Quick Comment about Solaris 10

(I'll try and keep this brief)
Officially released at the beginning of Feb. 2005, Solaris 10 is SUN Microsystems' latest OS.
Get Solaris 10



The first thing that is obvious with SUNs latest addition, is that Solaris 10 doesn't only run on SUN's 32 and 64 bits SPARC machines, it also runs on my home PC (AMD64) :-)
So just incase you didn't know, Solaris 10 is supported on x86 (probably what runs your home PC ).

Actually, really there is another obvious first, the latest addition does not contain (at the moment) ZFS (Zettabyte File System). ZFS is SUN's new 'breakthrough' file system. It has been designed from the ground up to deliver a file system for the storage needs of the modern world.
Some Key Features of ZFS:

• A 128-bit file system - 16 billion billion times the capacity of 32- or 64-bit file systems
  - So just enough space to store all your mp3s then ;-)
  
• All data is protected by 64-bit checksums, resulting in 99.99999999999999999% error detection and correction
• Copy-on-write eliminates the need for fsck or other recovery mechanisms
  - A gift if you know the hassles you can get with fsck.
  

Anyway, despite the lack of ZFS in Solaris 10 (which works a treat :-) SUN have also included some excellent new features to its OS, introducing Dynamic Tracing (aka DTrace) and my current favourite, Zones (aka Solaris Containers).

DTrace, which in fact doesn't have any predecessors, allows you to trace, track, follow (however you want to put it) a running process on the kernel. Now, I don't just mean how much processing power a particular process is using, I actually mean you can run about like a kid inside the kernel following a running program as it opens network connections, opens files, accepts user input.
In short, it can tell you about every aspect of a running process.

This of course has to be extremely useful, as it introduces another tool developers can use to highlight bottlenecks within an application, thus, hopefully aiding coders to produce more efficient code.
However, one thing should be noted, DTrace is not the easiest to learn, however, once mastered, it will be useful in the long run.

One of the quicker things to grasp is the use of 'Zones' (as I like to called them).
Solaris 10 basically brings you virtual OSs allowing you to create boxed off software enviroments on one machine. This, in short, allows you to get better utilisation out of under used hardware, however, why I like it so much is the fact it allows you to have several development enviroments on the same box. This allows several people to have, what seems like, root access on the machine without being able to affect another person's zone :-)

Anyway, I'm not going to ramble on about Solaris 10, I just wanted to highlight a few techy features I thought were useful.
Solaris 10 is not for everyone. I've still got a Desktop with a much needed version of Windows on it.
However, apart from the gamers, video/audio editors out there, Solaris 10 can pretty much do what most people want from an Operating System, you can Word Process, do Spreadsheets, send e-mails, browse the web, chat on-line, play music, so for the majority of people Solaris is perfect for them as it introduces a cheaper (it's free :-) ), reliable, Operating System.