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

Re:Prevailing market conditions...

[andrewscraig]

Yeah - I noticed this Sun Blade thing, but what I don't like is that they are somehow charging $695 for a basic 10/100 NIC. This strikes me as a little costly, to say the least...

Also, anyone know of the European availability of these beasts?

Have you ever tried to USE Solaris on x86?

[EvilNight]

It's a complete fscking joke! God forbid you want to install a decent raid controller (say 64bit 66MHz for example), even if you find one that is "supported" by Sun and the vendor, I bet money you'll be on the phone with the vendor for three days trying to find a working set of drivers. It's dead slow on Intel. Install DOS, it's faster and has better support.

I get stuck dealing with it because the poor fools we support absolutely MUST have "development" boxes that mirror the production boxes. All the production (Oracle 8i DB) is Solaris on Sun hardware. We can't afford Sun boxes for testing, but the platform has to be the same, hence the need for Solaris on Intel: cheap Sun development boxes. Putting Oracle 8i and Solaris 2.7/2.8 on Intel is like trying to install OS/2 Warp on a Commodore 64. Managers get pissed when you bill them a shitload of time (2+ days on some occasions) just for a working OS install. Especially when you write "Use Linux next time" in the comments field. ;)

Every chance I get I hammer management relentlessly, without pity or mercy, about what a shitfest this OS is on Intel. There is NO excuse, Linux can be made to simulate a Sun environment with precious little effort. Thank GOD that Sun finally decided to can this thing. Now I get to sit back and laugh hysterically since they have no choice except to use Linux. SuSE + Oracle = 10,000x faster performance on Intel than Solaris.

In case you couldn't tell, I have enough frustration energy from dealing with this OS to light up a small star system for a few years...

I've nothing against Solaris on SUN hardware, mind you. It kicks a hell of a lot of ass there. There's something very nice about an OS optimized specifically for the hardware it runs on. Must be why Mac users are always smiling (or it could be the drugs they are on, what do I know...)