What is Solaris?

[dmw16]

I was planning on downloading the free copy of Solaris from the Sun site. But to be honest, I dont know what Solaris is. I have always been interested in alternate OS's, that is why I want to get it. But can anyone tell me some stuff about solaris? Also, Im currently dual booting between win2k and win98, will I be ok installing Solaris, that is to say, will I mess up either windows install? Any tips on installing Solaris? Anything I should watch out for?
thanks,
-doug

 

[ASmurf]

Solaris is a unix OS....kind of like IBM's AIX. I wouldn't mess around with it too much. Both of these OSes are not really for general desktop use. If you want to try an alternate OS, go with good ol Linux...there's a baker's dozen different versions, including Redhat, Suse, and Caldera.
I doubt Solaris was meant for multi-boot....it's usually used in a business environment.

 

[earthman]

You will need a good boot manager to run multiple OS's really effectively, other wise adding removing them can be a big chore. Solaris is a unix based OS very similar to Linux or BSD, all unix's follow the same basic standards, or are supposed to. It originally ran on the SPARC architecture but has now been ported to the x86 architecture to tap into that market a little. Solaris is being made available for free because Sun wants to be more competitive to Microsoft and tap into the amatuer developers that have helped make Linux so successful. Expect an OS that works alot like Linux or BSD, that should run Linux binaries, but don't expect the flashy desktops and wide hardware support that recent Linux distros have. It uses the CDE (common desktop envirionment) which looks alot like Motif if I remember right.