No Solaris 9 for x86

Jon writes: "Unsurprisingly, LinuxWorld is reporting that Sun is not going to support Solaris 9 on PCs. The article cites a marketing suit who claims that the prevailing economic conditions account for this."

Comments

IDG article is apparently original source

[Jon Chatow]

Found here. But is this good, encouraging the curious to move to free OSes when exploring beyond Windows, or bad, removing a great way of finding out about an OS that is easier to convince your boss to have installed?

Prevailing market conditions...

[ergo98]

The market conditions are that Solaris on Intel machines is a total failure. As another poster in another argument mentioned: The only people who Solaris on Intel machines seem to be just taking it for a test run, and then they go back to their real OS (be it Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.).

Just thought that was a little more honest than claiming it's the recession or Sept. 11th fallout.

Re:Prevailing market conditions...

[ergo98]

Yes, in terms of actual revenue Solaris on Intel is a complete failure. In fact, it is farcical. But I dont think Sun ever considered it to be a primary business venture - more of a 'loss leader'.

Indeed, I've read many complaints arguing that Sun does a horrible job of optimizing on the Intel platform (hence "Slowaris") intentionally to make their own hardware look that much better. However that's a catch-22: It makes their hardware look better, but it makes their software look worse.

Why has it not been canned now?

[beezly]

Another interesting point to note is that Sun have not said that Solaris x86 is being canned. A t the moment they have just deferred the release of an initial FCS version of Solaris 9.

One of my colleagues suggested that perhaps Sun are testing the market, to see how people respond to a threat against future releases of S9/x86. If they wanted to get rid of Sol9/x86 then surely they could just come out and say so, but they haven't done that. Perhaps there is more to this than it initially seems.

Re:No proprietary unices left on x86

[Anonymous Coward]

...apart from QNX and Plan9...etc ?

The Register's vultures wrong again.

[zak]

UnixWare (now OpenUnix) is still in very active development. Check out the Caldera site.
It's only the best environment to run Linux apps on a multiprocessor, so I see why The Register would ignore it :)

Re:The Register's vultures wrong again.

[HeUnique]

You may want to look deeper - deeper then press releases and PR pages..

Go ahead to any Unix shop and ask them to write/port for you any application to Unix on X86 - sure, they'll be happy to do it for either Linux (most of them - RedHat), FreeBSD and Sco-Unix (or whatever Caldera calls it now)...

Now - you might want to take a look at the price purposal - Linux will be the cheapest one, 2nd will be FreeBSD and ScoUnix - the most expensive one - I know because a company I know asked me to look a bit into it and asked around and I got several prices - the scene was the same on all of them.

To make a long story short - it's dead, Jim - it might take a bit of time for SCO/Caldera Unix to die - but it's written on the wall - just like what Coherent Unix was on PC back then..

I never saw the point

[BenjyD]

I used Solaris 8 on intel for a few months and I have to say it was pretty nasty. Very little hardware support, poor performance and huge difficulties getting software to work, as porting to solaris is not exactly a high priority for developers.

Re:No proprietary unices left on x86

[mpe]

As this article [theregister.co.uk] on The Register points out, there are now no proprietary unices being actively developed on x86.
Linux and the BSDs remain the only options.

I don't see how this is a bad thing. One major problem with proprietary unix systems is that you end up different proprietary addons.Thus incompatabilities between systems.
Also remember that Sun's main business is selling hardware rather than software...

Overdue Decision

[4of12]

From a business perspective, I think this makes a lot of sense for Sun.

A few years back a friend tried to create a "UNIX laptop" for the purpose of having a portable roadshow platoform for a scientific code we have that was developed primarily on Solaris 2.5 and SPARC. At that time he found that Solaris/x86 was a lot of hassle to deal with and that Linux 1.2 was a better solution for him.

I think the resources spent on Solaris/x86 would have been better invested in bringing out the UltraSPARC III sooner and in further expanding utility of their big servers.

Am I missing something obvious in the following observation about the market landscape?

• x86 is further dominating the desktop, even now in the UNIX circles, where Linux/x86 offers price/performance ratios that *NIX/RISC cannot match
• big 64-way 128-way machines with high throughput are safely owned by *NIX/RISC, as IA64 development has been a fiasco (Intel would do better if they just swallowed their pride and brought out the Alpha 21364 under the house brand).

From my perspective, Sun would do well to find as many ways as possible to make Sun servers attractive in LANs of Linux/x86 desktops. The arena of high capacity servers is where x86 falls short and Sun shines. Make the most of it.

Not a solaris bash post!

[Cylix]

Well,

About a year ago I decided it was high time I get a little more experience with this demon known as Sun. At that point I was a hardcore Linux/X86 kinda guy with a love for Digital Unix as well.

So I pulled a Proliant from the back of the NOC and began installing Solaris 7 X86. Note, these compaq systems are Solaris certified (ie, every piece of hardware we had will work). The install went flawlessly and the box was up on the network upon completion. Granted solaris has a few *extra* features in inetd, but anyone with some sense can chisel that down to what is needed.

I could go into detail on everything I've done with the system, but the there really is only one bottom line. Solaris isn't a bad operating system at all. As long as you have all of the dependencies, most applications compile fine. (well, what I've used on the server end).

Sun support for non-customers has been fairly well. They release patches and updates frequently (not sure if its too frequently, but at least they fix their problems).

I've been happy with this operating system and I'm going to miss not installing and using 9.

The system is not without faults and I'm not an expert. Like any other piece of software, there will be times when it will frustrate the hell out of you. Thus is the nature of technology and if I damn Sun for it, I have to damn everyone else. (oh hell I do that all the time)