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Solaris 9 Support On x86 - But With A Price
choka writes "According to this ZDNet UK article, Solaris 9 will return to x86 platform for $99 instead of being free. There will also be a $20 early access version for testing. Support and update will cost $75 per month. However there is no mention on the Solaris web site yet." There's more than just not being free -- originally, rumor had it that Sun was not going to be supporting, in a major way, Solaris 9 on x86 at all -- that decision has now been reversed. See our past article for information about the original decision.
Can someone remind me what Sun's business plan is again? Oh-yeah, it's selling hardware... No wait, it's software... No, maybe it's selling consulting. Who knows??? Do they even know?
I thought the whole idea was to get people to try Solaris, and then if they like it to get them to 'upgrade' to Sun Hardware? (You know, the first hit is free...) Or is Sun going to actually support x86? I think it would be wish for Sun to get behind Hammer... Or I think it might just loss out to the lower cost x86-64 based hardware suppliers....
Actually, it isn't. The $99 for the initial cost is not bad, Windows and Mac OS X run for over that. The catcher is the support. Is the support for the testers or just in general? It seems to be ambigious. If its in general then it isn't too bad, that is if you know Solaris. Otherwise, its a bad idea.
It also seems that Solaris is coming to the x86 platform alittle late. Intel is moving away from the x86, and AMD also seems to be moving that way with the bridge with their x86-64.
The time may be wrong, and I don't think many mainstream users (non-Solaris know-how people) will attempt to start to learn it with this move.
Who knows, there may be some network admins that go and get it for their home pc.
Solaris has always been just another argument for buying sun servers - that you get support and free updates to the os when you buy the hardware. I mean, if you make your own/buy other unix-based x86 server, what's the point of later buying solaris for it? It won't offer anything more, then, say, linux. Now sun has made their x86 servers look more expensive - that you've got to pay for the updates + service too.
Solaris only makes a real difference on sparcs - and that's where they can charge for it, because if you already have a sparc server, then you are much more likely to pay money for a solaris update, then if you have an x86 server and the ability to switch to other OSes without losing performance or compatibility.
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I knew someone who paid to beta test win98, when I asked why he paid for a beta that he knew would be buggy as hell, he got realy mad at me and wouldnt speak to me for a week
I presume sun would have to reverse the decision to support Solaris 9 on x86, seeing as the LX 50 uses x86 hardware.
I used to work in the group at Sun that promoted Solaris on Intel. There is a core group of morons that is very good at dodging layoffs, signing large contracts that don't deliver revenue, and bitching to Scott McNealy that Solaris on Intel really isn't dead. This leads to all sorts of pathological decisions.
Solaris is an operating system, and a pretty good one. Solaris generally has oddly optimized drivers for large boxes that make it very useful for large sites. Also, Solaris is the vehicle for pushing Sun's special talent; networking more processors more effectively. Solaris on SPARC works well.
Solaris on Intel is the bastard child of an unresolved angst over controlling the client desktop. Sun has never figured out that it has a special weakness against making a decent client. Sun has never turned around to the niche market and embraced Apple clients, or PC clients, or anyone else. The wierd waffling on Solaris on Intel is a sickness from a lack of decision.
The problem will not go away until the group is fired. Deal with it.
Solaris on x86 is like putting perfume on a pig. Any IPC/IPX will run circles in IO performace next to a pentiumII. Any modern sun system will absolutely spank any x86 hardware.
By the time you get done buying all the parts for your high end x86 solaris server with an adaptec 29160, 5 drive array, 2 gigs of ram, and a 2 gigahertz processor you could have bought a modern sun for the same price with half the ram and half the processor speed, but three times the memory and disk IO so it really evens out.
How will this make people buy used Sun gear?
Given the choice between buying an new x86 machine (or using one of the ones I already have) and running Solaris on it, or buying more expensive, used hardware with an old version of Solaris. I'll stick with the x86 option any day.
I think that it's far more likely that people will just move away from Sun and Solaris in favor of Linux or *BSD solutions.
Signatures are for Nerds!
As soon as this story was posted, this discussion forum seemed to turn into a Solaris-bashing free-for-all, filled with a bunch of uninformed attacks on the performance of Solaris and a bunch of trolling about how Linux or BSD performs so much better. These are the same kind of people who complain about Microsoft spreading lies (FUD) about Linux, but these hypocrites have no problems doing the same regarding Solaris, because it doesn't fit into their open source ideology.
I have been a Linux user for years, and I love Linux for lots of reasons. But I make my living doing parallel/numerical computing research and I know from runnings lots and lots of performance studies that Solaris beats Linux handily in several situations. I have seen vastly better performance under Solaris (compared to Linux) with some of my codes because of better cache management, superior mmap() implementation, and better job scheduling in the presence of system memory shortages. Solaris isn't just a unix that is for people "too stupid" to use a free OS. There is a huge amount of manpower devoted to its development, and in many respects it is quite clever. For certain categories of codes, it outperforms Linux handily. I'm not saying that Solaris is better than Linux. I am saying that it is foolish and ignorant to bash the performance of Solaris simply because it is not open source.
For $99 you get a great OS, which is a nice start, but what all businesses really want is to know that there will be someone there providing support if they run into trouble. They can't just rely on the open source community hacking up a quick solution "once I'm done playing Quake".
$75/month wouldn't even show up on the balance sheet of any decent business and would be well worth paying to guarantee your supplier will be there when you need them i.e. they didn't go bust.
I develop bespoke software for a living and part of what we provide for all out clients is a service level agreement, which means they pay us x pounds a month, and we guarantee them x days of work and support on their apps each month. Without this arrangement their applications would soon become abandonware.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
With Solaris on the commercial side and FreeBSD on the free side, both technically superior and more stable and linux 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.5, 3.whatever, linux distros spiraling down the path of no return into oblivion for setting back the state of computing by 10 years reinventing a wheel.
BTW, my understanding is that most of the complaints about speed are due to two factors;
I don't get why slashdot geeks are giving this the thumbs down. At the end of the day, it's one more choice for a hardened geek and as such can only be a good thing.
:>
In addition to the choice angle, Solaris on x86 is there for 3 key reasons:
1) A proportion of us that opposed its death would be quite happy to offer payment to continue its existance - there are a reasonable number of developers & admins with time and money already invested in Solaris on x86 for one reason or another.
2) There will be those who take Solaris on x86 as a chance to learn before they jump in to the world of Solaris on Sparc - For example, it may be better than investing in a Sparc just to pass your exams.
3) For those who want to push Solaris on Sparc, it may be an easy way to prove to management that Solaris does have the advantages, again without buying the Sparc kit - hell you could even sneak it in in just the same way BSD and Linux advocates do, under the radar.
Sure, Solaris on x86 isn't perfect and certainly doesn't perform as well as on the Sparc architecture but is this any great surprise - Sun are trying to hit a moving target when it comes to modern PC hardware - if you stick to whats supported you should be fine.
The other criticism is that you need to install additional tools, but isn't this the case with any OS. These days, Solaris is supplied with most of the key open source tools. Additionally, resources like Rutgers RPM archive + apt-get bootstrap kit along with SunFreeware make getting a Solaris box up easy.
As I see it, this news has 4 (i/c the aspect of choice) positive points and 0 negative. Having said that, the news is moot to me, I run Sparc
Tim Brown
It takes a lONG time to get a usable system with Solaris.
/usr/apache, /usr/perl5, /usr/java, /usr/ucb, /usr/xpg4, and /usr/ccs (don't forget /usr/bin!). What are you looking for?
...edit 2 files to change the IP. (/etc/ifconfig and /etc/nsswitch)
/etc/hosts is all that is needed (/etc/hostname. can use symbolic hostnames). /etc/ifconfig doesn't even exist under Solaris 8, and /etc/nsswitch is used only for configuring datasources.
No, it does not.
A default install is practically useless.
Not true.
GNU tools
The freeware "bonus" CD shipped with Solaris 8 and 9 might help you here. Oh, what about sunfreeware.com or freeware4sun.com? Things come as source code, too (GCC is on the "bonus" CD).
Apache
Solaris 8 has
What version of Solaris are you using??? This is untrue, because updating DNS, NIS, or
Is your post a troll?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I've used Sun's $20 early access versions before (with Solaris 8, as an example). It covers the cost of shipping and the media itself. Comes in a nice plastic floder, and usually has around 10-12 cds in it. I don't think that they make any money off the early access versions, it just covers their costs in making and distributing the cds to people who want them. There is usually also a free download of the isos if you want to make your own copies.
>It is cheaper and it is Solaris.
>
>RH has a price of $149.95
Or it has a price of $39.95 (http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/personal/).
Or it has a price of $0.00 (ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/).
>so I don't see any price advantage for Linux.
Still not seeing the price advantage?
Matt
1. Good Solaris/HP admins can make serious $$$$. If you can add Veritas software and Oracle to that, it goes up substantially from there.
2. Solaris (SPARC version only, of course) will scale almost linearly when moved above 8-CPU's. It was designed to comfortably run on systems of 100 CPU's and above. If I remember right, x86 doesn't really scale well past 4 processors.
3. If it wasn't for linux, there'd be no way that I could've even touched Solaris. Without Solaris x86, there's no way I would have been able to learn it without going out and purchasing a sparc machine. I will help support the Sun x86 community in this and will purchase a production release copy for $99 when it comes out.
I use linux for just about everything I have at home (PA-Risc linux, familiar linux on my ipaq, yellow dog on my mac, linux for mips on my Playstation 2), but I also use Solaris x86 as my primary server at home.
If I didn't like it, I wouldn't complain - I just wouldn't buy it.
Ain't variety wonderful? It's all pretty much unix, people - can't we all just get along?
in terms of hardware support all equipment that Sun says works with Solaris works damn well. Putting a Linksys NIC in a Sun box is a dumb move. Stick with quality parts that are known to work with the machine.
Since when was solaris free for any type of production environment?
Sure, you could get a personal copy and play with it.. but that's useless to the business world.