This week I ordered a free Solaris 10 DVD from Sun. The Solaris 10 operating system is free, and you can download it. Having it on DVD is handy.

Sun is also offering a free 1 hour online course on Solaris 10. It's not really training, more of a 1 hour overview on what sets it apart from Linux and any other operating system, and why Sun calls it the most advanced, fastest, and cost effective operating system on the planet.

I've had an eye on Solaris since the summer and even tried it once on one of the new servers I bought. Solaris is certified on almost 800 systems. Anything Red Hat Enterprise Linux can run on (Dell, HP, IBM, Sun, etc), Solaris can too. However my servers were built from scratch using various parts purchased online. It's more of a PC than a server, but it's purpose in life is a server. The on board network card is not supported by Solaris, and neither is the ATI video card so I moved back to Linux.

Now that I'm planning on buying Red Hat Enterprise Linux just so that I can run two or three programs that run only on Red Hat, I think I might hold off until that Solaris DVD arrives. It can run Linux applications in a separate Solaris Container (like a virtual machine) that is compatible with RHEL v3. I just checked my junk pile and found a 3COM 10/100 network card and an SIS video card that are on the Solaris hardware compatability list. Solaris is on my roadmap for late 2007; maybe I can look at it sooner for these apps. The only downside is that I'm not familiar with Solaris yet. I'll probably have to pick up a system administrator book for Solaris 10 to help me with various tasks. It is supposedly similar to Linux, and uses Gnome for the desktop.

I am so impressed by Solaris that I might dedicate myself to it as my server and workstation platform instead of Linux. I will need to do more investigating about it's use as a workstation because I know there are less apps that run on it. All that really matters is the software *I* use. Mainly that is JDK, NetBeans, Sun App Server, Firefox, Thunderbird, Flash player, Skype, an office suite such as Open Office, and a bit more. I think all of the above runs on Solaris already except for Skype.

Now if only I could convince my boss to choose Java and Solaris for new systems. I think the biggest challenge is that I'm the only one at the company who's in a position to do that, and who wants to. Most of the others are happy the way things are now.