Sun Readies New Solaris

Sun Microsystems is offering up an early preview of Solaris 9 aimed at getting software developers off to an early start developing commercial grade applications for their flagship UNIX operating system. With a final release targeted for the first half of next year, Sun has outlined an ambitious set of features and enhancements for implementation. Some of the planned changes include greater interoperability with Windows, enhanced resource control, and a much more flexible installation process that allows customers to select a minimal set of components.

Citing user requests and feedback, Sun has included CD writing capabilities into Solaris that were developed in house. Other new features include support for Kerberos 5, and Live Upgrade –- a way to utilize unused storage space for a side by side installation to coincide with existing versions of Solaris without overwriting system files. If the upgrade does not go as intended, administrators can regress to the old version by performing a simple reboot.

According to Bill Moffitt, product line manager for Solaris, the initial release of version 9.0 may not ship with support for Sun’s Jini technology. Jini is the mainstay of the company's effort to push Web services and is a viable alternative to Microsoft's .NET framework.

Solaris is available free of cost for machines running up to eight processors. While this move was seen by many as a move to fend off the popularity of Linux and other open sourced flavors of UNIX, Sun told BetaNews that it has been and remains to be an open and standards driven company. To prove its good intentions, Moffitt told BetaNews that the company is actively working to integrate the GNOME user interface into Solaris.

Sun faces many fronts of competition ranging from freely licensed UNIX distributions, to Microsoft, to IBM. It currently runs on 32-bit Intel processors and SPARC systems.

Moffitt alluded to competing distributions as being "learning platforms" were users experiment with and learn about the UNIX –- eventually graduating to the proven strength and underpinnings of Solaris.

According to Andy Ingram, vice president of marketing for Solaris, "The upcoming version of Solaris OE software promises to build on the Solaris OE hallmarks of availability, scalability and security for the Internet age."

To beta test Solaris, visit Sun's Early Access Web page.

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