Solaris 10: Little bit Confused - the Difference?

Since there is a lot of confusion about Solaris 10 I'd like to spend few words detailing differences:

Solaris 10 is the official Sun release of its operating system, updated just after consolidating many improvements and considering them stable. At today we just have Solaris 10 Update 1 (called Solaris 10 1/06).
Solaris Express is the development version of Solaris 10, updated quite every month (so 3/06 means Express build for March 2006 ), and marked with a build name (this one for example is Nevada build 33).
If you are confident with Microsoft technologies it's what the Redmond giant is calling Customer Technology Preview (CTP) since some months.
OpenSolaris is a subset of Solaris 10 (and then of Solaris Express), made available as open source, and providing operating system source code, ready to be compiled with Sun Studio 10 (and gcc after some more debugging from Sun engineers).

So,

if you want to download Solaris 10 –> get it here
and if you want to try Solaris Express –> get it here

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Comment by sanjay on May 07, 2006

I think you have somethings backward.

In terms of Opensolaris terms.
The primary gate is Nevada.
The only thing that is not availabe in Nevada/opensolaris tree are things that have not yet been open sourced. However at no time should the Nevada gate be considered a subset of Solaris 10. Rather it’s the other way around.

Solaris Express is a snapshot of this that is released every month or so.
Solaris 10 can be thought of as a distro and the updates are released every quarter which include sometimes enhancements that have already been available in Solaris Express…ZFS for example has been available via Solaris Express and is in the Nevada tree. It will be availabe in the upcoming S10 Update release.

Comment by linux on May 07, 2006

Thanks Sanjay for clarifying on this issue.

As you can see, even me, who has little knowledge of Solaris, making small mistakes.
I think that this type of clear information should be available on opensolaris.org website, and maybe on Sun's official Solaris site.

Here is a question for you Sanjay –> since I want to have Solaris installed and running on my desktop, not as my primary OS, but rather for learning and maybe testing few things out - which one is a better option for users such as as me … having Solaris 10 installed or the Express/Opensolaris version. I want to have access to all the features and apps that Solaris 10 has and supports.

BTW, as a free user of Solaris 10 (not opensource), do I get access to all the updates available from Sun, and maybe new apps, or only the subscribers have this privilege.

If you can be more clear on this, I will make sure to have another post on this with better information for all new users of Solaris.

Comment by linux on May 08, 2006

I got a reply from Sanjay, a Solaris Kernel Group member, for my above mentioned questions. Here is what he had to say:

> Here is a question for you Sanjay –> since I want to have Solaris
> installed and running on my desktop, not as my primary OS, but rather
> for learning and maybe testing few things out - which one is a better
> option for users such as as me … having Solaris 10 installed or the
> Express/Opensolaris version. I want to have access to all the features
> and apps that Solaris 10 has and supports.
>
Either one will do. Think of Solaris Express releases as Fedora drops.
You get the very latest stuff though at times it may not be production
quality (by Solaris standards). Internally most of the developers run
the Solaris Express bits. Either way is fine. If you decide to go with
Solaris 10, I would recommend starting at S10U1 when we moved to grub.
If you go with the latest Solaris express, you can see some of the “cool
boot” features that have been integrated. This will be available in the
up coming S10 update release.

> BTW, as a free user of Solaris 10 (not opensource), do I get access to
> all the updates available from Sun, and maybe new apps, or only the
> subscribers have this privilege.
>
I believe you get updates for free. What you benefit from being a
subscriber are access to patches and support..which I take it is not
something that is applicable for you at this point.

> If you can be more clear on this, I will make sure to have another
> post on this with better information for all new users of Solaris.
>

Hope this helps…and thanks for your interest in Solaris and
opensolaris. We are definitely looking for more community involvement
and simply publishing the information on your blog is definitely one
step towards it.

-Sanjay

P.S>> Tnx Sanjay for having time to answer my questions.