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Solaris vs. Mac OS X?

M

MacVault

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 10, 2002
1,144
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Planet Earth
I tried Solaris for about an hour but really couldn't get along with it, for me I think it lacks the "nice" interface and I find some of its behaviour counter-intuitive.

I'm willing to give it another try though but at a later date, more than happy with OS X
 
Solaris is a great OS but I think Sun and Apple are aiming for different market segments. For technical 'coolness' it is hard to ignore the features that Solaris has. Plus it is now free.

Tough call.
 
Solaris is cool and I've used it for years. However, I have to admit that I prefer OS-X for my computing. Solaris is hard to beat on a server class machine though.
 
Hey, Solaris on the desktop is 100x better than it used to be, now that Gnome is the default interface. They used to have this interface called CDE (I think I'm remembering that correctly). Think about what Windows 1.0 looked like, and then make that image only 1/2 as pretty - there, you've got a good idea of CDE's functionality and appearance. :D

Before I saw the light and came over to Mac, I used Gnome quite a bit and followed its development closely. What I found insanely funny is they basically use OS X as their UI guideline. :) Once or twice on the dev mailing list I said "hey, then why not just buy a Mac?" - people didn't really appreciate it. :rolleyes:
 
Westside guy said:
Hey, Solaris on the desktop is 100x better than it used to be, now that Gnome is the default interface. They used to have this interface called CDE (I think I'm remembering that correctly). Think about what Windows 1.0 looked like, and then make that image only 1/2 as pretty - there, you've got a good idea of CDE's functionality and appearance.
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I think your thinking of KDE.
 
technologically, solaris 10, and its free
but hey, pretty looks is a big part, isn't it?
 
CDE was a theme for Motif based on IBM's OS2 Warp environment. IBM let anyone who wanted to use the theme have a free license. Their idea was that if people were using CDE on their work systems, they would be more incline to buy an OS2 Warp system for their home use. The same theme was used in other Motif environments such as AIX and HP-UX, but wasn't a requirement for Motif (IRIX uses Motif but not CDE).

Obviously it didn't work out that way.

CDE was the second environment for Solaris, the first was OpenWindows (a specialized version of X Windows Sun developed). After OpenWindows came CDE (which used Motif and Display Postscript) which was supposed to have been replaced with Solaris OpenStep (based on the NEXTSTEP 3 window manager and theme, the OpenStep Specifications and Display Postscript with compatibility for Motif and X based apps). Sun scrapped Solaris OpenStep after Apple acquired NeXT at the end of 1996 and continued to use CDE for quite some time after that.


As for the original question of the thread, considering that I use OPENSTEP on my Sun hardware more than Solaris, and that Mac OS X is more advanced than OPENSTEP... I'd vote for Mac OS X being more advanced than Solaris (at least in the workstation arena).
 
To make a general statement about an OS beeing the most advanced is pure marketing speech. Modern operating systems are way to complex to be the most advanced or best in every respect. And I guess you can find an aspect for almost every operating system, where it exceeds all other operating systems available.

I could say almost all Unix operating systems available have virtual desktops included in the system. Mac OS X will only get that in the next revision. Does that make it the least advanced unix on the market? Certainly not.

OS X and Solaris are just too different to make a general statement about which one is the most advanced.
 
MacVault said:
Sun says Solaris 10 is The most advanced operating system on the planet, and Apple says Mac OS X is ...the world's most advanced operating system.

So which one really is the most advanced - I'm interested in this mainly in respect to enterprise/servers? Hey, at least it looks like we're getting one advanced Solaris technology: ZFS!!! What other advanced technology does Solaris have better than Mac OS X?
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One advantage of macOS probably that it supports more kinds of consumer hardware, being designed for Mac computers. Graphics systems, sound, etc. It is designed as a UNIX system and also as a consumer system, so it is the best of both worlds I would think.

Because Solaris is designed as an enterprise system, it does not have to support as much hardware and it also does not have to be as user-friendly. So for a desktop system macOS is better, and for those who need UNIX-y features, macOS could also likely suit their needs as well
 
danielsutton said:
One advantage of macOS probably that it supports more kinds of consumer hardware, being designed for Mac computers. Graphics systems, sound, etc. It is designed as a UNIX system and also as a consumer system, so it is the best of both worlds I would think.

Because Solaris is designed as an enterprise system, it does not have to support as much hardware and it also does not have to be as user-friendly. So for a desktop system macOS is better, and for those who need UNIX-y features, macOS could also likely suit their needs as well
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You do realize you're replying to a post that's more than 16 years old, don't you?
 
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