Sun Microsystems Rolls Out Much-Awaited Solaris 10

[bemildred]

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Sunday introduced the long-awaited next version of its operating system, Solaris 10, which the network computer maker is betting on to help bring itself back to sustained profitability.

Sun said that Solaris 10, a version of the heavy-duty Unix operating system used by large computer data centers, banks, telecommunications firms and governments, cost more than $500 million in research and development. Sun claims more than 600 new features for Solaris 10.

Sun is relying on Solaris 10, which will be available at the end of January, to set it apart from rivals such as International Business Machines Corp. IBM.N Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Dell Inc. (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , as it battles back from a series of missteps since the implosion of the dot-com and telecommunications bubbles of the late 1990s, analysts said.

"Solaris 10 is what Sun believes will differentiate itself from companies like Dell and others," said Tony Iams, an analyst at D.H. Brown Associates of Port Chester, New York. "There are a number of very exciting new functions in this release that are going to be very valuable for their existing customers and they're also trying to capture new customers with their Opteron servers."

Reuters

[Fleurs du Mal]

1. I don't know about "Much-Awaited"

Our shop and several others I know of never even switched to 9.

[bemildred]

2. McNealy is an idiot.

Sort of the Sun version of Ken Olsen.
Solaris is, however, a fine version of Unix.
But I don't expect Solaris 10 will save Sun at this point.

[no name no slogan]

4. He's already hitched his wagon to MS, so he'll do anything

If there's one good thing to say about MS, it's that they put a crack in St. Scottie's armor-- one that OSS and Linux are now driving the Mack Truck through.

Scott M. is a pompous windbag who seems to think that everyone should run one of his $10k workstations, or his $2k "network computers"-- even if it's just your mom keeping track of her recipes and sending email to the grandkids.

Linux ate his lunch on the software/OS side, and now low-priced commodity hardware is doing it on the workstation/server side. Better learn some new tricks, Scott, uncle Billy will only prop you up as long as you're useful.

[TrogL]

3. I skipped 9. 10 looks promising

9 didn't give me much over 8 except for the over-bloated console, which I never used. I ended up creating my own.

10 has fixed up a lot of the stuff from 9 and given new functionality. Can't wait to try zfs.

[papau]

5. Solaris 10 will be a free download/GNU license open source OS?

So do I drop Linux and go Solaris 10?

[bemildred]

6. Off hand, you need to worry about hardware support and any special apps.