 [2penguins]                [The Linux Resource Exchange]
            Feauturing: A comparison between Operating Systems.

We are currently collecting information on AIX and several others, they
will be included as soon as we have enough information.

                    Operating Systems comparison chart

                                 Make a new Comparison
                        there's 13 OS's to choose from

               [Image]                  [Image]         [Image]          [Image]
[Image]        Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0


OS convenience
               Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0
Bugfixes and   Freely download able, and                Some (all???)    Freely download able.
other updates  available on CD. Both a                  minor
               stable and a                             updates/bugfixes
               bleeding-edge version is                 can be downloaded
               available.                               freely.
                                                        Subscription
                                                        customers get's
                                                        major upgrades on
                                                        CD.



Run a GUI app  yes                      yes             yes              no
on one machine                                                           3. party software exist
Diaplay it on                                                            that can display a GUI
another                                                                  from a Unix machine



Virus          no                       no              no               yes - is vulnerable to dos
                                                                         virus





Hardware
               Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0
Peripherals    Most PC hardware.                        All current SparcMany PC peripherals works
                                                        peripherals, somewith NT, many doesn't. See
                                                        PC peripherals.  the HCL for a list of
                                                                         devices that are certified
                                                                         to work.



Platforms      PC >= 386, Digital Alpha,PC >= 386       Sparc and PC >=  i386 >= 486, Alpha.
               Sparc, UltraSparc, PPC,                  386              Ther's some limited
               StrongARM                                                 support for Prep PowerPC's
               More are in development                                   and some older MIPS
                                                                         machines





More Info
               Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0
Mailing lists  An index of Linux
               mailing-lists and
               newsgroups



Newsgroups     comp.os.linux.*          comp.unix.sco.* comp.sys.sun.*
               alt.os.linux.*                           comp.unix.solaris
               An index of Linux
               mailing-lists and
               newsgroups



Manufacturs    The difference between   www.sco.com     www.sun.com      www.microsoft.com
web-pages      2.0.* and 2.2.*
               www.linuxhq.com
               The Linux Rescource
               Exchange





OS
               Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0
Single Unix    no                       no              yes              no
Specification
v.1
(UNIX95)
Single Unix    no                       no              no               no
Specification
v.2
(UNIX98)
Address space  32 bit on PC's 32 bit    32 bit          32 bit on Intel  32 bit
               Sparc's                                  and Sparc, 64 bit
               64 bit on UltraSparc and                 on UltraSparc
               Alpha



Multiple CPU's SMP up to 16 CPU's, much SMP up to 30    SMP on both SparcSMP
               improved performance in  CPU's           and Intel        2 CPU's in workstation
               comparison to 2.0.*,                     64 CPU's on sparcedition,
               clustering                                                4 CPU's in server edition.
                                                                         OEM's might implement
                                                                         support for more in their
                                                                         versions.



Max. file size 16 TB (ext2)                             1 TB (on         2 GB on FAT partitions,
                                                        UltraSparc)      64 GB on NTFS



Max. file                                               1 TB (on
system size                                             UltraSparc)



OS Flavor      Designed from scratch to SysV            SysV R4          A unique Microsoft design.
               be Posix and now Unix98
               compliant.
               Has some backwards
               compatibility for older
               *nix'n.



Max. memory    2 GB                     2 GB                             2 GB for programs and 2 GB
                                                                         for NT



Memory         yes                      yes             yes              mostly
protection                                                               Needs to be switched on
                                                                         for some 16 bit apps



POSIX.1        A posix.1 certified Linuxyes             yes              no
certification  2.0.* kernel is available                                 but ther's a Posix
               from Unifix.                                              subsystem that's
               The main kernel is                                        certified.
               designed to be posix
               complient, but haven't
               been certified.



Threads        posix 1003.1c                            posix 1003.1c    yes flavour unknown



XPG4 base 95   no                       yes             yes              no





OS and network interoperability
               Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0
NIS and NIS+   NIS yes, NIS+ in beta                    NIS and NIS+



Runnable       Windows 3.*-98 (Wine),   Dos, Windows    Macintosh (MAE), MAC (Executor), dos,
foreign        Windows (Wabi), Dos      3.1, Win95      Windows 3.1      windows 3.1/W32,
binaries       (dosemu), Mac (Executor),(WINE), DOS,    (WABI)
               SCO and some other Intel Windows 3.*,
               based SysV's(iBCS)       Win95 (SCO
                                        Merge)



Boot diskless  yes                                      yes              no
from a
networked
bootserver
dhcp server    yes                                      yes              yes



Disk sharing   NFS, SAMBA Net BIOS file SCO VisionFS    NFS, FileSync,   smb, Appletalk, SNA
servers        and print servers,       (Windows file   LANManager/SMB,
               Appletalk, Netware       and print),     SAMBA Net BIOS
               (NCPFS), Netware         SAMBA Net BIOS  file and print
               (mars_nwe)               file and print  servers, Novell,
                                        servers         Appleshare



Mountable      ext2, FAT, HFS, VFAT,                    UFS, iso9660,    FAT, VFAT, NTFS, iso9660
filesystems    FAT32, UFS read-only,                    VxFS is available
               SYSV (Cohorent, SCO,                     as an option
               Xenix), HPFS read-only
               (OS/2), iso9660 (CDROM),
               Joliet (Microsoft CD-ROM
               filenaming system), ext,
               minix, NTFS (read-only),
               HFS (MacOS), FFS (Amiga),
               Acorn RiscOS



Java           yes                      yes             yes              yes



Printer        SAMBA Net BIOS file and  SAMBA Net BIOS  lp, SAMBA Net    smb, lpr
servers        print servers,           file and print  BIOS file and
               lpr, Novell              servers         print servers





Provider
               Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0
Manufactor     Developed, programmed andThe Santa Cruz  Sun Microsystems Microsoft, USA
               maintained by a big groupOperation Inc., Inc.
               of people from all over                  901 San Antonio
               the world.                               Road
                                                        Palo Alto
                                                        CA 94303 USA



Pricing        free                     Free for        pay-ware or 2    pay-ware,
                                        personal, and   year             client computers accessing
                                        educational     subscriptions    an NT server need to buy a
                                        purposes,                        seperate license called a
                                        pay-ware for                     "Client Access License".
                                        other purposes



Source policy  GPL                      confidential    Source is        Confidential
                                                        available to some
                                                        people on some
                                                        conditions





User base
               Linux 2.2                SCO OpenServer  Solaris 7.0      NT 4
                                        5.0
Installed      The Linux Counter
systems        estimates that ther's
               around 8.000.000 Linux
               users, but no-one really
               knows.



Purposes most  Network servers,         LAN application Workstations,    Desktop computers for
used for       low-end/midrange/highend and disk server network servers, office/technical/graphics
               workstations or                          db-servers,      work,
               workstation replacements,                app-servers,     file/print/web/whatever
               database servers, thin                   file-servers     servers for light to
               clients (NC's), embedded                                  somewhat high loads.
               systems (eg. escalators,
               factory machines, POS
               terminals), fun.



                                                     Make a new Comparison
                                            there's 13 OS's to choose from

 The information in this chart are mostly from the OS and applications
 manufactors web-pages. The blank fields are areas where we haven' yet
 found adequate verified information.

 We appriciate updates, corrections and general information for this
 chart, especially if it is backed by URL's to "official" sites where it
 can be verified.
 A big thank-you goes to all of you who have send us information.
 Your help have made this chart much better than we could have made it
 ourself

 Comments, corrections etc. can be e-mailed to Kristian Elof Srensen at
 elof@image.dk or entered below.

 Last updated on May the 9. 1999

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Most recent comments to this page:

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Written at June the 24. 1999 10:26:08 CDT by Sorry, not disclosable at
 present <witheld@noname.com>

 I've worked with PCs for 15 years and am now looking for a job without
 them (difficult) and without Microsoft. Microsoft - who in my opinion do
 not deserve to be in existance have messed me around with so many updates
 which just make matters worse. I currently dread going to work where a
 simple PC callout ends up being a complete reinstall (3 hours!) I am now
 looking into Linux VERY seriously as my last hope of sanity! I AM at the
 top of my profession knowing more than Microsoft's technical support and
 more than most of the motherboard manufacturers/PC builders (reality -
 not boasting!). Boards today are often not configured for win98 properly
 and PCs which are purchased from HP, Tiny, Gateway, Simply and others are
 not stable from the day of purchase - I have often been called out to fix
 them by customers who cannot get in contact with customer support (three
 hours on hold is not uncommon).

 If a PC/motherboard is sent back for replacement the same errors occur.
 The manufacturers of boards/PCs seem to be giving up knowing that the job
 is almost impossible.

 If I can find a decent word processor for LINUX then I will be set up my
 own business selling home PCS with this instead. Its got to be better
 than paying through the nose for software that just doesn't work!

 Everyone is waiting for that next version from Micosoft that just might
 work - it never has! windows 95 with the stuff from years ago on the PCs
 I was involved with years ago are far more reliable than the newer ones
 with 98 and explorer 4 or 5 (which are both full of bugs and affect the
 reliability of the system even when explorer is not in use)

 As you can tell, I am at the end of my tether but am reluctant to give up
 PCs altogether.

 If you want to play games buy a nintendo or playstation - they can be
 bought for less than most of the cards often required for the best games.
 Games will often wreck you PC (non standard video cards, drivers and
 directX

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Written at June the 23. 1999 11:41:30 CDT by Bill Griffin
 <bill-gri@cswnet.com>

 If I were to learn Linux, where in the US could I expect to obtain
 employment as a programmer or computer technician? Also, what kind of
 salaries do Linux programmers acquire?

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Written at June the 23. 1999 10:50:55 CDT by Aksel
 <aksel_arnesen@admin.state.ak.us>

 Get Linux. It's cool. Note on your comparisons: For the Mac OS, with the
 new version of X (better than 8) you can do remote booting off of the
 server, aka diskless workstations. The clients don't even need hard
 drives. Jobs did an example of this with about 40 iMacs and a G3 server.
 Check it out at apple.com

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Written at June the 21. 1999 17:48:10 CDT by R. Seay <>

 I was glad to see you site given that I have been looking for a
 comparison of OS for several days. Good information. I would like to have
 more informance ofn performance of various OSs.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Written at June the 20. 1999 22:34:34 CDT by Jeff <mejeff-tdp@juno.com>

 HELP!?!?!?! Ok, i've read all the following but i'm still lost. Which is
 better? Should i get freeBSD or Linux or both? they both support dual OS
 boot right? I just want something other than windoze. Thanx for any
 comments =)

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Written at June the 16. 1999 15:29:22 CDT by Dan <dancer@cnmnetwork.com>

 What I, and probably everyone else, want is a replacement for window! Can
 this do that or will it ever be able to do that?

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Written at June the 8. 1999 01:11:10 CDT by Robby Casteel
 <rcasteel@discoverynet.com>

 Windows NT 4.0 has a file limit of 16 Exabytes in an NTFS. This is the
 same as the File systems max size too. I believe your site has this
 incorrectly listed as 64 GB. It should also be duely noted that the 2 GB
 partition limit on FAT applies to all FAT file systems, not just NT.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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