Open Solaris on Laptops

[tymiles]

I noticed that Sun and Toshiba are selling laptops with Open Solaris on them.

That makes me wonder, why did it take Linux companies so long to get on major hardware.

Also I noticed that if you get one of these laptops you get 1 year of software support directly from Sun and only hardware support from Toshiba.

Let me know what everyone thinks?

http://www.shopopensolaris.com/suntoshiba/home.htm

http://www.sun.com/service/opensolaris/

:o

[Regenweald]

I'm grabbing 2009.06 x64 via http right now, 82%. As a server/enterprise solution it is a beast and it's new feature set seems very server oriented. There was a thread about this before, general consensus was that it was a bit on the pricey side. I look forward to testing it.

[cmay]

i would like to have one. if its not too expensive.

[Sublime Porte]

That makes me wonder, why did it take Linux companies so long to get on major hardware.

There's only one single laptop as far as I'm aware. And it's taken a fair few years, Solaris has been open/free (for developer/desktop use) for quite some time now. I remember ordering my first free Solaris CD's back in about 2000.

Add to this the fact that Solaris has existed as an OS for a lot longer than Linux, so therefore is much more mature. Linux has not really been very 'presentable' as a desktop OS until the last couple of years.

[tymiles]

There's only one single laptop as far as I'm aware. And it's taken a fair few years, Solaris has been open/free (for developer/desktop use) for quite some time now. I remember ordering my first free Solaris CD's back in about 2000.

Add to this the fact that Solaris has existed as an OS for a lot longer than Linux, so therefore is much more mature. Linux has not really been very 'presentable' as a desktop OS until the last couple of years.

The Open Solaris project started in its current form September 2004 and put out its first release in May 2008. Sun had free versions of the X86 versions of Solaris for a long time. (Oh and the original Linux kernel and the first version of Solaris were both released in 1991) But Solaris and Open Solaris are about the same as Red hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora. Same company, some parts are the same, different in almost every other way though.

But the main point I think I am pointing at is that Toshiba is selling these laptops but pushing free Sun support. As I remember companies like Dell having to provide the support for Linux on top of having to sell it was a sticking point for a long time.

[durand]

I think canonical only have business and enterprise support, not for home users.

[gn2]

~ why did it take Linux companies so long to get on major hardware. ~

It didn't.

There have been quite a few adventures into Linux by major computer manufacturers over the years.

Most of them failed.