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Sun gives Solaris away free!

I thought it always was free, it certainly was a couple of years back. I downloaded Solaris 8 (I think it was 8) for SPARC from them a couple of years ago.
 
Yeah, a friend of mine had a SPARC station that he downloaded 8 onto as well. I'm not sure about Solaris 9 though.

Here's a more specific article.

It seems that this applies more towards those using the OS on a public server, and they only mention the x86 version, so maybe it doesn't apply to the SPARC version?

They also mention making it open source.
 
Solaris has been free for a while for educational and personal use, both on SPARC and x86 platforms. Now it's free for commercial use, as well, although you still have to pay for support.

Sun is trying to us Solaris as their way of delivering more value than their competition. If you have a 4-way Dell/Windows box, the price will include a MS OS license for 4 CPUs. Sun can offer an equivalent 4-way Opteron box and undercut Dell, since there's now no OS license cost included. Sun has the advantage over Dell and other Windows box manufacturers, because they supply both the hardware and the software (OS). We'll see how well the strategy works.
 
This is a big change for Sun's commercial customers. Solaris is very well developed and stable, an advantage over both Windows and Linux, which Sun sees as its main competitors. The move to free distribution is a reaction to the grown of Linux and the open source movement. Since Solaris allows users to run Linux software, Sun now thinks they compete on three main criteria: price (free except for support), stability (where they believe they are #1), and compatibility (running software developed for either Solaris or Linux).
 
I played with Solaris years ago (version 6, 7?) on a Pentium II and really enjoyed it. However, I really don't know much about Solaris other than what I've read in the news having never used it as an everyday OS.

The article mentions that it will be Solaris 10 that will be released and given away in January '05. I know there are several versions of Linux that can be installed on a G4 or G5, but is there a current PPC version of Solaris that could be installed on the G3-G5 systems? Would, presumably, Solaris 10 support the PPC platform?

I know that Yellow Dog has worked out some sort of deal with Apple to resell Apple hardware with Linux installed, and I wonder if Sun would try something similar with Solaris? Though I doubt Apple would warm up to the idea...

Just musing...
 
Well, I got Solaris 7 for "free" back in 1999 (11/99), I actually paid $19.99 for media and shipping cost.

I've played with the x86 version (as I got both in the package), but have only really used the SPARC version (I have a SPARCclassic... two actually :rolleyes: ). It is okay what little I did with it (which was mainly run StarOffice 5.1), but I've been thinking of trying to find Solaris 2.4/2.5 to see if my systems would run any faster with those.

I still spend way more time using my SGIs (pretty much daily) than I ever have using my Suns (few times a year now).

Right now my Sun sits behind my PowerBook collecting PostIt notes. :D
 

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Solaris runs only on Sun's own SPARC processor and on the Intel x86 architecture, including the AMD Opteron. Sun's migration from 32 bits to 64 bits was as painless as I've seen. I've been using it since Solaris 1 (which was called SunOS).

I love the clever phrase they use for marketing Solaris' robustness: They call it "Relentless Availability". :)
 
FoxyKaye said:
I really don't know much about Solaris other than what I've read in the news having never used it as an everyday OS.
Click to expand...
i had the great pleasure of using the Sun development tools on Solaris in the mid- to late-90s on a big C++ project. i think unix is the best development environment anyway, but their toolset (CodeManager, FileMerge, et. al.) was unbelievably powerful.

it allowed for workable parallel development in a way i'd not seen before (or since). i would often have several parallel changes in process (e.g. updating to and testing a new version of the project foundation classes, which touched just about every project file but took a long time to verify, so it was a month between checkout and merge) and be able to merge changes mostly automatically and expect it to work. very easy to support multiple release levels, too.

once windows began its developer workstation dominance, i left the industry. i'm not kidding, i tried windows development for several years but felt the platform killed 90% of my efficiency as a developer. kind of like typing while wearing heavy winter gloves.
 
Solaris on VPC

Somewhere I saw that Solaris doesn't work under Virtual PC. Solaris is much more pickier about the hardware than Linux. That was at least a year ago. I wonder if Solaris 10 will run on Virtual PC 6 or 7?
 
If you have a need, it's nice that they are giving it away free. Has that marketing plan really worked for Linux?
 
wdlove said:
If you have a need, it's nice that they are giving it away free. Has that marketing plan really worked for Linux?
Click to expand...
Linux doesn't make/sell hardware. Sun is hoping the free OS license will help them sell hardware.
 
BornAgainMac said:
Somewhere I saw that Solaris doesn't work under Virtual PC. Solaris is much more pickier about the hardware than Linux. That was at least a year ago. I wonder if Solaris 10 will run on Virtual PC 6 or 7?
Click to expand...

Here's a great site that tells you which OSs work with VPC.

I just tried to install Solaris 9 (PC version) under VPC 6, but its installer said that it doesn't run on 486 processors. :( I might try fooling with another version some other time.
 
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