Solaris 10 1/06, otherwise refered to as “Update 1”, has been released. This is the first major update since its release last January. A vast number of improvements, updates, and new functionality have been brought together in this release, most of which has alread been available to developers and enthusiasts thanks to OpenSolaris and Solaris Express releases.

Just a few of the major highlights include:

– A native iSCSI Software Initiator (iscsiadm)
– GRUB for Solaris/X86
– GLDv3 which provides Link Aggregation (trunking) and VLAN support among other things
– New Drivers including ‘nge’, the nVidia Gigabit Ethernet driver
– Support for filesystems larger than 2TB
– Fibre-Channel HBA Port Utility: fcinfo
– Sun Update Connection, System Edition 1.0

For details please see the Solaris 10 “Whats New” guide. The release can be downloaded as either CD or DVD images.

Today, Sun announced its new energy-efficient multi-core multi-thread UltraSPARC T1 processor and the Sun Fire T1000/Sun Fire T2000 server systems using the new chip.

Also announced was the OpenSPARC project, an effort to open-source the design of the UltraSPARC T1 CPU. Sun also announced plans to publish specifications for the chip, including the source of the design expressed in Verilog, a verification suite and simulation models, instruction set architecture specification (UltraSPARC Architecture 2005) and a Solaris OS port.

Sun has announced that its Java Enterprise System, N1 Management software, and development tools will be integrated into the Solaris operating system as the “Solaris Enterprise System“.

Use of the SES components will be free of charge for any use, but support will only be provided to customers who have purchased a support contract.

As of November 29th, Sun has changed its availability policy for patches and updates for Solaris 10:

Sun is announcing changes to how we will be providing access to Solaris 10 patches, or what we now call software updates. Now that Solaris 10 is freely available, support services require the purchase of a Sun Service Plan.
Under this new policy, access to patches, or what we now call Software Updates, is restricted. Security fixes and hardware driver updates are publicly available for free, but access to all other patches requires a Sun Service Plan.

As of December 2nd, I can’t even download software updates/patches *with* a Sunsolve login (“file not found” errors).