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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!!"
Oh great. My Solaris 8 install just finished last week.
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?
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.
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?
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.