Solaris might actually be the best OS on Earth

I confess, it's been a long time since I undertook the effort to operate a Unix system. When I began shopping for operating systems last month, I had only a general idea of what I was interested in doing. I need to run a minimum of four servers in a clustered configuration with one of them accessible to the Internet. This means one connection server, two application servers and a database server.

Now, with funding at a bare minimum, I also cannot afford a commercial operating system, nor would I pay for one. Windows is NOT an option, even though it is supposed to run Java fast. The only other feasible option I could think of was Solaris.

"Solaris? Doesn't Solaris Suck?" I thought. So, I googled "solaris sucks" and dug around. I found nothing substantive, and decided to burn the ISOs. Give it a whirl.

Four weeks later, I've purchased both of the Solaris Internals hardcover books and a book on Solaris System Admin certification, and I'm absolutely convinced I made the correct choice. Solaris is awesome. Let me count the ways:

1. Fine grained role-based access control (RBAC) instead of su
2. Zones (in lieu of virtualization) that fully integrates with RBAC
3. Easy to install and lock down. The secure configuration options right out of install are fantastic
4. Gives Java apps a performance boost
5. Best OS documentation I've ever read

Now, this is a pretty pie-in-the-sky list, but it's my sky, and pie beats cake any day. The first item in the list, by itself, was worth the initial (small) learning curve. This is an Open Source Operating System (OS^2?) with military-grade security features integrated at the kernel level.

Okay, so no bad news yet. I'm still learning about Solaris, very eager to set up my security zones and start focusing on application development again, but I have no regrets whatsoever about going this route. Maybe someday I'll pick up a couple of Sun boxes to get the rest of that performance boost, and be able to run a real Java shop.

I promise, however--if I find big gaping holes in this OS, or major annoyances I will be as vocal about them as I have been about the great first four weeks.