Sun to launch Solaris 10 on Nov. 15

Sun Microsystems Inc. will formally launch the next major release of its flagship Solaris operating system at a press event Nov. 15 at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, company officials confirmed Friday. The launch will be part of Sun's quarterly network computing product announcement, which is expected to include new product offerings from a variety of Sun's product groups.

Already available in an "early access" beta version, Solaris 10 will have a number of major new features, including a new error-detection system, a highly scalable file system called ZFS and a diagnostic tool known as DTrace. The new version of Sun's Unix operating system will also include significant performance enhancements such as a new TCP/IP stack and improved multithreading capabilities.

One of the most interesting features of Solaris 10 is that it will be the first version of the operating system to support AMD's Opteron processors while running in 64-bit mode, said Dennis Clarke, director of Blastwave.org, a Cobourg, Ontario-based company that develops open-source software for Solaris. Current versions of Solaris for x86 process data in smaller, 32-bit chunks, which means they do not perform as well as Solaris 10 in certain types of applications, he said.

More info at ComputerWorld