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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.
Any info against what least common denominator the binaries are compiled for ? 386 , 486, pentium ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
And what if free comes with a price ?
But seriously, this is great, now I can try Solaris and play around with it without having to buy it. I'm just interested in learning more about it.
Sun makes enough from licensing Solaris to big SPARC machines (that it makes) and that Solaris is originally supposed to run on. It's kind of like baiting penguins with processed tuna fish... when the penguins already know that there's fresh fish a lot more readily accessible. Some of the penguins might play with it, but they won't eat it religiously.
That was an awesome analogy. I rule.
- A
This is hardware that people have reported to work. I'm sure that more hardware is supported than is actually listed. For example, they only list two modems, but I'm sure any Hayes-compatible hardware modem will work. They only list a few CD-ROM drives, but any ATAPI CD-ROM will work. I don't see any PS/2 mice listed, which may be a problem -- or it may not.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Although Solaris is currently ahead of Linux for multi-processor/64 bit computing, it will not be when Linux 2.6 gets into propper production. Obviously SUN is trying to deploy Solaris as much as possible, and to make it as scaleable as possible, in an attempt to stay one ahead of Linux. It is destinned to fail here, there is just too much resource going into linux now. Solaris is destinned to become a legacy OS. A better stratergy for SUN would be to provide an upgrade path of Solaris to Linux, and to ride the wave, not fight it.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
The only two relevant platforms on IA32 are Windows and Linux.
You are absolutely right. What you overlook is that IA32 is a platform which is already starting to become less and less relevant in the enterprise.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
I wonder what Kevin Mitnick thinks about this little tidbit.
What I want to know is can you take C++ code you've developed under SPARC Solaris and port it to x86 Solaris with a reasonable chance of compiling first try?
Helium balloons want to be free.
it would make an interesting survey... I think it would show that 93% of slashdot readers use bash because it's the default shell on linux. 5% use korn because they've had experience with a SYSV Unix, 1% use csh because that was cutting edge in 1982 when they went to UCB, and 1% use something else because bash/linux is too mainstream for them.
Maybe more interesting would be a breakdown of *why* people use the shell they use. I used to be part of that 93% until a friend clued me in to korn & solaris... never looked back.
The main point of amusement is that those two lines of code (one of which is exit) contain "Proprietary Information of Microsoft Corporation", presumably dating back to the work it did on Xenix in the 80s.
If the word on the street is to be believed, Solaris 10 x86 will include support for AMD64 (Opteron et. al.). This is rumored to be targeted at a Q1-Q2 '04 release date (i.e. reasonably soon). It is true that some of the linux vendors/distributions are working on amd64 ports, but Solaris has been running on 64 bit cpus for years and years, so there are far, FAR fewer little "oops, you mean an int isn't four bytes????" bugs laying around to get tripped up on (I speak mainly in reference to userland here, given that it will go through a commericial QA process from a large vendor I'm not that worried about issues with the kernel itself ;)).
;)
Not that your average web or file server will need to care about 64bit anything, but it'll be nice for those of us running big databases or scientific/engineering codes.
Overall, what's the difference in flavor between Linux and Solaris? Not a lot, really. Solaris does "feel" much more integrated (man pages that don't suck, for example.) Now, you can throw that straight out the window if you insist on things like GNU utilities and such, but it's hardly Sun's fault if you don't like the 1970s versions of tar or vi or want a C compiler for free.
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The Solaris kernel, in particular, is a technological marvel and is one of the leading development platforms for new ideas in OS and Kernel development.
The Solaris system, as well, is very well thought out.
So if by chance you wind up with an UltraSparc or x86 box setup with Solaris, and with all your hardware functional, then you have a superb system.
However, getting to that stage without resorting to disk imaging is hard. Solaris has probably one of the worst installation routines - its even less stable (and functionally useful) than Microsoft's windows setup, which already speaks volumes. The design is horrible - from the key binding, to the (or lack thereof of) menu option, to the very unflexible installation, to the stalls and crashes along the way. Mind you, even if you did successfully manage to "install" it, it certainly will require a lot of your attention to make all your hardware work - certainly not turnkey.
As a person who bought four x86 Solaris 9 licenses, along with CDs, DVDs (StarOffice too!!), I was sort of disappointed in my fruitless methods of installing SOlaris successfully. Hardware support is definitely a little scanty (but I can't blame that on Sun since they tailor their OS to UltraSparcs which they produce, not to PCs). Installing Solaris on a spare Ppro box is definitely one of my Christmas holidays projects.
Sun, as a global company, may transfer your personal information to countries which may not provide an adequate level of protection. Sun, however, is committed to providing a suitable & consistent level of protection for your personal information regardless of the country in which it resides.
Is it just me, or does that statement say Sun will try to protect your privacy, but preventing it from entering a country without legal protection isn't one of the steps they'll take. And "committed to providing protection" isn't the same as "legally responsibile" either. I know it's intended as a disclaimer, but it also sure is one big loophole as well to get around any privacy claims.
Is there any reason to use Solaris on z86 other than to become familiar with it so that you can more effectively admin a Sparc machine?
Seriously. Linux and *BSD seem to have a much wider hardware compatibility base. Development for them seems to be going at a much more rapid pace. If you're not tied to a Sparc machine, is there any real reason to use Solaris?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano