Solaris Resources at Kempston

Buying Solaris 8

Sun Microsystems have greatly reduced the cost of using Solaris on both SPARC and Intel platforms. Solaris is a little more demanding in terms of hardware than Linux, both in terms of processor power and memory, and has been validated only on certain hardware. If you intend running Solaris on your Intel box, it may be worth checking Sun's Hardware Compatibility List before ordering. While Solaris will run on an Intel platform in 32 Mb of RAM with some paging, it's much happier in 64 Mb.

If in any doubt about whether your platform is sufficient, it would be worth checking Sun's minimum hardware requirements, but, personally, I wouldn't like to run Solaris on less than a P120 with 64 Mb and 2 Gb of hard disc space. I'm using a dedicated x86 box which I built for around GBP 300 ($450), not including the monitor. This consists of a TX Pro Socket 7 motherboard with a Cyrix M300 processor, 64 Mb of SDRAM, a 6.4 Gb EIDE hard disc, 32 speed Creative CD-ROM and a floppy disc drive in a mid-sized tower case. Solaris runs very well on this type of system.

There is some cost involved in taking advantage of Sun's "free license" offer. Most licensing fees for using Solaris were abolished with Solaris 8 but you still have to pay the media and shipping costs if you want Solaris on CD and these have been creeping upwards during the life of Solaris 7 and Solaris 8. At the time of writing, the cost of Solaris 8 in CD form is $75 (about GBP 50) plus shipping costs.

To order Solaris on CD, you need to fill in a form at Sun's online ordering page and pay by credit card.

Solaris 8 is also available for download as zipped CD (ISO) images from Sun's Binary License Program page but bear in mind that it's 800 Mb in size.

Feedback on these pages is welcome and I shall be delighted to receive your email at mike@kempston.net

This page is maintained by the Kempston Webmaster
Last updated 4 February 2001