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Sun Is Giving Away Solaris 10 DVDs
Tarmas writes "For a limited time only, just like Ubuntu's ShipIt service, Sun Microsystems lets you order Solaris 10 absolutely free of charge. The operating system comes on a single DVD supporting both the x86 and SPARC versions. Also included is Sun Studio 11."
Actually, it's just a way to drum up interest in a new product. A lot of companies do it.
Microsoft does it with the functional betas of a lot of their software including Visual Studio and they aren't really hurting for customers
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Is the source code included? It says only "Solaris," not "OpenSolaris," so I'm guessing that it's not. If it were, that would be cool.
It's 'news for nerds' because it's Solaris. It's 'stuff that matters' (at least, to said nerds) because they're giving away DVDs of it for free.
And if you only find it mildly interesting, you've probably got too much of a life. Try spending less time talking to people and going outside, and more time participating in OS flamewars, bashing Microsoft, and filling your multi-terabyte RAID (you *do* have a multi-terabyte RAID, right?) with porn.
It's the only way I can keep my productivity up; I install an operating system on my computer that won't run any games.
At least in downloadable form. I remember getting Solaris 8 iso images from them almost 5 years ago. Theres plenty of hobbyists and admins that need or want to run it at home. Their attitude is much better than SGI, IRIX cds still cost plenty on ebay. O2 and Octane workstations are dirt cheap now.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Solaris beats Linux hands down for porn hunting because of that nifty app it comes with, ddtrace.
Beep beep.
Canonical: Free Ubuntu cds shipped!
Community: Whoa, great innovative, breakthrough, sign that ubuntu is a serious contender
Sun: Free Solaris dvds shipped!
Community: Whoa, sign of desperation, they can't even give their os for free.
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
im giving away my SUN stock as well.
When I installed Solaris last year, there were no drivers to support my hardware. I was able to get it to work in VMware and it worked great. There was file which you had to tweak for the interface, but that was about it.
Microsoft also did something along the same lines with their Power Together program, although the end result of that was a fully functional copy of Office or Vista.
You actually had to watch a few webcasts (Hit play and go to sleep) but its essentially the same thing.
I'll be getting a free copy of Vista as well as Solaris, but more as a novelty than anything on both counts.
Yay! Free coasters for everyone :)
Support for huge boxes. The Solaris 10 you run on a single CPU sunblade 100 is the same OS as will run on a 144-core loaded 25K - there's also very little real difference in the OS between SPARC & x86 (main differences are boot loaders & X-windows).
Then there's feature set - zones, dtrace, ZFS, workload management & so on all come out of the box. Most linux software will run with a recompile.
I'll assume you've missed all of the Solaris 10 hype, and are genuinely curious. That said, there are a lot of interesting things in Solaris 10.
/etc/init.d method of starting services). There's dtrace which can trace anything in the computer (massively, incredibly more powerful than strace or truss). Zones are an implementation of virtual machines, and allow for complete isolation of environments all under one kernel. Related to that is the scheduler, which allows a very granular means of resource allocation to a process or application. Also, Brandz will let you run Linux code under Solaris, within a zone. I know of developers who are using this, because it lets them run dtrace against their Linux code for debugging and optimisation.
First of all, it is robust and reliable to a degree that Linux still doesn't achieve in a general-purpose environment. It's also immensely scaleable--dealing gracefully with as big of a machine as you want to throw at it. In terms of technology, Solaris 10 was a complete rewrite, and in many ways was a rethinking of Unix. It provides service-level fault tolerance (via SMF, which replaces the traditional
Finally there's ZFS, which is truly a new filesystem--the first in a long time on any platform. It combines filesystem operations with volume management, and results in a filesystem that has been abstracted from the hardware it's running on.
These are just the highlights of the most robust Unix out there right now.
What Solaris 10 will NOT buy you though, is the same end-user experience of Linux. The graphics routines, multimedia applications, and audio support just aren't at the same level in Solaris yet. That's changing fast enough, but it hasn't caught up yet.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Sun Solaris 10 Media Kit Program
Fulfillment and Customer Service by:
BrandVia Alliance, Inc. - Fulfillment Center
2300 Zanker Road Suite E, San Jose, CA 95131, USA
Telephone: 408 955 1750 customerservice@brandvia.com
Reference: 23072-588
To *Your Name*
-reserved-
*Address*
Air Mail $5.05
Contents: Free Solaris 10 Software Media Kit. Commercial Value less than $10
Postal service used: UNITED STATES POSTAGE, from ZIP CODE 95131 to Barcelona (Spain)
The package include 3 DVD:
* 6/06 Solaris 10 Operating System (SPARC DVD)
* 6/06 Solaris 10 Operating System (x64/x86 DVD)
* Developer Tools (Sun Studio 11, Sun Java Studio Creator 2 Update 1, Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8, NetBeans 5.0)
The DVD box shows a photo of castellers, quite curious, as it is typical from where I live (human tower, representing that the union make you stronger, etc.).
Corollarious: I'm glad the DVDs crossed the ocean. Thank you Sun! If Solaris become GPL v3 licensed, I would consider to use it for homebrewed hacking. Although I love Linux, and I will not leave using it, I like the possibility of have a GPL v3 alternative... just in case!
Canonical: Did it first.
What about AOL?
This is not the greatest
That means you have to formulate your request differently when addressing to Slashdot or to Google : Don't say "What features of Sun OS can not be found in linux distributions ?" but say "Solaris is just a toy! Linux is far more superior!" and you may get a full detailed list of the said features
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
You're apparently new here. Let me explain the Rules of Slashdot.
1. We love Apple (especially when they do something just like Microsoft, and even more if their product is vaporware).
2. We hate Microsoft (especially when they do something just like Apple, and even more when their product is vaporware).
3. Steve Jobs can do no wrong (especially when he does the same as Bill Gates).
4. Bill Gates can do no right (especially when he does the same as Steve Jobs).
5. Any story that is positive about Bill Gates or Microsoft will get tagged "fud" or "troll".
6. Any story that is negative about Steve Jobs or Apple will get tagged "fud" or "troll".
7. "One Laptop Per Child" is the second coming of Christ.
8. Nicholas Negroponte is Christ.
9. We ignore Sun (especially when they dominate any specific industry).
10. We adore Java (even though it was developed by Sun).
11. It has been "The Year That Linux Takes Over the Desktop" for about 8 years.
12. It has been "The Year That Microsoft Dies" for about 15 years.
13. It has been "The Year That Apple Overtakes Microsoft" for about 10 years.
14. Ubuntu is God's chosen Linux distribution.
15. All other distributions of Linux are wannabes...especially the ones that have been around longer than Ubuntu.
I've got $5 US that says this reply gets moderated as "troll" or "flamebait" because it contains so much truth about the attitudes of the majority of the Slashdot community.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
First release of Ubuntu was October 20, 2004.
Sun was giving away solaris on DVD since at least May of 2002.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Folks
The Solaris 10 DVD program looks aimed at pro users primarily.
If you want to start on SunOS (kernel) and Solaris (the OS from SUN = SunOS + userland) and you are primarily an enthusiast, may I recommend you OpenSolaris and its distributions.
OpenSolaris - It is the opensourced core OS + networking components of the Solaris OS. Solaris 10 and all future Solaris releases shall be based off it.
There are a number of distributions of OpenSolaris-
1. Solaris 10 - The official distribution from SUN and officially supported. (ROCK SOLID)
2. Solaris Express - Stable builds of development code. Supported by SUN.
3. Solaris Express Community Release (SXCR) - Bi-monthly development builds. Reasonably stabled (haven't seen it crash on the machine I have here in 3 months... 24x7 up, development server). [THIS is what you probably should be running if you want a SUN release to play with!]
4. NexentaOS - [This is what Linux folks should try] This is built off same code base but with GNU userland. It is based on Ubuntu with OpenSolaris kernel (SunOS).
5. BeleniX - A crazy fun distro of OpenSolaris. Also available as LiveCD
For more info please look at http://www.opensolaris.org/
Thank you
- A Solaris Fan
- mritunjai