does solaris free?

http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get.html

if i have a Java Application Server, then, it will suit better in solaris or linux?

for normal pc i686, we should consider to download solaris x86?

Solaris is free.

Application servers work well in both environments, possibly faster on linux although next solaris (10) may close the gap, and perhaps reverse the order.

What is a "normal" i686 pc ?

what is the benchmark between solaris and linux in term of processing time?

>What is a "normal" i686 pc ?

i mean ordinary intel 686 processor. Does solaris x86 is suiting this type of pc?
if i have a laptop, how compactible solaris x86 toward laptop? Does it ease of installation?

Benchmarking results depends on your application, and the tuning made to the platform.
Pure processing (CPU) time will be almost exactly equals with the same hardware, although it depends on compiler optimizations used to build your binary.
Disk i/o, networking, file-system access, multi-threading will also depends on O/S performance, this is the part where platform tuning can make a difference.

Concerning i686, Solaris supports the x86 intel family, which includes PII and PIII (Pentium Pro based) which are I think are what is called i686.

Other specs matters, like RAM size (256 Meg or more recommended), video / networking cards etc ...

look the hardware compatibility list (HCL) at
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/

I think Linux's performance is better than Solaris on i686.

Solaris on Intel is fairly slow compared with Linux, and then there are other problems of getting the hardware to work etc.
Also Solaris is free, but in order to be entitled to download updates etc you should pay for support, even though you can still download them.

I think the guy asked if he should install Solaris on his home PC. Right?

Go for Linux I say.

From the LinuxQuestions form rules:

I'm not sure some of the previous postings in this thread really match ...

Speed has always a price and is usually not an issue with recent hardware.
I prefer a rock solid O/S than a faster one that crashes.

Whatever you do, a PC is spending most of its time waiting for something to come from the keyboard, the mouse, a disk or the network, events the O/S is not responsible for.

it depends on the distro of linux u install, it would be better to go with a security orientated linux for servers rather than just dumping any old linux on it if u decide to put linux on as the server,
unix machines in general tend to be less usable becuase they are more secure out of the box - i.e. a lot of services not running/installed, tighter file permissions (on freebsd u users cannot su by default, they have to be in a special group)

also, if u want to boast about uptime, the linux clock resets itself just under 1.5 years of up time (i heard)

Is this a Solaris forum or the "discourage anyone willing to taste the real thing" forum ?

The guy asked for Java application server support, Sun JVM is and will certainly be supported and tuned a better way for the Solaris platform compared to Linux.

i say go with unix all the time if u dont mind a little extra work

I run Solaris 9.0 x86 home(I always wanted a spark though...). I found it extremely good for Java Development (my language of choice) and for server stuff. But so is Linux. The problem is Solaris is harder to configure, hardware detection/support is very limited(just check their list) and very, very dated to be useful as desktop... it comes with Netscape 4.x if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps Solaris is brilliant in a Sparc machine, but on a x86 structure is no competition for Linux. Perhaps it beats some crappy distributions as the heavy and unstable Mandrake, but that is it... I say go with Linux or *BSD for desktop. Solaris x86 for learning purposes and servers only...

i am currently deploying my java app in linux redhat server.
just that, i was told that, solaris is more suitable for java instead of linux.
initially, i had a move to go into solaris..., but, now, i think... it is not worth..
thanks..guy....thanks for ur opinions and sharings...

Don't confuse the kernel and the environment.

When we talk about Linux vs Solaris, it should actually be either:

1) Linux Kernel X.Y vs SunOS 5.X
or
2) Linux Distribution A Version X.Y vs Solaris Environment X release Y

Concerning part 1:

Solaris is in many areas superior to Linux in term of stability, standards compliancy, functionalities, ascending compatibility.
Solaris pure performance may still be a little behind linux, but this is changing with Solaris 10.
I agree Solaris is lacking support for some hardware, but this is rarely a show-stopper.

Concerning part 2:

Solaris standard distribution is very conservative, and provide a disappointing default environment to people used to the richness of user interfaces found in most Linux distros. It provides however the same default environment that IBM AIX users or Hewlett Packard HP-UX user found on their workstations or servers, and that was the goal (CDE = Common Desktop Environment).
The problem is that this environment hasn't evolved fast enough to remain competitive with open source desktops.


Solaris can however easily be upgraded either with the bundled freeware or with downloadable packages available in sunfreeware.com, blastwave.org or others to provide the very same environment you expect/like (KDE, Gnome, ...)

Solaris 10 is phasing out CDE and provide Gnome as a standard desktop.

I'm using currently Solaris 9 on a toshiba laptop with the following freewares (to cite a few):
a customized icewm
Mozilla Firefox 0.8
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5
Netbeans 3.5
Apache 1.3.26 / Tomcat
JDK1.4.2 and JDK1.5
Sun Application Server 8.0
OpenOffice.org 1.1
gcc

I'm doing java and portal development and am very happy with it.

I'm running at home a Solaris 10 server (Shuttle based) which never crashed.
I've also Mandrake 9.2 (which may not be the more stable linux distribution as Megaman X said) and it effectively crashed a couple of times in one week (kernel panics), with file system corruptions although journalling was enabled.
Since I'm using jounalling with Solaris ufs, I've never had a file lost due to a power shortage or other abrupt shutdown.

BTW, Solaris 10 will support direct execution of some (most?) Linux binaries (8 and 9 already do it with lxrun).

Cool. I hope Solaris will get stronger then 9.0. I never said that the performance was poor, just as a desktop it's hard to get it going. CDE was ugly, but very functional and due CDE, I made my way to XFCE.

They are very functional, but unfortunately, beauty beats functionality in this wonderful age we are living in... lol. If you have a 100% compatible hardware, that would make a huge difference. Since I could not get my sound card or network to work with 9.0, things got though. I'm not afraid of reading books and huge tutorials, but if access to Internet is not available, things get rough.

One thing that I disliked was that it's not possible to call the terminals with ctrl + alt + F[*]Keys. That is scary. One problem with X and it could bring the system down. Another thing is that Solaris 9.0 does not have console auto-completition by default. You could add/run bash and that should fix the problem. But you could also install Firefox in Redhat 6.2.

Not comparing kernels, because kernels are very relative with hardware (by that I mean, if you have a crap unsupported network card, it will give you a kernel panic if the kernel cannot communicate with the device), but comparing the both Linux and Solaris 9.0, makes Solaris to look like a very old Linux distribution... period. Again, performance is relative.. if you have a great supported hardware by the kernel, it will run just as good with either Solaris or Linux.

I just think that Solaris 9.0 x86 was not for me, or for my computer's hardware for that matter... Companion disk spiced up a lot though. Bash and gcc were fundamental.

Could you please tell me if Solaris 10 is already available for download? I cannot find anything, and I mean it, anything at Sun's homepage. It beats MS homepage by far in terms of organization (or ratter saying, the lack of it). And I'd really love to use Solaris more. Not in my main machine though, as a gamer, Linux has still better support for graphics cards as ATI and Nvidia, and some game manufactures as well as ID and Bioware, thus, desktop