I worked for Sun for 4 years during the Java boom. And during that time, if you wanted good server software, Solaris was your ticket. IBM, yeah, Linux, yeah, but really, Solaris was tip top.

But that was a year and a half ago. Now, I’m working on a stealth mode project for a client in Silicon Valley and am looking at a whole lotta software as part of the operation. Some of it is cutting edge stuff, some isn’t. The thing is that it all sucks on Solaris. Bugs, crashes, you name it, it’s happening. And it’s obvious that the vendors of this software (big names most of them–the stuff that you may be using) have spent zero time qualifying the entire package on Solaris. Furthermore, one vendor’s download site is even set up so that you can’t download the Solaris software package using the default Netscape browser that comes with Solaris 8. How stupid is that?

The really bad thing is that its all working a hell of a lot better on Windows. It’s really sad. This means that even though Solaris is a better server OS than Windows, it’s becoming harder to build next gen apps on top of. This isn’t good for Sun.

One theory that I have to explain this: Most developers are working on laptops these days. And that means that they are running Linux or Windows. Solaris x86 on a laptop? Hah! Sun never put any effort into that, and they may be reaping the seeds of that decision now.

Are you noticing the same thing?