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Solaris 10 Released, Updated & Free (Like Speech)

Sivar writes "Ace's Hardware and news.com.com.com report Solaris that 10 has been released. Improvements include a performance-enhanced TCP-IP stack to shed the "Slowaris" moniker and their much-vaunted ZFS (Z File System). Solaris will initially be "free" (as in beer with an annual subscription fee for bug fixes and support), and will reportedly be released under an open-source license later." As well, KingSkippus writes "MSNBC reports, "After investing roughly $500 million and spending years of development time on its next-generation operating system, Sun Microsystems Inc. on Monday will announce an aggressive price for the software -- free. Sun also has promised make the underlying code of Solaris available under an open-source license, though the details have not been released." An article at Computerworld also has the story from Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and chief operating officer."

24 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. Previous Versions... by NitsujTPU · · Score: 4, Informative

    Previous versions of Solaris were quite expensive...

    Solaris 9

    Solaris 8

    Before the Dawn of Time

  2. Re:does it still suck to install and configure? by Mark+Round · · Score: 4, Informative

    JDS (version 3) is present in the current Solaris Express builds, so should be in the final product.

  3. download links by pchan- · · Score: 2, Informative

    download Solaris 10 for SPARC or x86.

    the terminology on the site is a bit confusing, but what they label as the "Software Express" iso is the Solaris installer

    1. Re:download links by dohcvtec · · Score: 4, Informative

      That is a link to Download Solaris Express (Solaris 10 Beta), not Solaris 10. Sun has been releasing (mostly) monthly builds of Solaris Express, and there have been quite a few advancements and improvements over Solaris 9. I think Solaris 10 is going to be a big release, but we'll all have to wait until later to download it: the announcement of Solaris 10 isn't until 12:30 PDT today, and the actual release of Solaris 10 probably won't be available until a later date. The most recent beta build (b69) says SunOS 5.10 December 2004 from either a uname or in /etc/release :(

      --
      -- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
  4. Re:Woot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Does your iBook have an x86 or UltraSPARC processor?

  5. Funky definition of mainstream by PornMaster · · Score: 4, Informative

    SunOS was in the mainstream before Linus began working on the Linux kernel, dude.

  6. Re:It will be accepted in the mainstream by NitsujTPU · · Score: 2, Informative

    *counts Solaris machines in his lab at work*
    --Many
    *counts Linux machines in his lab at work*
    --A few
    *counts Solaris machines he has fielded for clients*
    --Many
    *counts Linux machines he has fielded for clients*
    --0
    *counts Solaris machines fielded to run his applications*
    --Hundreds
    *counts Linux machines fielded for his application*
    --1 (and I own it)

    I'd like to see more people running Linux, and I cant' seem to find a hard figure anywhere (I searched), but anecdotal evidence tells me that Solaris is pretty "mainstream."

  7. Not a beleiver. by His+name+cannot+be+s · · Score: 4, Informative

    I really don't see where the poster got the idea that the release would be free as in speech. Except maybe free speech in America.

    Sun has made no indication that this would be released under a real Free/Open source license. Sun's past history with this sort of thing has been, shall we say... dismal.

    Oh, they'll let us see the source. Sure as shit. Probably a clause that makes you "dirty" if you compile it, and sure as all hell it won't allow you to redistribute it, or patches to it. (like Sun's other "child" -- Java)

    Heck according to the article I don't see any evidence that the license will be even "open".

    Good Job Sun. Your work in promoting linux is amazing.

    feh: To damn dull for a Monday.

    --
    "...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
    1. Re:Not a beleiver. by Turmio · · Score: 4, Informative

      Linux cannot automatically take code from Solaris even if it was "completely open-source". Solaris must be licensed under the GPL or compliant license in order that to be possible. There are other licenses under which software is open source but despite that fact the source cannot be reused in GPL'd projects such as the Linux kernel. Remember kids, software under GPL is Open Source but Open Source software is not necessarily GPL'd.

  8. Premature... by dohcvtec · · Score: 4, Informative

    Solaris isn't being released until later on today. According to the Solaris 10 Countup Page: While the secrets of Easter Island in the South Pacific remain a mystery, Sun Microsystems is planning to reveal new details regarding Solaris 10 on November 15 at its Network Computing '04 Q4 launch in San Jose.

    And according to Sun's NC04Q4 page: NC04Q4 opens at 12:30p.m. PDT on November 15, 2004.

    Now, premature announcements are nothing new for Slashdot, but it's hard to discuss much about Solaris 10 before it's officially released; each Solaris Express release has shown continuing strides for Solaris 10, but the Express (Beta) builds have not included ZFS or Project Janus, (a Linux emulation layer.) These are two of the biggest features of Solaris 10, but nobody outside of Sun has much information on them, so we'll just have to wait until later today :)

    --
    -- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
  9. Re:Look at apple by Decaff · · Score: 3, Informative

    Java is "open source." Has been "since day one" (I guess). If it's so free why isn't it included with so many linux distributions? Because it ISN'T FREE. It's "open" - that ain't free

    You have it the wrong way round. Java is certainly free (you don't have to pay money to obtain it), but its not (according to some licenses) 'open'.

    Sun's Java is not supplied with some Linux distributions because these distributions have very specific licenses. These distributions often ship with other Java implementations (such as SableVM).

  10. Re:hardware by cloakes · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comes in two flavors: SPARC (Sun & Fujitsu) and X86 (most PCs). The PC version is only 32-bit currently.

    I acquired build 71: it comes with Star Office 7 and Java Desktop.

    Had an old 500 MHz with 500 MB RAM laying around, and it loaded very smoothly. The OS didn't recognize the Diamond Viper video card after installation as it did during the install (strange). But no worries, put an Nvidia card in (GeForce2) and it runs better (faster) than my Sun 1500 at work. Sun and Nvidia have teamed up to support each other, so good news all around. It comes with native Linux compatibility, but haven't tried it out yet.

    I downloaded Apache and set up a quick and dirty guild site for Worlds of Warcraft with it. I have no complaints. Very polished. Just wish they would post some OS patches at sunsolve.sun.com.

  11. Re:does it still suck to install and configure? by Curtman · · Score: 4, Informative

    without a doubt, solaris has been the biggest pain to set up out of ANY unix i've installed

    I agree. I spent a week fighting with Solaris 10 preview for all the wrong reasons. It was basically an experiment to see how much GNU software I could pack into it. To my horror, once I finally got the thing installed I learned that it doesn't even come with a compiler. Sure you can add GCC to it, but there must be some art to making GNU's tools work properly with Sun's libc that is beyond me. The biggest problem I had was libtool seems to be completely broken with respect to shared libraries on Solaris.

    The good news is there are lots of repositories for Solaris binaries:

    Sun Freeware (Sun sponsored - mostly GNU in Solaris package manager form, can be installed with pkgadd)
    OpenPKG RPM OpenPKG Solaris 10 RPM's (Lots missing from here and needs to be compiled via the SRPMS)
    OpenPKG SRPMSAlmost everything I use, I found here and compiled without problems
    IbiblioThere's a bunch of binary packages here for x86 and SPARC Solaris, I didn't use any of them


    Anyone else looking to venture down this road, you should be warned that Solaris is really no fun to try to use as a desktop. Out of the box, Gnome is at version 2.2 or something, and has many many bugs (like Nautilus crashes when you try to drag desktop icons for example).

    Summary: Solaris is not ready for the desktop.

    /me ducks

  12. Re:does it still suck to install and configure? by dohcvtec · · Score: 4, Informative

    To my horror, once I finally got the thing installed I learned that it doesn't even come with a compiler.

    True, but to be fair, no other enterprise UNIX comes bundled with the corresponding proprietary compiler, either.

    Sure you can add GCC to it, but there must be some art to making GNU's tools work properly with Sun's libc that is beyond me.

    This is a known "issue": AFAIU, the headers included in the GCC package you installed were meant for Solaris 9. Since Solaris 10 is still in beta, this ought to be forgivable, and the blame should go to the mainatiners of the GCC package you used, not Sun. However, Blastwave, the excellent Solaris package repository you missed, has GCC packages that work for Solaris 10/Express.

    --
    -- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
  13. Re:Solaris is great! by abulafia · · Score: 4, Informative
    Administering Solaris has been, traditionally, as much work as administering 3 different Linux releases at the same time. The subtle distinctions between their various compilers, the oddness they did to X, and their refusal to replace their various shells and command line utilities like "compress" with the vastly superior open source tools like "gzip" meant that to do any real work, you had to spend a huge amount of time porting over your tools both ways.

    I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps if you came to Solaris from the linux world and expected things to behave the same...

    I used to maintain a huge pile of Sun boxes, and rather liked it. I was supporting FreeBSD boxes at the same time, and ditto. I started cursing a lot more after adding Linux to the mix, until I got used to it.

    It you take the time to set up your environment, Solaris is no worse than anyone else. Of course, I _do_ really like apt, and wish everyone would use it, now that I'm used to it. But dealing with patchclusters is actually quite a lot more straightforward than the where-the-hell-is-libsuxx0r-3.1.25.6r.rpm,-and-now -I-have-to-upgrade-glibc game, IMHO.

    And porting Solaris code to the non-Solaris world is often quite difficult.

    Maybe so, if you don't write portable software... all of mine compiles on Solaris, fBSD, and the various Linuxen without a tweak.

    That said, I'm glad I'm no longer a professional admin... I got really sick of it. But that's a different story.

    --
    I forget what 8 was for.
  14. Re:Failed economy? by walterbyrd · · Score: 4, Informative

    DOS did not sneak in and start replacing UNIX. If anything, DOS snuck in and started replacing CP/M.

    Much later, NT4 server started replaced Netware, and maybe some UNIX.

  15. Re:Solaris is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I guess "Antique" is right. If by "oddness they did to X" you mean the old Open Windows "Xnews" stuff, that got ripped out ages ago in favor of a stock X11 server, and Sun has gone with x.org for Solaris 10. Gzip has been part of Solaris since 2000. And I'm really curious about what you mean about porting Solaris code to the non-Solaris world; Solaris is pretty much the de facto coding standard of commercial UNIX, and since it's based on the UNIX98 standard, de jure as well.

    Anecdotal evidence: I know of a vendor who was approached by IBM to port their product to Linux; vendor said sure (especially since IBM was paying them :-) -- no problem, we'll just start working on moving our AIX version over. IBM's response was that it'd be a lot easier and faster if the vendor happened to have a Solaris version they could start with instead... .

  16. Re:Free and open source? by Myopic · · Score: 2, Informative

    i think you're confusing free software and open source software. i think "simply" seeing the code *does* make it open source. if you can modify and redistribut it, that makes the software free.

  17. Re:SparcStation 20? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    No, Solaris 10 will run on 64 bit processors only, and not even on UltraSPARC-I. There is no 32 bit kernel supplied.

  18. Re:Best quote ever! (On ZFS at least) by Kiryat+Malachi · · Score: 3, Informative

    That quote seemed a bunch of crap until I looked at the link and saw that it was not "1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information", but rather "10^51 operations on at most 10^31 bits of information."

    Ah, missing the exponent sign. Good times. Interesting link, thanks.

    --

    ---
    Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
    (I read with sigs off.)
  19. Sun Catchup (Solaris 10) by unixfun · · Score: 2, Informative

    Having made a fairly decent living being a UNIX Sysadmin (mainly Sun HW w/Solaris), I have nothing bad to say about Solaris 10, or any other version for that matter. Many folks, including myself, toiled over a boiling hot Sun server by day, and hacked on Linux by night. I used to run Solaris X86, because I was a rabid Sun supporter. My mind opened up several years ago when I realized that whatever you were attempting to do could be done faster and easier on a Linux box. With my Solaris knowledge, coupled with ability to cobble together PC hardware, the sky was the limit and things "just worked". Also, in the early days the Sun sales reps and engineers I used to deal with scoffed and ridiculed my attempts to bring Linux solutions into the company. Now I think it's funny to watch Sun reverse positions to keep from being bled to death!

    --

    Slashmail.org "The Open Source Email Com

  20. How about some facts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    First of all, since Solaris 9, GNOME has been the official desktop of Solaris. Solaris 10 comes with GNOME 2.6. Sun has done a lot of work (time, money, engineers) in GNOME.

    Secondly, the Solaris 10 you have been using is a beta. It's still in flux.

    The Java (sic) Desktop System (currently based on GNOME 2.6 IIRC) is being ported to Solaris x86.

    You mention many places to obtain pakages of Free and Open Source Software for Solaris, but you neglect to mention the official Sun Companion CD which is part of the official Solaris Media Kit and is available to download from that link and is also mirrored at sunfreeware.com. You complain about gcc. Well, gcc is a very important piece of the Free Software catalogue in Solaris 10.

    Summary: Solaris is not ready for the desktop.

    You don't know how wrong you are, but don't take my word for it. Get yourslef the finished S10 product and then make your bold statement.

  21. Solaris 10 Express' unacceptable licence condition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just went to download the Solaris 10 Express OS and I had to jump through the usual registration hoops ... etc. but when I got to the licence, I stopped to read ... it said that I am granted the use of this 'evaluation' software for just six months at the end of which I must 1) destroy all copies and 2) send a written confirmation letter to Sun informing them that I have indeed destroyed all the copies. What kind of licence is that?! Since when do I have to destroy evaluation software and write letters to the distributor to confirm I have destroyed their software after six months of testing! Come on ... just time bomb it for simplicity's sake but require letters ... NO WAY! I declined the licence! I prefer to live without those kinds of conditions.

  22. Re:I Hope... by 0racle · · Score: 2, Informative

    Net Install Solaris from Linux. These are the instructions I used to install Solaris from a Slackware machine. The instructions are for Solaris 8, and I had to tweek them a little, but between that and the scripts that set up netbooting on Solaris that are on the Solaris CD's you should be able to get it working.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."