Sun Is Giving Away Solaris 10 DVDs 248
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."
I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft does it with the functional betas of a lot of their software including Visual Studio and they aren't really hurting for customers
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Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Yes, but who is their competition? (Score:4, Informative)
In the good old days, when Sun was making money, they had their guns trained on IBM. These days, there seems to be a tacit acknowledgment in their strategy that they are no longer in the same league as IBM. They seem to be aspiring to compete with HP, Dell and *shudder* Gateway. You dont see IBM giving away their AIX operating system for free, do you? And this is despite the fact that AIX soleley exists to exploit IBM hardware (it doesnt run on anything else) and therefore, could legitimately be given away, since IBM's objective is to sell hardware.
The bottom line is: yes, its a way to drum up interest in a new product, but they appear to be targetting the lower-end market segment with this gimmick.
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I've known a couple of people who worked for Sun going on-site to locations to do support and I would assume that they have phone based packages as well.
Personally, I have to say that, if I had the spare cash, this might make me want to buy a Sun box. I love their hardware, having worked on it in labs for several years. It's just that buying the n
Re:Yes, but who is their competition? (Score:4, Informative)
Sun, on the other hand, is trying to position Solaris as a Linux competitor. Technically, it's superior in most regards (driver support being a big exception, but this is not a problem for servers, since they are certified for the OS or not sold). It already has the reputation. It has a license that the FSF call Free, although some people have problems with it. At the really high end, systems like OpenVMS and z/OS still rule. Solaris can't compete with these, and neither can Linux. Yet. At the bottom end, there is Windows or Linux (or the *BSDs, but even though I use them I realise they are a tiny percentage of the market). Solaris lives in the middle, where the volumes are small and the margins are high. The bottom is creeping up on the middle though, and so it is important for Sun that they focus on the bottom.
Personally, I wouldn't try to compete in the top end. IBM are there, and they are welcome to the market. SIG used to be there; remember then? There are some people who can't make do with commodity hardware, and there will be for a long time, but this segment grows smaller every year. Sun are focussing on the bottom, because as technology increases, more and more people are adequately served by the bottom. The trick is to have a differentiator. Sun sell Linux and Windows systems, but they also sell Solaris systems. Now, anyone can sell a Solaris system as cheaply as they can sell a Linux system. Why is this good for Sun? A few reasons:
[1] They already had Fujitsu as a second source, which has helped them a lot.
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AIX exists, though, because it can utterly exploit power CPUs. What I can have my sysadmin do with a p595 and
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About a year ago I was handed a Solaris 10 DVD, a Solaris 11 beta and a CD for Nexenta (Ubuntu on top of a Solaris kernel)
I like Solaris, but I would like a very cheap Niagara ATX motherboard much more than a pressed DVD. And it doesn't even need to be for free. I think that would drum up the interest on Niagara, Solaris and Sun in general.
They also need to re-hire Frog Design. We need something as cool as a Sparcstation 1 and a Sun monitor to match.
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Informative)
Answered thus by whois:
<snip/>
[Holder]
Type: ORG
Name: Sun Microsystems GmbH
Address: Sonnenallee 1
Pcode: 85551
City: Heimstetten
Country: DE
Changed: 2006-01-06T14: 03: 1001: 00
<snip/>
[Tech-C]
Type: PERSON
Name: Sun Hostmaster
Organisation: Sun Microsystems Inc.
Address: 4150 Network Circle
Pcode: 95054
City: Santa Clara CA
Country: US
Phone: 1 01 3032727000
Fax: 1 01 6503366623
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Its been free for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Sun: Shouldn't need to.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Funny)
What about AOL?
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Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
First release of Ubuntu was October 20, 2004.
Sun was giving away solaris on DVD since at least May of 2002. [theregister.co.uk]
Fruit Issues (Score:2)
Apples and oranges. Ubuntu was never a closed-source product, and the people who put it together were motivated by the desire to put together a better Linux bistro that they always knew they'd have to give away. Solaris/SunOS has been a closed-source product, and a significant revenue source for Sun, since 1982. (Let's not quibble about whether Solaris and SunOS are the "same OS".) Sun giving away Solaris, either by opening part of the source or by giving away free media and licenses, is a major shift for t
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The Solaris 2.6 CDs that I got, free of charge, sometime around, oh, 1999, 2000, under exactly the same concept, disagree that this is new, or a "major shift." Or the Solaris 7 CDs, for that matter.
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Actually, Sun has long since stopped being a SPARC-only company. They officially admitted the stupidity of ignoring the x86/x64 marketplace a couple years ago, and brought back Andrew Bechtolsheim [eweek.com] to design a line of x64 servers [sun.com].
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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(This post will be modded down. But, by saying that, people will mod it up. Does claiming that it will be modded get people to mod it down?)
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There are lots of Solaris shops that looked at Solaris 10 and told sun to come back when its done.
Solaris 9 wasn't impressive as a development environment but for a production system you could rip out all the bloat and have a very lean system that was rock solid. The core system rarely needed patches and if you kept careful track of what modules where needed and checked what got patched, you would find that most patches were for things that wouldn't even be loaded on a secure
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As I recall, the deal was, you ordered it and paid for shipping, they waited 6 weeks, then sent it overnight. Yeah, thanks for charging me $50 for overnight shipping AFTER waitin
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Solaris is the dominant OS in the oil company datacentres of the world. Windows is the dominant desktop. Linux is making inroads on the desktop, and is a complete bit-player on the server side, in this industry. In commerce, AIX is still dominant, and Linux is unheard of. Telecom companies, admittedly, are getting more friendly with Linux.
Solaris is not only alive, but will remain that way for a while.
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Source (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's the only way (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's the only way (Score:5, Funny)
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funny coincidence (Score:5, Funny)
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VMware to avoid hardware compatibility problems (Score:5, Interesting)
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What hardware might that be?
There are 3rd parties developing drivers that work on Solaris, if you just look around.
For network cards, you can often find manufacturers officially supporting Solaris, and offering drivers for download. The BSD drivers are also commonly ported to Solaris, such as these: http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/eng/ [nifty.com]
OSS offers soundcard drives for just about every popular card. It doesn't use the
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When I installed Solaris last year, there were no drivers to support my hardware.
What hardware might that be?
Unfortunately downloading the NIC driver is hard when your NIC is not working. I couldn't get either of my network cards working. Also not fun is getting the NVIDIA graphics card to work. The drivers I am using now in Linux for my Nforce 4 chipset are:
skge
forcedeth
I was able to download drivers and burn them to the CD. Unfortunately I was either unsuccessful comprehen
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Nobody has ever given me a compelling reason to install Solaris. I put the x86 version of Solaris--7 or 8, I forget which--on a machine, and then tried to set up netatalk for some Macs on the network. It was a pain in the ass. Solaris also likes to put shit all over the disk--in /opt, in /var, in /usr/local/etc/var/ in /ramalamadingdong. I understand why--they have to provide compatibility. But it's just a pain.
Unless you're running highly specialized Solaris hardware, what advantage will you get over Cen
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Vmware (Score:2)
Open The Floodgates (Score:2)
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Free Coasters! (Score:4, Funny)
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Nice (Score:2)
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It's true (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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!
Could be good (Score:2)
Figure can't hurt to load it on VMWare, or VirtualPC and take a look, perhaps learn a thing or two. Knowing a little bit about yet another OS can't be harmful (unless it's Win ME).
I guess they figure if enough people do like me, they may win some people over. Couldn't hurt.
Yeah but (Score:2, Informative)
Solaris 10 recommended patches without a contract.
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Go straight to the source... (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [opensolaris.org]
Thank you
- A Solaris Fan
Quit Whinging! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:um... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:um... (Score:5, Funny)
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Is that a program for filtering out pics of girls with boobs smaller than DD?
If it is, I think I can convert several hundred people to Solaris and leave the thinking up imaginative reasons for the conversion to them.
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I'm too poor for that, and besides I built my RAID5 a couple of years ago... so mine is only
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That is only on the address "State/Province" box only which is not needed for non-us addresses. The box below the state/province selection has most of the planet covered
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As for why you should have figured this out yourself...Huge hint for you... The website is
Re:Not "just like" ShipIt... (Score:5, Funny)
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What makes you say that ? I live in .nl and I just ordered myself a set.
Re:General Information on Solaris 10? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:General Information on Solaris 10? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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So yes, they're workin on it.
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Re:General Information on Solaris 10? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funny that it sounds like a windows vs linux argument of a few years ago.
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Okay, so the CDE is ancient. It's still the official standard GUI for Unix. A pity it's binary-only, as I'd like to use it here (and NO, xfce isn't close enough - and no way in hell am I paying pumped-up prices for deXtop!)
-uso.
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Nah, they've been doing this for years and years and years. I have a copy of Solaris 2.6 kicking around somewhere, same deal; shipped for absolutely free, by request.
No different than any other tech company giving free for personal use or student copies of software.
Re:US/Canada only! Why not just allow ISO download (Score:3, Informative)
Rob.
Re:US/Canada only! Why not just allow ISO download (Score:2)
I think perhaps you shouldn't order a DVD, you seem to have problems with basic comprehension, Solaris would just confuse you.
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Also, I hacked together a DVD drive in an external drive bay (SCSI) which works fine one anything that gives you a SCSI connection (like most Sun hardware).
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Sure SUN did. What processor was the Standard (published)? Yes, that would have been SUNs. Why didn't the "Asia hardware makers" build something? Right, because Intel was more cooperative and gave proper designs -- not.
Because Microsoft was willing to give source code to those devs -- not.
Because Microsoft is smart -- ok, I'll grant that one. And, because of WinHEC... Why would you think such a thing is good? Given a choice between reasonable