For understandable historical reasons, Solaris as a developement platform feels like overkill to many. It’s not anymore with both Solaris 10 unique features and x86 support. Brandon is giving it a try.
Let’s see how things go for him.
Dtrace is well covered on blogs.sun.com, and its Java support is coming pretty fast, but let’s not forget that Solaris Zones also provide some very nice features for developers – no more port conflicts (each tier is given a zone), real fast zone startup (boot really), multiple environments (development, testing, integration) in a single box, and more.
See “Solaris Containers–What They Are and How to Use Them” for more details on Zones. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Solaris 10 is free.
Bistro! 2.0 