Re: so Windows and Redhat the winners
No we are running Sybase 15 on Solaris 10. Since you opened the conversation, I have already transferred all my data and schema from Sybase to SQL Server and done the tests. This is a massive system to transfer so no margin for errors, or jokes. My SQL Server runs on my PC 3.4G Ram, 2 core, the Solaris box is a proper production box with 32G memory, don't want to give much detail for obvious reasons. Any ad-hoc query like count, group by anything I've thrown at it runs quicker on my PC SQL Server. I have 20m rows in some tables. The more complicated stuff still runs much faster on SQL Server. I challenge you to do the same, if Sybase wins I'll buy you a beer or 2.
I think this is a Sybase shortcoming not Unix but don't have time or space to run Sybase on a Windows box. I know the optimisation on Sybase is no good so wasn't surprised but was surprised by the margin, ranges from 1.5 to 5x.