Is Solaris x86 usable on a PPro?

[bubba]

We have one odd solaris box here at work and, although I am comfortable with linux, I have not administered Solaris before. I thought I might get the Solaris for x86 binaries and install them on a test box. We have some PentiumPros around that I could probably get my hands on. This would be mainly for testing and running through things before I do it on the real production box. Would Solaris be usuable on such a box?

 

[Sunner]

Yeah most likely.
Solaris is pretty fast even on slow hardware, and a PPro should be more than fast enough.

 

[MGMorden]

Don't know if you're in charge of the project and have authority to make such decisions but if you are comfortable with linux then it is available for SPARC (Solaris) hardware.

 

[bubba]

Nope, need Solaris. This machine runs some Solaris only apps.

Sunner- Odd, I heard that Solaris x86 was a hog and performed *very* poorly on even good intel hardware. That it was just a good example of why one should buy 64 bit sparc hardware if they wanted to run it.

 

[Agamar]

Where can I get these binaries? I have a P-133 with 32megs of ram laying around collecting dust, and I would love to try out Solaris for a change.

 

[Agamar]

Wow, I just checked Sun's site and they are charging $75 plus s/h just for the damn media. What is up with that. It cost's like $7-12 to get a linux distribution from Cheapbytes. Anybody know where I can download it?

 

[SUOrangeman]

(Having made copes of Solaris x86 CDs), you probably won't find Solaris advertisd freely in the wild. I don't know why, but you won't. I mean, if Sun won't let you download them, why would anyone else **legitamately** let you do the same?

-SUO

 

[MGMorden]

I really do think it sucks though the way Sun says they're giving away Solaris, but then charging $75 for the media. That's not giving it away, that's frickin' buying the thing and not getting tech support.

 

[bubba]

if you think that have you *looked* into how much a commercial solaris license costs?!?! Holy frijoles!

I am sure that Sun is charging $75 for Solaris for the same reason why Apple is charging $29 for the public beta of Mac OS X... Namely to keep it just to people who are more seriously interested. It sets a threshold.

Anyways from what I hear Solaris x86 is terrible. Unstable and slow. I just wanted to use it to test patches/configuration on before messing with the one and only production box here.

 

[Agamar]

I just wanted to test it out period. We might be getting a Solaris box at work, but that thing is going to cost close to 25k or more....I don't wanna start out knowing crap.

 

[Sunner]

Its not just media, its 16 discs plus a whole bunch of manuals.
But if its for work it shouldnt be a big problem.

As for performance, I guess maybe it differs from verison to version, I only have hands on experience with Solaris 7 on x86 machines, but a guy at work says Solaris 8 is comparable, if not better than Solaris 7 in terms of performance.

This includes running CDE, surfing, mail, compiling programs, etc, havent tried any really heavy stuff though.