OpenSolaris
I’m half-way through installing OpenSolaris on my desktop machine at home. Total lack of Internet access has both aided and harmed my progress: because I have to travel to MC to use Internet access, I downloaded the Solaris Express b28 DVD in a fraction of the time it would have taken at home (a whopping 2.5MB/s over wireless!); destroyed it because if I forget even the slightest piece of documentation, I must wait another day to try again.
So far I’ve installed Solaris Express (Nevada) build 28. Solaris Express is essentially a pre-release version of the next full release of Solaris (in this case Solaris 11). It is tied heavily with on-going OpenSolaris work.
I have a copy of the latest OpenSolaris BFU code. This is essentially a binary archive of the OpenSolaris kernel, updates and changes over Solaris Express. What surprised me that OpenSolaris is little more than a community and a kernel. I had expected OpenSolaris would be the whole shebang.
On top of this I’ve got Sun Studio 10 and a license key to use it. This excellent development environment is provided free of charge by Sun.
This evening I will be attempting to install the OpenSolaris BFU code now I have the full (I hope) documentation. Fortunately for me the latest release (that I have) includes an Atheros wireless driver and wireless tools. Guess what wireless chipset I have? :)
I’ve also downloaded all of the necessary tools and source for building GNOME 2.12, the latest stable release of GNOME (although GNOME 2.13 has some impressive changes and advancements). I will be highly impressed if this gets much past the first or second step.
All in all I’m fairly impressed with the OpenSolaris project, the community and the work that’s going in to it. I see little difference between running Ubuntu Breezy Badger (the latest stable release) and OpenSolaris with GNOME 2.12 in terms of desktop experience. Can it really be that good?
Tags: unix