Huh ? Here are the top ten software developers worldwide. Six of them (in bold) are releasing software for Solaris. The remaining ones are mostly specialized with games.

1. Microsoft
2. IBM
3. Oracle
4. SAP
5. Nintendo
6. HP
7. Symantec
8. Activision Blizzard
9. Electronic Arts
10. CA

With the advent of Linux branded zones (Solaris Containers for Linux Applications), this is no more true. Many Linux binaries directly run on Solaris. It was actually even possible (but more complex) before that with lxrun.
Interestingly enough, this is an argument that has always been used against Gnu/Linux in its history and that obviously didn't refrain it to grow. In any case, the number of applications is an important factor but not the main one. What counts are the applications you want to run, not that much the overall number of applications available.

That determines how usuable it is for end-users, but the OS is not defined by the applications that run on it, that is totally a separate issue.


X and gnome have nothing to do with Linux. You need to separate the OS from the userland and applications. You can't say an OS is bloated or has problems when you're pointing to software that isn't even part of the OS.

They're not similar at all, not even from the user's view. You are saying since a race car and a bicycle are both based on a chariot (they all have wheels and go to and fro) they're very similar and operate in similar ways. In one way that's true, in one way it's a gross overexaggeration. You need to look more in depth because what you are saying is not correct. If you knew more you would know that these OS are all very different, and also the OS is not the userland. Two separate worlds.

Hear ye, Hear ye, prushnik has the right to make off-hand, unsupported, critical comments about various OSes, and no one has the right to contest his comments.

Unfortunately, this is an open forum.

I would suggest that if you don't want anyone talking about Solaris or Mac OS X here, then you shouldn't mention them. If you aim uninformed criticism at them (even, or maybe especially, offhandedly), you will be guaranteed to get a response. Also, don't respond to anyone else who does mention them. Ignore them. You can't criticize them and then shout down the responses with all caps, red type, and rudeness (your past messages telling me to "SHUT THE HELL UP").

My name does not have an n in it.


Talk about rudeness. I get attacked for every little thing I say.
I'm just trying to stay on topic. Solaris is not on topic. I mentioned it only for comparison, not for discussion or debate. It wasn't supposed to be a really controversial statement.

Seriously, is it that much to ask?

Not sure about what makes you think Solaris isn't on topic given the fact you mention it in your open posting and ask for other people's opinions about it:
Regardless, you wrote more or less incorrect statements later about it that needed at least to be corrected for the record.

It was meant for comparison.


My fault, Solaris can run any application, its totally unlimited.

I'm now going to do something extra-ordinary: make a post that is on topic and non-inflamatory

I've been looking at what's available, and the obvious problem for anything that's not a *nix is software. For example, Plan 9 is actually in use on some servers, but you'd find it a bit limiting at home. To view a webpage, you download the page and pass it to a (text-only) html viewer! Not much good for ordering from Amazon!

I tried Syllable, which is posix-compliant at command line level, but has its own window system. It could handle the internet and all media formats, but lacked a word-processor. That was version 0.6.5. Then they upgraded, and support for my SiS video chip disappeared.

Minix is similarly choosy about hardware, so I can't run that.

Haiku was quite stylish and worked well on my computer: I could even reconfigure it to cope with my personal keyboard layout. Internet access was OK, but the media players can't handle formats like wmv — unlike Syllable, this is from the US and has to respect the patents. In theory it will run old BeOS software, but I couldn't get anything I tried to work.

The really impressive thing about Syllable and Haiku was the 15 second start-up time! Also, Haiku put the same load on the CPU as Linux, but Syllable used only half the capacity.

One old OS that I still run is Minerva, a clone of QDOS, the OS for the Sinclair QL. I use a program I wrote for the QL, and there's no way I'm going to convert about 6000 lines of source code from SuperBasic. One of the editors is still useful too, if I want to do something like transposing a couple of columns in tabulated text. I know that could be done with vi, but The Editor is just so much quicker and simpler.

Unfortunately no more true than your previous statements about it.
You are welcome to visit the Solaris/OpenSolaris forum to improve your knowledge of this OS.

Thank you.
I really haven't looked into Syllable. I will look it up later (after work). Is it a derivative of another OS that we discussed before?

takes 45 mins on my 2 GHZ system
i compiled ReactOs (based on the winows kernel) and it took 2.5HOURS
no more debating but the point is all OS's are bloated

I wouldn't necessarily say "all". But most are, yes. One of the points of this thread is to maybe look at some that aren't, or aren't as much.

I just accidentally came across SkyFire OS. Which looks pretty neat. It runs on top of the DOS kernel. It can be installed on top of a DOS-clone, like FreeDOS, or MS DOS 7.1.
Here is a link:
http://skyfireos.blogspot.com/

then its not an OS, its a graphical shell like windows 3.1

Well, yes that is true. However, SkyFire OS combined with the DOS kernel is an OS.

From their website So maybe some intermediate beast, more like windows 95.