Java Plug-In

Java Plug-In for the Solaris operating environment is an add-on product for Netscape Navigator™ that enables Java applets and JavaBeans components to run on Web pages by using Java runtime environment (JRE) 1.2 instead of the default Java virtual machine (JVM).

Netscape Communicator 4.7

The Solaris 8 release includes Netscape Communicator 4.7 and now installs it by default on your system.

Solaris Network Cache and Accelerator (NCA)

The Solaris NCA increases web server performance by maintaining an in-kernel cache of web pages that are accessed during HTTP requests.

Apache Web Server

The open source Apache web server is now released with Solaris. This server includes all the standard Apache modules, including proxy server support as well as the mod_perl module.

Print Naming Enhancement

This Solaris release supports the printers database in /etc/nsswitch.conf, the name service switch file. The printers database provides centralized printer configuration information to print clients on the network.

Solaris Print Manager

Solaris Print Manager is a Java based graphical user interface that enables you to manage local and remote printer access. You can use this tool in the following name service environments: NIS, NIS+, and NIS+ with Federated Naming Service (FNS) files.

Universal Language Coverage

The Solaris 8 operating environment now includes support for more than 90 locales, covering 37 languages on both the Solaris 8 Software CDs and the Solaris 8 Languages CD.

Improved Language Installation and Setup

Changes to packaging on the language CD have reduced the storage requirements for a mixed language installation. A redesign of the install interface makes language selection and grouping extremely intuitive.

Expanded Unicode Support

The Solaris 8 release continues to broaden support for Unicode with the addition of new Unicode (UTF-8) locales for Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Customer-Extensible Codeset Conversion (geniconvtbl)

With the Solaris 8 operating environment, developers can easily create and add to the Solaris system their own user-defined codeset conversions by using the geniconvtbl utility. Modification to existing Solaris codeset conversions is also supported.

Improved Data Interoperability

Data interoperability with non-Solaris environments has been improved in the Solaris 8 release with the addition of the following new iconv data conversion utilities:

• iconv for Japanese mainframe data types

• iconv for Microsoft data encodings (including user-defined characters)

• iconv for UTF-8 interoperability in the People's Republic of China and Korea

• iconv for various Unicode encoding formats and international and de facto industry standard codesets

New Locales Added

Two new locales have been added to the Solaris 8 release for Iceland (ISO8859-15) and Russia (ANSI1251). The new Russian locale is in addition to the existing Russian (8859-5) locale and provides native Microsoft data-encoding support.

AnswerBook2 Documentation Server Updates

The AnswerBook2 Documentation Server has been updated for this release. Major changes since the Solaris 7 release include replacing the AnswerBook2 navigation icons with text, support improvements for non-English locales, and minor changes to improve overall performance and stability.

Reference Manual Reorganization

The section of the SunOS Reference Manual that describes the C library functions (but does not include the system calls) now contains six books instead of one. These books are:

• Library Interfaces and Headers

• Basic Library Functions

• Networking Library Functions

• Threads and Real-time Library Functions

• Extended Library Functions

• Curses Library Functions

In addition, many of the man page suffixes have been changed to reflect the library that contains the function.

SPARC: Audio Mixer

The audio mixer driver now enables multiple applications to simultaneously play and record audio. This new enhancement supersedes the previous capability, which only supported a single play application and a single record application. In addition, CDE 1.4 now includes a new GUI tool, sdtaudiocontrol, that supersedes audiocontrol. sdtaudiocontrol uses the features of the audio mixer, and provides more features.

SPARC: 64-bit Kodak Color Management System (KCMS) libraries

Kodak Color Management System™ (KCMS™) is now providing a 64-bit version of the libraries. Applications that currently use KCMS and are converted to the 64-bit operating environment can now retain color management.

Always Ready Power Management

With the Solaris 8 operating environment, a device driver that uses the new device Power Management™ interfaces will be power-managed automatically.

New cpustat and cputrack Commands

The new cpustat and cputrack commands capture system-wide and per-process CPU statistics respectively, to monitor the performance of a system or a process.

Extensions to Runtime Link Auditing

Additional means of invoking runtime link-auditing libraries is provided by the link editor options -p and -P. Additional runtime link-auditing interfaces, la_activity() and la_objsearch(), have been added.

Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl) 5

The popular programming language, Perl 5.005_03, is included in the Solaris 8 release. Perl is commonly used for CGI scripting as well as for automating complex system administration tasks.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Developers

The addition of RBAC to the Solaris operating environment gives developers the opportunity to deliver fine-grained security in new and modified applications. Developers can now create privileged functions that check for authorizations instead of checking for specific IDs such as superuser.

Secure Path Name Change from /usr/lib to /usr/lib/secure

The secure directory from which files can be preloaded is now /usr/lib/secure for 32-bit objects and /usr/lib/secure/sparcv9 for 64-bit SPARCV9 objects.

Dynamic String Token Support

Greater flexibility in establishing instruction set-specific, and system-specific dependencies is provided with the new $ISALIST, $OSNAME, and $OSREL dynamic string tokens.

Function Update: strftime()

The %u conversion specification for the strftime() function has been changed.

Alternate Libthread

An alternate threads implementation provides a model in which user-level threads are associated one-to-one with lightweight processes (LWPs). This implementation is simpler than the standard implementation and might be beneficial to some multithreaded applications.

SPARC: Audio Mixer Driver

The audio mixer driver now allows multiple applications to play and record audio simultaneously.

Updated DDI Interfaces for Cluster-Aware Device Drivers

A documentation overview introduces the concept of device classes and the necessary interface modifications and additions for device driver writers.

8-bit Visual Support

The 8-bit visual shared library enables device drivers with only 24-bit hardware to display 8-bit visual applications.

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)

ACPI is a new, more flexible way to configure and control IA hardware. ACPI obsoletes Plug and Play BIOS and the Intel Multi-Processor Specification (MPSPEC). If ACPI is available on your IA based system, the Solaris 8 operating environment automatically uses it to configure the hardware.

PCI Hot-Plug Support

This feature enables standard PCI adapters to be hot-plugged into a machine with the hot-plug capability that is running Solaris Intel Platform Edition. You can now add (hot-add) or remove (hot-remove) adapters from a system while the system is still running.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) Support for Keyboards and Mouse Devices

Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides USB support for keyboards and mouse devices.

X Server Video Driver Enhancement

Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides support for more video devices.

IA: Device Driver Enhancement: cadp

The Solaris cadp driver now supports Adaptec Ultra2 adapters.

IA: Device Driver Enhancement: ncrs

The Solaris ncrs device driver now supports the SCSI hot-plugging functionality and Ultra2 devices, in addition to general functionality and performance improvements.

IA: Device Driver Enhancement: symhisl

The symhisl device driver, which supports the adapters SYM22910 and SYM21002, is now included in Solaris Intel Platform Edition.