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.

Comments

Wait a minute...

[CptNoSkill]

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....

The price is right...

[I_am_Rambi]

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.

Bad move...

[RomikQ]

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.

I know these twits.....

[Thalia]

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.

Lots of Solaris FUD on Slashdot....

[Richard Mills]

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.

Re:Lots of Solaris FUD on Slashdot....

[FreeUser]

You are right to object to FUD, and some of the broader generalizations certainly are overly-broad (and therefor not so accurate). However, you are seeing a great deal of FUD where IMHO there really isn't any. Most people's exposure to solaris isn't in the problem domain you are working on, and from most people's perspective (my own included) Solaris is big, slow, and clunky, not because it is big, slow, and clunky at everything, but because it is big, slow, and clunky at those tasks most people perform most of the time.

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 think you'd better back that accusation up with some hard evidence, particularly the 'hypocracy' bit.

I have worked with SunOS since before GNU/Linux ever existed, and have been using Solaris for years. I too have been a Linux user for years.

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.

That is absolutely true, but there is a corrallary which is just as true: in many, many situations Solaris is clunky and shows its staid age all too well. I would go further and say, based on my own experience, that those situations, in which Solaris shows its clunkiness, and GNU/Linux really shines, are the ones that face most people far more commonly than those where Solaris shines and GNU/Linux lags.

Why is Solaris so much slower to improve in so many ways, despite shining in some? Probably because it isn't free software, and as such has many less people working on it, and is able to leverage far less communal contributions.

It may be ignorant to bash the performance of Solaris solely based upon its proprietary status, but it is certainly not ignorant to be critical of its greater overhead and clunky performance in most real-world cases, nor to point to its proprietary status as a contributor to that situation. Indeed, it is equally ignorant to assume people who have worked with both dislike Solaris solely out of philisophical grounds, when the Operating System (and Sun) provide ample reasons to dislike it on technical merit, behavior, cost, and lack of openness (which is often critical to fixing serious problems which occasionally arise). Indeed, with the exception of those who are working on in the kind of parallel computing problem domains you are, Solaris is in general quite slow and clunky, especially when running on intel hardware.

That fact that it is proprietary, and one must purchase (and wait on) expensive Sun support to get issues, even critical issues, fixed, isn't a factor in Solaris' favor either, and the latter (the need to be able to fix problems quickly, and not be handcuffed from doing so) was the reason we ended up dumping Solaris in favor of Linux on the desktop years ago, a decision which has been very good for our business BTW. And no, it isn't hypocracy, it is practicality.

Re:Oh Boy!

[BlackHawk-666]

You may have missed the point of this and the target audience. Solaris is aimed at business users, not nerds sitting at home debateing why vi is better than emacs.

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.

Re:I don't understand your logic

[pmz]

...buying more expensive, used hardware with an old version of Solaris.

You don't quite understand. New versions of Solaris, such as 8 and 9, work fine on older hardware. Sun does discontinue support for really old hardware, but they are up-front about it in their release notes. A good example: I run Solaris 8 on an early-90's-vintage SPARCstation 10.

Also, used Sun hardware is very reasonably priced if you shop around. Some vendors are arrogant and still think they can charge like-new prices, but other vendors are very competitive. If you don't mind a little more risk, there are incredible deals on auction sites, like EBay.

There are genuine advantages of Sun-branded hardware over most x86 hardware. OpenBoot firmware (OS-independent configuration and diagnostics), very rugged enclosures, redundant cooling fans, clean component layout, and SCSI on the real workstations (modern low-end Sun's have IDE).

Linux, NetBSD, and OpenBSD run on Sun hardware, too, in addition to Solaris, but Solaris will consistently provide the best hardware support, except, perhaps, for a few older peripherals (24-bit 3-slot SBus graphics, for example).

Don't forget, what I said above also applies to other used RISC-based hardware, as SGI, HP, DEC, etc. have active secondary markets.

The only advantage of x86 is really percieved cost, but that isn't always true. I've had much more "top quality" x86-based hardware (motherboards and modems mainly) fail than Sun-branded hardware seeing similar use. Support costs for Sun hardware really can be quite low (formal Sun support is very optional; if you don't know whether you need it, you probably don't).