Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Sun Microsystems Operating Systems Software Unix IT

Solaris 10 Released 478

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)."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Solaris 10 Released

Comments Filter:
  • Cheap Sun hardware (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and the best place to get your Sun hardware: Anysystem.com [anysystem.com]
  • by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @03:47AM (#11538089) Journal
    Everyone around here keeps saying that Apple should get out of the PPC business and get into licensing OSX for the Intel x86 procs. They argue that selling the software is more lucrative than selling the hardware.

    I think that Sun is providing us with a very good example of the opposite being true. Even though they literally give their product away for free, they still make money on their hardware. Apple would be fools to give up the high-margin hardware market and try to compete toe to toe with Microsoft Windows.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:18AM (#11538228)
      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.
      • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:51AM (#11538513) Journal
        " 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.
      • I thinks there is more to it than that.

        Ever heard of economic breach of contract? [Where it is more profitable to breach a contract than perform]. The worst that could happen to Apple is a disgorgement of profits [which would be HIGHLY unlikely for reasons below (antitrust laws)], but then they would have a footing in the OS market.

        Plus if Apple were to breach their contract with Microsoft and there are some an anti-compete clauses in the contract, I think a few antitrust laws in the USA and EU would prot
      • The main problem with the x86 'PC' market is drivers. There's an aweful lot hardware out there and they all need drivers. If you're aiming at home users, then they're going to want to plug in their latest toy and expect it to work. Trust me, as a devoted Linux user of 9 years I know how hard it is to get things working on a non-Windows OS without the support of the manufacturer. The nice thing about Apple hardware is that they control the platform and a number of the gadgets that plug into it. Go to the x8

    • Piffle (Score:4, Insightful)

      by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby&comcast,net> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:27AM (#11538273)
      Last I checked Microsoft made a fortune selling the OS instead of hardware. Hardware is cut throat with incredibly margins whereas with Operating Systems your margins are incredibly high. The only reason at all Sun or Apple can make decent margins on their hardware is because they are the sole providers of their proprietary systems.

      Sun simply isn't [theregister.com] making the money that you think it is.

      • Re:Piffle (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mstefanus ( 705346 )
        Microsoft can make that much money from selling their OS is because their dominance in the market. They can pressure people to increase their dominance even more.

        If Apple sells an x86 version of Mac OS X and want to increase their market share in the PC OS market, they won't be able to charge as much as Windows. The competition is also hard and rough in the PC world. Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc2. Another problem is that there are too many variations with PC hardwares. Apple are comfortable with t
        • Re:Piffle (Score:3, Interesting)

          by onyxruby ( 118189 )
          They make that much because they have a standardized consistent format. Linux does not have this, Solaris does but it is limited (largely) to their hardware and has never been oriented to the consumer market in the first place. The only other OS that has ever been aimed at the mass consumer market is Apple's.

          They have the standardizataion, they have the name brand, they have a market of established consumer software. They have consumer oriend distribution channels and developers that know their products o

          • ...they have the name brand, they have a market of established consumer software.

            I think you'll increasingly find that this is all that Microsoft really has going for Windows anymore. Apple is making a resurgence on the Desktop front. Linux and the BSD's are strong in many of the server roles. F/OSS in general is encroaching on MS's turf (e.g Mozilla/Firefox and OpenOffice). Attention is turning to small embedded devices (phones, PDA's) and media devices. MS is putting focus in these areas but hasn't

      • Sun simply isn't making the money that you think it is.

        Did you notice that the link you provided was a story from 2003 about the quarter ending June 2003? Hardly seems relevant today.

    • I agree and disagree, sun and apple should take a page out of each others books.

      Sun should release some hardware, for sure, and some pretty decent and funky stuff soon. I want Sun to be at the forefront of Java enabled devices. They have manuf. facilities, and they need to move fast.

      Solaris cannot compete against linux for home users (i.e. it doesn't differeantiate enough for home usage, just critical apps / support requirements / specialist software) so Sun realise that ensuring the market for it is good
    • I agree in the sense that apple should maintain its focus on developing products. However, their software is really amazing stuff. Just go figure what it would cost you to get the functionality that comes standard on a Imac/Ibook and you basically are getting the hardware for free!

      However I see no reason to NOT port OS-X to the Intel platform.
    • I wondered how long it would take for someone to shoe-horn in a comment about Apple.

      This reminds me of my time in 'Nam...
    • Apple doesn't sell Hardware in the classical sense of term. Neither do they sell "Software" in the classical sense of term. They sell a sum of both which adds up to something else (bigger) than the mere sum of both because each is designed ith the other in mind. That's why no one would compare Apple and Dell, even though they sell a combination of both hard- and software aswell.
      It's only with this special combination of both that gives apple a severe edge over it's competition.
    • 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
  • Don't mislead people (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @03:52AM (#11538113)
    Solaris is no longer available for "SPARC" systems, only UltraSPARC systems. It no longer supports sun4m or sun4d.
    • good point. I have 3 sun4m machines. I considered downloading the sparc version of sol10 just to see if it would run, even if in an extremely stripped down install. Thanks for saving me the trouble ;)
    • by SunFan ( 845761 )

      You can still use Solaris 8 or Solaris 9. Besides, sun4m is already more than a decade old, and sun4u (UltraSPARC) is binary compatible with sun4m for applications.

      Of course, there's always OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux for your older SPARC systems.
  • by Vo0k ( 760020 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:02AM (#11538164) Journal
    I'm really curious what the license limitations are. That is - can I use it for commercial purposes? Can I modify / reverse engineer it? Can I redistribute it?
    • by LeninZhiv ( 464864 ) * on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:09AM (#11538196)
      Have a gander: (Basically I think the answers are "yes", "wait for the source code, this is a binary distribution", and "I don't think so".)

      ENTITLEMENT for
      SOLARIS 10 3/05 OPERATING SYSTEM

      THIS ENTITLEMENT EVIDENCES YOUR AUTHORIZED SCOPE OF USE UNDER THE TERMS
      OF THE SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR THE SUN SOFTWARE
      INDICATED BELOW (THE SLA) UNLESS OTHERWISE AGREED IN WRITING BETWEEN YOU AND
      SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. (SUN). Capitalized terms not defined in this document
      have the meanings ascribed to them in the SLA. These terms will
      supersede any inconsistent or conflicting terms in the SLA.

      Licensee/Company: Entity in receipt of Software from an authorized source
      Beginning Date of License Term: the date of receipt of this Entitlement
      Software: Solaris 10 3/05
      Permitted Use: Commercial Use
      License Term: Perpetual (subject to termination under the SLA)
      Licensed Unit: Registered Computer System
      Licensed unit Count: Unlimited
      Additional Terms:

      1.0 License to Develop. You are authorized to develop software programs
      utilizing Software. If you desire to develop software programs which
      incorporate portions of Software ("Developed Programs"), the following
      provisions apply: (i) you may not modify or add to application programming
      interfaces associated with Software; (ii) you are not licensed to use fonts
      within Software to develop printing applications unless you have secured valid
      licenses from the appropriate font suppliers; (iii) incorporation of portions of
      Motif in Developed Programs may require reporting of copies of Developed
      Programs to Sun;
      and (iv) you will indemnify and defend Sun and its licensors from any
      claims, including attorneys' fees, which arise from or relate to distribution or
      use of Developed Programs to the extent these claims arise from or relate to the
      development performed by you. This Section 1.0 does not apply to the Sun Java
      System Application Server Platform Edition 8, Sun Java System Message
      Queue 3.5, Sun Java System Directory Server 5, and Java 2 Platform, Standard
      Edition (J2SE) included in or bundled with the Software.
      2.0 Sun Java Studio Enterprise for Evaluation Only. You may only use the Java
      Studio Enterprise (Studio) bundled or embedded with the Sun Java System
      Application Server Standard Edition portions of Software for Evaluation Use
      unless you purchase a separate license from Sun. Studio may contain a time out
      mechanism.

      3.0 Sun Java System Directory Server 5. This Section 3.0 applies only
      to the Sun Java System Directory Server 5 portion of the Software.
      3.1. Definitions.
      (a) "Directory Instance(s)" means an instance of the Sun Java System
      Directory Server process, slapd, running on a server.
      (b) "Entry(ies)" means a single Distinguished Name ("DN") and its
      associated attributes.
      (c) "Enterprise Wide" means your entire enterprise network.
      3.2 License Grant. Sun grants you a non-exclusive and non-transferable
      license
      for the internal use only of Sun Java System Directory Server 5 (Directory
      Server) (where you control, manage, configure and otherwise use the software)
      for your internal business use and not for resale or redistribution in any
      manner and only for the number of Entries for which the corresponding
      fee has been paid. Subject to the limitations of the previous sentence, you may
      provide services with Directory Server to users outside of your commercial legal
      entity, if any; provided that you may not permit any such user to control, manage or
      configure Directory Server.
      3.3 Additional Use Conditions.
      (a) Directory Server may contain, at no charge, up to an aggregate maximum of
      200,000 Entries, across any and all Directory Instances running
      Enterprise Wide.
      For the purposes of this Section 3.3(a) only, Entries exclude Solaris 10
      operating system entries that do not define users.
      (b) You may install and run multiple instances of the Sun Java System
      Directory Server Console client on multiple computers and platforms for remote
      and distributed administration of servers and applications.
  • Multiple OS support? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RatRagout ( 756522 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:05AM (#11538181)
    Can I install this version without killing my other operating systems?
    • by LeninZhiv ( 464864 ) * on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:47AM (#11538339)
      Yes, but (unless things have changed since beta69; my download is still in progress), it's not as idiot-proof as installing Solaris 9 was. (Although the hardware support is much better, so the chances of this working on your machine are way higher than with Solaris 9).

      It's also surprisingly easy to kill your other operating systems when you install though, so do your homework. (Google "dual-boot" "Solaris 10" etc. and keep reading till you're sure you've filled in all the gaps, and back up just in case). Also of course have a copy of Knoppix and your bootloader configuration around.
    • 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.
    • If your PC has plenty of RAM, use something like VMWare to try it out first. Or if you have the spare time, setup a beater box in a similar way your computer is now, and test an upgrade or install on the beater box.

      The experience you'll pull out of it will be worth it.
  • by KidSock ( 150684 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:06AM (#11538187)
    Currently I'm using a UML provider for my website / email / etc. I will be very interesting to see if Solaris 10 Zones perform better. If they do ISPs might provide more power per $.
    • Currently I'm using a UML provider for my website / email / etc. I will be very interesting to see if Solaris 10 Zones perform better.

      I am currently using UML for running multiple servers on one host, and a collegue runs multiple linuces with XEN [cam.ac.uk] (he runs it on his desktop, too!), and he says it performs near to native. He demonstrated it to me, very impressive. Easier to administrate than UML. I'll switch to xen. And ISPs will, too.

      I'll check opensolaris when it's ported to the xen-arch like netbsd a

    • I'm using linode.com [linode.com] for the same thing. Solaris zones look to be better implemented than virtuozzo [sw-soft.com] .

      If Sun can provide a full-featured OS, the slickness of SUSE (easy package management/admin gui), good range of drivers (including nvidia/nforce) then ISPs may well run Solaris.

    • by darkcompanion ( 83362 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:38AM (#11538474) Homepage
      Solaris 10 zones have much better performance than UML, more comparable to Xen or FreeBSD jails. However, Xen runs only on IA32, where Solaris also does AM64 and Sparc. Xen and UML also don't support multiprocessor machines, if I'm not mistaken, and FreeBSD jails do not support things like resource managers, in case of a jail process bringing the whole machine (and other jails) down. Sun has its Fair Share Scheduler, where you can bind a container to one or more processors.
      • However sun Zones require installing an complete OS in the subdir or telling LiveUpdate to do something unusual (which I haven't found any documents about). You can't just copy the tools you need to /home/jail/sbin and start up a new jail like you can with other OSs.
  • by zymano ( 581466 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:08AM (#11538192)
    http://www.openvms.org/ [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 .
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:09AM (#11538195)
    Ulrich Drepper posted this [redhat.com] to the libc-alpha (Glibc) mailing list today. "Some people might have heard about Sun's release of the Solaris sources under their dubious license. This license is obviously intended to be incompatible with the GPL. Therefore:

    Nobody who intends to contribute to glibc must look at anything but the public header files of the Solaris libc and related libraries.


    (Emph. mine) Don't fall for the Solaris trap!
    • by Donny Smith ( 567043 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @06:32AM (#11538635)
      > 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
    • by dbIII ( 701233 )
      Sun's release of the Solaris sources under their dubious license
      To translate, they are not using the GPL which RMS has set forth on tablets of gold, so it's heresy. Give up on the emotive language guys (eg. dubious, and RMS calling the thing treacherous), and point out what is actually wrong with the licence - although that would actually involve reading it.
    • Ulrich Drepper posted this to the libc-alpha (Glibc) mailing list today. "Some people might have heard about Sun's release of the Solaris sources under their dubious license. This license is obviously intended to be incompatible with the GPL. Therefore:

      Nobody who intends to contribute to glibc must look at anything but the public header files of the Solaris libc and related libraries.


      As usual I see the FUD trolls are out in full force this morning. I'll bite...

      In case you aren't already aware, there is
  • by clymere ( 605769 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:19AM (#11538233) Homepage
    Funny. I started downloading this yesterday, after being prompted to try Solaris10 by an ad at the top of slashdot.

    That same ad is at the top of the page now.

    In fact, I have seen it a LOT the last several days.
  • by ttys00 ( 235472 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:51AM (#11538512)
    I just bought an Ultra 5 (270Mhz, 128Mb RAM, new Seagate 120Gb disk) as a learning tool and fileserver, and I'm keen to give the new OS a go. Is anyone running Solaris 10 on an Ultra 5 or Ultra 10? Is it painfully slow? How much RAM does it _really_ need?

    If anyone could give me some guidance as to whether or not I can upgrade and still have a usable box, it would be greatly appreciated (I'm sure I'm not the only one either).
    • Solaris 10 is just beautiful on my Ultra 10. I've got a 20gig drive and 256mb of RAM, so I know that it suffers. Unfortunately, memory for the damn thing costs more than the system is worth. :(

      That said, I think the OS is nice...but consider that the U5 and U10 boxes are over 6 years old at this point. Regardless, I find the performance acceptable for my needs.

      Now, as soon as Sun's servers unclog, I might be able to download a copy.
  • Conflicted interests (Score:3, Interesting)

    by daithimacseoin ( 855289 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:57AM (#11538527)
    To what extent is the type of story that slashdot publishes influenced by the amount of revenue that can be generated by banner advertising related to that story ?

    (Just noticed the big sun.com advertisement at the top of the homepage)
  • by nighty5 ( 615965 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @06:06AM (#11538548)
    I'd like to comment on how the new Solaris 10 is actually quite a treat to use.

    I installed it on VMware GSX 3.1 as a guest on Gentoo Linux Host OS with little trouble.

    I gave the system 128 megs of ram to play with - I'm running 4 other VMs at the moment for development purposes so my development server needs a bit more RAM.

    I got to say, the new Java desktop is dead sexy, uses a lot of Gnome applets and programs. They have borrowed a lot from that gear, and also some the GNU tools now come standardly installed.

    A full install didnt seem to install SSH as a service, nor Telnet but that could be for my setup and selection process. I didnt select a fine tune, just install-all.

    I couldnt get the GUI setup to work, although this could be for my setup, the GUI setup requires 96megs of ram or more, and I did provide 128 meg in the VM so not sure whats going on there. However, the text install works fine. I am exporting the Vmware Console over an X client running on my Windows workstation so maybe it doesnt like something there - not sure. My other VM's havent complained thus far.

    Oh yeah I told a friend about Sol 10 is now ready so he downloaded it also, he was able to get the GUI install to work and said its awesome. Mentioned that you can browse the Internet whilst the OS is installing. Reminds me some Linux installs that let you play games whilst its chugging away.

    I was a bit disappointed that cc compiler doesnt work straight out of the box with the 'full install', it needed some other program or library it was whinging about and I havent bothered to look it up.

    The default shell is csh (?), but amazingly enough bash is installed by default.

    For some reason I couldnt create a home directory under /home for a new user. Some weird error, I tried it as root. Don't have the error on me, but if anything ran into this and knows the fix I'd appreciate some feedback. ?

    Well I only installed it 2 days and I havent really given it a run for its money. But do hope to start playing with it more soon.
  • Linux and BSD's are changing fast and becoming useful. They are also installed with many better options than CDE.

    The installation that came with Solaris 9 had no documentation sufficient to actually perform an installation unless you where already a Sun expert. This is one of the key points in what made Linux so popular in the beginning. Available documentation and free support from internet resources.

    If RedHat and SuSE decide to start really laming down their mailing lists, I would expect them to lose

  • Download speed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aggrajag ( 716041 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @07:16AM (#11538775)
    I just started downloading the first CD and it's giving be a whopping 5 kilos per second. This is why bittorrent was invented, so hopefully some nice torrent site has Solaris 10.
  • by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @08:09AM (#11539028) Homepage
    With each Solaris release, Sun stops supporting older hardware. Does anyone know where Sun has tucked the latest list?
  • by otisg ( 92803 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:50PM (#11545031) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone know of any Intel-based production servers using Solaris 10? I'd love to see some heavily loaded hardware and hear how they like Solaris 10, especially if they run Java (applications/servers) on it.

    Anyone know any such stories/examples?
    Thanks.

"A mind is a terrible thing to have leaking out your ears." -- The League of Sadistic Telepaths

Working...