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Solaris 9 x86 Review
ValourX writes "Here is a review of Solaris 9 x86, 08/03 edition. Now that the single-CPU edition is free to download for non-commercial use, people will be compelled to write a Solaris CD and try it out. Read this first -- there are a lot of things you should know before you begin. You might want to check out the documentation or explore other resources like the hardware compatibility list as well."
If you have a few bucks you might want to get an older sparc to try Solaris on. Sol x86 is a security nightmare, and its not the same as using sol under sun's arch. e.g. I run most of my sites on sun boxes, and love it, using x86 sol... Hate it. Definitely not the same if you ask me
MoFscker
That said, Linux or BSD with olvwm or XFce can be made to look so much like Solaris that most users won't care, and the hardware compatibility won't be a problem. I guess it depends on what is more important in a given context, really.
It takes time for you to get the system the way you like. Right now Solaris 9 is the absolute lowest "TCO" unix/linux for enterprise to servers and down to workstations. Redhat workstation costs hundreds more and has less true application support (certified vendor support) then Solaris9 X86.
And your lying through your teeth if you say there is no support.
Software: http://www.sunfreeware.com
Help/Guides: http://www.sunhelp.org
Patches: http://sunsolve.sun.com
Solaris9 X86 is a good stepping stone, a good resource to learn from and if accepted by the industry a very stable platform.
Sun DOES provide security updates, sun DOES provide software updates and there is already a ton of Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment stuff ported to solaris.
Give it a try, i'm sure you may like to see what an industrial strength workstation feels like to run. Honestly.
The biggest one is a consistent OS across the board.
We've got a group of geophysicists who use high-end sparc desktops (just receieved eight loaded Blade 2500s this week). Now having the rest of the group using the same computing platform would help substantially, and Intel hardware is still substantially cheaper than the Blade 150.
Really, I suspect that Sun releasing this is a way of seeing what the maximum prospective customer base might be. They're pushing their "X86 Java desktop" hard right now, and before they get too far into that I think they want to gauge how much development to put into Solaris/x86 as a desktop OS. (i.e. fancy apps, user friendly stuff)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
You are trolling, aren't you? Or you completely do not know what are you talking about. Or you just work for Sun. There is no other explanation why would you post here such a bullshit.
The only company that still insist that Solaris has lower than Linux TCO is Sun. Another company that is saying the same about Unix vs Linux is SCO. All others, including IBM, HP, and even SGI, agree that Linux has lower TCO, despite the fact they sell own Unix distros.
By the way, it becomes suspicious, all three companies are saying the same about Linux: Sun, SCO and Microsoft. Something is common for them behind the scene.
Less is more !
Sun machines are not different from PCs in any significant way besides the processor (which is slower than modern PC processors at most tasks in spite of being 64 bit and having boatloads of cache) unless you have a multiprocessor machine. The days when every Sun machine was superior to every PC are long, long gone. The days when Solaris was superior to Linux for single-processor machines, likewise, have receded past the horizon and are well out of sight. Solaris' only real advantage today is on systems with many processors, especially when you get out of the realm of what Linux will actually run on.
As for your lowest TCO, I don't believe Sun when they say it, and I don't believe you. Where's the figures?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
On the other hand, Solaris scores a big fat negative with patching. Their patching options seriously suck badly. In the Linux world you have great tools like up2date, urpmi, apt-get, etc. In Solaris you have... PatchPro... a horrible piece of crap java based patch management installer that simply does not work. At least, that's been my opinion of trying to use it with Solaris 8. In the end I always end up going back to just downloading the recommended patch cluster every few months, unzipped it, and running install_cluster to keep up to date on patches. Solaris desperately calls for better patch management without requiring you to install some bloated thing like SMC.