Quote:
Originally posted by tonkagunner
Has anyone used Sun Solaris operating system? I think it is free now.
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Yes, Solaris is free now. It's a flavor of Unix developed by Sun. They have it for the x86 platform and I've had success running it on a dedicated machine (P4 2.4 ghz Dell Optiplex GX260 you can look up the stats on the Dell website if you are interested), and as a VMWare session(Same machine running in VMWare on Windows XP). Of course as a VMWare session you need at least a gig of ram to get decent performance.
The only thing to say about it is that it's a well put together flavor of Unix. It's a bit more complicated than trying to install Redhat or Mandrake Linux on a box but the end result is a much cleaner, better performing OS.
The nice thing about Solaris is that it performs well as both a desktop operating system and a server platform.
However, some caveats, you need to be well versed in your Unix-fu before trying to tackle things. Sun likes to stick things in odd places in it's directory structure and you have to be fairly comfortable getting around in a command line.
Also installing software can be a bit of a bear on this platform. You pretty much HAVE to compile everything from source.
If these things aren't any problem for you I definatly recommend checking it out. If you are looking for power and stability in an OS that's a little easier to handle I recommend Debian linux. More specifically Knoppix. You can do a harddrive install of Knoppix with most of the tools you need in a matter of minutes and you can use apt-get to easily install just about everything else.