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Sun to Sell Unbundled Solaris 9
An anonymous reader writes "Sun VP John Loiacono told eWEEK that the company is scrapping its plan to limit Solaris 9 support to Sun x86 hardware. Loiacono said the version for non-Sun hardware will retail for $99 for a single CPU and that the company is committed to supporting both Sun and non-Sun hardware in the future. Sun will also publicize the compatibility test suite it used internally, and said it may ultimately open the code for the product to the open source community."
Solaris is a kick-ass OS...and as much as I'd like to have my own Sun Blade sitting right next to my BSD box, I don't quite have the free cash for that kind of hardware. For someone like me who has to test in all kinds of environments, the possibility to get support on any setup is rather important as well.
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
Note that the posted didn't say "open source the code for open source community". The poster said "open the source for open source community.." Solaris is really one of Sun's few crow jewels. I really doubt they'll open source it. They might release the Solaris code the way they did for Solaris 8 a year ago, though.
As soon as FreeBSD and NetBSD implement good threading, there will be no need whatsoever to run Solaris.
:). I personally detest having to maintain a solaris (sparc) box for my job.
When they'll be done is an open question, of course. The Net folks in particular tend to refuse to rush anything at all.
In the meantime, I can't see how solaris x86 is that much nicer than gentoo or debian (aside from having a working NFS implementation
I am working as a sysadmin for a huge company.
The reasons we chose Solaris are
Now, the OS itself is quite simplistic, I mean you have to GNU-ize it a lot to achieve a comfortable level of functionalities (Apache, vim, bash -now supplied-, GCC!
I still wonder why they don't provide a decent ANSI C/C++ compiler that we need when it comes to patch/recompile some Apache module (Vignette requires the commercial SUN C Compiler to be rebuilt)...
It's mostly a question of support and feedback from SUN and other developpers (Oracle, Vignette, Broadvision, Silverstream...).
Now, considerig Solaris alone on a lambda/PC, I guess this is not as interesting as you lose functionalities that only Sun's hardware fully provides.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Wondering the same thing myself. $99 I don't have a problem with. Solaris is my OS of choice and I'm happy to shell out for it. But if they're going to want, say, $400 for dual CPU then I'll stick with 8.
Solaris really is sweet on a dual CPU system. Yes, it sucks on crappy hardware, but for my money it can't be touched on decent kit.
Finally, just to preempt a few of the "why pay for Solaris when Linux is better and it's free as in beer and it's free as in speech and my leet AMD Gentoo boxen do everything an E15k does but faster" posts that invariably come with any Sol x86 story: SOME OF US JUST LIKE IT, and don't mind parting with a bit of cash now and again. m'kay?
IIRC, version 5.2 was from Star Division, not Sun. If it was sun, it was released right after the acquisition from Star Division, thus under the Star Division license. StarOffice has always been, AFAIK, free for non-comercial use. The fact that it now costs a little lets those people who need the extras that OpenOffice doesn't offer get them at a REASONABLE price.
/. crowd, *nix isn't a popular desktop platform, and I wouldn't bet the farm that solaris is going to change that.
SUN gave a HUGE contribution to the open source community by opening up OpenOffice. Distributions can now install open office by default with out any license issues. Even hard core GPL distributions such as Debian can have it in their stable branch.
I really doubt that SUN is releasing their x86 version to gain desktop market. Contrary to the
There's a nitche market for users who like or want to learn solars to further develop their careers at places that spend huge money on SUN hardware. There's also 2-3 people who prefer it over other *nix variants but just can't get their hands on the hardware. I've got an ULTRA-5 sitting idle on my desk right now (and 3 in the next cube) because my P2-366 is easier to use. Should I need to prototype a web site in JSP, I guess it's available to save my laptop some ticks.
As far as opening their sources, I don't think it's the solaris sources they're talking about, but the compatibility test sutes. The bread and butter for sun is solaris, hardware and support. By them protecting the internals of solaris (the API is open), they're protecting their support revenue. If they open source solaris, that opens the flood gates for other companies to offer support for their hardware and software. I doubt we'll ever see that from SUN.
If you need Oracle 9i and you need x86, there's Oracle for Linux I'm thinking Oracle ran a few performance tests of x86/Solaris/Oracle and x86/Linux/Oracle, then chose the platform that would give them the marketing numbers they need (and the performance their customers NEED). Originally Oracle/Linux was more a developer training tool, now it seems to be attempting ot compete with SQL Server. GO Oracle!
Its kind of nifty and all to run Solaris on PC hardware, but at the end of the day what am I getting?
Solaris is no great shakes; its just good enough to run on Solaris hardware.
Its like Linux. Its no great shakes, but its pretty firmly entrenched as *the* x86 Unix (With apologies to the *BSD crowd).
I agree with your point, except I would argue that Sun's greatest contribution is Java.
Well, since you asked...
Hardware support is plenty good enough for me. It works just great on the two machines I have. So it won't work with some obscure ISA token ring card, and it won't run on ARM processors. What do I care? It works for me.
As for software, yes, a lot of commercial stuff is SPARC only. But then, I can't afford licenses for commercial stuff, and I really don't need any of it anyway, so that doesn't matter to me either.
On my Solaris machine I've got everything I need. Bear in mind that pretty much anything that comes as source will build on Solaris. The exceptions are crappy little programs put together by people who can't see further than Linux, and I don't miss any of those.
I'm struggling to think of an application that runs on Linux but not Sol x86. The only one I've ever missed was the Audiogalaxy satellite, when that was worth anything. It was pretty easy to get the Linux binary running through lxrun though.
I'm not sure Solaris has the multimedia stuff Linux does, but I'm not really into that, so I don't know. If I reinstalled my machine with Linux, I'd just put on all the apps I now have on Solaris.
All the "big name" open source apps run just as well on Solaris as on Linux.
I'm not sure what you mean by widely supported. If you mean a tech support community, there are plenty of Solaris people round and about, and they're generally pretty experienced and smart. Too much of the Linux community is leet haxors who think they know it all and really don't know shit. In terms of support, the documentation for solaris (docs.sun.com) is second to none. The depth and quality is a different class to anything you can find for Linux.
If you mean that people who write open source software don't explicity support Solaris, again, what do I care? I've got the source, and I'm smart enough to make tweaks to port things. I enjoy the challenge, and I get to contribute something.
I've made my living out of Solaris for a good while: it's the Unix I know better than all the others, so it suits me to use it.
I say "I really like it" because, when choosing the operating system I run on my computer, that's all that matters. Arguing about "the best" operating system is like arguing about the best band, or the best film. Ultimately it's pointless. You go with what feels right for you. Unix is incredibly configurable. You can make any flavour do pretty much anything if you have the time and the smarts.
That probably does say more about me than about the OS, but it keeps us away from OS holy wars.
/. is about freedom of speech ,ideas and ideologies. Not about suppression of conversations that go against your ideologies.
Otherwise you are just as bad as any DMCA, RIAA, or Bush administration.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.