Solaris was the development OS for Oracle for years. I presume that's now shifted to their own linux distro but for many years that was the case, to the point that if you were a serious Oracle customer you ran it on Solaris (and Sun hardware) because all the bug fixes and updates came out first for that platform.

So from that standpoint it makes sense that they acquired it. They probably just didn't care about any non-Oracle users.

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justin66 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Solaris was the development OS for Oracle for years. I presume that's now shifted to their own linux distro

I wouldn't bet on that. Their Linux distro is a RHEL clone, but they have total control over Solaris.

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tw04 2 days ago | parent [-]

Given that they killed the roadmap and admitted there will never be a Solaris 12 after laying off 90% of the core developers - I would bet on that.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-set-oracle-closes-down-las...

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justin66 2 days ago | parent [-]

Not doing another major release of doesn't exactly rule out keeping it as the reference platform for their core database product.

I guess my question - I honestly have no idea and it's been years since I paid attention to Oracle or Sun's inner workings - is whether they're still developing SPARC hardware? The Google seems to say no, they've abandoned that... so I'm inclined to agree with you guys now.

I don't have a ton of nostalgia left for Sun stuff, but still... what a waste.

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tw04 2 days ago | parent [-]

SPARC hardware is also dead.

Their core reference platform moved from SPARC to Linux + X86 almost a decade ago. They pushed Exadata down everyone's throat at the time with their "it'd be too bad if we have to audit you unless you buy this new hardware" approach.

https://www.oracle.com/engineered-systems/exadata/

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justin66 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm endlessly surprised that Oracle has enough customers to support them. I was familiar with the reasoning a long time ago but so many of those same users have moved on to SQL Server or open source stuff.

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shrubble 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I have seen some of the hardware on eBay for not much money - can they take a regular Linux or possibly OpenIndiana distro being installed on them?

	▲	tw04 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, they’re standard x86 kit with I believe infiniband interconnects.