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Solaris 8 & 9 Free for x86 Once Again
REBloomfield writes "The Register is reporting
that after nearly two years, Solaris x86 8 & 9 is once again Free (as in beer) to download for x86 users." You can download it if you desire. Gives me college flashbacks.
Worth reading the hardware compatibility list before installing
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Depends on what is it you are using it for.
We have Solaris here at GTech GVU on both Sparc and IA. But we use Sparc here for a lot of graphics because while the SPARC and the Intel architecture have roughly the same performance on most integer operations, SPARC is better at floating point operations (don't remember the numbers - 30% I think).
I guess the overall performance would really depend on other things like your intent.
There's not really any good metrics given the differences in platforms. IIRC though, Solaris runs much better on sparc, but x86 hardware is *MUCH* faster than any sparc you can get these days, and is still cheaper.
That said, sun hardware is generally rock solid, and getting solaris x86 working is a PITA.
re: performance between solaris x86 and other free alternatives:
The performance gains [which IIRC there aren't any for most circumstances] aren't worth the compatability losses. For most people, solaris x86 is just a good way to learn the differences between BSD/linux and Solaris for when you get to a job with larger SPARC machines.
You must have:
Free disk space: 4.0 GBytes to Install Solaris 9 OS; 5.0 GBytes to Install Java Enterprise System Software
Recordable CD-ROM drive: To create CDs using the downloaded zipped files
Recordable CDs: Blank 750 recordable or rewriteable CDs, one needed for each CD image downloaded
CD labels: Required under license agreement
CD writing application: Use cdrecord for Solaris or Easy CD Creator for Windows is recommended
Download Manager: Sun Download Manager (Free version) runs on most platforms (see System Requirements for details)
Unzip application: WinZip recommended for Microsoft Windows (or use Sun Download Manager's automatic unzip feature)
you also need to "register" on sun's website. so it's as free as the NY times articles online. too bad there isn't a google cache of solaris 9
Yes and they would be right to; Sun doesn't own the full rights to all the Solaris code (cat /usr/bin/clear for one example) and doesn't have the legal right to release it under the GPL.
I've run across several free Sparcs, including an Ultra 2 that a friend's company was throwing away. It looks as though I can download Solaris for it for free now too! I thought about running Linux on it, but I'm not sure what the point would be since it would be slower than the x86s I've got around.
link
Those prices are outdated. Sun nowadays (is forced to) have cheaper models. Compared to brand-name x86-based servers they are not much more expensive any more. V440 (4 CPUs, 8GB RAM, 4 36GB SCSI disks, redundant PSU) list price US$16000.
No, it's not cheap and it certainly cannot compete with an off-the-shelf dual-CPU Xeon, but 4 CPUs are more expensive then 2 times 2. A Dell PowerEdge 6650 with 4 Xeon 2MHz and similar specs is available at US$17500.
And once you go beyond 4 CPUs, everything is pretty expensive. Sun is no exception here.
Sun is the "mystery licencee" who recently gave SCO a huge pile of cash last July. SCO is therefore leaving Sun alone.
Solaris x86 is pretty limited wrt hardware support, especially when you're used to Linux, Windows or *BSD. Also the installer is very very nasty indeed. I just spent 2 days to get this to run on an AMD system for all sorts of reasons, and couldn't get it to run on a Dell Precision 410 at all.
Worse yet, I paid $20 for the download about 2 weeks ago 8-(((
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
What? Working on amd64 ports???I downloaded the amd64 beta of RHES (gingin) the same month Opterons went on sale! I've been working on a dual Opteron box with SLES 8 for about 3 months now: everything (including DB2, and even _mplayer_) is running full 64-bit.
You've been out of the loop! It's Sun that's dragging their feet. Even Microsoft will probably beat them to the punch. (You can get betas of 2003 if you ask the right person)
The amd64 tree has been in the kernel for ages, ever since AMD started giving away developer manuals. As for the 32-bit-isms, most of those were hammered out ever since it was ported to the Alpha 6 years ago (and later improvements by IBM to s390). Most of those 32-bit oops are in abandoned user apps written by Joe-college-student, and device drivers for consumer grade hardware.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Yeah it basically crashes the system. I mention it because seeing things like killall httpd in shell scripts on linux.
Any info against what least common denominator the binaries are compiled for ? 386 , 486, pentium ?
I don't know what the binaries are compiled for, but I can tell you that Solaris 9 doesn't support 486 at all (i.e. it will not let you install.)
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
$150k? That's an exaggeration.
Sun Fire V440 Server 4 1.28-GHz UltraSPARC IIIi Processors 1-MB Internal Cache 16-GB Memory 4 36-GB Ultra320 SCSI 10000RPM Disk Drives 1 DVD-ROM Drive 2 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet Ports 1 DB9 (ttyb), 1 RJ45 (Console) Serial Ports 4 USB Ports 2 (1+1) Power Supplies Solaris 8 HW 07/03 Operating System Server License Ships Within: 10 business days List Price: $25,995.00
Looks pretty nice to me.
From this.
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
I dunno... I have several busy mod_perl based websites running on an Ultra 1 (167 MHz UltraSPARC in 32-bit mode). Even under heavy loads of thousands of dynamic requests a minute and using the same machine as an NFS server for my small LAN, it keeps chugging away without slowing down. Granted I have spent some time tweaking and tuning, have 768 MB of RAM, and used Sun's compilers to build the Apache + mod_perl environment. But still... it's a really old box that seems to have plenty of pep.
First of all, why was the parent modded up funny? Maybe I'm just humor impaired, but I didn't get the joke.
Second, the reason you think Solaris on sparc is slow is that you've never used a new powerful sun machine. You probably have experience on Ultra5's or something. I've done some work on these and they are by no means slow. Horribly expensive, but not slow. Also note, that these are included in Sun's "entry-level server" section.
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Check Solaris Freeware, they have GNU binaries for Solaris SPARC/Intel 8 and 9.
Apache, wget, gcc, nmap, openssh, samba, tcpdump, you name it:
Solaris Freeware
You can also install Gnome 2.0 under Solaris!
GNOME 2.0 Desktop for the Solaris Operating Environment
Ricardo