We got a real treat this week – Oracle refreshed the Solaris 11.4 Open Beta, meaning that it’s still the same Solaris version but with a few really important improvements:
- almost 300 additional bug fixes (280+ they say)
- really cool ZFS improvements (device removal and scheduled scrub)
- Spectre Variant 1 fixes
- Software updates for GCC (it’s v7.3 now) and other packages
Speaking on the Continuous Delivery mentioned a while ago, this updates brings promises that Oracle Solaris 11 will receive update releases on an annual basis.
In addition to update releases, there will be smaller functional, performance and security improvements released as they become ready – so Support Repository Updates (SRUs) and Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) will continue happening between major Solaris releases.