Oracle has released Solaris 11.4 SRU 87, which brings with it a whole slew of changes, updates, and fixes. Primarily, it upgrades Firefox and Thunderbird to their latest ESR 140.3.0 releases, and adds GCC 15, alongside a ton of updated other open source packages. On more Solaris 11-specific notes, useradd’s account activation options have been changed to address some issues caused by stricter enforcement introduced in SRU 78, there’s some preparations for the upgrade to BIND 9.20 in a future Solaris 11 release, a few virtualisation improvements, and much more.
If you’re unclear about the relationship between this new release and the Common Build Environment or CBE release of Solaris 11.4 for enthusiasts, released earlier this year, the gist is that these SRU updates are only available to people with Oracle Solaris support contracts, while any updates to the CBE release are available to mere mortals like you and I. If you have a support contract and are using the CBE, you can upgrade from the CBE to the official SRU releases, but without such a contract, you’re out of luck.
A new CBE release is in the works, and is planned to arrive in 2026 – which is great news, but I would love for the enthusiast variant of Solaris 11.4 to receive more regular updates. I don’t think making these SRU updates available to enthusiasts in a non-commercial, zero-warranty kind of way would pose any kind of threat to Oracle’s bottom line, but alas, I don’t run a business like Oracle so perhaps I’m wrong.
Does it come with a new desktop wallpaper? Asking the real questions…
Jokes aside, it’s nice to see that the last commercial Unix (that isn’t MacOS) is still being maintained, even if it’s closed source now. Oracle is contractually obligated to support Solaris 11.4 until November 2037.
Note: Apparently, HP-UX isn’t officially dead yet, as it goes EOL on December 31, 2025, but anyway, my statement will be true in a few weeks.
kurkosdr,
For better or worse, unix is less relevant than ever. “Linux” has replaced it. The relatively high costs of commercial unix led everybody to switch to lower cost options and specifically linux. It dominates IOT/hosting/cloud/SaaS/embedded appliance/etc markets. Even those who demand commercial support are leaning on linux instead of unix. I used to come across unix systems in the wild, but I can’t think of a single one I’ve touched in the past decade.
I’ve excluded MacOS here, but I also hesitate to call MacOS “unix” because they submitted a modified configuration for certification. Technically it got certified, but the caveats make it blurry for end users since the stock system is not unix compliant out of the box. And speaking from experience, this can create some friction for those of us who are trying to use macos as a unix.
It’s pure nostalgia, the university I studied CS in had one room full of Sun workstations (Sun Blade 100, Sun Blade 1500, and they even purchased two Sun Ultra 25 workstations the first year I was studying there) and they also had one more room full of SGI O2 workstations. They started replacing all of them with Sun Ultra 20 x86-64 boxes running standard Debian, and by the the time I graduated, all the non-Sun Ultra 20 boxes had been retired.
So, everytime I hear about Solaris, I am like “that still exists, cool”. Even though the latest version of Solaris doesn’t run on any SPARC workstations anymore.
But yeah, of course Solaris is irrelevant now, over at Phoronix we are analyzing the reasons why.
There haven’t been SPARC workstations for a couple of decades. But the latest version of Solaris most definitively still supports/run on SPARC (it’s the main reason why it is still maintained, to support the last remaining SPARC shops running Oracle mostly).
@Xanady Asem
There may not be any SPARC workstations but there is certainly still SPARC hardware for sale. Solaris primarily exists for that I would think.
https://www.oracle.com/servers/sparc/
True. But that HW is sold mostly for legacy shops, its mostly clearance inventory used for support contracts.
Both Fujitsu and Oracle stopped developing SPARC in 2017 or 18 I believe. Solaris and SPARC are fully legacy platforms, mostly on maintenance mode. Sadly.
In any case. As long as the *BSDs and macos are around, Unix will still be pretty alive and kicking in terms of actual active development and feature expansion.
The latest version of Solaris still supports/runs on SPARC, but Solaris 11 dropped support for the UltraSparc IIIi CPU, which is the last CPU ever used in workstations:
https://www.theregister.com/2011/06/28/oracle_solaris_11_old_iron_mia/
So, my statement “Even though the latest version of Solaris doesn’t run on any SPARC workstations anymore.” is correct.
Solaris 10 is still supported until January 2027, so you can use that if you have a SPARC workstation, but not the latest Solaris aka Solaris 11.
Solaris is not the last commercial UNIX. AIX is still being developed and maintained.
AIX 7.4 is on the way.
CPUs and hardware too with the latest cutting edge technology.
@kurkosdr
In addition to AIX, UnixWare is technically kicking as well (and OpenServer). This is the most direct descendant of AT&T UNIX.
https://www.osnews.com/story/141690/unixware-in-2025-still-actively-developed-and-maintained/
Technically z/OS is UNIX certified as well.
AIX is also maintained (IBM AIX 7.3.4. released Dec 5; IBM AIX 7.3.4 Release Notes: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/aix/7.3.0?topic=notes-aix-734-release) – even more interestingly with linked CPU (Power) being actively developed. Also both AIX 7.2 and 7.3 are being in-support without EOS dates stated.