Although I did not blog yet on the subject, I have to admit : I am a Mac user and fan. I switched from Linux to Mac OS X 4 years ago, looking for an UNIX-rock solid OS allowing to enjoy also all home-computing activites : photo, movies, music, internet in an easy way. Mac OS X provides the best of both worlds : the rock solid unix foundation allied with the Aqua user interface and perfect integration with devices like camera, printer, scanner etc …
Since a couple of days, rumors are refering to a possible switch from Apple : they might use Intel processors in their future machines.
Today, our president & COO even proposed to go one step further : why not build Mac OS X on top of Solaris ?
With our without Sun, is this rumor a new marketing buzz ? is it reality ? Let’s wait for Steve Jobs keynote tonight at the WWDC.
#1 by aric on 17/11/2005 - 11:58
I see that you use Mac OS X at home and I presume Solaris for your work. I have been using OS X for about 4 years now and am thinking of swithing to Solaris 10 at work. I mainly use emacs, latex, pdf viewing, R, and office stuff. The switch is partially driven by finances and also I was thinking that the Sun Ray idea would be great in the future for the lab. Is this nuts to move from OS X to Solaris 10 as a desktop environment?
thanks
#2 by Sebastien Stormacq on 18/11/2005 - 04:00
Hello,
Indeed, I am using Solaris at work, everyday, on a laptop and through SunRays. Solaris is known to be a great platform for data centers for years, but the focus Sun put on Solaris x86 from a couple of years now makes it possible to use Solaris on the desktop a viable solution for corporate usage.
I am glad with Solaris on my laptop because I don’t care of the following :
– PDA synchronization
– Power Management
– Multimedia (playing music, watching DVDs or DiVX, burning CDs)
– Adobe Acrobat Reader (available are Acrobat 4.x and Gnome-pdf viewer)
Should any of these be a stopper requirement for you, then NO, Solaris on the desktop is not (yet) for you.
Most of these areas are currently being improved, the situation will probably be much different in a year or so. For example, new wifi drivers have just been posted to opensolaris.org a couple of days before.
For people, like me, making a strong distinction between their home environment and their work environment, Solaris is a great solution for day-to-day work.