Oh yeah, I almost forgot. If Solaris is so good and stable, why on earth would Solaris use a modified version of Suse to use as their new home/Enterprise Operating System, the Java Desktop System:

http://wwws.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/faq.html

It's quite overpriced and, despite Star Office, they offer nothing but a modified version of Gnome and Java Integrated, in a Linux kernel and modified Suse distribution, for the price of 100 bucks / year and per-toilet seat license ala MS

You are mixing words, after I tell you not to confuse SunOS and Solaris, you now claim the nonsense that Solaris is using Suse ....

I suppose you mean Sun is now selling a Suse based distribution, which is true, but this is in no way a replacement of Solaris, neither an acknowledgment that Linux is technically superior. This version of JDS is primarily targeting companies and governments that have already made the choice of linux for their desktops, and are willing to pay to have a supported system including office tools at a quite small fraction of the price the current market leader is charging.

You'll know that, if you had fully read the url you sent:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/faq.html

If it is so overpriced, why would China Standard Software has agreed to buy about half a million to one million JDS license a year with a potential 200 million licenses goal ?
OK, I doubt they'll pay the US street price, but anyway that's a JDS win ...

Another piece of information from the faq:

In the near future JDS is also going to be available on the top of Sparc and Intel versions of Solaris kernel, and is actually going to be the default desktop environment for all its workstations range, including SunRay's.

I see here no plan by Sun to drop its O/S ...

Sun do not entirely endorse linux anyways and are on record of pushing solaris at the expensive of linux

Yes, that's exactly what I was saying, Sun has always and will certainly continue to be pushing Solaris at the expense of its competitors, and do what is necessary in R&D to have this system be superior to their ...

What other position would you expect from a commercial company owning such a powerful product ?

Sorry man, I don't see Solaris as a powerful OS. Not for desktop at least. That's only for servers... For desktop, Linux or freeBSD. And I serious doubt that Sun will go too far away with their new partners, Microsoft.

You know why I think that Windows is succeed and why there are more Mac users then Linux users? Because those products are not free. "Peoples" tend to believe that free is bad. I would not be surprised if more companies as the one in China that you mention, would buy JDS, because they have to pay for it and they will think it's better.... very narrow minded peoples, I'd say....

Nothing is free, specially when you're talking about a company. Individuals can often spent their "spare" time to do what they want, so tend to forget that even their spare time is also money ...

Free product, just like Commercial ones have an installation, maintenance and support cost.
When companies buy products instead of just downloading them for free, it is mainly to have someone in front of them accountable for the product and able to give them support.

Also, Company buyers do not like free products, because they cannot bargain for a rebate, and these guys love that ....

What difference do you make between a desktop O/S and a server O/S ?

Microsoft is making this kind of partitioning, but Unix never did, it is the very same Solaris code that run on a low end single processor system and an high-end 106 CPU SF15K ...

The guy at the origin of this thread was asking for a java development platform, that means that it will probably run at least a web server and an application server, that make it more a server side platform than a pure desktop one.

A lot. A server OS does not even need a X window system(which Solaris installs right during the installation process). The more services you run, the less stable and secure it gets. A desktop OS, unlike a server OS, must have a lot of hardware support (which Solaris hasn't) since we have plenty of manufactures around who does not provide drivers for anything besides Linux and Windows. It must be also easy of use and have eye candy, which Solaris has not either. Installing programs from Campanion CD goes by default to /opt and, for example, installing gcc, it not even links to /usr/bin and that should be done automatically as when you compile a program or install a native package, as .tgz for Slackware, for example. It also has to be attractive with games, which Solaris has not, nor official drivers for 3D cards, I have not seem anyone getting a simple mouse wheel to work with it either...

Basically, that's how I see a server OS and a Desktop OS . Comparing, let's say, Slackware to Solaris, I see that Slackware smashes Solaris on every way possible... and that's not even a user friendly distro and can be perfectly used as server too. Secure, fast and no X window needed

i think that was a retorical question!
linux leaks resources faster than unix imo

Solaris doesn't requires an X server, high end servers do not even have a graphic card to run it.
You can install Solaris in text mode only, you can also install Solaris remotely on a headerless PC.
You can just install core solaris that doesn't include server or client X11 files.

Meanwhile, a Sun Ray server can run hundreds of X Servers simultaneously.

From Linux experience ?
1) A robust O/S stability shouldn't be compromised by running services.
2) It is the service code responsibility to ensure security, the O/S has little influence on that.

Partially true, but you look like a Windows supporter here.
Several years ago, the same argument was used by them against Linux, that didn't stopped its success.
One of this lack of support's reason is mostly a legal one: although technically possible, the GPL license forbid to reuse the Linux drivers on Solaris, in consequence, these must be rewritten from scratch to Solaris.
Anyway, that didn't prevented me to install it successfully on all of a dozen of different PC's I used since 97.

I'm pretty sure my Solaris laptop has (or can have) eye candy, whatever it means ! (sorry, non native english speaker)

/opt is the right place to install S/W on SVR4 Unix, don't forget this O/S must comply to stricter rules than the linux distributions chaos.
Properly installing the companion CD s/w includes having the global PATH be updated to include /opt/sfw/bin.

Three times wrong:
I have galaxian, kobodl, breakout, doom and xbill :-) on my laptop,
most of XFree86 drivers can be used on Solaris X server,
mouse wheel drivers exists for USB and PS2 mice.

Can't agree:
X window is not needed by Solaris, although useful.
Can you elaborate on security ?
Have you looked at Solaris 10 secure containers ?

No, I've not seem Solaris 10. I'm not saying that Solaris or Linux can do one thing that the other can't. Both can run gcc, Java, Apache, databases, OpenOffice. And so can windows, macOS. Basically, all OS can be configure to do the same task. It depends a great deal what you want to accomplish.

About security, it is very very relative. There are much less peoples running Solaris x86 as server then Linux. So attacks and security holes falls more toward Linux, but that not necessarily makes it less insecure. If every 10.000 servers, one use Solaris, chances are that one will never ever get attacked....

About stability, it all depends of your hardware. Linux runs great in one machine of mine, while Solaris won't. Not really a kernel issue, but a problem with your hardware being unsupported by the kernel. There has been made a comparison test between a few OS that run in a x86 architecture:

http://www.usenix.org/publications/l.../sd96/lai.html

these, are tests, not personal preferences. Solaris simply has a lack of support (Nvida, ID software, Bioware, IBM, Novell, among others support Linux), it's harder to find solutions to problems, since fewer uses it. My personal preferences, as desktop, is:

Linux
FreeBSD
Windows
Solaris

But that is personal taste. You may prefer Solaris, I may prefer Linux, but tests shows the differences...

Wow, you cite tests made EIGHT years ago !?
Things may have changed ...

Concerning security, Solaris x86 is just exactly the same code as Solaris sparc, which is not a newcomer unix platform in the net.
Don't underestimate the number of attacks it faces, and efforts made to defeat them.

Anyway, as I said previously, if you run, say, apache web server and there is a hole in its code, the hole will be there whatever the linux, solaris, freebsd and windows versions.
you use.

The O/S can't do much on it , but it may isolate one service from the other, that's what s10 secure containers are about.

XFree86 Nvidia graphic cards drivers are supported by solaris
You can probably run ID Software linux games and perhaps bioware ones under solaris with lxrun (and directly with s10), but the original post was talking about java software development platform.

I perfectly accept you to think, WITH REASON, that your linux box is better suited to your needs, which includes playing 3D games from what I understand, but that does not make your preference or advice reasonable when the request comes from someone willing to develop Java software, that may also be java3D games by the way.

I'm not advising anyone to unconditionnaly install Solaris on its PC, sometimes I tell Solaris is the right choice, sometimes I say Linux is better, and I also sometimes advice to install Windows.

Applications, Hardware support and user skills are the parameters, not my personal feeling.

I'm a fan of Unix since quite a while (I first login on a lsi11 version 7 box in 1984).
I supported all the efforts made to take unix outside of its niche to the mainstream (minix, bsd, linux, solaris x86...) since their beginning.

I'm disappointed to see that Linux newcomers manifest contempt to the good old Unix (SVR4) instead of targetting the real threat to Unix/Linux/Open Systems/Open Source world, you know whom I'm talking about.

Cool. I see your point and I agree. I'm also not saying to everyone to do not try Solaris. I think it's a very good learning and to know one more OS won't do any harm. For learning purposes everything is great. Now, sorry to say that, but nvidia does not support Solaris. You can check their website and you will see that there's no driver for Solaris, but they have for win, lin and bsd's...

Solaris does, comes with a generic nvidia driver for TNT2, but that's is a very old card, plus, it does not provide 3D acceleration. There're a couple of alternatives:

http://utah-glx.sourceforge.net/

but very few could get it to work... Sad though, I'd like to see every OS being supported and I really would love to use Solaris more often then I actually do, since Java is my programming language of choice for graphical interfaces (which is also the language that you can code right off the box with Solaris, so it's a plus).

I just wanted to let it be clear that I agree with a lot of your points, I don't think Solaris stinks and I do recommend everyone to try everything, Solaris, Linux, freeBSD out around before settle down . In my case, Linux for programming and Windows for games are a nice combo .

Great, so we agree on almost everything, let's have a beer when you climb the hill from far away to Paris ...

btw, I reread this thread and noticed I forgot to answer one of your questions:
The place to start for downloading solaris 10 is:

http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/

Cool Anytime you in Sweden, lemme know . I know some good places with a lot of Blondie's to cheer us up. ghehe. Although, France looks like a really beautiful country (I've only seem in pics) I'm checking the link now, thanks a lot mate! . I've only a few CDr's left, but there's always room for yet another OS ghehe.