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."

Re:I wonder

[bladesjester]

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

Its been free for a while

[ArchieBunker]

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.

Re:um...

[NormalVisual]

Yeah, I'm not seeing the "news" angle since Solaris 10 and Sun Studio 11 have been available as free downloads for quite some time. Sure, it's nice to have them on pressed media instead of a writable CD/DVD, but I'm not sure why/how this is a big deal.

Re:I wonder

[AchiIIe]

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.

Re:I wonder

[QuantumG]

Canonical: Did it first.
Sun: Shouldn't need to.

Re:General Information on Solaris 10?

[Yvanhoe]

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

Re:I wonder

[Dirtside]

You mistyped:

Sun: Free Solaris dvds shipped!
One random guy on Slashdot: Whoa, sign of desperation, they can't even give their os for free.

Re:Last Gasp of Air for Solaris

[An dochasac]

The comment about Scott and GPL is nonsense. But it's true that Scott et. al made some enormous mistakes during the peak of the last bubble. When Sun was golden, they started selling Ultra workstations with inadequate memory, a PCI bus and IDE drives. These low end machines introduced many a college student to Solaris and helped promote the "Slowaris" meme. Sun delayed X86 Solaris at precisely the right time to insure that GNU/Linux could take advantage of a steep part of the X86 moore curve and decades of opensource software development, some of which came from Sun. Sun made their development environment an expensive option, which surely turned away many talented but frugal developers.

Now that Sun is doing (most) everything right, opensourcing Java (GPL), opensourcing Solaris and contributing real innovations to Unix (Dtrace, ZFS...), their biggest problem is that they don't have the marketing budget of IBM (Linux's biggest corporate backer) or Microsoft and they Schwartz doesn't yet have yet have the reality distortion aura of Steve Jobs. Solaris 10 and more recent releases of Opensolaris are already freely available, as is Sun Studio. How much extra who it cost to put S10 on some DVDs and ship it to those who show enough interest? It's a no-brainer and miles away from a "cry of desparation."

Re:I wonder

[Thomas the Doubter]

This is a sign that Sun is coming to terms with the economics of the Free/OpenSource movement. Get your OS out there and you will make more friends, sell more hardware and services. I think Sun has the right idea, whereas HP still does not know what to do.

Quit Whinging!

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Christ on a crutch. Sun is giving away a current/recent version of their OS and you lot are going on and on about pissing on them for it. It works. It's rock steady. Besides which, it's the first *nix version I learned.