Solaris 10, Beta7 is expected to be released tomorrow; you can get it here. This ‘blog posting covers the changes since Beta6. A lot has changed: The Service Management Facility, the Java Desktop System, and a new X.org-based X server on x86 have all been added.
What’s New in Solaris 10 Beta7
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Hi,
Great, can’t wait to download it. Hargraves actually mentioned this on his blog a few days ago, and I was wondering whether he meant 29th US time, or 29th Australian (Hargraves is Australian)…damn, can’t wait another 24 hours =).
Just a pity ZFS isn’t in this build, but apparently they were having some issues with it on x86 (supposed to work fine on SPARC).
Anyway, JDS (which is the *desktop*, not the OS), is hopefully very cool – though for some reason, I still like CDE.
Hopefully files.bigpond.com will mirror this when done (although not sure about legality of that) – anybody else on bigpond, submit an entry, and maybe bigpond will get flooded with requests and will acquiesce (damn, need dictionary to check spelling *sigh*) *grin*.
bye,
victor
Eugenia: Thanks for posting this – just out of curiosity, did you find out before I mentioned it in the email =) ? (secret journliastic sources?) Also, any chance of a link to that E17 pre-release? Cheers.
I meant 29th in the US. So it’s another day for the folks on this side of the dateline.
I’ve been using JDS on my Dell Inspiron 8500 for some time now and I’m starting to like it. The integration of the application stack is starting to look pretty good.
It’s only a little thing, but the software power off has made a big difference to how I use it on the train (I now can do an “init 5” and put it away in the bag closer to my stop than I could before; without having to worry about it overheating).
What I’m really hanging on is wireless, but the good news is that it *is* being worked on.
There are some folks internally collecting Xorg configs which (with luck) should be made available shortly to ease that initial pain as well. I’m currently running quite happily in 1200×800.
alan.
ps: Victor, Hargreaves has an ‘e’ in it
Anyway, JDS (which is the *desktop*, not the OS), is hopefully very cool – though for some reason, I still like CDE.
—-
the original jds is heavily outdated being based on 2.0. this is based on 2.6 and lacks several major gnome improvements including evolution 2.0. atleast they switched to x.org
Hi,
Sorry about that mate =).
Any heads up on when ZFS will be included?
Also, was there a particular reason for switching to Xorg? (eg, was it lack of drivers? – I thought there was a binary drivers port from xf86 to XSun) – just curious, because I thought with all the cool stuff you guys are coding, it would have comparatively trivial to code XSun.
Bye,
Victor
:/ JDS doesn’t really seem to be a good fit for Solaris, I suppose you’d say it is pretty consumer orientated, where Solaris, well, isn’t. Perhaps they should just stick with plain GNOME, and perhaps have an additional JDS release that is synced up to Solaris.
JDS is pretty ugly too, in all honesty and IMHO – give me GNOME with the simple theme instead anyday. But then again, I suppose JDS looks pretty nice next to that dinosaur CDE they still ship. Does anyone still use Motif? I doubt it.
Firewire and Realtek NIC support for x86 is nice. I too am curious about the reasons behind the move to XOrg though, not that I think it’s a bad thing. Will XSun be opened as part of opening Solaris?
By consumer I meant more home and office than workstations and servers.
I too am curious about the reasons behind the move to XOrg though, not that I think it’s a bad thing.
I think it is simply that XOrg simply has more hardware support for x86 hardware. They can now support more graphics cards.
I’m not terribly familiar with Solaris, but one assumes they’re migrating from XFree to Xorg – along with pretty much everyone else. Since the license change there’s a lot more development going into Xorg so that’s now the logical choice.
Any chance we can get some real benchmarks against a Linux 2.6 kernel?
They’ve been developing with X.ORG for.. a l o n g t i m e ..@ Sun..
sun has alot of people working on X and played a huge role in the reformation of X.Org and has always backed X.Org
This information is nothing new, there have been information on the internet about it especially in early 2004 (now we are coming close to 2005 now!)
Sun’s X server for Solaris has always been based on the X Consortium/X.Org releases. Furthermore, sun has alawys supported it.
Sun views X.Org as the main group of managing the X standards, not xfree86, therefore sun prefers a group of more industry standards as X.Org was the industry group that was the successor to the MIT X Consortium
remember, XFree86 and X.Org is really not that much different except due to political reasons therefore saying XFree86 is based on x.org releases is completely reasonable
The problem with “Real” benchmarks is that many of them require that you be less than a specific lead time away from availability. I believe (I could be wrong) that we would have to get all kinds of permissions before posting such.
alan.
I can’t wait till the AMD64 version if released, apparently it will appear in around a month 🙂
I’m waiting until next year for the first refresh of SUN’s Opteron systems, which hopefully will include PCI-Express and PCI-Express video card too 🙂
:/ JDS doesn’t really seem to be a good fit for Solaris, I suppose you’d say it is pretty consumer orientated, where Solaris, well, isn’t. Perhaps they should just stick with plain GNOME, and perhaps have an additional JDS release that is synced up to Solaris.
JDS is pretty ugly too, in all honesty and IMHO – give me GNOME with the simple theme instead anyday. But then again, I suppose JDS looks pretty nice next to that dinosaur CDE they still ship. Does anyone still use Motif? I doubt it.
Please study the target market before making unfounded statements. SUN need JDS on Solaris as part of their SUN Ray and workstation programme. No only are SUN trying to get people to buy servers, but also use them in conjunction with SUN Ray to move away from the hugely inefficient PC model back to the centralised processing one – the one where by the capital is untilised to its maximum potential rather than having 1,000 PCs sitting idle 90% of the time.
Firewire and Realtek NIC support for x86 is nice. I too am curious about the reasons behind the move to XOrg though, not that I think it’s a bad thing. Will XSun be opened as part of opening Solaris?
I would say it has to do with providing OpenGL support, and also that XSUN is ladened left, right and centre with various patents, and IP from other companeis. XORG will make life alot easier for SUN in the long run. MESA is a *VERY* good OpenGL library, and XORG is the target for driver developers, what I hope is that SUN sits down and talks to ATI and Nvidia to get them to make their Linux drivers ported and made available for Solaris. That would be a *MAJOR* coup if that occured.
From the blog:So: If you thought we did a lot in build 63, you ain’t seen nothin’. Build 69 includes some sweeping changes, in the form of the new Service Management Facility, the Java Desktop System and piles of other improvements.
From the link on OSNEWS:
404.59 MB) Download Now!
Solaris 10 EA for SPARC Platform, CD 3 (required), Multi-language (sol-10-b63-sparc-v3.zip, 431.16 MB) Download Now!
Where could i download Build 69 instead of 63 ?
I guess its to soon, maybe it will be possible from a few days
from now.Heh i was a bit to enthusiastic that i forgot to notice:Solaris 10, Beta7 is expected to be released tomorrow;
I’ve dual booted an Athlon64 laptop with Solaris 10 32bit and Gentoo Linux 64bit in hopes of benchmarking these operating systems.
That said, I will be unable to share the results with you for several restrictions in Sun’s licensing contract which I had to agree to before downloading the operating system:
3.7 Licensee may not publish or disclose to any third party the results of any benchmark test or other comparison relating to the Licensed Softwareand/or Hardware without Sun’s prior written consent.
Other fun ones:
3.5 Licensee acknowledges that the Licensed Software may contain a time bomb mechanism.
3.6 Licensee may use any Sun or third party products bundled with the Licensed Software or Hardware only in conjunction with the Licensed Software or Hardware, and not with any other software products or on a stand-alone basis.
One might want to take these and other heavy handed tactics into consideration before signing on the dotted line with these folks.
Maybe true, nevertheless Solaris exists,i’m just curious what it feels like.
at anandtech they did today a review of an dual opteron workstation with linux 2.4,2.6 and solaris 10. Not all benchmark have solaris 10 number but some of them have it.
It is very standard for software companies to put in time bombs for alphas, betas, preview versions, etc. The purpose for these releases are for people to get a rough feeling for where the product is going and help out with bug crushing. Security patches and support are not provided for them and it would be very bad for people to continue to run them for no reason when the final product is released. Running them will be damaging to the companies name if lots of people were to use a beta and get hacked or have subpar performance/uptime. And trust me, without these time bombs, people would be installing these beta’s in production environment and would be too lazy to migrate them later.
Also, I very much agree with the standard clause prohibiting people from benchmarking other people’s software. The simple reason for this is they don’t want random idiot’s that don’t know how to use/optimize a product to start publishing their meaningless results. Otherwise, you’ll always get stupid things like I benchmarked my DOS install against Solaris and DOS was able to handle far more connections at a faster pace than Solaris. This is a slight exaggeration, but you get my point.
“3.5 Licensee acknowledges that the Licensed Software may contain a time bomb mechanism.”
Please study the target market before making unfounded statements.
People are looking at the target market. Companies want the latest features and the latest software otherwise they feel as if they’ve been ripped off – which they will have been.
Look at previous attempts Sun have made with the desktop in the same manner as Sun Ray. They came up with Network Computers and JavaStations, and Sun just didn’t have the first clue as to how to sell them, how to improve them or what was required in general. Sun are totally woeful at it.
Please think before you come out with the usual “Oh, look at the target market” or “Oh, it’s got outdated components for stability purposes” bollocks. People are looking at the target market, and Sun have a track record in not understanding it.
what I hope is that SUN sits down and talks to ATI and Nvidia to get them to make their Linux drivers ported and made available for Solaris. That would be a *MAJOR* coup if that occured.
What the hell for? It took long enough for nVidia to produce good drivers for Linux, and ATI; well, do they really produce any drivers at all? Given the market size of Solaris as a desktop basis, and the fact that it has shrunk markedly over the years, how is it justifiable for them when they have barely got good quality Linux drivers up and running?
It is very standard for software companies to put in time bombs for alphas, betas, preview versions, etc.
If they want Solaris to be an open source operating system to be taken seriously in the developer community, and that people are going to contribute to, this sort of thing is going to have to go the journey.
Security patches and support are not provided for them and it would be very bad for people to continue to run them for no reason when the final product is released.
So what? It’s a developer version. The people running it will know that, and if they want to continue using it, well then they’re on their own. Linux distributors are able to do this with hardly any trouble.
Running them will be damaging to the companies name if lots of people were to use a beta and get hacked or have subpar performance/uptime. And trust me, without these time bombs, people would be installing these beta’s in production environment and would be too lazy to migrate them later.
If they want to open source Solaris then they’re going to have to accept that and come up with a final release worth using and paying for. To get help from the developer community in developing Solaris then they need to allow people to use Solaris the way it is going to be used in production environments – make the software do something early on. That’s the way Linux distributions work, and directly or indirectly, everyone benefits – including companies like Red Hat and Novell/Suse.
The simple reason for this is they don’t want random idiot’s that don’t know how to use/optimize a product to start publishing their meaningless results.
You accept it. It’s an open world. If you release something to a community then release something that works. If you don’t want people doing this with something you will turn into a commercial product, then develop it in-house or use the two development methods equally.
Otherwise, you’ll always get stupid things like I benchmarked my DOS install against Solaris and DOS was able to handle far more connections at a faster pace than Solaris.
People do stupid benchmarks with Linux all the time – and commercial distributions as well. It hasn’t made a blind bit of difference to any of the companies selling them.
I thought the new beta was going to be released today but the download page is still showing beta 63 as being the latest release. Did i misread something? Has anyone else been able to get the latest beta?
Solaris will never become an opensource product. Think OpenOffice versus StarOffice. Besides, your point is mute when you take into consideration that they haven’t gone opensource with Solaris yet.
And I would agree with you that if Sun was to put in timebombs in OpenSolaris, that would be a big disgrace. However, I don’t see anything wrong with putting it into their beta versions of their commercial product, Solaris.
If they want Solaris to be an open source operating system to be taken seriously in the developer community, and that people are going to contribute to, this sort of thing is going to have to go the journey.
OpenSolaris hasn’t been released yet, and when it is, it will be released under a vastly different license. This is akin to arguing that Netscape’s license stifles developers, even though you can go download Mozilla under an open license.
And I would agree with you that if Sun was to put in timebombs in OpenSolaris, that would be a big disgrace.
There aren’t any time-bombs in Solaris or OpenSolaris. This is likely a case of Sun’s legal department liberally applying a general-purpose beta license.
Think OpenOffice versus StarOffice.
Yes. What is the point of StarOffice these days?
Besides, your point is mute when you take into consideration that they haven’t gone opensource with Solaris yet.
Sun hopes to have a developer community for Solaris in the same way that Linux has, but maintain total control over it. I doubt whether they will open source it, and if they do then it will have so much baggage no one will be able to do anything with it.
OpenSolaris hasn’t been released yet, and when it is, it will be released under a vastly different license. This is akin to arguing that Netscape’s license stifles developers, even though you can go download Mozilla under an open license.
Then no community will be interested in developing and improving Solaris as Sun hopes that it will get in the same way as Linux. Open sourcing Solaris will be another in a long line of failures by Sun, apart from Java (which had such mindshare anyway), and even there they could have done far, far, far better. .Net should never even exist today.
Sun hopes to have a developer community for Solaris in the same way that Linux has, but maintain total control over it. I doubt whether they will open source it, and if they do then it will have so much baggage no one will be able to do anything with it.
Last time I checked, the expectations for OpenSolaris were more realistic. Yes, Sun is interested in building a developer community; however, no, they don’t plan on it being as large or as unstructured a linux. Sun will release OpenSolaris under an OSI compliant license, so no, they won’t have total control over it.
I don’t know where you’re getting your facts about this project, but they’re mostly wrong.
Then no community will be interested in developing and improving Solaris as Sun hopes that it will get in the same way as Linux.
Based upon the previous line of reasoning, are you asserting that nobody is interested in developing Mozilla?
Further, who told you that Sun is releasing OpenSolaris so that it will be like Linux? Sun is releasing OpenSolaris so that interested parties can develop on the platform and aren’t encumbered by the traditional UNIX intellectual property restrictions. Why do you think the release is taking so long? It is because Sun has to remove code that has been encumbered by licenses from other vendors, be they patent, source, or in some other form. The end result will be something that is entirely Sun’s IP which will then be released under an OSI license so there are no weird restrictions about what you can do with it. Fundamentally, RedHat could take this source and build a product with it. It will be that unencumbered.
Nobody is forcing you to develop on OpenSolaris, and nobody at Sun has the expectation that it will take off like Linux, at least initially. However, I do think people will be interested. Maybe not you.
Yes, Sun is interested in building a developer community; however, no, they don’t plan on it being as large or as unstructured a linux
—-
linux, the kernel is very much a structured software.
http://www.kroah.com/log/2004/09/26#2004_09_26_sun_rebuttal_round2
Sun is suffering from Not invented here syndrome
“Based upon the previous line of reasoning, are you asserting that nobody is interested in developing Mozilla?
”
mozilla was the only real browser as free software for unix like operating systems. browsers are very different from operating systems anyway
” Fundamentally, RedHat could take this source and build a product with it. It will be that unencumbered. ”
other than silly PR, there is NO conclusive facts to back up your claim
Do you really want to have good bench mark without stupid licensing restrictions do it the redhat way. ask decently to mail a contact address
http://www.redhat.com/archives/nahant-beta-list/2004-September/msg0…
btw, Open office release cycle of 18 months is a insanely long time and tell that Jonathan guy to stop bitching about redhat all the time
mozilla was the only real browser as free software for unix like operating systems. browsers are very different from operating systems anyway
You’ve stated the obvious, and missed my point. The initiatior of the previous comment I was responding to claimed that licensing of a proprietary product decreased interest in its equivalent open source version. This is patently false, and the counterexamples are prolific. Netscape licensing doesn’t decrease interest in Mozilla, MySQLs licensing provides an open and closed version, and it’s tremendously popular as well. I’m not trying to claim that OpenSolaris will be as popular as Linux, rather that it is a viable platform for open development.
” Fundamentally, RedHat could take this source and build a product with it. It will be that unencumbered. ”
other than silly PR, there is NO conclusive facts to back up your claim
My comment isn’t PR, rather a statment of fact. Your argument is a negative assertion without any subsequent reasoning offered. Please explain to me why RedHat could not take OpenSolaris, licensed under an OSI compliant license, and build their own product from it? One of the goals of OpenSolaris is to generate something that can be productized by *anybody*.
Last time I checked, the expectations for OpenSolaris were more realistic.
Linux is realistic. It works and companies and people are using it. Judging from Sun’s bottom line over the years I thought they would have realised that by now. If you don’t call that realistic then Sun is setting the bar way too low.
however, no, they don’t plan on it being as large or as unstructured a linux.
Who do you expect to get involved in development then? Unless you have a clear plan for the wider developer community, their involvement and their freedoms to develop then it’s dead before it’s even started. If you see OpenSolaris as some kind of feeder project for Sun’s Solaris (which will shut out OpenSolaris so the development process is one-way) without appropriate compensation and comeback for the community through a license like the GPL that really frees up development and gives access to Sun’s work, open sourcing Solaris is totally pointless.
You’ll probably point to Fedora here, but all of Red Hat’s software is GPL’d. You have a lot to learn about this process, but it was done with Open Office to a large extent. It’s not perfect, but it’s OK.
Sun will release OpenSolaris under an OSI compliant license, so no, they won’t have total control over it.
Like what? OSI approved licenses don’t mean very much. A lot can be useful, but to have the broad developer appeal that Sun needs to compete with Linux they need to let go of it totally and keep their IP by staying ahead of the game and adding value.
Based upon the previous line of reasoning, are you asserting that nobody is interested in developing Mozilla?
Doesn’t make any sense. Mozilla is an unstructured community of people without one company controlling it through licensing. In case you missed a trick, Netscape doesn’t own Mozilla. There isn’t any proprietary or encumbered parts of Mozilla – what you contribute you get back as open source software.
Even those companies like Trolltech who do control their software to an extent, use the GPL and dual licensing to allow a whole community to flourish – and it hasn’t forked – another ridiculously stupid notion Sun has about the GPL. Also, GPL’d Qt is the full Qt – there is no hidden uber-Enterprise version. Sun needs to work out how this works.
Fundamentally, RedHat could take this source and build a product with it. It will be that unencumbered.
Comment just above:
The end result will be something that is entirely Sun’s IP which will then be released under an OSI license so there are no weird restrictions about what you can do with it.
Unencumbered? I hardly think Red Hat is going to use that! Is the GPL’d software Red Hat uses encumbered with Red Hat’s IP? No. Why (apart from being GPL’d
)? While Sun has non-existant worries about forking and IP, Red Hat doesn’t worry about any of that and has a working business model 
. Anyway, as you say, Solaris hasn’t been opened yet.
I can see this is a real problem for people at Sun (and obviously a tender area for you), but they’re going to have to get over it and learn. Their survival depends on it.
You’ve stated the obvious, and missed my point. The initiatior of the previous comment I was responding to claimed that licensing of a proprietary product decreased interest in its equivalent open source version.
Unless done properly, yes.
This is patently false, and the counterexamples are prolific. Netscape licensing doesn’t decrease interest in Mozilla, MySQLs licensing provides an open and closed version, and it’s tremendously popular as well.
Netscape does not own Mozilla. MySQL do not produce a version of MySQL that is separate, and has more features, than their open sourced version. Neither does Trolltech with Qt – their GPL’d version is their Enterprise Version. What you see is what you get with what they’ve open sourced, which will almost certainly not be the case with OpenSolaris.
I’m not trying to claim that OpenSolaris will be as popular as Linux, rather that it is a viable platform for open development.
If it’s a feeder project it’s dead. Red Hat just about got away with that with Fedora only because all their software is GPL’d and is allowed to flow in both directions.
Will OpenSolaris be the full and final version of Sun’s Solaris, or will Sun’s Solaris be open sourced to allow code and development to flow into OpenSolaris?
Please explain to me why RedHat could not take OpenSolaris, licensed under an OSI compliant license, and build their own product from it?
It is encumbered with Sun’s IP. As Red Hat’s software is GPL’d Sun’s OSI license will almost certainly not be compatible. Given that they use Linux I doubt whether there would be anything of value in it anyway.
One of the goals of OpenSolaris is to generate something that can be productized by *anybody*.
Then bite the bullet, give up total control and totally open it. Red Hat has. They stay in control through the mindshare they’ve created and how they’ve navigated themselves as a company.
Comanies like Red Hat have said “OK, let’s stop being protectionist, let’s stop worrying about IP and totally open up and work our socks off to make sure we stay ahead to stay in control.” I’m sorry to say that unless you understand that and respond in kind, you haven’t got a snowball in hell’s chance of competing with companies like Red Hat.
Please explain to me why RedHat could not take OpenSolaris, licensed under an OSI compliant license, and build their own product from it? One of the goals of OpenSolaris is to generate something that can be productized by *anybody*.
—–
you claim that I state the obvious but come on now tell me how redhat can package a NON existant software called “opensolaris”. they cant really package press releases from SUN or blog comments. they need UNrestricted source code access
Mozilla is an unstructured community of people without one company controlling it through licensing. In case you missed a trick, Netscape doesn’t own Mozilla. There isn’t any proprietary or encumbered parts of Mozilla – what you contribute you get back as open source software.
I didn’t miss a tick. You’re missing the point. Once Sun releases OpenSolaris under an OSI license it’s going to cease to belong to Sun and will be part of the public domain, the “community”, or whatever else you’d like to call it. I’m aware the Mozilla and Netscape are seperate, yet Netscape contributes to Mozilla and also pulls code from Mozilla into their Netscape browser. From the information that I’ve recieved, it looks like Sun is planning on taking a similar approach. Their Solaris code will be periodicially pushed to the OpenSolaris source base, and code that they deem to be business-relevant to Solaris will be incorporated from OpenSolaris. This is precisely the two-way exchange you’ve been describing.
you claim that I state the obvious but come on now tell me how redhat can package a NON existant software called “opensolaris”. they cant really package press releases from SUN or blog comments. they need UNrestricted source code access
From:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hypothetical
Hypothetic Hy`po*thet”ic, Hypothetical Hy`po*thet”ic*al, a. [L. hypotheticus, Gr. ?: cf. F. hypoth[‘e]tique.]
Characterized by, or of the nature of, an hypothesis; conditional; assumed without proof, for the purpose of reasoning and deducing proof, or of accounting for some fact or phenomenon.
Hi,
The reason linux companies can get away with releasing beta’s is that they some non-profit organisation (eg Debian), or just some guy (eg Slackware), or simply not an Enterprise distributor – and if you want to ask of RH Enterprise, have you taken a look at their EULA lately? (google: redhat eula)
bye,
Victor
It’s the 31st, where is beta 7? Just checked a few minutes ago and build 63 is still that’s showing up on the download page.
Go here
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get.html
>Go here
>http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get.html
I think that’s what Jeff was talking about. Beta 63 is still showing up there not the latest beta.
This link will take you into B69 downloads:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get_x86.html
When I go thru the usual paths on the site, say:
http://www.sun.com/solaris/10
I only see build 63 still showing.
Guess some links haven’t updated yet.
Found the build 69 downloads, thanks for the help, was beginning to wonder what was going on 😉
Jeff
bash-2.05b# zoneadm -z zone1 boot
bash-2.05b# zlogin -C zone1
[Connected to zone ‘zone1’ console]
Hostname: zone1
Loading smf(5) service descriptions: 93/93
# uname -a
SunOS nemesis 5.10 s10_69 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-5_10
Installed and running here