Version History
Notable features of Solaris currently include DTrace, Doors, Service Management Facility, Solaris Containers, Solaris Multiplexed I/O, Solaris Volume Manager, ZFS, and Solaris Trusted Extensions.
Updates to Solaris versions are periodically released, such as Solaris 10 10/09.
In ascending order, the following versions of Solaris have been released:
Colour | Meaning |
---|---|
Red | Release no longer supported |
Green | Release still supported |
Blue | Future release |
Solaris version | SunOS version | Release date | End of support | Major new features | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
SPARC | x86 | ||||
1.x | 4.1.x | 1991–1994 | - | September 2003 | SunOS 4 rebranded as Solaris 1 for marketing purposes. See SunOS article for more information. |
2.0 | 5.0 | June 1992 | - | January 1999 | Preliminary release (primarily available to developers only), support for only the sun4c architecture. First appearance of NIS+. |
2.1 | 5.1 | December 1992 | May 1993 | April 1999 | Support for sun4 and sun4m architectures added; first Solaris x86 release. First Solaris 2 release to support SMP. |
2.2 | 5.2 | May 1993 | - | May 1999 | SPARC-only release. First to support sun4d architecture. First to support multithreading libraries (UI threads API in libthread). |
2.3 | 5.3 | November 1993 | - | June 2002 | SPARC-only release. OpenWindows 3.3 switches from NeWS to Display PostScript and drops SunView support. Support added for autofs and CacheFS filesystems. |
2.4 | 5.4 | November 1994 | September 2003 | First unified SPARC/x86 release. Includes OSF/Motif runtime support. | |
2.5 | 5.5 | November 1995 | December 2003 | First to support UltraSPARC and include CDE, NFSv3 and NFS/TCP. Dropped sun4 (VMEbus) support. POSIX.1c-1995 pthreads added. Doors added but undocumented. | |
2.5.1 | 5.5.1 | May 1996 | September 2005 | Only release to support PowerPC platform; Ultra Enterprise support added; user and group IDs (uid_t, gid_t) expanded to 32 bits, also included processor sets and early resource management technologies. | |
2.6 | 5.6 | July 1997 | July 2006 | Includes Kerberos 5, PAM, TrueType fonts, WebNFS, large file support, enhanced procfs. SPARCserver 600MP series support dropped. | |
7 | 5.7 | November 1998 | August 2008 | The first 64-bit UltraSPARC release. Added native support for file system meta-data logging (UFS logging). Dropped MCA support on x86 platform. Sun dropped the prefix "2." in the Solaris version number, leaving "Solaris 7." Last update was Solaris 7 11/99. | |
8 | 5.8 | February 2000 | March 2012 | Includes Multipath I/O, Solstice DiskSuite, IPMP, first support for IPv6 and IPsec (manual keying only), mdb modular debugger. Introduced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC); sun4c support removed. Last update is Solaris 8 2/04. | |
9 | 5.9 | May 28, 2002 | January 10, 2003 | October 2014 | iPlanet Directory Server, Resource Manager, extended file attributes, IKE IPsec keying, and Linux compatibility added; OpenWindows dropped, sun4d support removed. Most current update is Solaris 9 9/05 HW ("U9"). |
10 | 5.10 | January 31, 2005 | January 2018 | Includes x86-64 (AMD64/Intel 64) support, DTrace (Dynamic Tracing), Solaris Containers, Service Management Facility (SMF) which replaces init.d scripts, NFSv4. Least privilege security model. Support for sun4m and UltraSPARC I processors removed. Support for EISA-based PCs removed. Adds Java Desktop System (based on GNOME) as default desktop.
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11 Express 2010.11 | 5.11 | November 15, 2010 | - | Adds new packaging system (IPS — Image Packaging System) and associated tools, Solaris 10 Containers, network virtualization and QoS, virtual consoles, ZFS encryption and deduplication, fast reboot, updated GNOME. Removes Xsun, CDE. | |
11 | 5.11 | November 9, 2011 | November 2024 | New features and enhancements (compared to Solaris 10) in software packaging, network virtualization, server virtualization, storage, security and hardware support:
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A more comprehensive summary of some Solaris versions is also available. Solaris releases are also described in the Solaris 2 FAQ.
Read more about this topic: Solaris (operating System)
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