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The Return Of Solaris 9 For x86
The Pi-Guy writes: "Hoping that I won't screw up again about Solaris 9 on x86 again, this time I'm sure I got it right... eWeek is covering that indeed, Sun will be shipping Solaris 9 for x86 after all!!! Also in that article, they note that Sun is shipping a x86 based server, which will ship the 26th. It will be running a Sun Linux distro... Many surprises from Sun today!!"
Sun Microsystems announced the Sun LX50 today at LinuxWorld. They also are again shipping Solaris 8 for x86, the cost is $45 for the CD or $20 to download the CD image. They have not yet released Solaris 9 for x86 for general availability, as far as I can tell.
The LX50 is intended for edge computing. For example as a web or proxy server. It runs "Sun Linux 5.0", although I can't find out much about what that distro is. It appears to be based on the UltraLinux distro.
Since Solaris 8 for x86 was one of the fastest and most stable UNIX releases for Intel platforms I would venture to guess that the 9 release will be also. The usual problem will be the lack of ISV applications for the product. Although numerous open source packages will be available, making it a great web server or email server.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
Don't get excited yet, According to Infoworld the new Solaris x86 will only run on Sun hardware such as the Sun LX50. You won't be able to download it for free and use it on any system as in the past.
They are only doing this for the admins who want cheap Solaris hardware to mix in with their SPARC stuff. No more free lunches.
What are the real differences between Linux and Solaris as server OSes?
Solaris has:
- extreme CPU, disk, and peripheral scalability
- mature 64-bit support
- multiple scheduling and VM algorithms
- fine-grained patch management
- Dynamic Reconfiguration (allows partially-broken servers to continue running)
- easy hot-swapping
- Dynamic System Domains (multiple OS images)
- multipathing for networks and disks
- bundled management software (SMC, Disksuite, etc.)
- fairly easy installation (similar to Red Hat's install but much more robust)
- JumpStart automatic installation
- sccs (minor detail, but I like it)
- really good bundled documentation (enough to get a sysadmin cert. using it)
And I'm sure there are many more. One thing that is frustrating sometimes is that the Solaris vs. Linux vs. Windows arguments lose many of these details. Most people mindlessly regurgitate benchmarks or marketing-speak trying to justify their basically-religious feelings when an objective analysis would pose a much different argument.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin