Is there Solaris Installation Packet for Home PC (Personal Computer)?
 

Dear IT experts,

I a newbie in Solaris, but I am very interested in learning it, but I have problem.
I do not have any SUN solaris machine.I just have a computer with 512 MB memory, processor 2,8Ghz, and Graphic card 256MB.

Is there any version of Solaris that we can install at common computer (PC)? Where I can get it, so I can install in my PC?

Thanks,


Ferianto

Open Solaris runs on Intel machines.

http://opensolaris.org/os

... still a work in progress, AFAIK.

Sure, Solaris has been supporting the x86 architecture since more than ten (if not fifteen) years.
You can freely download Solaris 10 from Sun, or one of the Open Solaris based distributions supporting the x86 CPUs.

There are six of them now:

- Solaris Express
- Schillix
- Belenix
- Nexenta
- Open Solaris Preview (Indiana)
- MartUX

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp
http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/

512 MB may be a little short for some of these distributions. I would recommend 1 GB for a better experience.

I thought Sun charged for the x86 version of Solaris 10. Did that change?
Wow, I didn't realize there were so many.

OP might want to strike Nextenta off that list, since he expressed an interest in "learning Solaris". I have yet to run Nexenta (and in fact I plan to), but the project page seems to imply that Nextenta is very close to GNU linux, but with a Solaris kernel. That implies that learning Nexenta isn't really learning Solaris.

No change. Solaris 10 was downloadable for free for both personal and commercial use when it was launched, and still is.
Yes, this distribution is the one that diverge the most comparing to the other ones. If the goal is learning Solaris, one of the Solaris Express editions is the best choice.

Not only that but you can fill out a form and they'll post cds to you as well.

Yeah, I've got the free Solaris 10 sparc DVDs. But I recall a $20 USD charge for the x86 version. Sun's site can be confusing (especially if you're looking through the java products, each of which have a few different aliases). So I suppose it's possible that the x86 version that was selling for $20 was perhaps some special version with extra premium stuff.

Solaris 10 has always been free for any use on both SPARC and x86/amd64.

I guess you are confusing with either Solaris 8 beta which was made available for a short period of time at $20 by the end 1999 or Solaris 9 for x86 beta which was also priced $20 by the end of 2002 and early 2003. Solaris 9 for x86 was released commercially at $99 but as far as I recall, it was free for personal/educational use.

That might explain it.. that was probably the time frame I was looking for a copy of Solaris for the x86.