a. Existing customers already got their hands chopped, their prices raised, or their lawyers poked. They're stuck with an abusive, litigious, opaque vendor and will migrate out when they can. Many are stuck.
b. Prospective customers must have some compatibility need or they'd look elsewhere.
c. Developers won't be fooled so rule them out :)
whalesalad•Mar 10, 2026
I wonder where Solaris is still actively being deployed and used.
nine_k•Mar 10, 2026
Solaris proper, not Illumos?
whalesalad•Mar 10, 2026
Either way, SPARC and the entire family seem to be entirely dead in the grand scheme of things. I don't know why anyone would develop for this platform.
claudex•Mar 10, 2026
Solaris and Illumos are available on x86
nubinetwork•Mar 10, 2026
But illumos doesn't run on sparc... granted I don't have the hardware, but if I did, it would be nice if I could use illumos.
iberator•Mar 10, 2026
Nope.
Oracle SPARC S7, T8, and Fujitsu SPARC M12 still supported
whalesalad•Mar 10, 2026
supported sure but its an ancient dying platform. sparc was discontinued almost 10 years ago.
proxysna•Mar 10, 2026
it's mostly OmniOS/SmartOS and other Illumos (descendant of OpenSolaris) distributions. All the Solaris 11 deployments i was aware of in mid-late 2010s are now either migrated to some sort of container setup of running on OmniOS.
coredog64•Mar 10, 2026
My employer uses ZFS under AndrewFS (aka AFS) and I would bet dollars to donuts that the OS is Solaris.
chasil•Mar 10, 2026
I think that OpenIndiana is where those with general interest in Solaris on x86_64 should go.
SmartOS, for example, is a more specialized application of the scions of OpenSolaris.
Here is a list of other distros that originated from the Illumos efforts after OpenSolaris was terminated:
-DilOS, with Debian package manager (dpkg + apt) and virtualization support, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-NexentaStor, distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system.
-OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use.
-OpenIndiana, a distribution that is a continuation and fork in the spirit of the OpenSolaris operating system.
-SmartOS, a distribution for cloud computing with Kernel-based Virtual Machine integration.
-Helios, a distribution powering the Oxide Computer Rack.
-Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution.
-XStreamOS, a distribution for infrastructure, cloud, and web development.
Edit: From this blog entry, this is suspicious: "the committed support for Oracle Solaris until at least 2037" - does Solaris have a 2038 problem?
bigbuppo•Mar 10, 2026
No 2037 problem. That's just 25 years after they killed the product.
kaladin-jasnah•Mar 10, 2026
I think Oxide Computer uses it.
pjmlp•Mar 10, 2026
A few places, Fujitsu also has Solaris servers, and if you care about security, Solaris SPARC is the only production UNIX with hardware memory tagging in active use since 2015.
my123•Mar 10, 2026
AmpereOne M with MTE is out nowadays
pjmlp•Mar 10, 2026
Good to know, still I bet there are more Solaris SPARC deployments on the wild than GNU/Linux on AmpereOne M.
jordemort•Mar 10, 2026
"We're about to take a bath on these datacenters, do we have any other viable lines of business left?"
heybales•Mar 10, 2026
The Oracle business model is to rope you into a contract, set you up for failure, ignore you until you violate a license agreement, then sue you and rope you into another contract to avoid the lawsuit. If you're an Oracle customer, prepare to get sued... for something... anything really.
shrubble•Mar 10, 2026
Illumos/OpenSolaris etc are great and install about as easily as FreeBSD, on desktop and server systems with Ethernet. Other stuff like WiFi etc is not as well supported.
It’s still my favorite OS, if it fits what I need it for.
maztaim•Mar 10, 2026
What are your needs that it would fit? Oracle have you by the database?
shrubble•Mar 10, 2026
It’s great for ZFS and for Zones, including Linux zones.
RobotToaster•Mar 10, 2026
I think I'd rather use hpux than deal with oracle
nubinetwork•Mar 10, 2026
Hpux died on December 31, 2025
fweimer•Mar 10, 2026
Mature Software Product Support without Sustaining Engineering through at least 31-Dec-2028
Apparently, it's out of support the same way RHEL 6 is out of support.
5 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
Start at 33:02 for full rant.
a. Existing customers already got their hands chopped, their prices raised, or their lawyers poked. They're stuck with an abusive, litigious, opaque vendor and will migrate out when they can. Many are stuck.
b. Prospective customers must have some compatibility need or they'd look elsewhere.
c. Developers won't be fooled so rule them out :)
Oracle SPARC S7, T8, and Fujitsu SPARC M12 still supported
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIndiana
SmartOS, for example, is a more specialized application of the scions of OpenSolaris.
Here is a list of other distros that originated from the Illumos efforts after OpenSolaris was terminated:
-DilOS, with Debian package manager (dpkg + apt) and virtualization support, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-NexentaStor, distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system.
-OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use.
-OpenIndiana, a distribution that is a continuation and fork in the spirit of the OpenSolaris operating system.
-SmartOS, a distribution for cloud computing with Kernel-based Virtual Machine integration.
-Helios, a distribution powering the Oxide Computer Rack.
-Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution.
-XStreamOS, a distribution for infrastructure, cloud, and web development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illumos#Distributions
Edit: From this blog entry, this is suspicious: "the committed support for Oracle Solaris until at least 2037" - does Solaris have a 2038 problem?
It’s still my favorite OS, if it fits what I need it for.
Apparently, it's out of support the same way RHEL 6 is out of support.