Sun Microsystems is about to take the next step in its plan to refurbish the reputation of its Solaris operating system in the eyes of a small but crucial group: programmers.
Sun poised to take open-source Solaris step
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Eugenia Loli
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…won’t be a free Solaris distribution, IMHO. The real advantage will be getting an “under-the-hood” view of how Solaris operates, so when the documentation of certain features is somewhat lacking (I’m running into this with the Solaris 10 event completion framework) you can always turn to the ultimate documentation of a given feature’s behavior: the source itself.
We’re psyched to get the source out to you, and it will certainly give you an “under-the-hood” view (and sometimes an “in-the-sausage-factory” view). That said, it’s unfortunate that you’re running into documentation issues with port_create(3C) and friends. We tried to write those man pages to be pretty complete; apologies if we failed. Perhaps there’s a specific question I could answer?
less talk more walk. I’m looking at you Schwartz!
Well, if he doesn’t have a question for you, I do. How does a person who has a too slow an internet connection speed get ahold of Solaris 10? Is it available on CD or DVD anywhere?
Instead of going free and opensource everything and close business, why sun isnt packing the source code with the retail package. This way all the users will be happy. If you dont want to pay for solaris you wont buy anything from sun.
who’s buying staroffice?
Compare OpenSolaris on Sun kit to RedHat on Dell Kit or Windows on Dell Kit, etc. Also compare J2EE stack to .NET stack. Sun is set up, now, to compete on price and on TCO from 1-U rack servers to 6-foot-tall SMP machines. This is a very bold move by them; within one year, they aren’t the same company at all from a customer’s point of view. Most of the trolls are rendered obselete, as their basis has been taken away from them. Sure, Sun skipped a couple or three years, but this year is like when they first went 64-bit or first went big SMP. This is cool stuff.
“who’s buying staroffice?”
StarOffice is bundled in with the Solaris box set, for example. Basically everyone who uses Solaris has it, now. Everyone else has OpenOffice.org. Not a bad arrangement, IMO.
Also, with Solaris x86, you don’t have to pay Sun for anything, even if you don’t have Sun hardware. You pay only for professional support, if I read their info correctly.
That said, it’s unfortunate that you’re running into documentation issues with port_create(3C) and friends.
I was going off the documentation on Sun’s web site and wow, don’t I feel dumb for not looking for the manual pages in the right section. Well done…
I was going off the documentation on Sun’s web site and wow, don’t I feel dumb for not looking for the manual pages in the right section. Well done…
That’s a relief! We actually spent quite some time grinding those man pages out: this was the kind of project where we wrote a prototype to get a feel for the problem, then got a bunch of us in a room for several grueling hours/week for several weeks to figure out the right interface and write the man pages, and then we threw out the prototype and rewrote it from scratch. So you can at least know that we argued over just about every word in those man pages.
Bart (one of those who was in the room) has a great blog entry with an example program using event ports:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/barts/20040720#entry_2_event_ports
Give it a rest Smart Patrol – we all know you’re an IBM’er who just can’t stand that your competition is getting air time. When’s IBM open sourcing AIX?
If you don’t have an internet connection you should
really, really get one!….
Ok, seriously, once the “RR” or Revenue Release is
available for download, it takes a few weeks to get
all the media kits ready to ship to people. I believe
there is (or at least, will be) a link off the
http://sun.com/software/solaris page
where you can request a copy of the media once Solaris
10 has actually gone “GA” (General Availability).
There’s no difference between RR and GA except for
the method of distribution btw.
Finally, if you want to keep going with the Solaris
Express (SX) program, at some point in the next month
or so SX is going to become snapshots of “the release
after Solaris 10 which Marketing hasn’t named yet.”
Gentoo/OpenSolaris WOW what a dream!!! i can’t wait anymore!!! portage is one of the best software management systems ever and Solaris has got to be one of the most stable feature rich ass kicking operating systems i have had the pleasure to work with. Sorry Linux partition but once this is out in the public domain im wipin u out!!! P.S. GET RICH TEERS BOOK!!! Solaris Systems Programming, Prentice Hall, 2005. the one and only book you will need to learn Solaris. No i dont work for prentice hall Sun or any other company mentioned above.
Yes, you can download Solaris media kits for a nominal cost. I believe its approx 80-90 USD, as long as its for non-commercial use (solaris 9 and below). I think Solaris 10 is on subscribtion.
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get.jsp
Give it a rest Smart Patrol – we all know you’re an IBM’er who just can’t stand that your competition is getting air time. When’s IBM open sourcing AIX?
Huh? Don’t know what you are talking about i worked for IBM for a short time it was a horrible experience. Even though my perfectly valid comment was modded down it still is very appropriate in regards to SUN. Open Sourcing Solaris will not save SUN they need to come up with a better plan.
Open Sourcing Solaris will not save SUN they need to come up with a better plan.
What needs saved and who thinks that just open sourcing Solaris would save them? They keep reducing prices to stay competitive in the market, and they just had a net profitable quarter. Solaris 10 is a solid OS that real corporations are clamoring for. Their hardware reliability is improving. They’ve got some really great strategic partnerships with AMD and Fujitsu.
Looks to me like they’ve got some pretty good plans.
What needs saved and who thinks that just open sourcing Solaris would save them? They keep reducing prices to stay competitive in the market, and they just had a net profitable quarter. Solaris 10 is a solid OS that real corporations are clamoring for. Their hardware reliability is improving. They’ve got some really great strategic partnerships with AMD and Fujitsu.
Looks to me like they’ve got some pretty good plans.
They continue to marginalize themselves they had a great platform with a great OS. Now they are desperate trying new things. They are makeing good choices with partnering with AMD etc.. but they just entered a larger competitive market by jumping on the PC bandwagon. Where prior they competed with mainly IBM RS/6000 and HP PA-RISC based systems now they are in a market where anyone that can assemble a AMD64 PC and install linux on it can ruin their day.