TjPhysicist said:
Yes, I know: "ANOTHER vs thread", but I have honestly not been able to find an up to date answer to this question. While most vs threads cover usability or features and so on, that's NOT what I am concerned about primarily.
So at first I kind of ignored the whole thread because, as you said yourself, "Yet another one...". But going over it I feel it needs a little more background, even though
@SirDice basically said it all.
But there is a very good reason for it too, and it isn't solely an issue of Solaris being owned by Oracle either, though they are the major cause of it all.
The thing is; Oracle likes money. And basically prefer it over everything else to such extends that they'd rather get less frequent but bigger portions instead of smaller portions and optionally more frequent.
Sun Microsystems had several subscription models for their Solaris OS even though the OS itself was usable free of charge. What you basically paid for (apart from supporting an, in my opinion, awesome operating system and likewise company) was access to continuous updates. Now, this may sound weird at first; continue reading.. Solaris updates, just like the OS, were of course free too. But if you relied on the free part you'd also rely on a different distribution model, which basically pushed out an update package every once in a while. Usually every one or two months.
Note that this did not include security updates. Unlike Microsoft Sun has always realized their responsibility and as such have always provided security updates for free. Even dating back to Solaris 6 and 7 which you had to pay for (note: with "free" I'm not insinuating "easy to download" or "obtainable in an (end)user friendly manner").
Still, the free update model basically meant that you had to invest quite a bit of time to keep your system up to date. Compare it to the Ports system; if you update every week you'll have a lot less issues than if you update every month. The less frequent the update, the more ports which might require your attention and in general more work.
The commercial update on the other hand allowed access to continuous updates, but still heavily tested updates of course.
And the best part about their subscription model is that both big players as well as smaller ones (like myself) could all benefit.
Back in the days I used 4 Solaris servers and had an update subscription for 3 of them. Even though I could probably have chosen to keep 1 up to date and push the updates further down myself. I didn't bother because this was easier (took less time), I had the feeling I was supporting an awesome operating system and most of all: I could afford it.
So what was one of the first things Oracle did after the
assimilation, corporate takeover? (I'll keep it professional
).
Simple; raising the prices for the Solaris subscriptions. Two to threefold.
Where I paid approximately E 180,- / per server per year I was now looking at something starting to tick around E 700,-. Worse yet: the provided services were also heavily cut short. Extra's like SunSolve access were all removed (SunSolve was a specific website which contained in-depth and technical information of just about every piece of hardware Sun had produced).
That was pretty much the beginning of the end for Solaris.
Sure; we still have OpenSolaris (project Indiana if I recall correctly).
First: don't get me wrong here, I heavily respect the project. I think it's commendable that some people feel so strongly about their preferred OS that they decide to take matters into their own hands.
But still... Personally I never really liked OpenSolaris myself.
But the thing is: it seems that many people forget that Sun has spend a lot of company resources working on OpenSolaris. I don't think it'll be that easy to pick that up, something which in my opinion has proven itself in the last years when looking at the progress (or somewhat lack of) which has been made.
Not to mention the issue that companies have been bailing out of Solaris (and can you blame them?). And that is another important aspect: if you invested in moving away from Solaris then you'll need a lot more than merely looking at a situation where a sort of status quo of the previous situation is maintained before you'll even consider to move back again. I think it's safe to say that in general all the companies which moved on are gone for good.
So yeah, Solaris really is pretty much dead where commercial usage is concerned.
And from a company perspective I would be very reluctant to pick it up again myself, even though Solaris is my all time favourite Unix environment. Simply because, once again with all due respect, it has become a liability.
FreeBSD has been around almost as long as Unix itself existed (not entirely true, but you get the idea) and same can be said for Solaris as it was. Yet the OpenSolaris group basically still has to prove themselves. For all I know (from a commercial point of view) they could be gone next month. That makes it a liability, especially in comparison to Sun being out of the picture and the love/hate relationship with Oracle.
TjPhysicist said:
My basic question is this: Which am I more likely to find useful to know, in terms of a career in UNIX/Linux administration?
I think I answered the main question up there.
You'll still find Solaris around, but usually in enterprise environments where companies simply can't afford to "just" move on. Even so, I think it's very likely that many of them may have started a transition to move away already. So even if you do come across Solaris I wouldn't be surprised if the first thing you heard was that it was getting ready to be put into retirement.
Even though the question has already been answered I hope this still can shed some different light on the matter.
Edit: Null edit & fixed broken quote.