Solaris Linux
 

Has anyone used Sun Solaris operating system? I think it is free now.

...Solaris...Linux? :eek7

Are you talking about running Linux on a Sun, or Solaris on a PC?

Solaris is a Unix flavor by Sun ...

Solaris Rocks!:)

Sticking with FreeBSD :thumbsup

And with 5.3 and better hyperthreading and multithreaded support no reason to go elsewhere. :thumbsup

I wouldn't touch anything but a x86 platform with either FreeBSD to act as a server or Windows XP to act as a workstation :thumbsup

Anything else makes me feel dirty :1orglaugh

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.

Solaris free?? I doubt it.

I've used it for mainstream commercial development (with Oracle).

The speed of those boxes is pretty amazing, they seem to scale better for enterprise level applications than linux. Licensing costs are a bit prohibitive though.

We've got about 3-4 sun boxes in our office's server room gathering dust at the moment.

I stand corrected. All we need is Oracle free now :)

Actually yes, Solaris does offer a free package for non-commercial usage on computer systems using the x86 architecture. They also have a free version for SPECIFIC Sun processors. If you want to run it on anything more powerful you have to purchase an appropriate license. See the link below:

Link to free Solaris details...

I heard that they are charging for bug fixes updates and are trying to still keep patents. It looks like I'm going to stay away.