Looks like this thread has just got juicy, so much so that I've paused my TV show to add this comment
Actually as jlliagre pointed out, OpenOffice.org was sparked off by StarOffice and hence contains if not the same but similar source code. If you actually look at the naming conventions if downloaded the packages Star and Open office from Sun's website they both use the same binary names! soffice, swriter, scalc etc.
I must admit that I have only only been using Solaris for maybe 4 months now (versions 9 and 10) and Solaris Express Community Edition (SXCE) for even less.
Transitioning from Linux over to Solaris was pretty easy in terms of migrating certain network infrastructure services like DNS and reverse proxy but learning the OS itself is taking more time.
jlliagre being one of the first people 'ever' to help me with my transition to Solaris and actually made it and still makes it really pleasurable!!!
Sure the OS handles things in slightly in some cases and totally in other cases, ways but something to get used to if you want to bounce between UNIX's like me who is trying to get to grips for industry reasons.
The really cool thing about Sun is the fact that they produce such cool hardware and software but also have some really novel ideas also such as the Sun Ray system and powerful exchange solutions like the Java Communicator Suite.
I don't know much about Oracle at all other then it is enterprise scale database software similar in concept to MySQL and something else which I've forgotten now I think perhaps IBM or another??.... anyhow my only hope is that Oracle leave things as they are in terms of what's available but just make it better which through time and development things get anyway provided politics doesn't kill them first!
The only thing that I would like to be better with Solaris I guess is the printing system as I can't make heads or tales out of it, either because my printer isn't supported or the printmgr tool doesn't like consumer grade printers? Also CUPS got disregarded after Solaris 9 too which is another mistake in my opinion although that isn't the best software out there either but still it does support a good range of printers.
I just hope that I will be lucky enough to work in industry with Solaris and Sun hardware since it's so cool, I mean 64 - 128 CPU's can be handled by Solaris without it breaking a sweat - try doing that on an MS based platform of which the world is so much in favor of!!!
In terms of best UNIX I guess that is a personal thing, and I would like to stay neutral in this but chances are that yor cell phone or modem is connecting directly to it and that's a thought which is pretty reassuring when taking things into account.
Anyway back to my show now and is that the smell of beefburgers? Must be time for dinner soon
