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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."
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.
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...
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.
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?
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?
Here is the Intel based HCL list, but nothing about Solaris 9 yet.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
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.
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 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?
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 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.
Yes, it does run on VMware.
Haven't run it on Virtual PC as I don't have that.
Only thing I ran into was that if you're going to run X is that it has no clue what video card VMware is using. No surprise there really. Did what I needed in 256 colors though.
Word to the wise; if you install it, skip the install disc and use disc 1.
That will save you a poop-ton of questions on the forums and usenet.
You've got an easy breezy wind at your back...most of the time.
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?
Good questions, and well asked.
:P
:P
Is Solaris a graphical OS?
Yes, very much so. It uses an X for hardware management, and for many years has used CDE (Common Desktop Environment) for mime-type association and related activities, which KDE was based off of. Gnome has gotten into the market, however, and is to be the new desktop environment for future releases of Solaris. For many years Solaris has competed with the likes of AIX and IRIX. Solaris supports stereo-3D graphics (read: Virtual Reality, VRML, CAVE, OpenGL) and high performance SVGA, PAL, and NTSC graphics configurations. Because it supports things like multi-head, multi-processor, and multi-threaded applications and configurations, movie studios and game-design companies often use Solaris workstation and server solutions to design and render special effects for Hollywood movies and the like (I may be mistaken, but I believe that Industrial Light & Magic is a Solaris shop... ever see Jurassic Park?).
Is it easier to use than Linux?
Yes and no. It's easier to design special effects for movies, install virtual reality caves, and run scientific data analysis with Solaris. They are both flavors of unix, so the difficulty is about the same, in terms of learning arcane commands and stuff. It's probably easiest to say that Solaris is as easy as Linux... just different. (Your questions is like asking whether or not vanilla icecream is warmer/colder than chocolate icecream...)
And, most importantly, is there any way I could run Windows games on it?
Sure. You could install WINE libraries on your machine, I suppose... But if you get a Solaris box, and download your OpenGL and Java3D libraries, why play Windows games, when you can design your own games? Why play windows games, when you can play VR games?
Version 9 doesn't load on the Mac version of VPC. The installer thinks it has a 486 CPU, so it won't install.
I heard that Solaris was faster and more scalable than Linux.
It is, on Sparc machines. (And I've even heard rumors to the effect that Linux is faster on old sparc hardware.)
Slowlaris on Intel is a big waste of time for Sun. The only reason they did not kill it is because enough of their large customers insisted they keep it in place. I hope they are charging them an arm and a leg for it, because x86 Slowlaris will only drain resources they need to apply elsewhere (like Sparc Solaris and Cobalt).
Plus you are not bothered with kernel recompilations etc.
Apparently you've never had to deal with patching Solaris.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I tried it a few days ago with VirtualPC 6 for Mac. Even though the About VirtualPC dialog reports a Pentium II with MMX, the Solaris 9 boot detects a 486 and refuses to continue. If anybody figures out how to get around this, I'd be interested. In the meantime, I downgraded to Solaris 8. Even with that, I've been having problems getting it to initialize the DEC21041 ehternet device that VPC emulates.
You're missing out on one of Sun's biggest points: reliability.
On the Sparc platform size, Sun builds high-end, high-reliability, high-predictability boxes. They want an OS that works (a) very well with the hardware, and (b) with the same reliability features. If they're going to promote porting of other OSes onto their platform, they'll do it on their own terms, and with their own requirements, and that's not very straightforward.
It's smartest, easiest, and most profitable for Sun to constantly reinforce the equation:
Sun = Sparc = Solaris = Solid
Aiding the development of other OSes leads to...
Sun = Sparc = Another processor, with lower MHz than Intel.
Now on the Intel side, there are two factors at work I figure. First of all is the fact that through purchases and blunders, they're moving into it with boxes like the LX50. Given that fact, they (a) want to get Solaris on as many machines as possible, and (b) want to keep their toes in the Linux waters. Add to that, the fact that when they tried to kill of Solaris/x86, there was a large backlash.
So on the Intel side, they develop Solaris and Linux both. Developing SunLinux is a safety measure which in the short term will sell a few more systems to die-hard Linux admins, while developing Solaris/x86 will keep Solaris on machines that people couldn't justify the cost of Sparc gear for.
OK, so this is all rambling. What it boils down to is this: Sun, like most companies, says "We don't sell computers--we sell SOLUTIONS!" Well on the enterprise side of things, companies don't buy computers--they buy solutions. Buying a PC from the guy down the street, installing Linux, configuring IPTables, locking it down, etc. etc. is not as appealing for most companies as buying an LX50/Solaris/FW1 box and having a single vendor for complete support.
Or to summarise the summary, (nearly) NONE of those copies of Solaris/x86 that Sun sells for $20 will go onto serious production machines--the sort of machines that Sun sells and supports. They'll all end up on hobbiest machines, family web servers, and tiny corporate LANs. This isn't enterprise computing, and it's not going to affect Sun's bottom line.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Well, I used 8.0 and it's ok. I don't use it for interactive desktop type applications much anyway. I mostly use it like a server, so video support doesn't matter much. I'll keep it in mind for Sol9, though.
Check out my eclectic infosec blog at InfoSecPotpou
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.
Btw, (off-topic ) does OS X run in VMWare?
Don't believe so, VMWare isn't an emulator, it wouldn't emaulate the Mac processor/hardware etc.
You can't get a threaded piece of code to work on x86 and expect no problems when porting it to Sparc.
Threaded code works just fine unchanged on SPARC and x86; see the Solaris codebase for plenty of examples. =) With very few exceptions, all features available on SPARC are required to be available on x86 as well.
Hell, I don't think Sun even offers an x86 version of their C/C++ compiler.
Search on store.sun.com for part FC9II-602-T999, Forte C 6 update 2 for Intel. The SunONE Studio 7 Compiler Collection seems only to be available (externally) for SPARC, but expect that the 8.0 compilers will be available for both platforms.
Ditto. Busy installing it on VirtualPC right now.
The graphics options are a bit limited (S3 Trio64) so I set mine up as 1024x768x16. So far so good and no problems yet. On CD 2 now. It found a conflict with Soundblaster and Soundblaster something else which I ignored.
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! -
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>
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Nope. 15 years ago, SUN stopped being a hardware company that only needed an OS to support their computers. Today SUN is trying to sell you solutions. (and not that kind on "solutions" where you select some shrinkwrapped product, install it on some new PCs and leave.)
Sure, often they seem to charge for the hardware parts of what you buy and give you some (but not all) of the software for next to nothing. But for them, this is more a price policy. (You get what you need cheap for development and initial employment, but start to pay real money when you upgrade to take serious loads or becomes dependant on real reliability.) Besides customers like to get something real back whan they pay real money. A box appears more real than software. (This is way more true and important than you would think.)
Today if you are trying to do something serious (using a web-service as an example). You never use only one big-ass box for everything and leave the rest. You use a combination of web servers and database servers and what ever other specialized servers you need.
You can use cheaper non-redundant 1U boxen for serving static web pages. Creating a cluster of these is a trivial task. Making the cluster reliable is then mostly a questrion of removing non-working servers from the cluster and perhaps dynamicly assigning new servers to the specific task if needed. A compentent system developer will make a something that does most of this in a week. SUN will sell you software that will do all of this.
But you cannot make a serious application by serving static web-pages. You have changing data (like any page on slashdot.) You have data that should be handled with care. (Your internet bank must not forget that you have paid a bill.)
You have running applications doing real logic.
Moreover, SUN is trying to sell in three-tier-solutions for serious use. Cheap front-end systems 1U, 1CPU, completely replaceable (for example web servers) somewhat more heavy application servers 2-8 CPU, cost effetive redundance, an outage mean a localized loss of work/data (for example running some java applications, scaleability depends on application) and backend database servers (typically oracle) or SAN systems where multiple-box scaling more difficult (or next to impossible, depending on application) more interdependencies, an outage hurts a lot, data loss may mean out of buisness.
For SUN there is currently quite a shift from vertical scaling (big boxen that never crash) to horizontal scaling (lots of small boxen that may crash sometimes, but that won't hurt the overall service). This can be illustrated by the fact that they recently bought a Norwegian company called Clustra specializing in extreme reliability and extremely low latency databases using a cluster
of small cheap boxen.
The traditional (oracle) clustering techologies uses few big boxen, shared disk system (redundant by itself), big redundant box, hot stand by replacement (only one box handles transactions for a single database at any time.) If you have multiple databases you can spread them over the cluster to attempt to balance the load.
The clustra database uses data stored multiple places, a single node will never have all data in the database any piece of data will reside on more than one node. A single transaction can affect data multiple data (of course), it may even affect data on all nodes in the cluster. All nodes containing data that is involved in a transaction must agree on wether a commit is successfull or not, even if any single node may crash or othertvise become unavailable during the transaction. You can upgrade the OS or clustra software without any downtime for the database. There are tools that will do this automaticly.
Untill recently this was only for very specialized applications like telcom roaming databases. But now there you can use ODBC/JDBC for access and more and more
Actually, with the clustra consept, reliability will be higer with 2n half performance, twice number of crashes el-cheapo boxen than n solid database servers. This opens for using trow-away hardware on the most holy dome of big never-stopping boxen. The ideal clustra node is an 1 CPU, 1U, no special redundance box with a single local disk. (IDE is fine)
But don't ask sun for a clustra database to save money. Expect to pay for the extra reliability.
Expect to pay way more than the hardware of the big box with redundant everything and oracle.
This is an example of software that won't be free or next to free for quite a while...
The clusta consept is not unique. I could have used an olther example, like the older multiple-small-box web solutions of Cobalt, also bought by SUN. The lesson from Cobalt is that multiple small boxen is not bad if you have tools for administration that takes avay the work of dealing with every single stupid box.
In more and more areas there pops up solutions to get reliability and performance as the big iron or better with el-cheapo hardware. The number of situations you can scale like this may still be a minority, but they are growing rapidly.
The point is that in this picture Solaris x86 and SUN-branded Linux on X86-boxen makes completely sense. SUN needs both the big redundant boxen and the small, sold by the dozen, thingies. In addition to testing and development, they are used in server-farm and clustering niches and some of these niches may, in the long term threaten to take over a substancial part, or who knows even all, of SUNs big solid box market.