Linux or HP-UX?
 

Hey all...I have worked with linux (redhat, ubuntu) and solaris for a long time. The company I work for is exploring the possibility of going to hp-ux (which I am not familiar with). Can anybody shed some light as to the pros/cons of linux vs hp-ux?

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Hi,

I did some porting and benchmarking of mobile operator software in HP benchmark center in Grenoble, France 2005. It was very intersting to see that HP by itself only uses RHEL for the Itanium machines there. This told all i had to know about HPUX at this time. :)

The main differences are the same as between other Unixes, what means other hardware management tools, monolitic kernel without dynamic module support, mostly commercial compiler software for development, high stability, professional support options.

Some of this options are also available for linux, especially support. Missing the large community support is some cons for HPUX, otherwise commercial support contracts should also solve the problems coming up.

I prefer linux because of a wide range of software running easily on linux, but often only difficult or not on other Unixes.

I administer both OS' to be honest, our HP-UX machines are currently being thinned out. You're talking about a proprietary model vs an open more flexible model. Many different things come into play when making a decision like this - personally unless a particular software vendor made it mandatory to use HP-UX I'd go the Linux route. If you go with HP-UX you're stuck in a proprietary hardware and software model and it is NOT cheap.

If you absolutely need Enterprise-class support - you can look into Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSe Enterprise Linux. Take it from me, it would be an expensive sunken-cost to go the HP-UX route.

In HP-UX's defense, it is Unix and it runs well; although there are many caveats with running a proprietary Unix, specifically Support costs, Hardware costs and the license to run the OS.

Also keep in mind, if you must run a "true Unix" you can look into IBM's AIX operating system ( not cheap either ) or FreeBSD.