatant lying and half truths. Hey Sun, don’t let the facts get in your way.

Believe it or not but this is actually verbatim from the guide.


• Solaris runs on more hardware platforms.

• Solaris is supported by more applications.

• Solaris holds performance and price/performance world records that demonstrate its speed and scalability on a variety of systems.

• Solaris is supported by Sun, the company dedicated to UNIX for more than two decades.

1. Lets see, the first fact is just blatant lying. Last I checked Linux supported IA-32, MIPS, x86-64, SPARC, DEC Alpha, Itanium, PowerPC, ARM, m68k, PA-RISC, s390, SuperH, M32R and many more platforms. While Solaris only supports SPARC, IA-32 and x86-64. Does anyone at Sun’s marketing department care to fact check?

2. Depends on your definition of “supported.” Marketing is most likely referring to commercial support. I don’t have the facts to back this up but I doubt this is hold true with Linux in 2009, maybe they had a case back in 1999. Majority of open source applications are developed against Linux and Solaris compatibility is just an after thought.

3. You win http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_perf_results.asp

Sun develops some of the best hardware and software on the market, but their marketing department is a disaster. There can only be one Steve Jobs and his reality distortion field.