^ Open source, free high-quality development tools, and an ever growing nice community.

Does this make it ' better' than FreeBSD?

Yeah, i find it odd. But to stay with things. I believe that Solaris isn't really all that "unused". I've been administering Solaris for a short while now, and most of my questions have been answered via google searches. Of course it can take some extensive googling, but then again i've always had to do that for any linux flavor i had installed.

Solaris is a solid solution and is MUCH more secure than any windows box. Basically we're flying under the radar and a question like "what government agencies use Solaris" is odd. I believe they[government agencies] want to remain under the radar

I won't go that way, trying to avoid religious wars.

You were asking for specific things that make Solaris interesting, and these are certainly some of them.

Moreover, Solaris and BSDs share a lot in term of code quality, security focus and development model, the fact Sun co-founder Bill Joy is one of the well known original BSD developers is probably not foreign to that.

Another good thing is that BSD license is less choosy than Linux's one, so mixing Solaris and BSD code is allowed. Dtrace is on its way to be integrated http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/r...-jun-2006.html

As you seem to like comparing O/Ses, can you explain what makes FreeBSD different from other *nixes that makes it interesting ?

Yes I do like to compare OS'en and try them out. I was planning to, but have not done yet, try FreeBSD. From what I heared about it is that it is more newby friendly and has nVidia driver support so you can play 3D games like Quake3. It's the closest to desktop computing compared to other BSD's. It runs Linux software better and faster than Linux itself.

This is all I know about it () Correct me if I am wrong. Ofcourse this awnser might not be the one you were hoping for. I gues you were hoping for a more technical awnser I also never ever tried any other OS than Windows and Linux before... and DOS.

Good, I'm sure there are a lot of newbie friendly O/Ses around though.
Solaris is not yet in this category when talking about installation and other administrative tasks. On the user level perspective, Solaris desktop, JDS, is I believe newbie friendly.
Solaris has genuine nVidia drivers.
Fresh news here:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/smg...is_x86_running
Ok.
Sources ?

Solaris on x86 run Linux applications, either with lxrun or "natively" in a lx branded Zone (Brandz), which is still beta though.
I don't think the latter will claim running Linux applications faster than Linux, as the same code running on the same CPU/RAM will obviously run at the same speed. On the other hand, When the program leave the userland to enter the kernel, differences will occur. First there is an overhead because of remapping linux system interface to the native kernel one, second, the system call execution will be a different implementation, this includes device drivers differences.
All of this combined will produce a performance that will be close to the native linux one, but there is no evidence that it will run significantly faster, unless with very specific benchmarks.
Yes, I was hoping for innovative strong differentiators, but nothing in your reply belongs to that category.

Look I am just a newbie who's interested. I am not defending FreeBSD or anything. I am also not attacking Solaris or anything.

Okay, sorry if you feel I over-reacted.

Actually I wasn't attacking FreeBSD either, I think BSDs are high quality O/Ses that haven't the exposure they deserve.

Maybe I just asked the wrong question Maybe if I put it like this: Why do you use Solaris instead of a BSD?

There are a bunch of reasons, the original one is I switched from BSD 4.2 to System V in 1988 because BSD wasn't designed for SMP, and lacked modularity, i.e. was doomed in the long term for non desktop use.

For these reasons, almost all the Unix H/W vendors did the move toward System V based O/Ses, Sun was amongst the last ones to do it in 1990.

About current reasons, I have few spare time to investigate in BSD and I do not feel I would have a lot to learn from it while at the same time, Solaris is very innovative.

Of course someone may prove I'm wrong about BSD missing technical interest, as I didn't installed a BSD since a very long time, and I have few opportunities to use it.

That said, I'm still convinced BSD is a robust and secure desktop and small server O/S.

Personally, I like Solaris because I am deep into scientfic computing, I run very CPU intensive apps, and I need an OS that can take incessant punishment, day in and day out, without crashing. Solaris fits the bill perfectly. I have been using it since two years, and it has never failed me, or crashed on me (and when you are doing serious research work, there is nothing more annoying than a computer hanging or crashing on you). Finally, Solaris is free (now in both senses of the term), rock stable, and has all the tools I happen to need. This makes it convenient for me to use Solaris. I never tried BSD much, and I see no reason to migrate away from a comfy platform like Solaris.

But really, it is like asking `why do you follow religion X, instead of religion Y?', since most of the religions have much in common (that is what it is like in today's *nix world).

I would say it depends on what apps and packages you want. It is immaterial how many packages are available, if the ones you want are not there. Conversely, it really matters how few are available, if you can have the ones you want.

This is an issue if you have new and/or strange hardware, but for much of the general hardware of say - one or two years ago, you already have what it takes to keep the hardware working properly.

I never used any desktop environment, so I cannot answer that. I am running X with IceWM.

I do not know - I keep hearing about the `ready for the desktop', and never really understood what it means. My Solaris machine is on my desk, and it does all I want it to do. I guess it is a matter of what you expect of it really.