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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!!"
how much? will it cost regular home users cost of shipping only like past versions?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
all seven Solaris x86 users are jumping for joy. ;)
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Or as robust ;)
dude, Xenix has been out for years!!
Microsoft reliability with UNIX(tm) price. unbeatable.
Microsoft reliability with UNIX(tm) price. unbeatable.
Since I wouldn't pay $10 for so-called Microsoft reliability (the last MS OS I bought was Win95 because it was bundled with my PC) Xenix must be free???
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
Sources close to industry insiders at slashdot say that Sun will be releasing Solaris 9 for x86.
Is it bad when an article uses a source that is using the original article as its source.
Not only will Solaris 9 run on x86, but Sun's new LX50 server is x86 based. And the really cool thing is you can get it with either Solaris or Sun's new Linux distro. This marks an interesting turn for Sun, throwing support to both x86 processors *and* linux.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Already been done. Check out the RoadRunner series of computers from Sun. Granted, it's not a true IBM PC compatible, but it was Intel based. It was killed in favor of the 68K/SPARC architectures.
Apparently, Solaris for x86 is not going to be GA like Solaris for SPARC is.
It appears to only be available as a shipping option on the x86-based LX-class servers...
Cheers,
Ken
to make my x86 run like a (x-1)86.
four-oh-four
Because Solaris is too "heavy" for the smaller hardware (think desktops) and Linux is too "light" for the big hardware (think E10K+) Solaris has a huge tool-set for hotswapping, clustering, etc.
Who is John Galt?
Do penguins like sun?
because, you know I thought they didn't.
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.
Why would I want to run Solaris x86 over Linux or BSD? I have used Solaris on Sun boxen but never have touched it on the x86.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Any word?
I guess since Sun is in the 64 bit domain....it might not make sense. But then again, it might!
Sun is releasing their LX50 today as well, their first general purpose Intel 1U server.
p hp
s sories/sr 1200/index.htm
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/lx50/
I actually participated in the beta and was very underwhelmed.
This machine is nothing more than an identical clone of the: http://www.penguincomputing.com/store/relion-125.
Which in turn is an OEMed Intel server:
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/acce
Very pathetic, Sun is becoming another Dell! I guess they realize that their market for "boutique" servers with SPARC CPUs is no longer profitable, at least at the 2 range.
The part that annoys me the most is that they are taking RedHat advanced server and re-branding it Sun Linux 5.0...they will waterdown thrid-party ISVs support by doing this IMO.
Try here for further info...
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
I don't realy see why I would run solaris on an x86 system. Sun hardware combined with solaris is great, because you get a good OS and very well tested stable hardware. On an x86 based system however, there are better options for servers with were made natively for x86 and not ported, such as windows 2000. Personally I find native x86 OS's more reliable than ported ones. If you use sun hardware however, solaris is great and the only real option to use.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
The reason for keeping Solaris for x86 alive?
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As a stepping stone for those geeks that want to learn and work on Solaris, but are unable to afford real Sun hardware and don't want to take the risks associated with second-hand-could-be-missing-important-pieces-of-
For instance, I personally used Solaris 8 x86 for this purpose. I loaded it up on an old 200Mhz system that I had laying around. Granted the installation took way to long, the boot process took way to long. However, in the end, I had a functioning Solaris running box to play with.
I started learning the Solaris commands. The files in
Why knock Solaris x86 as slow? As a Solaris learning platform, it is more than perfect for someone on a budget who may have a spare PC, but little dough to blow on Ebay. Personally, I wouldn't use it in a production environment, on the hardware that it came with.
I am quite certain that it will be faster with specially provided drivers for hardware that has the "blessing" of Sun.
If you ignore a tool for the other uses it has, does that make the tool less usefull or you less usefull?
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I worked for a company that had quad 486 SCO boxes, rather good boxes for a couple hundred people doing customer tracking and parts ordering, each with 3-4 telnet sessions per person. This is when I learned about Merge that allowed our Admins to run SCO/Win311 boxes. (Ok, it was a long time ago!)
I know a few people who run Solaris x86, mostly for firewall use, they seem to like it. It seems to support pcmcia, so 2 nics and a older laptop and you have a portable firewall.
"It appears to be based on the UltraLinux [ultralinux.org] distro. "
No, is based in RedHat Linux 7.2
why risk a reputation of stability on hardware configs they havent tested well? This way they can build and sell x86 machines with hardware configs they know WILL work stable.
-
April Fools was months ago - enough is enough!
Is the phrase "Going Forward" the 21st century equivalent of the telegraph statement "STOP"?
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
IF you own Sun Hardware AND have a service contract on your Solaris software, it costs nothing. Since people buying servers that big are paying a million plus for the hardware, they also purchase annual maintenance agreements from Sun. The cost of your Solaris maintenance agreement is $0 if combined with hardware maintenance.
In ten years of supporting Sun platforms I have yet to pay for a operating environment upgrade.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
Don't forget (Free|Open|Net)BSD! These have a genuine UNIX heritage.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
As a Solaris x86 user, I'm happy that Sun is releasing Solaris 9 for x86, but I continue to be puzzled as to why they are doing so. It makes no business sense to me. A modern x86 running Solaris 9 will spank a Sun Blade 100, so providing an x86 version of Solaris seems likely to hurt sales of lower-end Sun workstations. A decent x86 box is blindingly fast, in fact, and I would not be surprised to see them even hurt sales of low-end UltraSPARC servers. From a business standpoint, I think that Sun should have stuck to their guns and told the world "if you want to run Solaris, you will have to buy a Sun computer."
For the Linux crowd, the Solaris OS has a level of stability, maturity, and unified feel that Linux simply lacks. It's a one-company vision of how a Unix OS should work and, while I don't always agree with them, the consistency is refreshing. No, this isn't flamebait or a troll. I have removable drives with Mandrake 8.2 and Solaris 8 and I'm not bashing Linux, but I'd sooner choose Solaris for a mission-critical application.
Do you have a URL for that?
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
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Sun has excellent products in both the hw and os arenas, but Sparc/Solaris isn't for everyone.
By not fully embracing Sparc/Linux and x86/Solaris, Sun was cutting its own throat.
Sun ought to make the new software products as Free as they possibly can in order to gain some mindshare. For example, I think they should give us an easy, free download of x86/Solaris for non-commercial use.
I'm pretty sure they're referring to the return of Solaris to the x86. Solaris 8 was available, then they cut off Solaris 9 and announced it was for SPARC only.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
:-D
:-D
Yes, this is one special feature 4U and welcome to my universe
We took over the student ACM, weaseled an unused facilty office from the CS department and went to work on assembling a small lab based on the UPL at UW-Madison (we stole their name, too, which really frosted them and nearly earned me a beating from a guy with a crowbar, but I digress).
The real trouble was getting machines to run "real" UNIX distros on.
Given that, the Solaris x86 distribution was an attractive alternative. In the end, we didn't go with it because $99 was prohibitive (hey, we were *college* students). However, if I knew then what I know now (how good Solaris use and admin is on a resume), I would have insisted we spring for it on the second machine we put together from donated bits -- as it was we just used Linux.
So, there's your roundabout answer: It's for people who can't afford Big Iron but want to learn Solaris.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I wonder how much work really went into it. 8 is already shipping with 75% of it's software from GNU ports
Am I the only one that doubts that there is (or, at least, wasn't) any such word as "Productization"? They used it *twice* in the article. [ahbadee-ahbadee-ahbadee (the sound made by a toon when shaking his head to clear it!)] :)
So Microsoft reliability is a good thing? Frankly, if it weren't the only operating system that actually supported any software, I wouldn't use it because the damn thing doesn't even boot up 10% of the time.
It probably wouldn't even be a problem at that if there were actually something wrong with my computer, but it's brand new and running Windows XP pro and when I reboot, not a single error message. I certainly hope the parent comment was meant as humor.
Just look at the benchmarks... Slowlaris is blown away by Linux.
Benchmarks? I don't see any benchmarks in your post.
Solaris and Linux are different beasts. It is fair to say that Solaris and Linux are optimized differently, where Linux may win on small computers, and Solaris shines as the number of processors, disks, or peripherals increases. Quite honestly, Solaris probably just gets better and better as the computer gets bigger. As it should if a 212-CPU Sun Fire 15K becomes possible next year.
Also, Solaris incorporates features that only IBM will be able to put into Linux: Dynamic Reconfiguration, for example.
At its core, Solaris is meant to be a very robust high-throughput high-uptime OS. Remember, there is more to life than single-user workstations (not that it does really badly on single-user workstations, anyway.)
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Theres a big difference between "compatible" and "the same thing"
You've been running Solaris X86 on your systems since the early 90's and would have a training and support hassle if you tried to switch now.
Though I suspect, given sun's dabbling in the Linux realm, that they will be moving away from Solaris X86 in the long run. As long as money spent on keeping it up to date is less than they are bringing in from the sales and support contracts they'll keep at it, but Solaris X86 seems silly these days with so many unix variants on the market.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Hoping that I won't screw up again about Solaris 9 on x86 again
Don't know about the Solaris 9 story. And if your previous screwup was about the word again, then this nitpick is in error. But if not, then yes, you did screw up again.
Infuriate left and right
Sun[tm] LX50 Server Press Conference Press Kit here (photos, datasheets, documents)
that they are right in starting with version 5? Just curious...
true && more || less
After further research, it appears that Sun will only be offering Solaris x86 as an option on their own line of x86 hardware. Thus, many of my concerns voiced in the previous post are moot.
Just shows that I should have gone to The Register rather than trusting a half-assed Slashdot rumor.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know how good this new Solaris will, now that it includes George Clooney.
Let me first say that I am a fan of Sun.
However, I don't much understand Solaris on X86. To the previous posters comments about 8 people being happpy, I agree. Try and buy Oralce for solaris on X86. Try to buy almost anything for Solaris on X86. It can be done, but now try and buy that same thing for Solaris on Sparc or Linux on x86. Better support, many more software options etc.
Maby this is why sun will be moving off of solaris for x86 and going to linux on x86.
People that are going to run mid to large scale applications do buy solaris, but they don't run it on x86 hardware.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
It would be nice if they released it like they did with Solaris 8. Maybe they will do so down the road. In the meantime, Solaris 8 is still available. I understand that it is only $20 to be able to download it from Sun's servers.
That's not to bad of a price to me.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
All the big application vendors left solaris x86 fearing it is dead. Sun should of watched their mouths. I doubt they will come back because everyone else already left and the herd mentality is in. Why risc an investment in a platform in which everyone else already left?
Most of the big name vendors whose products were only available on solarisx86 and solaris-sparc have been ported to Linux except for a few cad apps. Solarisx86 is used as a server and not a workstation anyway so it wont matter. Linux might be a better alternative to a nervous IT manager who has a budget only for cheap x86 hardware.
I think sun should just let it die or opensource solarisx86. They are throwing money away and a now dead product thanks to the false annoncement they made on the death of solaris8 on x86.
http://saveie6.com/
The first 4 versions were the various base operating systems in the Cobalt appliances...
Well, I got Solaris 8 x86 few years ago (I still have the CDs) -- I got it installed, running, etc., etc. but that was it, end of story!
Other than the OS and the very few applications that came with it, there was nothing else I could do. So what good is an OS on any hardware if it doesn't come with any real world applications to run on it, be it for free for for $$$.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
So ... what could Sun put in as "value-add" to justify the cost of $2800 for their P3 1U server?
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Prices for the Sun LX50 start at $2,795 and rise to some $5,295 for a richer configuration. The systems will be generally available on Aug. 26, O Brien said.
I guess Sun won't be giving out free copies of its version of Linux at LWE tommorrow...?
"Sun will focus on its core competencies to help grow the market..."
Is Danese Cooper reading this comments thread?
If they are shipping Linux Sun distro, why bother making Solaris?
In many cases, Linux is simply not a drop-in replacement for Solaris. Linux is suitable for the small servers, but it lags behind Solaris in features for maintaining small to large servers in a corporate environment.
Only Solaris has been so highly tuned for Sun's UltraSPARC platform.
There are many many people out there who grew up with Solaris and strongly prefer it.
There are many many people out there who have a lot invested in Solaris and have no practical reason to give it up.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I'm writing this on a Sparcstation IPX. An amazingly well crafted and slick piece of hardware for its day (1992). The Sparcstation is running NetBSD, which is much faster than the Solaris 7 installed on it when I got it. (Linux support on 32-bit Sun hardware has incomplete support for the SCSI bus, leading to decreased performance.) Still, Sun has delivered some great thing to us over time. There are a few large computer companies that I think we would have been better of without, but I don't think Sun is one of them. More options in the market means more opportunities for cross-fertilization.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
For the Linux crowd, the Solaris OS has a level of stability, maturity, and unified feel that Linux simply lacks. It's a one-company vision of how a Unix OS should work and, while I don't always agree with them, the consistency is refreshing.
Change a few words in this..and..
For the Linux crowd, FreeBSD has a level of stability, maturity, and unified feel that Linux simply lacks. It's a single vision of how a Unix OS should work and, while I don't always agree with them, the consistency is refreshing.
Sounds exactly like why I stick to FreeBSD these days rather than Linux, unless I'm working on a desktop machine. I dealt with Solaris machines for a couple years (on both Solaris 7 & 8), and while they did their jobs just fine, admin'ing those boxes was definitely not as well thought-out and easy as admin'ing any of the FreeBSD boxes--and the Solaris machines provided no additional benefit in uptime or stability, while costing about $2k more a piece at the time. Rightfully so, of the couple hundred or so machines I've been tasked with setting up in the couple years since, not a single one has been a Sun box.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Now for the part that will be controversial with this group: Solaris 9 x86 will only be licensed for use on systems shipped by Sun. However, a new program designed for the Solaris x86 community is planned for announcement in the near future. This means that we plan for you to be able to use future Solaris x86 releases beyond Solaris 8 as part of a new program. I'm planning to announce this to you all before the end of September.
Run a server and what else? Anything that linux (or win2000/xp) can't do?
Show me a win2k/xp server that supports thousands of users, accessing terabytes of information, 24X7 and doesn't go down ...... ever.
Show me a linux distro that runs more than 8 CPU's, is supported by all the ISV's, can be run a cluster with 512 CPU's, and yet still runs well on a single CPU workstation.
Linux is a great workstation and small server choice. Win2K/XP is fine for the casual home user. But when you want to do real Enterprise computing then Solaris, AIX, OS/390, OS/400 or HP-UX is where you will end up at.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
Might want to uncomment that sarcasm flag :)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Considering the mutual feelings about Microsoft within the Slashdot community, I'm sure you can take that to the bank that it was humour. :)
as far as winxp doing that, your not alone. Hell, just out of the blue, win2k started telling me I had an improper line in my boot.ini, and nothing was added or removed. (ever!)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Could one run Windows 2000 server on Sun LX50?
You know, as a form of sadomasochism.
The pricing is horrid -- the "low end" model is $2800 list for a 1.4Ghz PIII, 512mb memory, 36gb SCSI drive, and the usual (2xPCI, 2x serial, CD & floppy).
I can get an almost identical machines (same specs) for $2100 list from qsol.com.
I'm a raving Sun guy, and I wouldn't buy one.
...Xoff
Phineas J. Whoopie, you're the greatest!
Let's say I'm a fairly experienced Linux user and part-time admin willing to front $20 for Solaris 8 and give it a try. Is there a good book or tutorial out there to get me started and help explain some of the differences between a Linux and Solaris?
Does anyone know if Sun has made any significant changes to the Linux kernel for their new distribution? It would be interesting to see how the wits of the programmers of 'closed-source-turned-open' companies such as Sun stack up against people who belong to the open-source community since Linux's inception. I for one have had the myth that "closed source" is better rubbed in my face a 100 times at least - so I am only naturally curious to see what that (probably misplaced) brilliance is all about. Did the programmers at Sun study from a different set of computer science text books than the ones who aren't from Sun, e.g. are opensource? :) Or does that even matter anyway?
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It seems once agina that Sun is making amistake ..
Rahter than recognizing that they cannot go it alone and accepting a minstream Linux distribution such as IBM has done..
They are spending more resources that they do not have in hand crafting their own distribution..
Its almost as bad as the decison not to open source Java!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I have a poor, dejected Cobalt Qube that I don't even use anymore because the software on it is so full of holes that it would be suicide to use it as a server.
I'd be happy to take that off your hands, if you really can't use it. I certainly could =)
Get off my launchpad!
Well, my last job involved me playing with a few old SCO boxes (SCO UNIX is what Xenix evolved into, even still has the Microsoft copyrights on it). We were replacing one old server with a fancy new one (about a billion times faster), and I believe this was the first time the box had been down since it had been installed four years previously.
Not bad, if you ask me.
If you want reliable UNIX on x86, SCO's your bitch, not Solaris x86. If only it didn't have such a slooowwwwww TCP/IP stack.
I use Linux, but I'd love to try Solaris, but I don't want to try it on my Intel box. Any place I can get a low end SPARC box for cheap?
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
Aside from the fully multithreaded kernel, the real reason why solaris (incl. x86) is better for mission-critical apps is that it supports real threads. On Linux, threads are mapped as processes, so a multi-threaded application, if works at all, works much slower than on a real threaded system, like Solaris. Until Linux has real threads, a threaded OS will always outperform it. This is why I stick with Solaris on the server and MacOS X on the desktop right now.
Linux (and FreeBSD, where threads don't work at all) has a problem with C++ threads and exceptions as well. It's surprising that more people don't talk about this, perhaps nobody runs heavy multi-threaded applications on Linux yet...
Lenny Primak PP-ASEL-IA,Heli
Ick, SCO. Not my favorite UNIX variant, I wouldn't run this dog unless I had an application that absolutely requred SCO. Back in the day SCO had something to offer (stablity and commercial software support) but nowdays I don't see any advantages over FreeBSD or Linux.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Heck if its cheap I might just install it for kicks.
Why not fork?
If you buy from an auctioneer that is getting rid of government or government contractor Surplus, you won't be getting any Hard Drives. Those are detroyed and melted down in furnaces to keep the data that was on them protected.
Have you watched SCSI drive auctions on Ebay? They get rather pricey because there are always limited quantities.
What if you buy a machine that lists that RAM is missing. I run into people that believe that they can put DIMMs into 166Mhz Intel machines. Yeah, while they may have put a 166Mhz into a newer board, I am talking about STOCK Packard Bells, Compaq Presarios and other consumer end pre-built machines.
Buying memory for an old Sun machine can be difficult to do, from what I understand.
Besides, the whole point of my post was to state that Solaris x86 should be used as a stepping stone without making you spend more money than you need to spend. If you have a spare machine laying about, put it to work and learn Solaris.
Then, perhaps you have a chance to move around in the corporate environment, if you have one of those entry level jobs.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
My company has done some market research for Sun, and we were present at Sun's VIP Day presentations at LinuxWorld.
Here is some information gleaned from the presentations, Sun's website, and the LX50 documentation:
Kernel version: 2.4.9-31
Apache version: 1.3.22
Tomcat 3.2.1
J2SE SDK 1.4
SunOne ASP (Chilisoft ASP) 3.6.2
Red Hat 7.2 ships with the 2.4.7 kernel and with Apache 1.3.20, so Sun has done some buffing of the distribution.
For more information, see http://www.sealrock.com/lx50_sealrock_brief.pdf