May 23, 1998: Sun culture vs. Linux culture

Now after a few months of work in the Sun shop I have enough things to think about... All my previous Unix experience was either from days when I considered things under totally different angle and barely understand what is OS at all, or with Linux. Despite a very short period of work with Sun systems (and with people using Sun systems), I am dare to make some comparison.

Linux culture is about experimantation, do-it-yourself, hacking.

July 30, 2000 side note: I remember my immediate reaction when issuing for the first time in my live uname -a on Solaris and observing "Generic_": What?!! They do not compile their kernels but using default ones?!!
Sun culture is about stability, conservatism, proud of doing "enterprise computing". (Note that am not talking about actual merits of systems, as Linux PC box can be as rock-solid as a Sparc Solaris, and one can experiment with Solaris as well as with Linux - that's just people attitude).

Sun guys often deny the very right of Linux to belong to Unix family, "hey, do you still play with your toy OS, kids? It's time to start with real things". Linux guys don't care about it as consider Sun as one of duying dinosaures and they are all in a bright Linux future.

All this is regrettable, as Unix is Unix, and they have a common very dangerous enemy.

__END__

created May 23 1998
last modified Sat Dec 18 19:01:47 EET 2010