At long last, Sun Microsystems has delivered a version of StarOffice for its own Solaris x86 operating system.

Big Solaris x86 fans have been searching for StarOffice 7 for several months. Sun's open source productivity suite has only been available for Solaris/Sparc, Linux and Windows, making the x86 clan feel a bit left out. As of Wednesday, however, Sun put the software up for sale on Solaris x86 systems at $79.95 a pop.

"By providing StarOffice 7 support for Solaris x86, Sun demonstrates it is actively listening to the community and is committed to meeting those needs," said Bruce Riddle, a Unix consultant at Agere Systems, in a Sun statement.

Riddle's inclusion in Sun's marketing material is a nice touch. He has been one of the most vocal supporters of Solaris x86 over the past few years and encouraged Sun to revive its interest in the product.

Along with the StarOffice Solaris x86 release, Sun announced that the United India Insurance Company will replace 10,000 Microsoft Office desktops with StarOffice 7.

Later this year, Sun plans to bring all of the software running on its Linux-based Java Desktop System OS over to Solaris x86. ®