Why is Solaris so un-popular UNIX OS??
 

Why is it that Solaris among UNIX users are not considered popular than LINUX or FreeBSD? Is Solaris dying?? Is it because Solaris has alot of security exploits? I dont know...

What makes you think Solaris is unpopular? Quite a number of individuals and companies use Solaris extensively. Granted Linux and the BSDs (along with Windows) have eaten into Solaris's share of the low and mid-range server market, but it's still used very extensively in these spaces and in large transaction processing systems.

I know that most federal information systems use Solaris...Esp. the Trusted version. But I am talking about home users..If Sun hade developed more hardware/software support for home PC hardware, than yes, Solaris may become extensively used for home users. But it just bugs me that I cannot find answers that I want because it seems like knowbody cares.

Can you do me a favor here?? Please? Can you list all the Federal Information Systems that DO use Solaris? If not, dont sweat it. I know that the IRS do use Solaris on their server-side OS along with IBM's z/OS mainframes. ALso or perhaps but I dont know, the DoD uses it too.

thanks.

Hi as400, I'm afraid you were misinformed, Solaris has never been as popular as it is today.

I support well over a thousand Solaris servers. Solaris has been great for years and has been getting nothing but better.

I dont know...maybe I am illusioned by that...But I had several questions that needed to be answered and no replies after 4 days...I KNOW that most Government agencies use Solaris as their database server...But I mean for HOME users...

Can someone please post a list on which Governments use Solaris as their server? I would appreciate it...

- You posted your questions 18 hours ago, that does not make 4 days.
- You had replies.
Same for them, Solaris is much more popular within home users given the fact Solaris is now free and has better x86 H/W support.
The Vatican web servers run on Solaris, I'm sure you'll find some others.

Anyone else find this question odd or out of place somehow?

So you want it for home use but you are requesting known a list of goverments or angencies that use it? I don't see how they relate personaly.

Also, no admin or contractor is going to share a details about systems in thier care let alone those working with goverments and wouldn't everyone else would just be guessing?

As far as Solaris, I've only worked with it a little but it seems very similar to RH but that may just be me.

Solaris is not dead or dying. I don't know where you got that idea. Furthermore, I can truly tell you that most agencies use solaris (mixed in an environment with linux/windows and sometimes other unix versions). Think NASA for instance. Furthermore, large business also use it.

Lots of security holes? You must be thinking windows here.

till about 3 or 4 years ago, most big machines that needed to deal with massively large databases or high loads of whatever either ran Solaris or AIX. Windows made its mark on small and medium sized businesses and Linux is just starting to make its move.

Like folks have said, Solaris should now be more popular now that it supports x86. As for as exploits go, secunia says there are 2 unpatched issues (out of 40) for Solaris 10 and Win 2003 has 10 unpatched (out of 90).

Hello All,

Thanks for enlightening me on Solaris and its capababilities.

I am new on this forum and as a matter of fact, today is my first day and this is my fist post.

Thanks.

atandasteve.

Solaris also has just recently become open source. Perhaps it will begin to catch on once people have a chance to try it

Yep, before it was expensive and required proprietary hardware. Now it's free (as in beer) and runs on the computers you already own. That makes Solaris a good choice for enterprises of any size, IMVHO.

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp

It was in fact in the same price range as the other commercial Unix available.
Not necessarily, I've been running Solaris on x86 PCs and laptops for more than 8 years now. The same H/W that can run linux or *BSDs so no difference here.
Yes, it's free since more than 2 years ago actually.
Unless that's a PPC or some other exotic CPU, but this is worked on.
Yes ! and home users of any size too ;)