Solaris release confusion

 

Overview

STAND: 31.12.2006 by psc

Release Release Type Patches Patch Clusters Liveupgrade
Solaris Stable Some Free Subscription ???
Solaris Express Metastable developer snapshot No available No available Yes (Monthly)
Solaris Express Community Release less stable snapshot No available No available Yes (2Weeks)
OpenSolaris bleeding edge No available No available Yes (???)

Releases

 

Release Version Codename EOL Comment
Solaris 7 SunOS 5.7 11/99 (latest per 20061231) 15 August 2008
Solaris 8 SunOS 5.8 02/04 (latest per 20061231) 31 March 2012
Solaris 9 SunOS 5.9 09/05 (latest)
Solaris 9 SunOS 5.9 HW (DVD CD) 09/05 u9 (latest per 20061231) add support for: Sun Ultra 25 and 45 Workstations and Sun Fire V215, V245 and V445 servers
Solaris 10 SunOS 5.10 11/06 u3 (latest per 20061231)
Solaris 10 SunOS 5.10 06/06 u2 (latest per 20061231) Certain systems or configurations may still require or recommend use of the previous Solaris 10 update, Solaris 10 6/06, which is still available for download as DVD (SPARC, x64/x86) or CD (SPARC, x64/x86) images.
Solaris 11 SunOS 5.11 02/06 build31 codename nevada
Solaris 11 SunOS 5.11 12/06

 

Solaris 10

This is our officially supported Sun distribution. This is a free download, and we will release binary patches, updates, etc. etc. The current release is Solaris 10 01/06 which we refer to (internally at least) as “Solaris 10 Update 1″, or s10u1 for short. The initial release was Solaris 10 03/05 which was the FCS release of Solaris 10. Update releases are “service pack” releases that add new features and fix bugs for the main Solaris 10 distribution. Solaris 10 is probably best analogous to Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux type of distribution. Except we provide free downloads in binary form 😉 (oh yeah, and support is cheaper)

Solaris Express

This is the official Sun ‘bleeding-edge’ bits (as opposed to the OpenSolaris ‘bleeding-edge’ bits. these are provided primarily for customers interested in testing out new features of the new Solaris release without the total cutting-edge-ness of the Solaris Express: Community Release. Currently, the newest release is 02/06 which is Nevada, build 31. These are typically updated every month or two… at a frequency less than Community Release. Solaris Express is a minimally-qualified SXCR, meaning, it boots, and has passed some minimal testing.

 

Express Community Release

This is the base for OpenSolaris (currently). These are our super bleeding-edge bits… our latest internal build… what will be Solaris 11, currently codenamed Nevada. Currently, as of Feb 22nd 2006, this is Nevada, build 33 (also referred to in shorthand with snv_33, or nv_33). These are released typically every 2 weeks in sync with the ONNV build schedule.

 

OpenSolaris

This is probably best analogous to kernel.org, except with more. 😛 It’s our ON (OS/Net) consolidation, and contains the kernel (like kernel.org) as well as other user-land utilities/tools (unlike kernel.org), but is NOT enough to get a whole system bootstrapped currently (like kernel.org). So you’d have to download the Solaris Express Community Edition (Nevada, build 34), and pop the OpenSolaris bits on top. Not unlike downloading Fedora Core, and then downloading the latest Linux kernel and installing it on top. Alternatively, you can download any of the other OpenSolaris-based distributions, such as Schilix, Belenix, or Nexenta GNU/Solaris. We have the OpenSolaris roadmap up for viewing which should also help give an idea for how OpenSolaris will be unfolding over the next year.

References

http://whacked.net/2005/06/21/confused-so-was-i/

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