Commercial Unix like Solaris and QNX were far better engineered than Linux ever was. Even Minix, which was used to bootstrap Linux, had a micro kernel design.
> Commercial Unix like Solaris and QNX were far better engineered than Linux ever was.
As with many other fields of endeavor, it is very hard to compete against free. Throw in the ability to fix any problems that might affect you personally, and you have a powerful combination.
The same goes for Apache as well, and to a lesser extent MySQL and Perl/Python/PHP.
Trying to set up an equivalent commercial stack was both painful and expensive (and not just the software licensing, but the minimum hardware requirements too). Not to mention that once you're considering commercial options, Microsoft was a contender, often with better initial ROI (the cost to exit Microsoft platforms was quite another matter).
This also glosses over that commercial Unices weren't superior technology. There was more polish (and a ton of own proprietary ugliness too) but you could pretty much build and run the same application stuff on Linux.
Solaris had technology like ZFS and dtrace (granted these now integrate with Linux). QNX had a micro-kernel and support for real time. Solaris would have made a better server OS and QNX a better mobile phone OS.
However Linux is free, and we have all benefited enormously from that, myself included and the tech giants.
You are trying to move the goal posts. Both Solaris and QNX are still examples of "superior technology" to Linux, despite both being dead for a long time. Kernel architecture is also highly relevant, ever wonder why Android phones only get a few years of updates?
You were literally wrong given the context of the conversation. It is immaterial which features Solaris got 13 years down the road in its competition with Linux (and Linux wasn't static as well).
> Kernel architecture is also highly relevant, ever wonder why Android phones only get a few years of updates?
I figure in your mind it has to do something with micro-architecture rather than vendors not giving a flying fart, so I'll bite. Can you explain the mechanism by which a monolithic kernel update is any harder than a bunch of services?
> You were literally wrong given the context of the conversation. It is immaterial which features Solaris got 13 years down the road in its competition with Linux.
No, you were wrong with the statement "This also glosses over that commercial Unices weren't superior technology.". The context was Linux killing off the (technically superior) competition, a process that took decades.
There are many other technologies that Solaris had years before Linux, e.g. decent SMP, Zones (containers), ZMF management and many other features that Linux still does not have. QNX had realtime features and a microkernel.
> I figure in your mind it has to do something with micro-architecture rather than vendors not giving a flying fart, so I'll bite.
The situation is more complex than "vendors not giving a flying fart". Linux does not have a stable module ABI, in fact, it doesn't even guarantee a stable API. This is all part of "kernel architecture" and highly relevant. Regarding microkernels, security concerns will eventually force this design on future operating systems (e.g. Google's Fuschia)
Minix was so good that Intel lifted the codebase (within the terms of the FOSS license, not telling the author) for their management backdoo- uhh engine.
