Slashdot Mirror
Sun Releases Solaris 9 for Intel
nairnr writes "Sun has announced that it is releasing Solaris 9 for Intel. Any takers? According to Sun, it extends the 'enterprise class OS to the X86 market'. How nice of them. Non-commercial usage is available at no charge, while commercial pricing starts at US $99; attractive OEM pricing is also available. Source code for Solaris will now be available. It seems they are after Microsoft, not Linux. More Power to them."
Where's that free x86 Solaris CD? friend of mine signed up for a Solaris 9 x86 free CD thing. Turned out not to be, just a typo on their part.
I heard that Solaris was faster and more scalable than Linux. Plus you are not bothered with kernel recompilations etc.
I think I'll download it and try it out. What the hey, it's free.
Non-commercial usage is available at no charge
Apart from the fact you have to cough up $20 to pay for the download, which personally, i think blows...
And has anything changed since this was announced on the 1st of December as an 'early adopter' evaluatation?
How much better could it possibly be? I'm no 'closed OS' hater, by any means, but a choice between the volume of development that has gone in to Linux compared to the volume in Solaris9-x86 just cannot equate to superiority IMB.
Great of rinterfacing to the back-end, I suppose - beyond that?
I hate Grammar Nazi's
everyone who breaches contract, I suppose...
like every other company as well
Also, I write about system administration and security topics, and it's nice to try out certain procedures. I don't have a SPARC at home, so using the Intel version under VMWare is a lifesaver.
Check out my eclectic infosec blog at InfoSecPotpou
Non-commercial usage is available at no charge
Thats cool and all, but you still have to pay $20 to download the ISOs.
I guess it's a good deal. Free would be better though.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Yeah, imagine GNU without all the BS involved.
My boss asked me the other day if I was a socialist! I said no, but I do use linux. I like it for scp/ssh/co$t is all. Not big on the idealogical crap that comes with it.
Keep the battle for an open minded society alive!
I wish you would have given us a little insight as to the specific ways that you find Solaris superior. I am not doubting you. I will probably get Solaris and play with it soon. It is just that as I do so (once again after many years, but not on a x86 platform), I would like to have in mind other's opinions of the areas where it offers more...
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
I don't think you should compare volume of development. Think of it as usefulness in an Enterprise situation. Scalable SMP support anyone?
The software is free...
Their bandwidth isn't, its $20 for the bandwidth to download it.
Nice way of trying to appear nice, but still screwing you...
I respect your views but, as a longtime solaris AND linux user, I have to say I disagree. Solaris is much better than Linux in certain aspects and viceversa. For most of my needs Linux is the best choice (price, feature and performance-wise). For some applications, though, Linux does not come near the scalability and stability of sun boxen with solaris ( GNU/Solaris :-) ? )
It all boils down to selecting and using the appropriate tool for each and every task and associated circumstances - including luser and sysadmin comfort.
--Moo
As much as I like Sun, I have to admit that Linux is better than Solaris. Probably because the Linux community values politics and ideology in addition to technology.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Ok, so what is going to actually please this person? Sun gets closer and closer to the Open Source idea, and all we can have is sarcasm in the post? We should be CELEBRATING! Thanks, SUN!
Solaris 9 Operating Environment, SPARC Platform Edition - FREE
. html
Solaris 9 Operating Environment, x86 Platform Edition - $20 US**
**Discounts are not applied to products purchased through the Free Solaris Binary License Program.
from http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get
The press release is new, but Solaris 9 x86 has been available on Sun's site for a while now. Also, only the SPARC version is free, the x86 version still costs $20 to download or $95 for the media kit. However, since they were originally planning on canning Solaris x86 altogether, this is great.
Solaris is a neat system, and I've enjoyed playing with x86 version 8, though it couldn't replace Linux on my desktop. I have seriously considered using it on my servers though.
Sun's engineers put technology before politics and ideology.
Please elaborate. How does the personal feeling of a person effect his/her code and also how does that effect the project in general?
Take RMS for example. He's quite vocal about his feelings about Open Source and all that, but how does that effect his code?
Alan Cox with that whole not putting an entry in the Changelog because of the DMCA (IIRC...)?
Does this make Linux worse because of these (although only two) examples? These fellows are damn good coders yet still voice their opinions on "politics and ideology". Please explain how that hurts Linux and OSS on the whole. I'm really curious how you may feel your post was not Flaimbait.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Does anyone know if Solaris 9 will run on Connectix Virtual PC and VMware?
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
I can hardly see how this will affect Microsoft.
Windows attracts a large user base of non-technical users, who don't care about volume managers, ssh, etc. If Sun are seriously trying to dig into Microsoft's market share, they better include ported versions of Deer Hunter and Solitaire.
Would it be legal to set up your own mirror and offer the free downloads of the OS?? If the $20 is actually just for the cost of downloading (ha) this should be possible.
Insert sig here (slashdot) Insert cig here (Lewinsky)
It's certainly worth $95 but they claim it's free and you only pay for the media and shipping costs which is a giant load of crap. I think the $20 for a download is fair enough but screw paying $95 to have it shipped out.
Yeah, the free market idealogical crap is soooo much better.
Quoth the Press Release: "Solaris[tm] Operating System (OS), the number one UNIX platform"
Does anyone know by what metric they figured that? Sales volume? Some kind of security/performance metric? Or is it pure marketing speak for "we think we're #1!"?
--
$tar -xvf
My boss asked me the other day if I was a socialist! I said no, but I do use linux. I like it for scp/ssh/co$t is all
Then why not use OpenBSD? After all, it costs the same and they are the ones that wrote the OpenSSH package you find so useful.
Trolling is a art,
How nice of them. Non-commercial usage is available at no charge, while commercial pricing starts at US $99; attractive OEM pricing is also available.
The Solaris 9 x86 download is a $20 charge. The SPARC download is available at no charge. Also, the source was available for free for Solaris 8 as well, so that's not something new.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
This may the beginning of having people switch _servers_, not desktops! Which freekin' *nix will take over the desktop? The Mac is the closest to doing that, and its chances are near nil.
I wish you would have given us a little insight as to the specific ways that you find Solaris superior.
They way it handles threads, and virtual memory management and.......
We call Solaris "OOS":
:)
(wait for it
"Oracle Operating System"
Edith Keeler Must Die
The software is free...
SCSL is not a free software license by the GNU definition, nor is it an OSI approved open source license.
As to whether the Solaris 9 operating environment for the x86 platform qualifies as gratis with a $20 shipping charge, it depends on whether Sun has licensed it for free redistribution to any third party.
Will I retire or break 10K?
but it costs $20 to download. i love big companies.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Here is the Intel based HCL list, but nothing about Solaris 9 yet.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
You wouldn't pay a lousy 20 bucks for a mature, rock stable open source operating system? Jeebus. Scrooge should worship you.
Foobar.
Awsome. I'm exceedingly limetied on resources, but this would make getting a solaris box much more viable currently. Gret for learning. Eventually one day I might consider picking up an ultrasparc box anyway. Mmm. Yeah. Can't wait fo solaris 10
they must actually be TRYING to go after the linux market...however, if people think that Linux has a "long way to go" before it's usable, then solaris has a "really log way to go" before it's even half as usable as Linux. They might get a few servers to switch, but definitely no desktops.
preemptive kernel, threads to handle system calls, real-time capabilities, thread based os, etc. Linux is nice and simple, and severely lacks performance and utility in some aspects that make Solaris great.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Last year, Sun really, really wanted to drop Solaris for Intel.
Speculation was that it was for one or both of two reasons:
1) Not to dilute their SPARC-oriented business,
2) Not to dilute their Sun-Linux business.
At a conference I attended, as well as some Sun presentations, some Sun employees were begging customers to demand Solaris 9 for Intel from their sales reps. Seems that there was still a "Solaris for Intel" faction inside the company. Also, the inside scoop was that they already _had_ Solaris 9 for intel, but the higher-ups didn't want to release it.
Customer demand was heavy and it changed the original plan to nix Solaris 9 for Intel. Now it's out.
No big secrets here, just a little historic perspective.
More power to them! Because they wouldn't be Microsoft if only they could! No sir! God Bless Sun! Hail Sun, the doer of all Good and Right in this wicked land of Microsoft!
Sun! Sun! Sun!
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
caveat: i have not seriously used solaris since 7, but at that time it was my 40-hour-a-week os:
if solaris is to be considered "better" than linus it is because of two things:
1. sun hardware. if you complain about "price-performance" on sparc boxen then you don't need those extra couple of point-001s on your performance and should stick with yr hp pavillion. people run solaris because the purple boxes are bulletproof.
2. service. yes, it's outrageously expensive - but when the gbic card on yr database server makes a gentle popping noise and ten million bucks worth of data drifts away like an untethered boat from the pier, you will appreciate that one phone call will have some ubergeek in tweed show up with a bag of pro bono hardware and a shoebox full of patch disk and make everything alright.
this release offers neither of the above points. yes, it's free. yes, it runs on your mom's machine. but unless you need to spend fifty grand on a bulletproof solution, solaris is a waste.
2 1337 4 u!
One thing I disliked about Solaris 8 x86 is that there wasn't a good amount of natively supported graphics hardware, and the drivers it did have were for fairly older graphics cards. I'd always have to compile and setup xfree86 just so I wasn't running in 640x480x16colors. Does anyone know if they have drivers to support modern graphics hardware?
The futexes are also cursed!
yes the download or the media costs $20, but have you seem how big that thing is? Sun has costs like everyone else, and from my reading of the eula, it seems like once I buy the cd I can make copies or loan the cd to anyone I want as long as they have noncommercial use in mind, I don't see this as a big deal...
I did not get clear information about how "free" or "available" the source is. Sun is actively developing OpenOffice.org (besides StarOffice), which is a very good thing (for me, at least). Can somebody get into detail about Sun's relation with free/libre software (comparing, e.g., with better known MacOSX case)?
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
The Solaris 9 x86 download is a $20 charge. The SPARC download is available at no charge.
There's a difference here: There have to be more drivers included with an x86 operating system distribution because there are so many different variations of x86 hardware, unlike with the SPARC platform where Sun Microsystems and SPARC Intl. are pretty much in control. Drivers take disc space. Granted, drivers won't fill a CD, and the Solaris OE has always lacked drivers for the newest hardware, but it's still something to be considered.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This just shows that Sun is reacting to getting killed by Linux. Linux is shooting at Microsoft, but hitting Sun with friendly fire.
The simple fact is that Linux is most suited to Sun's core market (realiable servers), and Sun is losing market share big time to Linux. On the other hand I believe that last year Microsoft went from 92% to 94% of the desktop market.
Is Solaris a graphical OS?
:P
Is it easier to use than Linux?
And, most importantly, is there any way I could run Windows games on it?
Thinking of it, please do the same for the next release of Solaris/Sparc ...
If you do that, you will get very happy customers ... although may be they will be not so ready to spend money on some of yours over-priced software products
Ciao
----
FB
You wouldn't pay a lousy 20 bucks for a mature, rock stable open source operating system?
I won't pay for an operating system unless I can guarantee that it has driver support for my hardware. That's why I pay for Microsoft Windows and pay for those Linux distributions that I have tested on my hardware.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I never entertained the idea that Sun intentioned Solaris-x86 for enterprise-level applications.
/.ers with experiences in back-end Solaris-x86 would care to clarify?
Why would 'IT-Manager-X' lean towards Solaris for the back-room Xeon cluster, when there are already thousands of near-identical configurations leveraging Linux beautifully around the globe? Is the scalability A) that much more extensible under Solaris? B) all that common a need? C) Worth the relatively miniscule newsgroup/bbs/irc channels for support?
I have always figured Solaris-x86 for a 'mindshare' stunt, nothing more... Perhaps
I hate Grammar Nazi's
How much better could it possibly be? I'm no 'closed OS' hater, by any means, but a choice between the volume of development that has gone in to Linux compared to the volume in Solaris9-x86 just cannot equate to superiority IMB.
The volume of development in Solaris has had focus. The volume of development in "Linux" (are you referring to all packages, because I'm not sure your arguement works as well kernel vs kernel) has resulted in 50 different tools that do the same thing a slightly different way.
What's the application support for Solaris-x86 look like? I'm not talking about your opensource stuff that can be built on anything from an XBox to a Cray X1, I'm referring to many closed source apps that people purchase Linux and Solaris-sparc boxes for.
Well, they can charge $20 for the BW, and it'd be all fine by me as long as they don't bitch when it gets distributed on other places. Over P2P networks or if some other site wants to mirror it and offer a free download (fileplanet, sunet, whatever). If the $20 actually is to cover for BW then I don't mind at all.
Two thumbs up Sun, this is a real nice move!
I am having problems with SUN JVM on linux
and considering switch my java servers to
Solaris x86. Does anybody have feedback on
quality of JVM on Solaris x86?
How long until this is available on gnutella?
Earlier versions of Solaris on Intel were half-assed and limited, I have had the opportunity to use this one, and I have to say that I'm pretty impressed.
The first "right step" that they have made is including the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME replaces the venerable CDE and upstages the purple K Desktop Environment.
Sun has thrown their support behind aopen standards, and they should be saluted for their recalcitrant embracement of Linux. Perhaps their stock will go over $1.00 now.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
We eventually replaced it with an x86 box with NT when the software was migrated, but I do miss the CDE desktop (and yes... i know Linux has an attempt at it...)
Woops, sorry Sun.
On the other hand the continually growing Unix presence in the world, largely fueled by Linux (I like BSD too, but it has had nothing like the success of Linux) has made it possible for Sun to once again start taking some accounts away from Microsoft (who has been gaining ground on them since NT's release.) This is an especially crucial time because until now the only 64 bit operating systems have been Unix - NT/Alpha doesn't count because of its narrow distribution. Windows on 64 bit is now going to become downright inexpensive with the release of Hammer. There is NO TIME TO LOSE in gaining some ground.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't understand why they're charging $20 for Intel but not for Sparc. It can't be for covering the bandwidth (do you seriously think it should cost $20 to download a few gigs of data ?), so there must be some other reason.
Putting a charge onto a "free" developer version doesn't seem like a good way of encouraging developers to download and try it out.
Sun should also consider that the fewer developers who are using the "free" version on small Intel boxen, the fewer developers there will be to work on projects using the commerical version on large scale hardware. Limiting access to your products is not a good way of making them popular !
I wonder with this new annoucement what Sun's future is. I used to work on Sun equipment for a long time, until I got converted over to Tru64. Each has it's strengths and weaknesses, but I always found Solaris much simpler, YMMV.
If they're recognizing the fact that they need to expand into the market with Intel-based solutions (as much as we can personally hate them, they're not a bad platform - the problem is the OS that runs on it right now), it would be interesting to see if they make the effort to port to Itanium.
I know most of you might hate the idea of the Itanic, but it rumours are true, and that the 2005/5006 version of the Itanic is mostly based on Alpha, then we'll have a good OS running on excellent hardware - what could be better?
I am the Spirit within The Machine.
is that "free" as in "free beer" or "free" as in "costs US$20"?
I just got rid of my x86 Solaris 8 workstation setup. I actually used it more than a year, almost continuous uptime.
Solid as a rock but disk speeds were unimpressive, at least on my IDE setup. Went to NetBSD for the desktop and I'll stick with Solaris on servers (sparc).
Granted, x86 Solaris is great for practice.
but a choice between the volume of development that has gone in to Linux compared to the volume in Solaris9-x86 just cannot equate to superiority IMB.
I don't follow, from what I can see, Sun's had a team working full time on Solaris since 1983, Linux was a pet project started in 1991, released in December of that year (and bearing little resemblance to what we have today).
Or did the (almost) 10 year jump cause Sun's engineers to rest on their laurels, waiting for Linux to catch up?
I'm not sure anyone can say for sure, but what number of people are working _full-time_ on Linux? More than Sun employs? Or maybe the same number?
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd say that Sun's had longer to get things going, which doesn't mean it's better, but it certainly doesn't mean it's had less development.
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
Check out the VMware site first, I believe that Solaris dones't work well with VMware. Something about the video adapater, if I recall correctly.
Does anyone know by what metric they figured [that the Solaris OE is the #1 UNIX platform]? Sales volume?
I'm guessing Sun's press release refers to sales volume among UNIX® brand products. The GNU/Linux operating environment is not a UNIX brand system, and neither is any of the free BSD systems. The Solaris operating environment is, and it just might have the greatest sales volume among UNIX brand systems.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There are three evils for Linux: Microsoft, Apple and Sun. Not sure which is worse.
Linux is evil for Linux, too.
It seems they are after Microsoft, not Linux. More Power to them.
/. -- chances are some of you *are* that guy). You have some computer assets running an existing proprietary UNIX (HP-UX, AIX, take your pick) on x86. You want some modern OS goodies (built-in web services, enormous RAM & file system capabilities, reasonable security implementations, etc), but you also need to protect your investment in your current system (hardware, your administrators' know-how, blah blah). You're not going to jump ship completely from the *NIX world & go buy a bunch of Windows 2000 licenses... you're going to choose between Solaris/x86 and Linux.
No offense to anyone who agrees with the above, but if you ignore the anti-Microsoft PR banter from the posted story, this statement seems naive. Sure, that press release has a whole section about how Solaris/x86 kicks the crap out of MS Windows Server 2000, but (in my AC opinion) that's just the PR flacky talking. When you think about it, this move really positions Solaris/x86 directly against Linux in the marketplace.
For example, imagine you're the IT guy for a small-to-mid-sized company (hey -- this is
All that said, I don't think Sun is "after Microsoft, not Linux" anyway... they're after $$$ in the current market.
--Mid
I don't give a sh*t about the binaries, I want access to the source code. They don't seem to have that one available for download...
I am not just going to switch to Sun when I don't need to. Linux works just fine for anything that I have to do, and I develop custom servers that invade everyone's personal freedom ( according to some people ).
I just want to see if I can learn anything from software that has been touted like the crown jewels.
Random Developer TypeA
I don't understand why they're charging $20 for Intel but not for Sparc
SPARC platform users paid for the download of a couple future versions when they bought their machines.
It can't be for covering the bandwidth (do you seriously think it should cost $20 to download a few gigs of data ?)
IP packet transit to a country other than the United States and Canada just might cost $20 per GB.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't get why sun is releasing solaris 9 to the intel platform. I thought they were supposed to be a hardware company?
By releasing solaris for free on the sparc platform they increase the value of their hardware business. By releasing solaris for the intel platform they are decreasing the value of their core sparc platform, because they are giving users the choice of going with cheaper hardware companies. All of sun's engineering talent and effort is going to waste.
What they should be doing is making operating systems like OpenBSD and linux as easy as possible to port to the sparc platform. This way potential sun hardware customers would not need to have these stupid "which unix is better?" debates.
It seems that sun does not want to make any money.
The subject says it all. While it would be certainly _nice_ to simply download the ISOs for free, think about this:
1. Sun's come a pretty far way towards at least being more 'open source friendly,' and making free downloads available for products that would normally go for (IMHO exaggerated) prices otherwise. Java, SunONE (used to be Forte), etc. Contrast this to Microsoft if you'd like- has anyone seen MS make a version of Windows free, even opened the source to (agh!) Win3.1, or given a free version of MSVC/C++? I think not. Redhat and others sell their free versions of Linux on CDs and have increased prices over the years. Companies DO need to make some money, and no matter how much we wish _everything_ were free (I do as well), I highly doubt that at $20/download they will ever come close to even recovering 10% of their investment in Solaris 9/x86.
2. It isn't a bad OS. The x86 versions of Solaris have some definite differences from the Sparc/UltaSparc version as far as development goes (some library differences), but it's a pretty stable, decent OS, and most Solaris open source software can be made to build on it fairly easily. You'll need to go to GCC/G++ for development obviously. It's quite stable, even if earlier versions (I've run x86 Solaris 2.6, 7, and 8 previously) don't have near the HCL that Linux does.
3. It's another step in the right direction for Sun. Bearing in mind that they won't make any $ at all off of the x86 line, all hey're really doing with it is trying to gain a few more supporters in the 'new to Unix' camp, which may help in Solaris/Sparc sales down the line, and get some good will in the open source/tech community. Not a bad deal all around.
Ok, ranting off. Lest I be 'attacked' for any sort of anti open-source, anti-Linux, or anything else, I've been pushing Linux at every company I've worked for as developer and admin, as well as open-source options where they're available. I've replaced many a Windows server in my time...but do realize that companies do ultimately need to regain _something_ on their investment...so those of you that still buy RedHat or Suse on CDs in order to 'give something back' to their respective companies...$20 isn't a bad deal at all.
Scott
Unix Developer, Admin and Linux Freak/Geek at Large
And OSS stands for Operational Support System where I work.
I would recommend that your next troll not include any special HTML formatting. That made me feel like it wasn't as authentic. However, your comment about better fonts was really good and added a bit of believability to it.
All in all, I rate this troll 3.5 out of 5 stars. Keep trying!
Happy to answer it.
/usr/share/doc) is usually better.
:)
You read something about better fonts in Redhat. Keep in mind the Linux community is fanatical about their favorite distributions and will argue the finer points of them until their dying day, with no resolution. Don't listen. Pick a distro and spend some time with it.
Should you return Suse for RedHat? No. But not because SuSe is better. I haven't even tried it. I say NO because you need to stick with the one you have, and spend some time with it. Don't get caught up in this nonsense. I switched distros about 6 times before I realized it was a never ending cycle. I was switching for the wrong reasons - to get some feature the other had. If you spend some time with it, and learn it, you'll usually find that any feature on one distro can be had on the other, if you spend some time with it, and learn how to install it yourself.
You prefer to buy a packaged distro. Good, your investment will discourage you from switching distros once a week.
Which is the best distro? You're better off not asking this question. It's like asking "Which is the one true faith?"
I haven't used Slashcode but I'd imagine it works with Apache, and Apache works with everything.
You *might* want to read some of the distro comparisons that you'll find on Google, but don't spend too much time on this - it will never end. Pick one, stick with it. Only switch if your existing system collapses and you're itching to try something new, BUT you're comfortable with migrating your data and dealing with the quirks of the new distro.
You said you prefer to buy a packaged version, but you didn't say why. The only reasons I can see is that you get the manual, or you don't have the bandwidth or a CD burner. You'll really want to get decent bandwidth to download stuff, you'll learn faster. If you don't have a CD burner, that's understandable, neither do I (at home anyway.) If it's for the manual, you will find that searching online documentation is more efficient.
It's hard to learn Linux and linux apps from a book, by reading it start to finish (unless you're extremely disciplined.) More often than not, you're just trying to get something to work and need some specific information. Searching online documentation (or
PS: Mandrake is the best distro.
# Erik
Yup, I have to agree. On SUN hardware, it's ROCK solid. We had a cpu burn up and it didn't bring down the box (14 proc). A quick swap and you're back at full capacity :)
> service. yes, it's outrageously expensive - but when the gbic card on yr database server makes a gentle popping noise and ten million bucks worth of data drifts away like an untethered boat from the pier, you will appreciate that one phone call will have some ubergeek in tweed show up with a bag of pro bono hardware and a shoebox full of patch disk and make everything alright.
Garsh, I didn't know James Bond worked for Sun!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Because it's a complete product. It feels like a commercial product. Using Linux feels like testing a beta product. Solaris also feels _much_ more stable. I have solaris 8, mandrake 8.2, and a windows 2000 workstation I use at work.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Solarisx86 was available free or at a symbolic price years ago. I fell for it, and besides not working properly, it managed to destroy my CD-ROM by making the arm whack back and forth violently all the time during the painstakingly slow installation process.
For a single CPU low end box used for non commercial purposes, there were no advantages at all, and it took a lot of effort to get (most of) your linux or *BSD software compiled and running on it
It was interesting for learning purposes though.
Do you know if it is any more suitable for a PC now? Taking into account that the average PC now is about 5 to 10 times more powerful, and Solarisx86 has been developed for a few years more?
Having it run on your Mom's machine is great for those of us that want to learn Solaris but can't afford a SPARC. Way I see it, this can only increase Solaris mindshare which has to be a good thing surely?
Maybe just my hw, but I tried S8 on my home box (Tyan dual-PIII) and it did nothing but hang on the install. Has anyone tried 9 on a multi-CPU Intel box?
I would rather a system come with the bare essentials then large quantities of crap *cough* redhat *cough*
Its not user friendly at all. An OS should not be physically painful to use... if using solaris cuases you physical pain, I think you need to find a new hobby/profession
Screw user friendly, if the required task can be performed, and the system is still stable, then im happy. Think of the reverse situation, hmm, I clicked the "make it work" button and it didn't do anything, then five minuets later my system died. Which one would you prefer?
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Damned good point tho. We really have some self-righteous SOB's on here who feel entitled to all software, without writing a single decent piece of software themselves. $20 for a mature OS with no license limit, and people BITCH. Ingrates.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
One other thing - if you need to ask the community a question, and you don't do it in the right place (such as asking about distros on a website under a topic about Solaris x86 news) you'll generally get no answer.
For best results try newsgroups, or sites dedicated to helping people (experts-exchange?)
# Erik
>>It seems they are after Microsoft, not Linux. More Power to them
I'm sorry, that doesn't sense to me. I think Linux and FreeBSD are encrouching on Sun's territory more than MS.
I tried to install Solaris 8 for Intel. I really wanted to make it work, but I simply ran into a dead-end trying to find any graphics or network cards available locally that would work with it. I finally gave up and shelved my cd's.
Someone already posted the Hardware Compatibility List, noting that it doesn't seem to be updated. That was my same problem with Solaris 8, the equipment all seemed to be too many years old.
Are there any rumors that Solaris 9 includes new drivers for more recent equipment? Has anyone successfully installed it with modern video/ network equipment? I'd like to hear a success story before I try again.
...some ubergeek in tweed...
Garsh, I didn't know James Bond worked for Sun!
Tweed? James Bond??? NEVER!
Well, I forked over 20 clams and am downloading it now. Looking forward to getting home and giving it a try. Lets see if I can go with a triple-boot box, RedHat 8, Win2k and Solaris.....
I thought /. had the best and most experienced Linux brains among it's readership..
Seems this was news in in October.m l?tag=fd_t op
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-960756.ht
We have have had our media kit for Solaris 9 x86 for quite some time now.
I'm trying to determine where on their site it establishes whether it's OK to mirror the x86 ISOs.
c l. html
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/b
That BCL license seems to be in full effect, even on the x86 version, unless I'm reading it incorrectly. There's a big round-robin on the site navigation when you attempt to find the license (without registering anyway.)
# Erik
Version 9 doesn't load on the Mac version of VPC. The installer thinks it has a 486 CPU, so it won't install.
Hey, didn't anyone tell you that size doesn't matter? ;)
But seriously, something being in development for a long time is not a measure of how good it is. For instance, take Mozilla. Sure it's good. But did it warrent the amount of development time? Contrast this with Opera 7. A complete rebuild pretty much. Just as cross platform as mozilla, smaller, faster, etc. etc.
The advantage that proprietary developer have over open source is focus. They can move faster (smaller team of more talented peopl), devote all their working time to their task, and of course communicate easier.
During my undergrad in computer science, we had two main undergrad servers. Comparable in hardware power, one ran Linux and the other rand Solaris. From the words of the admin himself, "We have to reboot the Linux server four times a day, we never have to touch the Solaris server." Don't take this as a flame against Linux, but don't discount something just because it's not "open source".
Solaris has a *long* track record of proven stability. That's why it's known as big iron in the industry. It probably won't get you much on the desktop over Linux though, the big differences show up only under heavy load.
$20 shipping I could see, especially if it came with a manual like 8 did. But bandwidth just doesn't cost that much. Their download pages claim 3 CDs is the average size, unless you get every last package. $20 for 2.1 gigs transfer? No.
"After you have it [after you pay $20 for it], it's free for non-commercial use"? No, it's not free, it cost $20. Are schools even teaching logic these days?
That's like saying, "After I paid $12,500 for my car, they gave it to me for free." Or, "After I paid $5 to the McDonald's register weasel to take my order, they gave me what I ordered for free."
640x480 is fine on a server.
Thanks for the detailed answer. I think I will keep SuSe Linux but the fonts really suck (I am someone used to Windows fonts).
Is there a way I can load fonts from my licensed copy of Windows to Suse ? (I have licensed copies of Windows 98/ME/2000/XP on my 4 boxes and 5th box has Suse Linux now)
I am a software developer by profession and have worked on Unix about 10 years ago in college... since then it has been IBM and Microsoft platforms... Now I think it's time for Linux...
I know you can get GCC for Solaris on i386, but do you get Sun's Workshop compiler? A native compiler is always nice.
Nice way of trying to appear nice, but still screwing you...
Yeah! Why should I have to pay them for the bandwidth that I use? In fact, I think it really sucks that they won't pay the cost to FedEx the CDs to me. Cheap bastards.
And they conveniently don't mention that I have to pay for the blank CDs after I download their ISOs. First screw me out of $20 for gigabytes of bandwidth and then I find out I have to supply the blank CDs. Assholes.
Why can't they follow the Mandrake Linux model where they give away their product AND supply the bandwidth for free? It seems a shame to abandon that business model just because it drove Mandrake into bankruptcy.
I think the parent was thinking of Q, not Bond.
Program Intellivision!
The vendors will not come back now fearing Sun can still kill it at any time and Linux is a less risky decision. Linux totally ate all of the early solaris on intel marketshare.
The only thing you can run on it today are OSS apps. Kind of expensive for just this not to mention FreeBSD and any Linux distro have both the OSS apps and commercial support and they are cheaper and more supported in hardware. Also solaris is optimized for the sparc so performance is not so good on intel anyway.
Sun already has their own Linux distro for their Lintel servers. They have lost millions already for solaris on x86 and they should relise that its already dead and its a sunk cost investment because McNealy opened his big fat mouth.
http://saveie6.com/
i was talking to a guy at the sun booth and he gave me a copy of it. haven't installed it yet. maybe someday.
my gentoo installation has been working out real well, so i don't forsee a change.
Absolutely. Whatever your feelings about their software, their fonts are terrific. Mandrake has an automatic tool to import Windows fonts. Suse may too, and I think KDE has one. Or do a Google search for Linux and Microsoft fonts -- yoou'll find something that tells you how to do it.
Solaris certainly has its advantages in code maturity. But one of the biggest advantages Linux has is that they care not a whit for binary compatibility, and can therefore rewrite things from scratch when they want to, keeping only source compatibility (and often not even that). Solaris and other commercial OSs, for obvious reasons, must make sure that they provide easy upgrade paths for existing customers and applications. Therefore, they must keep legacy code and interfaces around, and must avoid making changes which might cause incompatibilities.
It's certainly annoying that you can't depend on code to run across Linux kernels without recompiling; it makes commercial software (particularly driver) development a nightmare. But it allows Linux to make extremely rapid changes and fix mistakes. It's highly unlikely that any commercial OS could have changed as rapidly as Linux has over the last twelve years. That speed of development, combined with the fact that Linux is consciously modelling itself after another OS, has probably equalled or exceeded the extra time and resources Sun has put into Solaris. At this point, Sun's only real advantage is their ability to produce both the hardware and software, and not worry about portability.
solaris.9.intel-u2-x86-install.iso solaris.9.intel-u2-x86-v1.iso solaris.9.intel-u2-x86-v2.iso
In 'production' kernels (2.4 and lower) you're right. The latest development series, however, adds both better threading support, faster syscalls, and preemptive scheduling. It will take a while for these features to mature and stabilize, of course.
Sadly, I already paid the $20 for the beta of Solaris on i386. It turns out it didn't like my Dell Laptop. However any linux distro likes my hardware.
How it "feels" is completely irrelevant.
In the end, the only thing that matters is results.
I am not sure if I know of anyone that would deploy servers with Mandrake.
If anything feels like "testing a beta product", it's Solaris running CDE (rather than Mandrake).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I maintain several Solaris systems, both sparc and 40 intel systems (our Unix Lab). The problem with Solaris is there's no software for it! no Java 3d like on Sparc, no SVG plugins for Netscape or any other SVG software used in our computer graphics course here at the University. Hardware compatibility is abismal, only supports limited Nics and video cards, no DRI, limited sound card, and so forth.
Sun does not do any marketing to entice companies to port their applications to Solaris x86. Even sun doesn't provide decent support, no Java3d, have to use Mesa for OpenGL, no Journalling file system like Veritas for Sparc.
I'm sorry, but I just can't take this seriously until Sun gets serious. Anyone that says Solaris is better than Linux on Intel Hardware needs their head examined.
-- DuckWing
I've used Solaris 5 and 6 on Intel, if I remember correctly. It was fairly good experience, and system was performing well. I did have to use Xfree86, since whatever came from Sun had fairly limited support of the graphic adapters, but moving Xfree86 into Solaris was fairly easy operation, no brainer. I probably will take a look at Solaris 9. In general Solaris is very solid and stable system (starting around 5 or 6).
It sucked big time before that.
It didn't have proper J2EE support and in general didn't perform very well. We did a Java test with Windows (completely unscientific, granted) and it ran neck-and-neck to a little slower. I was annoyed and installed Linux (2.4 kernel had just come out) which did better.
Of course this was on a single CPU system, so SMP could well have been a different story.
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I run a large testing Facility in the Telecom industry. I believe that we could use the SolarisX86 in the Labs for free under this license. Do I understand that correctly, we previously had 1 SolarisX86 box, and this was several years ago. We would have like to have had more, but these days, we've relied for heavily on Linux where possible. We still have some HPUX, and Solaris on Sun hardware etc, but if we could freely use the SolarisX86 in a test environment, that would Great!!!
(if not, we'd just keep using Linux, but diversity is important in this case)
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Until they make this free, Linux will still roxor, since normal linux developers don't want to pay for anything, and everything in the world should be free. Thats why every company linux users like always go out of business, they don't pay for anything.
i, for one, plunked down a hard-earned $20 bill and am downloading it right now. i've got an extra p2-450 kicking around and will throw it on there. $20 seems like a good deal to familiarize ones's self with an official, popular unix operating system. hey, the The Unix Administrator's Handbook (a.k.a. the purple book) covers Solaris (8, but hey...).
if you're a fan of computing and have the means, this is certainly a good deal. hell, if Microsoft put up a non-commercial version of XP for $20 i'd get that too. one can never have too many operating systems to play with.
I've been using Solaris X86 since 2.4, and in my business since 2.5.1 (about '97), and it's great! Total source compatability, very few problems over 7+ years using it. Performance is acceptatble. Price is right, and support is excellent.
You Free people need to go get a real fucking job and move out of your parent's basements and see what the rest of the world is doing.
I could not have said it better myself. "I'm part of the free software movement" is often just code for "I've never written a line of code in my life and don't contribute in any way to any free software projects. But when they are done, I'll be there to download them."
The easier it is for one of us to put up a proof of concept system, the more likely it is that Solaris x86 will trickle into corps and bring expensive Sun boxes along for a ride.
It's as if you were asleep for the last 10 years of Linux market penetration.
I didn't say it might not be a good idea for sun - obviously, as you mention, the reason they give away Solaris x86 is for sysadmins to play with. And no, I haven't been asleep. In fact, linux is used at my workplace for the same reasons you mention - a few of us were playing around with it, and then...
But while it might be a good idea for them to give away Solaris x86, that isn't to say that all these Stallman Jr.'s on here have any grounds to claim that Sun is EVIL for not giving away everything they own for free, all the time, to any jackass that wants it. For a lot of people on here, it's not about Sun's business practice, OSS has become their freaking religion.
In fact, I doubt very much that Sun gives a rat's ass about the $20/download they will make - I doubt they could fund an office picnic with it. It's likely to separate people into two camps - those who want to dl it because they saw it on /., and those, like sysadmins, who actually are serious about it. Kind of like country club fees in that way - keep out the riffraff.
Quite frankly, you should be glad - that nominal fee will keep your download faster by keeping their bandwidth clear.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The Solaris kernel is much more mature than the Linux kernel. It is pre-emptible, multi-threaded, supports dynamic loading of all kernel modules, and very stable. The drivers available for some devices are a bit lacking but SUN is trying to fix this now. It's development model is geared towards stability, and speed having been designed for the server. This means that if you are planning on using it for your desktop you have a little work ahead of you but I have done it for years. Linux for my gaming, Solaris for my work.
For those running Solaris on Intel, if your disk is slow run eeprom and you will see a setting to turn on UDMA. SUN turned this off by default as many UDMA controllers especially older ones where a bit flaky when using generic drivers.
For GNU software go to sunfreeware.com SUN already ports many linux apps to Solaris.
It is free for personal use, but costs for commercial. Just like Minx, SCO, Dr-dos, and so many other OS's. Hummmmm..
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Don't be so sure about the free part. If you read the fine print, it's only free for single processor systems.
If you have a multiprocessor system, or even a board with one CPU but two sockets, then you have to pay.
Intel isn't the only x86 platform
Solaris 9 released for Intel?
Leather protectant spray has been released for Nike shoes.
- Install Sunx86
- ???
- Profit!
Actually, I think I know what the "???" may be in this case. That would be: build your SUN chops with a copy of said on one of these nice ch33p b0x0rz and grab hold of some dead trees and with some perserverance and love of knowledge you will get to 3.Quod scripsi, scripsi.
The press release of Feb 6, 2003 states:
Non-commercial usage is available at no charge
This does a bit more than just imply that I can acquire and use the OS without the request of monetary exchange. Yet I'm sure with a careful review of the license we'd find this statement means something else entirely: you can use it freely on your system once you've paid us to get it.
If I had a stack of Jacksons to hand over one by one to develop my technical knowledge, this might not be an issue. Yet $20 right now *is* significant and I'm not willing to pay for an experiment in installation.
This press release intrigued me to revisit Solaris which I've not dealt with for a few years now. Many job postings I've encountered recently are asking for recent versions of Solaris and it'd be helpful careerwise to work on this OS.
But I'm reluctant. As mentioned above $20 is a significant sum right now, there's the principle of the contradicting press release, I don't know if this will even install on my system, and I picked up somewhere running on a dual CPU required commercial licensing.
$149.99 is for the Professional version. Just
get the $39.99 Personal version.
I really don't understand wht anyone would want to use Solaris when there are better alternatives such as Linux, *BSD, ...
... and ten times cheaper!
... but Solaris really plain sucks for most apps imho
I work at an ISP as system engineer and I must say Linux beats Solaris in almost every area.
- the filesystem in Solaris is so slooooow, if you have more than 1000 files in a directory, simply forget it!
- tcp/ip stack sucks too: connection establishment takes much more time than in Linux
- impossible to make Solaris switch threads between several cpus!
- so many GNU tools missing
In every area where we moved from Solaris to Linux, we offered a better service to our customers, be it mail, news, web, mysql,
We also compared Solaris to Debian sparc and saw a large performance increase.
Sun have some interesting (very expensive) pieces of hardware such as the T3, the SunFire,
I want to believe Solaris must be better at something... it makes good printing server!
Please, someone show me a real-life benchmark where Solaris beats Linux!
Oh my! Last night I awoke from a delicious dream where Sun had approached RMS to see if he would accept the newly GPL'd Solaris kernel as the official GNU kernel. Of course, the FSF had to change the name from GNU to GIU...
I saw some Oracle benchmarks lately... Conclusion: Solaris is the worst/slowest platform for Oracle ;)
sparcv9 is 64 bit
Doesn't "64-bit" refer only to the size of the registers (that is, hardware support for long long) and pointers (that is, hardware support for far pointer arithmetic)? Last time I checked, the 64-bit architectures didn't have 64-bit instruction words unless they were VLIW architectures such as Crusoe's backend or TI TMS320C6K. The "bitness" of a processor has nothing to do with its instruction size; witness the 16-bit Thumb instructions of the 32-bit ARM architecture.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As a hetero (as in many platforms) UNIX admin, I applaud Sun for coming to their senses. One of the things that got me into Solaris in a big way, which also helped me with my job, was the availability of an Intel version.
Its called MINDSHARE.
Now I ended up getting 2 Ultras off Ebay, so I use the Sparc version at home, but I always contended that Sun was being dumb in throwing out the mindshare that they can scrape up just by having a version that runs on cheap Intel hardware. The x86 version of Solaris got me used to it, comfortable with it, and led to Sun hardware sales when I got to a position to recommend some Unix purchases at work. So you see, mindshare can add to the bottom line.
I love Linux, but I also LOVE Solaris. I love Solaris on sparc hardware better, but having a free non commercial x86 version rounds out their offerings.
I wonder who in the company was for it and who was against it, and who actually decided the final direction?
Probably because the Linux community values politics and ideology in addition to technology.
Well, at least in Solaris vi is vi. I swear that the vi clones in linux want to be web browsers, LaTeX typesetters, on-line help systems, and on and on and on. When one of them asks if I want my car washed or my house painted, I won't be suprised one bit. It can be easily argued that many GNU/Linux tools have abandoned some of the KISS principles of UNIX, which is kind of a shame. I still prefer to connect simple tools via a pipeline; everything is just more flexible that way.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
The Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) is the premiere OS for the enterprise
Do they mean premier? They need a new PR company.
Now, it would be awesome if Sun released their compiler suite for less than $100. It is the best compiler for SPARC-based machines (duh) and would fill in where GCC lags behind. Their dbx is pretty good, too. It's also well documented, which makes it very hard to beat for SPARC-based software development.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Who's using this, and on what hardware? I know about google. I want to know what /.ers are doing.
There are no trolls. There are no trees out here.
So if the EULA says we can copy and distribute (for non-commercial uses) Does anyone know where this is being mirrored yet?
I'd guess that Java support is pretty good.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Could it be that they are charging $20 just to be able to see how many out there acctually cares about Solaris on x86?
Management: Lets discontinue Solaris on x86.
Techie who want to keep his job: Oh, no! Please no!
Management: No one want to buy it.
Techie: Eh... Well, lets give it away for free then?
Management: But what good will that do if noone uses it?
Techie: Hm. We can charge like $20 so we can count how many that cares.
Management: Mmmm, money. Good.
Techie: Phew.
I think most people do not understand why Solaris is so damn cool. So many peices of the puzzle where Linux says, "when we tackle the [insert issue here] as was shown in [insert publication here]we will be ahead of Microsoft like all the big UNIX players." Solaris is the big Iron solution. We did tests @ sun with a machine that would scale from 1-128 processors and they had them lined up. Image your server just taking processors like they were quarters going into a gum ball machine. That is cool. You get the same basic OS that they run the SUN Sun Fire 15K, that sells for a couple Million Dollars for free off of the Sun website. This is a bullet proof OS. Now if it only had the hardware support we could rule the world.
I studied the kernel threading system and it is really great how they have mixed user-level (M to N) and kernel-level threading (N to N) into a hybrid system. Your programs can control blocking systems, so user level threads can give up their time slice as easy as kernel level threads. That makes Java threading make more sense than with Native threads in Linux, where you have to use IPC for processes to talk between bytecode interpreted programs.
Give us hardware support and games and ease of cross-compiling source level Linux programs and you have a winner.
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
I just got a HyperSparc 4 CPU 200mhz that runs on and Old Sparc Station 20. What can be cheaper than that ?? Other thing to remember is that Solaris on x86 is not the same as Solaris on Sparc. Some important pices are mising like OpenProm
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
I agree. The x86 version is a) $20 to download and b) not freely distributable. How is this "Non- commercial usage is available at no charge"?
Like the subject says... I just forked over the $20, and have almost finished downloading the files.
I have an old 1GHZ AMD kicking around that I was going to try installing this on, and wondering if anyone has had any luck with it before I begin.
Is this even supported ?
Cheers,
-Xian
OK, so this isn't real open source and it isn't really free.
It's onlt 20 Bucks I hear you scream, but for someone who just wants to evaluate or simply 'play' with it (e.g. see if you can get it going under VMWare) it's too much.
If Sun says it's really open source, why can't just one of us pay the 20usd and bung the 3 ISOs on KazaA or some university FTP server (that way Sun aren't paying for any bandwidth)?
I'm glad I got Solaris 8 x86 before they started charging for it, same with Star Office.
#include <sig.h>
I already have a copy of slaris 9 for intel. I got my copy for Free from linux world New York. They were handing them out on DVD at the sun booth. Sorry to those who were there and didnt get their copy
I haven't worked on Solairs since 2.5, but back then, the "gcc" compiler was essentially the default compiler that you needed for most packages.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
You know, it's exactly this attitude that prompted sun to STOP development of x86 v9 in the first place. Considering they let you have it for nothing, I can't see what there is to bitch about.
Minus five geek points to you sir, it is "Do or do not, there is no try".
Last year when Sun offered a free copy
of, I believe, v8 on DVD for Intel/AMD
systems. I gave them all my personal
information, and was told to watch
for my copy to arrive in the mail.
Then some weeks later, they sent me an
e-mail saying I would NOT be getting a
copy. Then they proceeded to begin
sending me SPAM (uhm, marketing). Of
course I used the Remove From List
option, but they proved to me what
type of operation they run. I thought
it would be nice to try it, but I can
always download various GNU/Linux
distro's for free (or buy them for
cheap), so not interested. No soup
for you today. NEXT!
I agreee with your post but feel compelled to point out that there is no free market when it comes to food esp. in Europe.
Food has it's price subsidised under the Common Agricultural Policy in order to stablise the European food economies. Food is grown and destroyed or land is made "set-aside" [farmers get paid to *not* grow food!]
The price is fixed at source and the cost passed on to the consumer. This all sounds well and good to protect the little farmers that work hard for little return in order to fill our bellies, and that's the way it is pitched via the region Farmers Unions.
Truth is, most of our farmland is owned by big companies and as such they are milking us. We live in a place where the laws have been accumlated through a set of parliaments created by the landowners and most people don't even know it's happened.
We've only got what they've let us have to keep us docile.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I can't help thinking how things might have gone if Mandrake charged a token download fee rather than have the MandrakeClub with it's constantly updating mirror list.
Anyway, I am glad to see that Solaris x86 is out there and getting exposure on slash. I still think it's a bloody good operating system once you get some gnu software onto it.
GNU/Solaris, anyone? :)
see lots of folks mumbling bout how they like solaris cause they dont have a sparc at home....If anyone wants to get a copy of solaris 9 for x86......I'll trade you one of the Secret Decoder Ring Magazines old Sparc 5's......Its in detroit and I'm not shipping it...but if you want a free as in beer SUN Workstation....email at sdr-mag@moscowmail.com
ciao
From Sun's website: "Please note: A new, community-based Solaris[tm] 9 x86 hardware compatibility list (HCL) is under development. Please check back here later for more details."
...
They could have at least listed the X86 hardware they tested on. Unless
This is business right? Let's weigh the options. I'm only going to get it to see what it's all about, no enterprise here. So I can either
1. Pay $20 for the "free" download, or
2. Get it off P2P and risk installing a hacked/backdoored version on my old non-networked pentium.
I think I just saved myself $20.
it's been available for the $20 fee for at least a week or two, regardless of the date of the press release. I know because I was about to do it last week, but instead went for the free SPARC version first (previously, the SPARC version was available to *me* only on DVD, and my Ultra's don't have DVD drives).
yawn
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I ordered and downloaded Solaris 9 for x86 over two weeks ago. How did this become news on Feb 7?
Kris
Kriston
I'm an avid Linux user, but don't often use Solaris. Regardless, I'm intrigued by your comment. Can you give some specific examples of why Solaris has such an edge, in your opinion?
Somehow I am sure that I was modded down by Solaris zealots - only Solaris zealots could mod as a troll the post correcting the parent by saying that Solaris is more intended for Linux users rather than for Windows one. I wonder what will be a meta-moderation of that mod.
Less is more !
For most of my needs Linux is the best choice (price, feature and performance-wise). For some applications, though, Linux does not come near the scalability and stability of sun boxen with solaris
Boxen? Boxen? Say it again, asshole!
These studues often assume one OS per machine. This is increasingly not the case. The studies may not be intentionally flawed. MS might also be seeing more sales due to reduced piracy percentages.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
I think you must be getting vi confused with emacs ;-)
:)
Besides, you can still install plain old vanilla vi on linux boxen - well, I have on my Debian GNU/Linux system at least. So you've got choice, no need to bitch
--Gareth
This is great, but apparently I can't use it to operate my nuclear power plant's aircraft control tower. Damn.
-Splat
I paid the US$20 (AU$33) and thought i would mirror the files for the masses.
http://mirror.ausgamers.com/solaris9/
If sun want me to take it down, they can contact me at mirror at ausgamers dot com.
--Trent
I didn't think that the FSF or the OSI dictates what is free and what isn't Free.
I mentioned this in my comment, making a careful distinction between "free" and "Free". The USA's advertising laws dictate what can be considered "gratis", that is, free as in "free lunch". I'd assume that nobody can deceptively sell you a "free car" and then reveal a $20,000 "shipping and handling fee". If it's really small-f free, and the $20 covers replication, shipping, and handling of the copy, then it should be at least freely copyable and redistributable, which means there needs to be an exception to the Sun Binary Code License Agreement analogous to the exception provided with the Java 1.4 JRE.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ah. Well, it _was_ a funny image. Thanks.
AC got your tongue ? :)
What do you not understand about the word free?
What do you not understand about the word "license"? Sun's web page says that they are offering a free license and that you have to pay for media or download costs. What's so damned confusing or misleading about that?
I will just wait for someone to put it on P2P to download for free (Actual)
There's always some jackass that has to try to fsck things up for everyone. Thousands of man-hours that have gone into the development of Solaris and you felt the need to announce your intent to pirate it rather than pay a $20 download fee?
Sun is being incredibly generous in giving you a free license to such a robust, professional OS. Why don't you just pay the $20 and download it from them instead of being an ass about it?
Besides, you can still install plain old vanilla vi on linux boxen
Yes, but I feel that is unnecessary work. For example, in Slackware, vi is a symbolic link to elvis. The first time I launched elvis to edit an HTML document, elvis rendered the HTML! I had to go out of my way to read and learn how to disable that option--an option that should be disabled by default. If I wanted to render HTML, that's what lynx, mozilla, netscape, opera, konquerer, etc. are for.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on
a photo-safari in Africa. As they're driving along the savannah in their
jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.
The biologist: "Look! A herd of zebras! And there's a white zebra!
Fantastic! We'll be famous!"
The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant. We only know
there's one white zebra."
The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
white on one side."
The computer scientist : "Oh, no! A special case!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...