Last month Oracle released a ‘free’ version of Oracle Solaris 11.4 for opensource developers and non-production personal use. The key point to note is that this doesn’t mean that there is a free/opensource version of the OS now available because unlike the Open Solaris project (that was released in 2008 but was discontinued) this build is a similar to a beta release and contains pre-release builds of a particular SRU (which I think means a release version). To me it sounds like they want the opensource community to perform free testing for their releases while getting some positive publicity.
I don’t think I will be trying it out because I don’t really trust Oracle. They are notorious for their bad takes and really aggressive enforcement of their IP rights. Plus their history with opensource projects has been bumpy and you never know when they will change their mind and go in a different direction.
My first experience with Unix/Linux was SunOS 4.1 followed by Solaris 5. I even had a Sparc machine at one point but it got lost during one of the many moves I made over the years. I loved the OS and since I couldn’t run it on my machines I started using Linux which was a great alternative. When OpenSolaris was released I received installation CDs to try it out, unfortunately life got in the way and I never really tested it out (other than the initial install). It was disappointing when the project went defunct & shutdown. I took a look at the OpenSolaris Wikipage and it looks like none of the derivative projects that were supposed to take over really went anywhere. So that sucks.
I don’t think that Unix does anything that Linux can’t do and even then if you want to run Unix on your machines I would recommend you go for FreeBSD instead of this ‘free’ version.
Thanks to HackaDay: Solaris Might Be Free If You Want It for the initial link.
– Suramya