&gt; [...] well, SmartOS has to start somewhere.<p>When SmartOS or generally Solaris-descendants&#x27; zones start being anywhere near
popular, then we&#x27;ll talk about <i>eating Linux&#x27;s lunch</i>. For now the situation
doesn&#x27;t look like that even remotely.<p>&gt; What exactly is objectionable about running a Solaris-like operating environment?<p>To me -- not much at first sight. But there is the factor of familiarity,
which is very, very important. There are plenty of sysadmins, you know, who
can recover Linux from almost any failure, and gaining similar knowledge in
different OS takes quite long time. Solaris derivatives (or BSDs, for that
matter) are at huge disadvantage to those people.