The hell? Free Solaris Download costs $20!

[Gunnar]

Has anyone downloaded the Solaris 8 "free" binary? It costs $20 to get one! So much for free, I read the licensing agreement, and the user only has to pay "media or download" costs. Its $45 to get the cds.

What a gyp! Anyone have any thoughts on this? Is Solaris really worth $20? Im so fed up with Linux, FreeBSD, while better than linux, is not much of a desktop OS. I thought Id give Solaris a shot.

Although I have a feeling itll just be gnome with different internals....

 

[sswingle]

Maybe the linux community has finally discovered its hard to run a business without profit........
Just a thought...

 

[manly]

Solaris is a rock-solid OS, but it's a lousy desktop OS (think Linux circa 1996). The reason it now costs some money is because Solaris x86 is a tiny niche product that isn't a substantial part of Sun's business model. I'm pretty sure that if you own a Sun UltraSPARC box, you can get Solaris for gratis. In fact, every now and then, you can request the Solaris media kit for free.

Obviously, software licensing for other commercials OSs is a higher cost (i.e. MacOS or Winblows) so $20 is actually quite reasonable.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Does that go for an usparc download too? Id pay that for Solaris 9 for my newish ultra 10

 

[Aboroth]

Originally posted by: pwddesign
Maybe the linux community has finally discovered its hard to run a business without profit........
Just a thought...

Uh, what? Solaris is definitely *not* Linux.

The "Linux community" is also *not* running a business, and isn't trying to make money. There are certain companies using Linux in their business model, though. Redhat is quite successful at it.