Hi my brother has just bought a semi old system with a 10gig drive and
128 megs of memory and we want to venture into a new area we both took
some linux courses but arent professionals still very much newbies.
Well we have a three computer network 1 Windows 2000 Server and 2 XP
boxes and now this one. We want to either install Solaris or Linux,
but still trying to decide. We both want to get into a network
position within a company, but dont know if linux would be useful to
us as solaris would be. Any suggestions of which one is more practical
in a company enviroment, and would what are some pro and cons of the
two

thank you

deabobb@hotmail.com (Bobby) writes:

> We want to either install Solaris or Linux,
> but still trying to decide. We both want to get into a network
> position within a company, but dont know if linux would be useful to
> us as solaris would be. 

You can do both. All you need is an extra disk, and a 10GB disk
can be had for less than $5 on ebay. In fact, go for 100GB disk:
you can install multiple Linux distributions, and you can always
pull this disk out and put it somewhere else later.

Having played with both Solaris and Linux will make you more
"experienced" than if you only played with one or the other.

> Any suggestions of which one is more practical
> in a company enviroment, 

Which company? If you worked at google, Linux would be "more
practical"; but if you work in a place that has only Solaris boxes,
the answer would be Solaris ;-) And some places only have AIX boxes;
so the answer is "either" ...

> and would what are some pro and cons of the two

Solaris is quite picky about supported PC hardware; you may discover
that it will not install on your box. OTOH, Linux will install just
about everywhere. You are also much more likely to find "free
support" for Linux: the number of Solaris/x86 boxes is probably at
least a 100 times smaller then the number of Linux/x86 installations.

Cheers,
-- 
In order to understand recursion you must first understand recursion.
Remove /-nsp/ for email.

|Thus Spake Paul Pluzhnikov On the now historical date of Sun, 11 Jan 2004
13:56:58 -0800|
> Having played with both Solaris and Linux will make you more "experienced"
> than if you only played with one or the other.

Also, look into OpenBSD.  You'll get another perspective about unix
systems.  When looking for help on OpenBSD, be sure to read all the
documentation before seeking help online.  OpenBSD people are notoriously
contankerous towards people who don't read the documentation.  The good
part is that OpenBSD is one of the best documented systems out there and
so is *very* good for learning unices.  Those OpenBSD'ers are so
contankerous because they put so much work into properly documenting the
system.

Be sure to read ESR's "Art of Unix Programming."  You may not want to be a
programmer, but this book does a fine job of explaining how all the pieces
of Unix systems fit together.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/

HTH
Good Luck!

Sam Walters.

-- 
Never forget the halloween documents.
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/
""" Where will Microsoft try to drag you today?
    Do you really want to go there?"""

>>>>> "Samuel" == Samuel Walters <swalters_usenet@yahoo.com> writes:

Samuel> Also, look into OpenBSD.  You'll get another perspective about
Samuel> unix systems. [...]

And don't forget OpenBSD's well-deserved reputation of being the most
security hardened open-source Unix as well.  I'm able to sleep at
night knowing I'm running OpenBSD on my servers.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

deabobb@hotmail.com (Bobby) wrote in message news:<d013da4.0401111250.42312105@posting.google.com>...
> Hi my brother has just bought a semi old system with a 10gig drive and
> 128 megs of memory and we want to venture into a new area we both took
> some linux courses but arent professionals still very much newbies.
> Well we have a three computer network 1 Windows 2000 Server and 2 XP
> boxes and now this one. We want to either install Solaris or Linux,
> but still trying to decide. We both want to get into a network
> position within a company, but dont know if linux would be useful to
> us as solaris would be. Any suggestions of which one is more practical
> in a company enviroment, and would what are some pro and cons of the
> two

Solaris for Intel OOB supports only a very limited set of PC hardware -
especially video and network devices. Additional video drivers
are available from Xfree86 (via emulation mode) and other 
third parties.

- Finnbarr

fpm@hotmail.com (Finnbarr P. Murphy) writes:

>Solaris for Intel OOB supports only a very limited set of PC hardware -
>especially video and network devices. Additional video drivers
>are available from Xfree86 (via emulation mode) and other 
>third parties.


The Xfree86 "porting kit" (really a binary driver kit) allows you to
use most any graphics adapter; many network adaptors are supported
through the hardware vendors (Intel, broadcom, realtek) for Solaris/Intel.

Casper

Samuel Walters wrote:

> |Thus Spake Paul Pluzhnikov On the now historical date of Sun, 11 Jan 2004
> 13:56:58 -0800|
>> Having played with both Solaris and Linux will make you more
>> "experienced" than if you only played with one or the other.
> 
> Also, look into OpenBSD.  You'll get another perspective about unix
> systems.  When looking for help on OpenBSD, be sure to read all the
> documentation before seeking help online.  OpenBSD people are notoriously
> contankerous towards people who don't read the documentation.  The good
> part is that OpenBSD is one of the best documented systems out there and
> so is *very* good for learning unices.  Those OpenBSD'ers are so
> contankerous because they put so much work into properly documenting the
> system.
> 
> Be sure to read ESR's "Art of Unix Programming."  You may not want to be a
> programmer, but this book does a fine job of explaining how all the pieces
> of Unix systems fit together.
> 
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/
> 
> HTH
> Good Luck!
> 
> Sam Walters.
> 


So what about FreeBSD? Which one is better to use, and which one is easier
to install and more secured?