Sun has published an article describing how they “transformed the Unix into the leading environment for technical and enterprise computing” with Solaris. The article features a timeline description from SunOS in 1982 to 2001 and Solaris 8. In the meantime, Solaris 9 is still in beta and it is scheduled to be released next year with the following new features:
- Multiple Page Size.
- Support in the kernel for better memory management.
- Improved threading library for better scaling and performance.
- New Reconfiguration Coordination Manager API allows applications to react to Dynamic Reconfiguration events. Live Upgrade, which lets an administrator install the new operating system onto an unused portion of a storage system then reboot the server to the new version. If it doesn’t work right, the administrator can boot back to the older version.
- Detailed control over computing resources. The new Solaris improves how software processes can share CPUs. It also lets administrators monitor or change how resources are being used.
- Support for the latest version 5 of the Kerberos authentication system.
- The ability to write data or audio CDs.
- The ability to install only a minimum set of Solaris features.
they lost it in my book going from bsd to hyrbid. solaris on my sparc is a reaaaal dog (ok so its only on a sparcstation 5 and not some ultrasparc)…
sunos 4… sigh.
Hmm… You kow Sun is an awfully large company. It seems to me like they should be able to throw enough engineering resources at the OS to actually make it competitive in the marketplace. I just don’t understand why they are allowing the OS to stagnate so. In comparison with MacOS X and Windows XP, Slo-laris is really losing out.
It just seems like the company has lost heart, and the stock price seems to echo this sentiment. I mean really, switching to an open source window manager/desktop manager because you don’t seem to be able to engineer something better professionally seems pretty extreme, don’t you think?
Let’s not even begin with the Java conversation. How can the performance problems not have been ironed out in 5 years of widespread use? This seems like an excessive amount of time in which Sun engineers apparently have been more focused on where they’re going to work after they get laid off than churning out the brilliant products of the mid 90’s. Looks like MS is going to clobber Sun out of the internet services platform now too, what with the creation of a *performance conscious* platform (which runs Java code an order of magnitude faster than the JIT).
Are Sun’s days numbered? If they continue to stagnate in the arena of innovation, they surely will not survive.
Linux, of course will eventually overtake Solaris. For the same reason that Sun won over Apollo and other competitors in the 80s and 90s: Sun won becuase it was the most open platform available at the time. Linux is now more open than Solaris, and is slowly becoming as scalable as Solaris is right now.
In five years, I think the only thriving OSes that will exist will be the free unices (MacOS X is somewhat a free unix), and Windows.
People that admin systems and want to be able to sleep at night run Solaris. One person can manage fifty Solaris systems. This would take an equililent of 100+ linux boxes and probably 500+ windows boxes. Running windows has tons of hidden costs such as a virus team, more network infrastructure, bigger data centers, short hardware life, etc.
-a merger of all the ix’s into one great one, replacing the
“great split” of unix (years ago – thanks to AT&T,…), is where we’re going.
But I guess that was the cost of development.
Solaris(SunOS) has always been designed for Sun’s great hardware. They
became the dot in .com by focusing on that and not trying to be everything
for everybody (like HP, MS, … has done). At the high end (of course more $) is where it really shines.
Sol9 will likely be even more “Open” than Sol7/8, which is good, and the reason behind that are the xBSD’s, and those(emulative unix’s called) Linux.
To me, SunOS(at its base) is really xBSD-(with years of commercial development, money, and of course,the added sysV stuff, and the corporate name behind it).
The xBSD’s , and Linux will overtake/replace Windows-(read the Header, & Mike’s
comment). It’ll be interesting to see then, where the Open developments of the Solaris’ will take Sun.
But for now, don’t expect to see Solaris9 on the store shelves of
“Future Shops” around the world.
-anyway,for personal use you can just download for free(the iso’s of)
the Solaris OS’ from Sun’s site. can’t get more Open than that.
🙂