Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux?

None of your requirements, at least when they're as unqualified as they are, can help you to pick an OS.<p>Ask yourself where your bottleneck will be, then ask yourself if the OS is going to make any difference there. The answer is very likely no.<p>No modern OS is going to give you any significant performance/cost advantage over another in serving regular web apps. Most of your trouble will be in setting it up and maintaining it, so go ahead and pick whatever you're most comfortable, or, if you're not comfortable, ask someone who are (and that you trust).<p>Also, don't pick CentOS, unless you need RH compatibility.

I'd use FreeBSD.<p>OpenSolaris is officially dead. Solaris isn't low cost for sure. FreeBSD gives you a high performing io/network stack plus extras from Solaris world, like DTrace &#38; ZFS, plus a focus of maintainers on just these features you seem to need most. This is contrary to many Linux distros, even commercial ones like RedHat, where the focus seems to drift to different directions over time, as they are trying to please different groups of users/donators/customers.<p>If you decide Linux anyway, I'd recommend Debian instead of CentOS. Contrary to common belief, RedHat/CentOS distros are "enterprise-oriented" maybe in the aspect of supporting typical Java development, but when it comes to production operations their enterpriseness does not necessarily shine, esp. when things break. YMMV.<p>These recommendations change a lot if you must deploy Oracle databases on the machines.<p>Well many people want to give their 2 cents in this thread; while this is excellent, I'd like to point I'm a sysadmin of various Unices since 15 years so I claim to know what I mean and not just promote personal prefs when saying something about OSes (if it was my personal bias I'd use Slackware forever). If you had further questions and wished to ask them privately, you'll find contact links on my profile.

If you are unsure of which to pick, perhaps it's indicative that you're going to have other problems ahead: maybe you should hire someone to advise you and help you out.

My 2 cents: Oracle is going to drive Solaris into the ground (and OpenSolaris doubly so). It's days were already numbered, like all proprietary Unixes, but while before I was betting on Solaris to be the last one standind, now I think it will probably be AIX.

You left out a big piece of information. Are you going to be setting up these servers physically (colocation?) or are you going to be going with a hosting provider?<p>Pick what you know, though from what you have posted I'm not sure you know either of the systems you mentioned very well. Actually, unless you are a professional systems administrator then even picking what you know may not be good enough. You can setup your own servers if you are running on a low budget, but ideally you would be paying someone to take care of all your administration needs.<p>So, I assume from your budget you won't be buying your own servers and even if you were interested in buying your own servers you don't have the expertise to set them up properly. You will then be looking at hosting.<p>You should probably be looking at a hosting provider which offers managed hosting. This will be your support. Don't worry so much about the distribution, just choose whatever that provider has available.<p>Arguably Solaris is superior to Linux in many ways. If you want to go that route I would suggest Joyent as a provider. Linux is wide open for hosting choices. Find one you like and is within your price range and go with them.<p>You probably need to start out with a VPS as opposed to a dedicated server. Done right, a dedicated server is generally much more expensive than a VPS. Also, a dedicated server requires a lot of knowledge just to know what to look for.<p>Your widest choice of offerings for a VPS is linux. Pick one which offers a managed plan and go with whatever that plan ships with. If you have a choice, just go with CentOS. Personally, I prefer Ubuntu, but that's not on your list.

I've used Solaris on Sun SPARC hardware and it is a very strong environment for heavy duty enterprise applications, especially if you have to use Oracle and/or Java. But very expensive solution. With Oracle now owning them, I don't think the cost of ownership is going to be coming down, but the quality of support might.<p>If you are using FibreChannel and SAN attached storage, then Sun might still be a good option. But seriously I'd look at HPUX and AIX as well.<p>My experiences with OpenSolaris on x86 (non-Sun) hardware has been disappointing. Maybe I had high expectations due to the SPARC experiences.<p>These days, I only use Ubuntu Server LTS editions. APT and the Debian infrastructure meets my needs well. Also use PostgreSQL rather than Oracle RDBMS.

wearing dev,sysadm, architect hats running these platforms since 1999. i had the most consistency and general usability with freebsd. freebsd is easier to maintain and learn its features, docs are great. choose the one that you need to learn the least to run, install and maintain. yes i am somewhat biased to freebsd based on my own experience. the past say about 5 years solaris gave me many headaches like library dependecies, package management. freebsd, linux have good package managements. solaris has solid reliability and performance. all things considered, go with freebsd. freebsd security is easier to learn than selinux.

Wow, this is a question that can really fracture a community.<p>My two cents, from pretty extensive linux experience and one short Solaris experience: do what aligns more with your IT admin's philosophy.<p>My feel for Solaris is that everything is managed -- there are daemons to watch daemons whose job it is to make sure certain apps don't go down.<p>Linux is a bit less monitored -- "Oh, your apache process shouldn't have gone down? Shit you shoulda had something watching it."<p>Personally, I like the more ad hoc feel to linux. But pick whichever your sysadmin prefers. Solaris, to me, felt like I was being handcuffed.

Why can't you deploy whatever you've been developing and testing on? That would make most sense to me.<p>For me, that would mean OpenSuse, but that seems to be a minority choice these days.<p>Anyway, I would advise against OpenSolaris after Oracle (paid for Solaris might be OK) - see the recent leaked emails etc. When I use CentOs I am always frustrated that they are using such old software versions (Python 2.4!), but that may just be the clients I have. For stability and security a BSD is not a bad idea, but again check for versions of the software you need.

Whatever you choose, stay clear of Solaris. Especially OpenSolaris (that's a dead-end).<p>If you're unfamiliar with both, Linux systems are easier to get used to, in my experience.