wiki says HP-UX is $99 and it has a long UNIX history

i tried a ?$30 OpenSolaris i386 when it came out and enjoyed it - it was solid X11 desktop frim etc (kept using linux because i was busy and just knew the commands better)

also interested in anyone's experiences with other "not fully sourced" proprietary UNIX (or do they have source now?), their cost and benefits common use

anyone have thoughts on these v. linux bsd today? would like to shed light on where they shine best and why?

thanks

First, each of those was designed to run on (and be the BEST thing to run on) each vendors proprietary hardware. Where they are the best thing to run, each shines!

I have AIX certification, and can tell you that pure IBM hard/software with support costs $$$. With that you get decent support, the only OS in the world that comes with complete system backup and to cold-iron full restore, and solid as a rock behavior.
I used HP-UX on HP servers for a long while (we ran a hospital on it), and it was very solid on that hardware.
I used True64 UNIX from before it belonged to HP, and on that hardware it rocked. It took work to make it right, but once right it just worked FOREVER! IF you get sick of the hardware, tough: it was not gonna quit.

I now use Linux at work and home, and can tell you that the biggest advantage is that it does a lot more with less hardware. It is not better, but you do not get lock-in on the hardware vendor side (or from the software side, much), and it is VERY, VERY GOOD! It is FAR more versatile than the proprietary OS, and arguable more powerful at some functions. From RH or Suse/Novell it comes with pretty good support. The biggest thing is that it costs less, free if you do not need the support: resulting in a low TCO that is unmatched.

If money is secondary to reliability, and hardware AND software support matter, I would always go IBM unless the software ruled that out. If money matters, always go Linux.

AIX has (since AIX5L) gone Linux flavored, and has a lot of OOS software ported to it. It has also picked up the LPAR mainframe virtualization that is arguably more mature than nearly anything else available. It is not going away any time soon. Most of the others are either obsolete or at some stage of a death spiral: support is going away. AIX, Linux, FreeBSD are NOT going away. Invest your time in something that will be here to reward your efforts.

One big factor is that no single company can match the world-wide 'free' development engine that is the GNU and Linux ecosystem. There are more brains changing and expanding the Linux/FreeBSD options that could be hired by any company (or country) in existence. There are more development environments (and compilers) designed for Linux than any other OS base that has EVER existed! If you need something that is not hardware specific, it is likely to exist in the Linux world before it can be found anywhere else. If you want to MAKE something new, there is no better platform than Linux. We redefined the cutting edge, and made it our hobby-horse! ;-)

DISCLAIMER: I did not discuss other operating systems, because my experiences with them are inadequate for a reasoned and justified judgement.

Very well put. My current client has been using AIX to power their systems (HR, ETL, etc.). Rumors then started circulating that they we cutting down on TCO, which almost made my company lost its contract with that client. That was followed by rumors of moving their enterprise grade applications (our systems included) to servers powered by Linux. Sadly, I will not witness that to happen.

I will muddy the waters, and lament the passing of VMS, which was the same. Was WAY ahead of its time, in my opinion, and was similarly rock-solid.

However, I have absolute disdain for IBM, because of their 'planned obsolescence' cycle, and the fairly poor support we've received from them for many years.

I've seen smaller systems that are hardly taxed at all, but you can't upgrade the OS...EVER...due to their microcode. I have a hard time suggesting to customers that they throw out a box with a 3% utilization, and spend a packet on a new one, JUST to get the new OS that supports the new application. I've had IBM service people tell me systems weren't going to be supported at multi-million dollar customer sites, because they weren't in IBM MADE RACKS. Yes...apparently, having square holes for the mounting hardware isn't 'supported', and will somehow make servers behave differently....yes...really.

Personally, I'd pick Solaris w/Sun hardware *OR* the True64. Never been able to really get over the 10,000 little differences that AIX has 'just because'. I prefer going RHEL or SLES on production systems, since I can then pick pretty much ANY hardware (with some exceptions), and still get support from the OS, application, and hardware vendors. And I don't mind that they're three different folks...since *I* am the single-point-of-contact for 'the system' in general for my customers. I get to deal with the finger pointing if there's a problem, and it's not been bad.
C'mon...how are you EVER going to start a flame-war/troll-bait with that attitude??