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I'm not trying to be inflammatory with this question! I can't any statements though from Oracle regarding the future of Solaris, and wondered if there were any press releases or official notification of future versions. As I understand it, work has been greatly scaled back on Solaris and it's not being developed at a great rate. Is Solaris 11 the final party, with endless security updates to come but nothing else?

Nicholas Wilson
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    Only Oracle knows. And even they probably don't know yet. And maybe they'll declare some existing version to be called Solaris 12, like they did for Solaris 1. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Dec 06 '13 at 00:35
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    https://blogs.oracle.com/markusflierl/entry/solaris_general_session_at_oracle is from the Oracle VP in charge of core Solaris development about the roadmap presentation he gave for Solaris at Oracle OpenWorld a couple months ago. Slides from his talk are at https://oracleus.activeevents.com/2013/connect/fileDownload/session/B2D5279660EFF384E762435F302F6EE3/GEN9021_Flierl.pptx – alanc Dec 07 '13 at 03:05
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    I'm pretty sure that development on anything which is desktop related in Solaris has come to an almost complete stop. At the same time I see Oracle adding server-side features in 11.0 and 11.1 that are really innovative and still nowhere to be found in Linux. This is in particular true for "Enterprise" like features. Bottom line: Desktop stuff: You'll be disappointed with Solaris' lack of progress. Server stuff: Solaris is (IMHO) still ahead of Linux and the gap isn't really closing. (my comment is highly opinionated of course) – unixhacker2010 Dec 30 '13 at 14:27

4 Answers4

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There is a Solaris roadmap in page 33 of this slideware from https://blogs.oracle.com/openomics/entry/solaris_day_27nov2013_slides

Have a look to page 2 disclaimer first.

Update: Solaris delivery model has changed and instead of the major disruptive versions that used to be the norm, is moving to a continuous delivery model where new features and changes are introduced by updates, not upgrades.

The "major" version will then indefinitely stay at 11 and there will be Oracle Solaris 11.next updates.

This is described in this blog page: https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/new_solaris_sparc_roadmap

Note also that along with that announcement, Solaris 11 long term premier support was extended by 10 years, moving from 2021 to 2031 (and even 2034 for extended support).

Update2: Oracle Solaris 11.4 Beta has just been released.

Update3: Oracle Solaris 11.4 was released yesterday (2018/08/28) and was certified as conforming to the Single UNIX Specification Version 7 Standard.
Stéphane Chazelas
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jlliagre
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Yes. There will be a Solaris 12. It will be released in the timeframe shown on the public SPARC/Solaris roadmap here: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc/oracle-sparc/sparc-roadmap-slide-2076743.pdf.

Unfortunately, I can't say more about Solaris 12 at this time.

To answer about development of Solaris, we (Oracle) have expanded the number of engineers working on Solaris by more than 2x since the acquisition.

We are are actively working on improving Solaris every day, and each successive version of Solaris adds new, unique innovations building on the last version. We just launched Solaris 11.2 on July 31, which we almost called 12 because of the number of large features we included in it.

Solaris 11.2 includes over 500 new features including:

  • A new type of Zone (container) called "Kernel Zones" that behaves like a Solaris optimized hypervisor; allowing independent patch levels and updates in each Zone separate from the global zone and the other zones, and yet has nearly 0 performance impact.
  • Unified Archives allow quick, simple and flexible golden image creation and deployment.
  • Simple PCI-DSS compliance reporting and remediation.
  • Enhanced SDN capabilities
  • A distribution of OpenStack

For more information, you can watch John Fowler speaking at the Solaris 11.2 Launch here: http://www.oracle.com/events/us/en/solaris-11-2/index.html#vid=3521205463001

Scott Lynn
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    As noted in other answers, plans have changed since this answer was written in 2014, and what it says about Solaris 12 is no longer correct. – alanc Sep 13 '18 at 19:39
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I've recently seen bugids referencing v12. Chances are they're waiting for a new hardware rollout to introduce Solaris 12 (or whatever name Oracle gives it).

sleepyweasel
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    We updated the bugs in July 2017 to stop showing "12.0" as the version due to the change in plans announced earlier in the year. – alanc Dec 19 '17 at 03:34
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Based on the latest information from Oracle, is that they'll continue to add dot releases to Solaris 11, which each adding new features/enhancements. Sorry, I'm too lazy to find the link.

Appears the answer will be no, but I'm sure down the road they will release a later version. Vendors do enjoy the who has a higher release #. Just look at chrome and firefox...

sleepyweasel
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