Solaris is a UNIX-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.
Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace and ZFS. Solaris supports SPARC-based and x86-based workstations and servers from Sun and other vendors, with efforts underway to port to additional platforms.
Solaris is certified against the Single Unix Specification. Although it was historically developed as proprietary software, it is supported on systems manufactured by all major server vendors, and the majority of its codebase is now open source software via the OpenSolaris project.
Supported architectures
Solaris uses a common code base for the platforms it supports: SPARC and i86pc (which includes both x86 and x86-64).
Solaris has a reputation for being well-suited to symmetric multiprocessing, supporting a large number of CPUs. It has historically been tightly integrated with Sun's SPARC hardware (including support for 64-bit SPARC applications since Solaris 7), with which it is marketed as a combined package. This has often led to more reliable systems, but at a cost premium over commodity PC hardware. However, it has also supported x86 systems since Solaris 2.1 and the latest version, Solaris 10, includes support for 64-bit x86 applications, allowing Sun to capitalize on the availability of commodity 64-bit CPUs based on the x86-64 architecture. Sun has heavily marketed Solaris for use with both its own "x64" workstations and servers based on AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors, as well as x86 systems manufactured by companies such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. As of 2009, the following vendors support Solaris for their x86 server systems:
- Dell - will "test, certify, and optimize Solaris and OpenSolaris on its rack and blade servers and offer them as one of several choices in the overall Dell software menu"
- IBM - also distributes Solaris and Solaris Subscriptions for select x86-based IBM System x servers and BladeCenter servers
- Intel
- Hewlett-Packard - distributes and provides software technical support for Solaris on ProLiant server and blade systems
- Fujitsu Siemens
Other platforms
Solaris 2.5.1 included support for the PowerPC platform (PowerPC Reference Platform), but the port was canceled before the Solaris 2.6 release. In January 2006 a community of developers at Blastwave began work on a PowerPC port which they named Polaris. In October 2006, an OpenSolaris community project based on the Blastwave efforts and Sun Labs' Project Pulsar, which re-integrated the relevant parts from Solaris 2.5.1 into OpenSolaris, announced its first official source code release.
A port of Solaris to the Intel Itanium architecture was announced in 1997 but never brought to market.
On November 28, 2007, IBM, Sun, and Sine Nomine Associates demonstrated a preview of OpenSolaris for System z running on an IBM System z mainframe under z/VM, called Sirius (in analogy to the Polaris project, and also due to the primary developer's Australian nationality: HMS Sirius of 1786 was a ship of the First Fleet to Australia). On October 17, 2008 a prototype release of Sirius was made available and on November 19 the same year, IBM authorized the use of Sirius on System z IFL processors.
Solaris also supports the Linux platform ABI, allowing Solaris to run native Linux binaries on x86 systems. This feature is called "Solaris Containers for Linux Applications" or SCLA, based on the branded zones functionality introduced in Solaris 10 8/07.
Installation and usage options
Solaris can be installed from various pre-packaged software groups, ranging from a minimalistic "Reduced Network Support" to a complete "Entire Plus OEM". Installation of Solaris is not necessary for an individual to use the system.
Usage with installation
Solaris can be installed from physical media or a network for use on a desktop or server.
Solaris can be interactively installed from a text console on platforms without a video display and mouse. This may be selected for servers, in a rack, in a remote data center, from a terminal server or even dial up modem.
Solaris can be interactively installed from a graphical console. This may be selected for personal workstations or laptops, in a local area, where a console may normally be used.
Solaris can be automatically installed over a network. System administrators can customize installations with scripts and configuration files, including configuration and automatic installation of third-party software, without purchasing additional software management utilities.
When Solaris is installed, the operating system will reside on the same system where the installation occurred. Applications may be individually installed on the local system, or can be mounted via the network from a remote system.
Usage without installationSolaris can be used without separately installing the operating system on a desktop or server.
Solaris can be booted from a remote server providing an OS image in a diskless environment, or in an environment where an internal disk is only used for swap space. In this configuration, the operating system still runs locally on the system. Applications may or may not reside locally when they are running. This may be selected for businesses or educational institutions where rapid setup is required (workstations can be "rolled off" of a loading dock, the MAC addressregistered into a central server, the workstation plugged in, and users can immediately leverage the desktop) or rapid replacement is required (if a desktop hardware failure occurs, a new workstation is pulled from a closet, plugged in, and a user can resume their work from their last saved point.)
Solaris can be used from an X terminal, which can boot from embedded or network accessible firmware and display a desktop immediately to the user. Applications and the operating system run remotely on one or more servers, but the graphical rendering (and occasionally the window manager) is offloaded to the X terminal. In the case of a desktop hardware failure, an X terminal can be easily replaced, and a user can resume their work from their last saved point.Solaris can also be used from a thin client. Applications, operating system, window manager, and graphical rendering runs on one or more remote servers. Administrators can add a user account to a central Solaris system and a thin client can be rolled from a closet, placed on a desktop, and a user can start work immediately. If there is a hardware failure, the thin client can be swapped and the user can resume their work from the exact point of failure, whether or not the work was saved.
Desktop environments:
Early releases of Solaris used OpenWindows as the standard desktop environment. In Solaris 2.0 to 2.2, OpenWindows supported both NeWS and X applications, and provided backward compatibility for SunView applications from Sun's older desktop environment. NeWS allowed applications to be built in an object oriented way using PostScript, a common printing language released in 1982. The X Window System originated from MIT's Project Athena in 1984 and allowed for the display of an application to be disconnected from the machine where the application was running, separated by a network connection. Sun’s original bundled SunView application suite was ported to X.
Sun later dropped support for legacy SunView applications and NeWS with OpenWindows 3.3, which shipped with Solaris 2.3, and switched to X11R5 with Display Postscript support. The graphical look and feel remained based upon OPEN LOOK. OpenWindows 3.6.2 was the last release under Solaris 8. The OPEN LOOK Window Manager (olwm) with other OPEN LOOK specific applications were dropped in Solaris 9, but support libraries were still bundled, providing long term binary backwards compatibility with existing applications. The OPEN LOOK Virtual Window Manager (olvwm) can still be downloaded for Solaris from sunfreeware and works on releases as recent as Solaris 10.
Sun and other Unix vendors created an industry alliance to standardize Unix desktops. As a member of COSE, the Common Open Software Environment initiative, Sun helped co-develop the Common Desktop Environment. CDE was an initiative to create a standard Unix desktop environment. Each vendor contributed different components: Hewlett-Packard contributed the window manager, IBM provided the file manager, and Sun provided the e-mail and calendar facilities as well as drag-and-drop support (ToolTalk). This new desktop environment was based upon the Motif look and feel and the old OPEN LOOK desktop environment was considered legacy. Solaris 2.5 onwards supported CDE. CDE unified Unix desktops across multiple open system vendors.
In 2001, Sun issued a preview release of the open-source desktop environment GNOME 1.4, based on the GTK+ toolkit, for Solaris 8, Solaris 9 8/03 introduced GNOME 2.0 as an alternative to CDE. Solaris 10 includes Sun's Java Desktop System, which is based on GNOME and comes with a large set of applications, including StarOffice, Sun's office suite. Sun describes JDS as a "major component" of Solaris 10.
The open source desktop environments KDE and XFCE, along with numerous other window managers, also compile and run on recent versions of Solaris.
Sun was investing in a new desktop environment called Project Looking Glass since 2003. The environment has been copied by other desktop vendors.
License
Solaris' source code (with a few exceptions) has been released under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) via the OpenSolaris project. The CDDL is an OSI-approved license. It is considered by the Free Software Foundation to be free but the GPL is incompatible with it.
OpenSolaris was seeded on June 14, 2005 from the then-current Solaris development code base; both binary and source versions are currently downloadable and licensed without cost. Source for upcoming features such as Xen support is now added to the OpenSolaris project as a matter of course, and Sun has said that future releases of Solaris proper will henceforth be derived from OpenSolaris.
Version:
| Solaris version | SunOS version | Release date | End of support | Major new features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solaris 10 | SunOS 5.10 | January 31, 2005 | - | Includes "x64" or x86-64 (AMD64/Intel 64) support, DTrace (Dynamic Tracing), Solaris Containers, Service Management Facility (SMF) which replaces init.d scripts, NFSv4. Least privilege security model. Support for sun4m and UltraSPARC I processors removed. Support for EISA-based PCs removed. Adds Java Desktop System (based on GNOME) as default desktop.
|
| Solaris 9 | SunOS 5.9 | May 28, 2002 (SPARC) January 10, 2003 (x86) | October 2014 | iPlanet Directory Server, Resource Manager, Solaris Volume Manager, extended file attributes, IKE IPsec keying, and Linux compatibility added; OpenWindows dropped, sun4d support removed. Most current update is Solaris 9 9/05. ------------------------------ |
| Solaris 8 | SunOS 5.8 | February 2000 | March 2012 | Includes Multipath I/O, IPMP, first support for IPv6 and IPsec (manual keying only), mdb modular debugger. Introduced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC); sun4c support removed. Last update is Solaris 8 2/04. ------------------------------------------- |
| Solaris 7 | SunOS 5.7 | November 1998 | August 2008 | The first 64-bit UltraSPARC release. Added native support for file system meta-data logging (UFS logging). Dropped MCA support on x86 platform. Last update was Solaris 7 11/99. ------------------------------- |
| Solaris 2.6 | SunOS 5.6 | July 1997 | July 2006 | Includes Kerberos 5, PAM, TrueType fonts, WebNFS, large file support, enhanced procfs. SPARCserver 600MP series support dropped. ------------------------------------------- |
| Solaris 2.5.1 | SunOS 5.5.1 | May 1996 | September 2005 | Only release to support PowerPC platform; Ultra Enterprise support added; user and group IDs (uid_t, gid_t) expanded to 32 bits,[37] also included processor sets[38] and early resource management technologies. |
| Solaris 2.5 | SunOS 5.5 | November 1995 | December 2003 | First to support UltraSPARC and include CDE, NFSv3 and NFS/TCP. Dropped sun4 (VMEbus) support. POSIX.1c-1995 pthreads added. Doors added but undocumented. |
| Solaris 2.4 | SunOS 5.4 | November 1994 | September 2003 | First unified SPARC/x86 release. Includes OSF/Motif runtime support. |
| Solaris 2.3 | SunOS 5.3 | November 1993 | June 2002 | SPARC-only release. OpenWindows 3.3 switches from NeWS to Display PostScript and drops SunView support. Support added for autofs and CacheFS filesystems. |
| Solaris 2.2 | SunOS 5.2 | May 1993 | May 1999 | SPARC-only release. First to support sun4d architecture. First to support multithreading libraries (UI threads API in libthread)[40]. |
| Solaris 2.1 | SunOS 5.1 | December 1992 (SPARC) May 1993 (x86) | April 1999 | Support for sun4 and sun4m architectures added; first Solaris x86 release. First Solaris 2 release to support SMP. |
| Solaris 2.0 | SunOS 5.0 | June 1992 | January 1999 | Preliminary release (primarily available to developers only), support for only the sun4c architecture. First appearance of NIS+. |
| Solaris 1.x | SunOS 4.1.x | 1991-1994 | September 2003 | SunOS 4 rebranded as Solaris 1 for marketing purposes. See SunOS article for more information. |
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