SunSoft Inc last week announced version 2.3 of its Solaris Unix implementation for Sparc systems, which will include a free copy of the SunSelect Windows-on-Unix Wabi software emulator, Adobe Systems Inc Display PostScript level 2, C2 security, Network File System 3.0, X Window X11.5, enhanced multiprocessing features – including support for up to 20 CPUs against 12 under Solaris 2.2 – and performance tuned for both multiprocessor and uniprocessor architectures. Solaris 2.3, which ships this month, also fixes some of the bugs still associated with Solaris 2.X – in printing for example – which it is hoped will encourage more independent software vendors to move their applications up to Solaris 2.X from Solaris 1.X (SunOS 4.X). To get Wabi – which ships in November and is clearly being offered to try and tempt more users to move on to the Solaris 2.X environment – Solaris customers have to send off a coupon they’ll receive on purchase of the operating system. If there is sufficient demand, SunSoft will bundle Wabi with Solaris – it won’t initially because it has to pay sister company SunSelect for every copy of Wabi it sends out. Solaris 2.3 supports the Open Look graphical user interface, even though Sun has said it will migrate to Motif – that is not expected to become standard until around the middle of next year. Instead, and until then, Sun offers the IXI Ltd Motif toolkit and other third party tools, which enable users to convert Open Look applications to run under Motif. The new Solaris does not include support for the NeWS Network-extensible Windowing System, although NeWS applications will be able to run under Display PostScript. Solaris 2.3 now includes support for Latin American Spanish in addition to German, French, Italian, Swedish, Japanese, Korean and two versions of Chinese. Existing Solaris prices – $880 for the desktop, $2,000 for WorkGroup Server and $6,000 for Enterprise Server – remain in place. SunSoft’s versions of Solaris for Sparc and for Intel Corp iAPX-86 environments aren’t expected to converge until sometime next year. Sun claims to have sold some 180,000 copies of Solaris 2.X environments, most are not new Sun operating system licensees. Over 70% of Sun’s users are still with Solaris 1.X (SunOS 4.X) implementations, including the company itself, which says it will move its internal operations over to the latest available version of Solaris 2 sometime in the next six to nine months.
