a. Existing customers already got their hands chopped, their prices raised, or their lawyers poked. They're stuck with an abusive, litigious, opaque vendor and will migrate out when they can. Many are stuck.
b. Prospective customers must have some compatibility need or they'd look elsewhere.
Illumos/OpenSolaris etc are great and install about as easily as FreeBSD, on desktop and server systems with Ethernet. Other stuff like WiFi etc is not as well supported.
It’s still my favorite OS, if it fits what I need it for.
pharaohgeek 47 minutes ago [-]
Started using Solaris 7 in college when Sun made it available for free. All you had to do was fill out a web form! I absolutely loved it. To this day it remains my favorite OS to use. I love macOS and its ease of use (plus its Unix-ish support) but there's something about Solaris that always made me feel like I was doing "real" work.
pjmlp 6 hours ago [-]
It remains one of my favourite UNIX as well, back in the day I mused even to buy one of those Toshiba that came with Solaris.
Other than a others like Irix, QNX or NeXTSTEP, I am not picky in what form UNIX/POSIX gets made available.
maztaim 22 hours ago [-]
What are your needs that it would fit? Oracle have you by the database?
shrubble 22 hours ago [-]
It’s great for ZFS and for Zones, including Linux zones.
gt0 16 hours ago [-]
I haven't used Solaris since the last time I used it for work over 10 years ago. Agree ZFS and Zones are both exceptional, I would still use Solaris now where it made sense.
hsjdjdjrj 21 hours ago [-]
[dead]
RobotToaster 21 hours ago [-]
I think I'd rather use hpux than deal with oracle
nubinetwork 21 hours ago [-]
Hpux died on December 31, 2025
fweimer 19 hours ago [-]
Mature Software Product Support without Sustaining Engineering through at least 31-Dec-2028
Apparently, it's out of support the same way RHEL 6 is out of support.
whalesalad 24 hours ago [-]
I wonder where Solaris is still actively being deployed and used.
chasil 23 hours ago [-]
I think that OpenIndiana is where those with general interest in Solaris on x86_64 should go.
SmartOS, for example, is a more specialized application of the scions of OpenSolaris.
Here is a list of other distros that originated from the Illumos efforts after OpenSolaris was terminated:
-DilOS, with Debian package manager (dpkg + apt) and virtualization support, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-NexentaStor, distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system.
-OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use.
-OpenIndiana, a distribution that is a continuation and fork in the spirit of the OpenSolaris operating system.
-SmartOS, a distribution for cloud computing with Kernel-based Virtual Machine integration.
-Helios, a distribution powering the Oxide Computer Rack.
-Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution.
-XStreamOS, a distribution for infrastructure, cloud, and web development.
Edit: From this blog entry, this is suspicious: "the committed support for Oracle Solaris until at least 2037" - does Solaris have a 2038 problem?
bigbuppo 22 hours ago [-]
No 2037 problem. That's just 25 years after they killed the product.
ycombiredd 16 hours ago [-]
As a former SUN sysadmin/netadmin (from SunOS 4.1.4 days), I vaguely remember the Solaris releases after 2.5.1, maybe to another re-version/branding called Solaris 7, maybe? And then not paying any attention after Oracle absorbed it. I was honestly surprised enough by this headline to click TFA, simply because I did not think Solaris even existed anymore.
jamesfinlayson 15 hours ago [-]
One of Australia's bigger universities still had a Solaris server 15 years ago - no idea if it's still in use though.
proxysna 23 hours ago [-]
it's mostly OmniOS/SmartOS and other Illumos (descendant of OpenSolaris) distributions. All the Solaris 11 deployments i was aware of in mid-late 2010s are now either migrated to some sort of container setup of running on OmniOS.
pjmlp 20 hours ago [-]
A few places, Fujitsu also has Solaris servers, and if you care about security, Solaris SPARC is the only production UNIX with hardware memory tagging in active use since 2015.
my123 19 hours ago [-]
AmpereOne M with MTE is out nowadays
pjmlp 19 hours ago [-]
Good to know, still I bet there are more Solaris SPARC deployments on the wild than GNU/Linux on AmpereOne M.
panick21_ 3 hours ago [-]
I recently saw it on a big European bank. The Oracle version.
An of course Oxide is still very active in developing the open source version. They develop upstream first.
coredog64 23 hours ago [-]
My employer uses ZFS under AndrewFS (aka AFS) and I would bet dollars to donuts that the OS is Solaris.
nine_k 23 hours ago [-]
Solaris proper, not Illumos?
whalesalad 23 hours ago [-]
Either way, SPARC and the entire family seem to be entirely dead in the grand scheme of things. I don't know why anyone would develop for this platform.
claudex 23 hours ago [-]
Solaris and Illumos are available on x86
nubinetwork 21 hours ago [-]
But illumos doesn't run on sparc... granted I don't have the hardware, but if I did, it would be nice if I could use illumos.
shrubble 18 hours ago [-]
Tribblix does, which is based on illumos - I have a V210 I installed it on, not too long ago...
iberator 20 hours ago [-]
Nope.
Oracle SPARC S7, T8, and Fujitsu SPARC M12 still supported
whalesalad 19 hours ago [-]
supported sure but its an ancient dying platform. sparc was discontinued almost 10 years ago.
sys_64738 14 hours ago [-]
Oracle generated $3b in revenue from these systems last year.
kaladin-jasnah 20 hours ago [-]
I think Oxide Computer uses it.
jordemort 23 hours ago [-]
"We're about to take a bath on these datacenters, do we have any other viable lines of business left?"
heybales 23 hours ago [-]
The Oracle business model is to rope you into a contract, set you up for failure, ignore you until you violate a license agreement, then sue you and rope you into another contract to avoid the lawsuit. If you're an Oracle customer, prepare to get sued... for something... anything really.
HackerThemAll 16 hours ago [-]
I have not touched anything related to Oracle for as long as I remember.
a. Existing customers already got their hands chopped, their prices raised, or their lawyers poked. They're stuck with an abusive, litigious, opaque vendor and will migrate out when they can. Many are stuck.
b. Prospective customers must have some compatibility need or they'd look elsewhere.
c. Developers won't be fooled so rule them out :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
Start at 33:02 for full rant.
It’s still my favorite OS, if it fits what I need it for.
Other than a others like Irix, QNX or NeXTSTEP, I am not picky in what form UNIX/POSIX gets made available.
Apparently, it's out of support the same way RHEL 6 is out of support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIndiana
SmartOS, for example, is a more specialized application of the scions of OpenSolaris.
Here is a list of other distros that originated from the Illumos efforts after OpenSolaris was terminated:
-DilOS, with Debian package manager (dpkg + apt) and virtualization support, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-NexentaStor, distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system.
-OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use.
-OpenIndiana, a distribution that is a continuation and fork in the spirit of the OpenSolaris operating system.
-SmartOS, a distribution for cloud computing with Kernel-based Virtual Machine integration.
-Helios, a distribution powering the Oxide Computer Rack.
-Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution.
-XStreamOS, a distribution for infrastructure, cloud, and web development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illumos#Distributions
Edit: From this blog entry, this is suspicious: "the committed support for Oracle Solaris until at least 2037" - does Solaris have a 2038 problem?
An of course Oxide is still very active in developing the open source version. They develop upstream first.
Oracle SPARC S7, T8, and Fujitsu SPARC M12 still supported