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Solaris 10 Released
AusG4 writes "Sun Microsystems has released Solaris 10 for both SPARC and Intel/Opteron. Downloading it is the usual 'register and get your free license' meandering; the Intel/Opteron version is 4 CDs and an optional language and companion disc (a bunch of pre-compiled GNU software in pkgadd format, I'm assuming, same as Solaris 8 and 9)."
Portage on Solaris? NetBSD pkgsrc already provides 5,300 packages ready to build on Solaris.
-Install Solaris
-Install gcc
-Install pkgsrc
-'make install' your desired package
-Enjoy
http://www.openvms.org/
A new operating system every year but software that can't be ported is the still the main problem. Why don't you people realize this. It's the software that is the problem . The software vendors are targeting only a few distributions. Windows .
I disagree, I work at Apple. Here's the deal... even though we do sell to the business market our main focus is the home user. Yes, we make servers and Xsan, BUT our main market is home user and it always has been. Sun's market is purely business class IT infrastructure, always has been. So comparing the two is irrational. Now that's not to say that we should stop using power PC chips and making hardware; our hardware is beautiful. I think that if we released OS X on a intel /intel clone platform that our operating system being a user friendly unix, that is spyware free, adware free, virtually bug free, and virtually virus free would knock Microsoft's market share out of the water. The cool thing about OS X is it's feature rich enough that any coder, admin, or hacker can use it (BASH shell HELLO!) but easy enough that a 70 plus grandmother can use it. Just like our slogan says, "It just works". Now as you probably know OS X was based on NeXT's platform and it ran on Intel 486 (in addition to other processors) So it's not like "we" haven't done it before. What I think is keeping "us" out of the market is the little matter of 150 million Microsoft dollars that saved us back in '97. I think one of the terms of that hidden agreement was a non-compete clauses. I think we are bound to stay of Intel clone architecture. I mean why else? There's money in software; just ask Bill Gates.
People who are paying large amounts of money for Solaris are doing so because they want hardware and software support from Sun. If something goes wrong, they can have a Sun technician on site in a day. Can you have a Linux kernel programmer on site in a day if your system is repeatedly crashing? Probably not, unless you write out checks directly to him :)
I've never understood the significant advantages of branded *nixes over BSD and linux.... My school runs Solaris, and I find it to be a solid *nix, but why would anyone pay (a large sum of) money for it?
Traditionally the branded *nixes have been more stable than Linux, performed better especially on large multipro systems, been guaranteed to work practically 100% of the time on certified hardware, been better tested and not on the OS using public like Linux still is to a large extent. Furthermore, with the big brands, if you have a mysterious bug or kernel panic you get a number to call and somebody works on it 16 hours a day till the bug is fixed. I can vouch for that last part, I used to do it for a living with a major Branded *nix. I will freely admit, however, that Linux is catching up with the branded *nixes. It has practically killed them off on most stand alone workstations and it is eating into the small to medium server market which is probably also why Sun is doing this.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Sun simply isn't making the money that you think it is.
sucks if you don't have supported hardware
Solaris is a server-class OS that was never intended to run on the kind of commodity hardware most people have in the box on their desk. That said, maybe now it's open source people will start writing and contributing drivers.
Why would you? Solaris runs perfectly fine on x86 hardware these days.
Oh come on, where's your sense of geekiness?! Sun hardware is cool! Give me my E250 over some boring beige box running Linux any day.
You got your troll modded Insightful, congrats.
" virtually bug free,"
Hmm, but one would need to brace oneself for new bugs due to the much more varied PC hardware => having to rely on third party developers => having to accept they might break your stable OS. That's basically the major cause of instability for Windows XP that I can see today. Fortunately, there are WHQL certified drivers so it became less of an issue when those were introduced. Just saying that with Apple hardware, you're staying away from a heck of a lot of problems in the formula of giving drivers direct hardware acccess for decent perfomance while keeping the whole thing stable.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
if I had mod points, the parent would be +5 Insightful!!!
I killed multiple Windows installations and a BSD installation a few years ago by installing Solaris on a spare partition!! This marked the immediate end of my adventures with Sun software.
All you've done here is make a bunch of predictions with no reasoning to back them up.
... now it would REALLY matter.
:p
;)
Why will people not give up on Linux and move to Sun ? Why will the opposite happen ? Why will small to mid sized accounts increasingly see linux as the core to their infrastructure ?
Your Googole example is irrelevant - Google have shown that their infrastructure does not need 5x9s reliability, if they have a hardware failure during a lookup then you might get 10,000 results returned instead of 12,000. Would you notice and would it really matter ? Now imagine your are a bank, a teleco provider or a pharmicutical company
Linux has it's place, Solaris has it's place, those places are starting to overlap.
But destroying the competition in a certain areas would end up with Micro$oft syndrome.
Why can't everybody play nice
Oh and Sun will NOT become another Linux vendor, been their, tried on the t-shirt, didn't fit
There are folks out there buying Apple hardware because they are more comfortable with a UNIX-like operating system. They want a system capable of interfacing with all of their various Linux and Unix boxes with built-in ability to run X11 (or some variant thereof). They also realize that they work in a corporate environment where MS Office is King, and may have been burned in the past with OpenOffice not handling all MS documents properly.
Some folks may also value the XCode suite as a development environment.
There are some heretics that may even believe that the Apple is the current power tool for a person that has to live in both the Windows corporate environment and the Linux/Unix world of servers, clusters, and simulations.
These folks may be willing to pay a premium for hardware that works and works well without a lot of fuss. The attractive interface, sexy boxes, and secret-society appeal are just added bonuses.
> Don't fall for the Solaris trap!
How is that informative? If anything, that is stupid. FUD the Red Hat way. Woo - I'm scared, my mouse hand is trembling as I'm clicking on that download link...
First, 99.9% percent of those who try will never see thieir libc contents (or, can't understand them).
Second, it's not that Drepper is some legal expert. Furthermore he has vested interest - the fewer folks look at Solaris the better for him and Red Hat stock price.
Those who can think with their own head should read the FAQ and licensing terms themselves rather than listen legal advice of a coder...
www.sun.com/software/communitysource/faq.xml
What we need is a Solaris Live CD, similar to Knoppix. If Sun wants the maximum exposure for the OS they should make it convenient to try.
Apple would lose their most valuable possession. :) ) .
Mindshare.
They want people to think of well built quality systems, with emphasis on quality. This is the reason Rolls Royce doesn't make cars to compete with civics. If apple where to make OS X for x86 they'd lose the image they to try to project of having systems that just work (due to quality on lots of x86 hardware) . Apple may be a small fish, but it lives in a small pond where it IS the big fish. They keep that market and they'll live on just fine (and be happy with their products
Apple doesn't have the _infrastructure_ to compete with Microsoft. If they
were to suddenly get even 5% of Microsoft's market share in a year, it would
be more than a company Apple's size could handle -- it would *double* the
size of their business, and while that may sound attractive on the face of
it, it's the kind of thing that could destroy a company as easily as raise
it up.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying Apple doesn't want to grow. They do.
But they want to grow in a way that works for them as a company. The Mac
Mini could conceivably boost their market share considerably -- by as much
as 50% in three years, I guesstimate, which is huge (if it materializes,
which is hard to predict), and by then they'll have figured out where they
want to go next. The iPod isn't exactly hurting them either.
It's also noteworthy that Apple's growth pattern is healthier than
Microsoft's, in that it's more diverse. Microsoft is almost entirely in
software, and a little hardware. Apple's got a nice ballance of hardware
and software and has been moving into music. I've been wondering for
years why Microsoft doesn't diversify more -- at their size, they should
be in half a dozen industries. They should own a big movie studio and
a major restaurant chain, or something. When you're that big, you're
supposed to wonder, "What happens if a competitor comes along and forces
us to cut prices to compete until the profits in our entire industry are
razor thin?" Microsoft *knows* this can happen, and they're scared to
death of Linux in particular, but what are they doing about it? Nothing.
(Well, sure, they're doing plenty to try to *prevent* that from happening,
but they're doing nothing to ensure their survival and profitablity as a
company in the event it *does* happen.)
Long term, I like Apple's prospects better than Microsoft's, because
they're manifestly smarter about the way they conduct business.
But of the three, I'd worry most about Sun. They do have the ballance
of hardware and software (and support contracts), but they've always had
that, and they don't seem to have fundamentally improved their business
any time lately, unless I missed something. Solaris is a cool product,
but Solaris 10 is an incremental upgrade, and what *else* is Sun producing?
Incremental hardware upgrades to match, sure... but what else? And their
marketing just isn't up to the standards of Apple and Microsoft. HP has
carved out nice niches for itself in PC hardware and especially printers,
so if they lose a lot of big corporate support contracts to Microsoft or
someone else, it'll hurt, but it won't kill them. I'm less sure about Sun.
Sure, they could turn it around. They could potentially turn Java into
something, for example, but so far I don't see where they're making any
money on it. They're halfway on the Linux support bandwagon, but they're
going to have to compete there with the same players Solaris has been
competing with -- HP, IBM, and so forth. It doesn't differentiate them
at all, really. They need to carve out a niche for themselves in another
market, where they can differentiate themselves better.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Unless you are talking about Linux, IBM already had the enterprise. AIX is the enterprise OS and it's pretty darn good. Support for LPAR's, very good SMP support, HACMP, HAGEO, and 64 bit support. IBM can brign this all to Linux, but they have to fight the SCO monkey yet.
Gorkman