Hello, I know very little about Solaris.

My first question is: Is Solaris more powerful and secure than the BSDs?

Second, can solaris be used as a desktop and do stuff from the web browser like play youtube videos, play Netflix, etc.

Thanks

Pretty sure solaris is dead. https://siliconangle.com/2017/09/05/...aris-products/

Desktop, not easily. The BSDs are very good, my favorite being FreeBSD, but again, as a desktop, very painful. I ran FreeBSD as a desktop for several months a couple of years ago but got frustrated with several things, namely Xorg and my new video hardware so gave up and went back to Linux. You CAN run BSD as a desktop (TrueOS), and there are others, such as ghostbsd, but I have never had luck with them.

FreeBSD as an operating system is amazing: but it is really meant for servers and other such uses. Running it as my firewall as we speak. Maybe one day it will be much more desktop friendly but at this point, I would say no.

Solaris 11.4 in process of installing desktop. VBox give it a shot. put aside a hour or so and give it a shot.

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I guess solaris's popularity has dwindle in favor of the more popular linux. Because linux is always in constant development to support more features and hardware.

I'll think about it

This is a long shot, but is anyone going to that? You can put direct questions to the guys there. But if it's minor number releases only, that's bug fixes, and essential features to keep it in it's present state (way behind linux)

A company is in business to make money. 450 devs or hardware techies (in the States, not a 3rd/4th world tech centre) is a lot of salary/buildings/overheads. I can see them selling a few pcs, sure; But who's paying over the odds to have a server with Solaris these days? I can't imagine the operation making money for the last decade.

They'd do better to Open Source it and let the community develop it. Or hand over the the code base to Richard Stallman and let him do it.

Any server operating system that has a GUI can be used as a desktop, it's a just a question of how much effort you want to put into getting everything to work. The OP stated "do stuff from the web browser like play youtube videos, play Netflix, etc." These things may or may not be possible, depending on the software available for Solaris.

That's all I was pointing out.

he has two questions out there on this
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...11#post5909411

and yes I think I put it out on that to him. in his other post on this subject.

Solaris and BSD are both server OSes, not that you can't work and install a desktop, but you're removing their best feature: security. You'd have to disable flash, & javascript on any browser, which cuts your options.


A sysadmin once posted that he'd be fired if he installed X. The OP should stick with linux. Solaris-11.x is probably patched for Meltdown & Spectre.

yep it gave me grief on that one.
Spectre Mitigation how to turn on in mint, and VBox for Solaris 11.4

Many thanks to all.

Linux is still my main OS.

i think this question is answered.

however, wasn't there a rebirth of solaris, called open solaris or was it indiana?

The minor/major version number is no more relevant. Oracle decided to keep the 11 major version number indefinitely and just change the minor version for new releases. One of the reasons to do it is to ease the transition to a new version, instead of a disruptive upgrade, only an update is required.

Thus, Solaris 11.4 has just been released and customers with a support contract and running an up to date Solaris 11.3 can move to it with a single command. Solaris 11.4 is to a large extent what Solaris 12 was supposed to be. It contains new features and changes that would have only been in a new major version in the past.

As far as desktop usage is concerned, while it is clear it is no more the focus of Solaris engineering, it is worth noting the desktop environment has moved to Gnome 3.

OK, but how come they laid off so many developers? What were those guys doing that they're obviously not doing now. They're bad mouthing their ex-employer now.

I guess they were working on hardware or software projects that were either abandoned, relocated or downsized.

While the amount of people that have leaved is certainly significant, what matters for Solaris now is what is done by people still working on it.

Dropping the desktop market, and its ever changing hardware, compatibility issues, wide range of drivers needing to be available, and focusing on the server one is also certainly simplifying the kernel developers tasks and let them focus to areas where Solaris can still lead. Servers tend to have a much stable and predictable hardware, especially when they are built by the same company.

That article is broadly outdated. There will be new Solaris versions and new SPARC CPUs. If you are afraid anyway, try illumos distributions (like OpenIndiana or Tribblix) which are basically a FLOSS version of Solaris 11.

FreeBSD's killer features - DTrace, ZFS, ... - are all imported from Solaris. Better use the original.