Slashdot Mirror
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.
I think I'm going to adopt Sun's policy on this one and start charging all my QA testers instead of paying them a salary.
I don't know what you are talking about. I only have a dual 3.7GHZ system with 2 gigs of RAM and it seems all right to me. It's not snappy, but I wouldn't call it slow.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
All this will do is make people buy SUN gear USED on EBay. SUN might think this will cause people to buy their overpriced new hardware, but there is a glut of nice used machines out there.
Bad move, JMO
We can all throw out our 32-bit DOS extenders now that Sun has graced us with an x86 UNIX.
I am a little disappointed that Sun has decided to charge for the x86 version of Solaris, but I guess it's better than the alternative of not having one at all. Besides Solaris is quite the advanced operating system and I for one would rather pay $99 for a copy than pay the current price for that Redmond made OS.
Now the $25/month for updates, that worries me.
Signatures are for Nerds!
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.
both x86 versions and Sparc (I have an Ultra and I run x86 on a Dell Optiplex). Solaris is SLOW on x86 because of I/O. But as a server, it runs like a champ. The funny thing is, It takes a lONG time to get a usable system with Solaris. A default install is practically useless. It takes hours to install GNU tools, Apache and any other tools I need. I've been using Solaris for about a decade, and I STILL forget that you need to edit 2 files to change the IP. (/etc/ifconfig and /etc/nsswitch). I always thought that was dumb. I only remember that I screwed up when CDE no longer works. Oh well. I will not upgrade to x86_9 unless it has REAL benefits.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
You're mistaken. You can download patches from http://sunsolve.sun.com Support is for businesses who want someone to yell at or help replace machines or something like that. Realistically, you don't need to buy the support (I never have and my system is up to date in patches at least).
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.
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
Why pay uberbucks for Solaris on x86 instead of using Slackware or OpenBSD for free? Its like when you continue to drive your 1988 Cutlass, which is in the shop for repairs every other week, when your brand new prowler sits in the garage gathering dust.
0xfeedface
Which begs the more obvious question:
Why pay uberbucks?
*sigh*
Calling the Sword of Truth uber is one thing, but uberbucks? Do you even know what you are saying?
Anyway, you would pay regular dollars (perhpas something else w/ exchange rate) for Solaris, as opposed to superdollars (worth more?).
--
Win? Lose? I don't even play the game.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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.
The price of Windows, the applications of Unix. Why would I want to run it? If I want an x86 *NIX, my choice is *BSD. Now, if Solaris could run Windows apps, or even if it could run MacOS X apps it'd be more than worth it.
Paying for maintenance or "subscribing" sucks too. That's why I won't downgrade to XP. They are trying to move people towards the subscription model. I'm holding out for MacOS X for x86, or a *NIX that can run Windows apps. Running Windows apps a major release back (ie, Win2k apps now, WinXP apps by 2004) would be just fine. If the price is one-time $99, I'm sold.
Does anybody have what it takes to get Windows apps running in less than 2 years? Wine couldn't do it. I wager that a large company like AOL or IBM could do it if they made the commitment. They wouldn't become "the new Microsoft" but they would be like generic drug makers--not household names, but still a good business.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This is... bizarre.
I don't know anyone who runs Solaris on a x86 because they like Solaris on an x86, but it's a very good platform for keeping current on your Sun sysadmin and netadmin skills or prepping for the cert exams.
And that, in turn, affects our employer's decision on which hardware to buy when they need honking big servers.
Microsoft, for all of its other faults, does understand that the developers and admins are key people to get in the loop. These programs can be a real pain if you're a small consulting firm, but if they think you're large enough to be throwing business their way you can get access to a lot of software so your familiarity with it may be a line item when the CIO decides which package to purchase.
So why is Sun pissing on the SCSAs and SCNAs? They don't need to worry about the people who are already using Solaris-on-Sparcs at work, they need to worry about the people who are using HP/UX or AIX or Linux or *BSD and might not remain current on what Solaris offers unless they have that low-cost box to play with.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Maybe you should do two seconds of research before you try to spread your FUD.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Here's the Heliopod blurb *cough*shameless plug*cough* from Oct 4:
By the way, TechTarget.com posted an interview with Chris Baker, Sun's Product Manager for Solaris x86. They discuss quite a few aspects of the OS, including support, driver development, and pricing plans. If you run x86, it's probably worth checking out.-- null
This is a serious question!
What's the reason to run Solaris on x86 instead of Linux or Free/Open/Net BSD? From what I've heard it's slower and has much less support for hardware, besides the fact that it's so conservative that I often bang my head on the desk and install GNU stuff on all Solarisboxes we have at work..
The only reason I can think of is to learn it so one can put "Solaris" on the "list of things I know" when looking for a new job...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
That's a beast of a system. By it not being "snappy" on that machine, yes, I'd call it "slow" in the world of real computers.
I was only joking. I only wish I had a system like that. Truth be told, I have never used solaris on an x86. just on sparc hardware.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
The point is not that people are actually running Solaris x86 on a high end server box. They're (me included) throwing it on one of the hundred or so old P3 500's you have in the back room(thanks to the dot.com layoffs) to add another service to an existing Sun environment. I run a small web development farm, consisting of 5 Sun Netra T1's and X1's. No big whoop. But you should hear the laughter from Up Above when I need to roll out, say, a Proxy server, and ask for $2000 + for another Netra. Why bother, when I have all those P3's gathering dust.
Sure, I could throw Linux on them, but keeping the same OS across the board was important.
I just got my Solaris 8 Admin I cert, and guess which platform I did the majority of my studying on? x86, right. No one cares if I kill test servers left and right. Hearing the screams from Up Above when I accidentally down the development Oracle DB (or Weblogic App server) for our $2 million dollar app is not cool. (Granted, I did have to come in on weekends to learn the OpenBoot PROM crap, but whatever.)
So the point, (from Sun's perspective?), of Solaris 9 x86 isn't that its going to be doing hard-core production work right next to your Sun 220R screamers. No, its that you: a) use it to get more familiar / get certified with the SPARC version, b) deploy it on cheap and already available machines, for low-end projects, and proof-of-concept projects.
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
Not that I'm complaining. I ordered the Solaris 8 for Intel media pack and was extremely impressed with what you got for that price, but, er, "free"?
This is fodder for those who think that, for instance, 10-10-220 is right to advertise selling that you can use its service to get a 20 minute phone call for under $1. NO YOU CAN'T. There is no physical way of spending less than $1 to get a phone call over 10-10-220.
Likewise, if you're charging $20 minimum for giving someone access to an operating system, you're not giving it to them for free.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I haven't heard "Slowlaris" since the mid nineties. I guess the System V vs. BSD debate is still going strong. Or, more likely, the poster just thinks the term has a nice ring to it.
/.'ers.
History of the term "Slowlaris" (according to me):
A long time ago there was a mobo named SUN, the Stanford University Networking board. Some folks took this tech and turned it into a product.
They needed an OS for their computer and, after losing their way initially, they eventually stopped upon unix, the Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD). They used BSD as the base and created their OS, which they called, unimaginitivly enough, SunOS.
Time passed, Sun made more and more products, and eventually deciding on a multiprocessor architecture for their workstations. This decision ate up huge amounts of silicon and resulted in a dog of a machine called the sparc 10. The main problem was that there were no multithreaded applications for the multiprocessor hardware. That and the concentration on multiprocessor hardware meant that the cpus, on their own were pretty slow, AND, not to mention the fact that the cpus and mobos were so expensive, owing to the smp arch , that most clients could only afford 1 cpu.
Anyway, around this time Sun thought that, going forward they needed a better kernel to support all this smp shit, so they started on a new kernel, and, why stop there, a new layout to the entire OS.
About this time there was the BSD-SVR5 holy war going on. Most people probably don't realize that before MS, people actually used to argue about which unix was best.
So they renamed SunOS to Solaris 1 and then introduced a new SVR5 OS called Solaris 2. Nobody likes change and Solaris 2 didn't exactly make your sparc 10 run any faster, so most users kept on running SunOS (er. Soalris 1).
This is where the term "Slowlaris" came into vogue, the BSD'ers who didn't like the switch to system 5, talked up the fact that Solaris was sooo much slower than SunOS. Which was not entirely inaccurate, but the real issue was more likely the shitty software they were running on top of the OS.
And then NT and the MS marketing machine hit like an atom bomb and, if not for Sun and Gnu/Linux would probably have moved unix onto the os scrap heap with cpm, amiga, and all those other "speedy" os's loved by
Maybe 10 years ago your statement would have been true...
But go on e-bay and you will find a ton of old sun boxes, i've seen IPC's for 5 dollars, 5 fucking dollars for a system that was not engineered to be a "Genereal Purpose" box.
Here's a few links randomly grabbed from e-bay. (Note this is better stuff than IPX/IPC's..)
Sun
Ultra Enterprise 2 200 MHz 256 MB Server $61.00
Sun
Ultra Enterprise 2,1024MB,2x300MHz,9GB $405.00
Sun
Ultra 10 Workstation w/ 21in Monitor $575
Yeah, 10 years ago, I would have totally agreed with you. But today, sun hardware is easy to get, and why fuck yourself with hardware that isn't going to retain it's resale value or less than server class construction? Why even bother with desktop 3 layer process motherboards that needs heatsinks up the ass for overclocked, overworked IO glue chips when you could have something that was built right the first time for the same price?
You must buy a lotta crack with that Solaris cert you got, cause your reasoning makes me think you're crack smokin.
And don't knock knowing Solaris resume-wise.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
>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
Solaris does not particularly target the desktop user any longer, and hasn't seriously for a long time. So bitching about Solaris being "clunky" in that kind of usage (which is what it appears you're talking about, ditching Solaris on the desktop), is ludicrous.
Tell that to Sun Marketing.
Solaris desktop isn't the only area where solaris is clunky. It is also clunky in a number of server configurations (e.g. database server, etc.) where Linux, FreeBSD, and others shine.
You may not like the fact that your favorite operating system isn't terribly well suited for a number of applications, applications for which it is often marketed by its seller, but that does little to change the fact that it remains less well suited than others, or that the areas where it does shine are areas that only a few specialized applications have any real use for.
You may also not like the fact that businesses and companies, including the one I work for, have found it in their strategic interest to deploy open and free(dom) operating systems and products wherever feasable, or that the turnaround on fixing problems is typically faster than Sun (who is BTW a great deal better than Microsoft in that respect), so much so that it, more than anything else, became a deciding factor when my bosses chose which direction to go, and which operating system to deploy.
Indeed, you may not much care for anything I've said on the subject (your rather trite post certainly seems to indicate that), and certainly Sun probably doesn't like to hear it (and when it has been brought up to their sales representatives, you could almost see their hands go over the ears and their lips begin to move in the "I can't hear you, I can't hear you" refrain), but that does absolutely nothing to negate the fact that, for the vast majority of common tasks to which computers are used in many, many corporate and small business settings, Solaris ins't nearly as well suited as other alternatives such as FreeBSD and Linux, nor does it negate the fact that Sun's unwillingness to listen to its customers on this subject has played no small role in their shrinking marketshare.
Of course, your contention that 2-cpu unix configurations isn't relevant to the discussion shows an immense ignornace of the hardware offerings Sun itself markets, many of which are precisely the clunky, slow, and ineffecient architecture you yourself dismiss in lauding their 64 and 128 cpu solutions, which the vast majority of us have no use for.
Finally, I recommend you look up the word 'attack', then look up the word 'criticize.' There is a difference that your idealogical adherance to Sun appears to have blinded you to, much as Sun's sales representatives have been blinded as they've watched their accounts dwindle toward zero. Hint: I was criticizing Solaris, and rightly so based on my not inconsiderable experience with the product (indeed, I work with it every day). Your interpretation of that as an attack says a great deal more about your bias than it does about mine.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
Correct me if I am wrong but are there not some patches on SunSolve that are only available to support contract holders?
I seem to recall that for some (non-security-related) patches, they let the support contract holders get the first crack at them.
Who would use Solaris/x86 ? I mean, as a previous post mentioned, a default install is basically useless, furthermore there are very few apps precompiled for it (and I don't think it does well in terms of hardware support either).
It used to be effectively free back in the day, so it was good for providing developers with cheap workstations for building applications to run on real Sun servers. Maybe at a startup, maybe for students, etc. In many cases, it's more valuable to use platform-specific features than to code for maximum portability. But these days, you can get an Ultra 5 (I think it's being replaced by the Ultra 60 now) for the price of a PC, and it's a real SPARC, so Solaris x86 is less useful for that purpose.
Also, I guess people could use them for EPOS applications - loads of people ran SCO on x86 for that purpose.
The default install is "useless" because Solaris is used for so many different things. Sun's attitude is pragmatic. It's expected that anyone buying Sun kit is going to have their own strong opinions about how things should be, so there's little point in trying to shoehorn them in. You can get anything you want from the freeware CD that ships with Solaris, from sunfreeware.com, etc, then you can set up JumpStart to install all your machines that way automagically.
It's usually Linux eating up Solaris' market share, not the other way around.
Solaris shares the advantage of FreeBSD in that it's a known platform. People say "Linux" as if it's one thing, but there are a dozen or more distributions and they're all configured differently, all ship with slightly different libraries, all have different filesystem layouts, etc. If you are writing software that requires specific versions of specific things to be in specific places, then it's much easier to go with a known platform (even vendors like Oracle only support certain Linux distros for this reason). If you have your heart set on x86 hardware, Solaris can be a better choice than Linux for that reason.
You've almost gotta wonder if they sat around in some board room somewhere and said:
bonehead1:"What we really need todo is drive more unix users into the arms of linux!"
bonehead2:"I know, we'll charge an obsurd price for our x86 version of solaris!"
bonehead1:"Yeah! In fact we'll even charge for the crippled only one user can login, disables the ethernet after 24 hours beta to discourage people from even testing it!" (*note: I'm not sure that's true, it just sounds funny so I made it up...*)
bonehead2:"I am in awe of you!"
bonehead1:"What can I say, I am god.."
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The $99 for Solaris x86 isn't new. Solaris 8 x86 was also $99; I know because I bought it to upgrade my Solaris 7 x86 box (which was free because Sun was trying to get everyone to develop in Java, so they set out boxes of Solaris 7 x86 and a bunch of software like Java IDEs). And there also wasn't _any_ people-support for this unless you paid for it, as is being advertised now for Solaris 9 x86. You got free support from the web site and support sites, but not phone tech support. (Updates are no doubt free for download.) So, doesn't look like anything is new now, unless the monthly support cost has changed.
Oh, and in case people are wondering why someone might want Solaris x86, the answer was very easy for me: it's a reference platform. If your socket code works on Solaris it's pretty much going to work anywhere else just fine. If you want the real sh in an environment that actually expects sh (instead of bash, for example) then you go with Solaris. This is extremely handy for writing OS independent sh scripts. I can't afford a SparcStation, but I can afford Solaris x86, and it means I can do Solaris development and testing (okay, not really low-level stuff that is endian-important) at home.
Hint: If you need it, xfree86 2d driver support runs exactly the same on solaris as it does on linux/bsd/xyz
First of all, public patches are still available for free and Sun plans on keeping things that way.
Secondly, don't hold your breath on Trusted S9/x86. Trusted S8 is still the current version for Sparc as well as x86, and Sun tends to move quite cautiously on their trusted OS.
But it'll probably happen, eventually.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
OK, I'll rise to the bait...
First of all, consider Solaris in the generic (i.e. Sparc, x86 versions both).
Solaris is simply a better OS than Linux. Stability, reliability, scalability, and a track record that Linux can't yet touch. Solaris and Linux are both far more _advanced_ OSes than *BSD. Consider that FreeBSD isn't that much beyond SunOS 4.1. Given a choice, I'd use all three of them in different situations.
Now Solaris on Sparc? You have a hardware-specific OS running on...that hardware! There is nothing that runs on a Sparc as well as Solaris, if you count 'better' as meaning predictable, fast, managable, standardised, solid, reliable, non-tweaky, well established, and supported.
Finally, you don't have to pay for Solaris Sparc! When S8 was the current version, it was a free download and free to use on anything up to (and including) eight processor machines. Solaris 9 is now a free download, and free to use on single processor machines. (And in fact will work fine on any number of processors, but if you're in a production environment, don't count on support if you don't have it licensed).
And while community support is oftentimes invaluable, it's also unpredictable and unreliable. When you have a problem at 3:00am that HAS TO BE FIXED RIGHT NOW!!!, who would you rather turn to for help: The informal community of Aurora Linux hackers, or professional trained engineers, specialising in your particular combination of hardware and software?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Not only is Solaris a very kickass server OS, but the perceived problems you mention can be addressed by changing the time scheduling class of the process. There is a specific class of task scheduling designed for, say, sitting in front of the machine and doing interactive stuff. There's another for real-time scheduling, but I don't think anything uses that by default out of the box.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
But these days, you can get an Ultra 5 (I think it's being replaced by the Ultra 60 now) for the price of a PC, and it's a real SPARC, so Solaris x86 is less useful for that purpose.
/etc).
The Ultra 5 is quite a few years old, now. For the Ultra 5's market, the modern replacements are the Blade 100 (500MHz USIIe) and the Blade 150 (550MHz or 650MHz USIIi). The Ultra 60 (2x 450MHz USIIi) was marketed as an engineering workstation, which has been obseleted by the Blade 1000 and Blade 2000 (2x 1GHz+ USIII).
The Blade 100 and Blade 150 are inexpensive ($1000 to $2000), but the Blade 2000 is the no-holds-barred version ($7000+). Regardless, even the Blade 100 is well engineered and a good workstation, but it's overall performance makes it suitable for administration and productivity tasks. For software development and real engineering work, the Blade 150 and especially the Blade 2000 are better options.
Solaris shares the advantage of FreeBSD in that it's a known platform.
Very true. I consider each Linux distribution to be a different operating system, since they vary down to the system startup run-control level (rc scripts in
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin