OpenSolaris 2009.06
Where To Get Help
Please take a moment to register for the DLR forum (registration takes less than a minute and you can login with your Facebook account if you want); everybody is welcome. You are welcome to post a message in the Linux Help section and we’ll do our best to point you in the right direction. The forum contains discussions about Linux, but also many other topics. Please stop by and say hello when you have a chance.
Drop by the forum to get help, talk about Linux or just hang out.
You might also want to check out the OpenSolaris wiki and the OpenSolaris Learn page. If you’re already an experienced Linux user then you might want to read the Migrating to OpenSolaris from Linux page. And be sure to drop by the OpenSolaris forum to connect to other users.
Final Thoughts & Who Should Use It
As I noted earlier, OpenSolaris was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. It’s easy to install and ran very well for me. The biggest drawbacks I ran into were sound problems and lack of flash in Firefox. Both problems were solvable and my overall experience with OpenSolaris was quite good. It was pretty quick and seemed very stable to me. I didn’t run into problematic crashes or anything else that significantly impacted my experience with it.
I recommend OpenSolaris mainly for distrohoppers who are always on the lookout for a cool, new OS to play with on their system. Others may certainly benefit from trying OpenSolaris and I don’t discourage anybody from checking it out. But I don’t think it will be giving Linux Mint or PCLinuxOS a run for their money as anybody’s preferred desktop distro just yet. The sound problems will probably annoy casual users enough to keep them away.
Still, it’s a neat operating system and it’s definitely worth a download for distrohoppers.
Summary Table:
| Product: | OpenSolaris 2009.06 |
| Web Site: | OpenSolaris |
| Price: | Free |
| Pros: | Excellent installer, good selection of software. Fast boot time. |
| Cons: | Flash not installed in Firefox by default. Required sound system package installation. |
| Suitable For: | Distrohoppers and others looking for a new desktop OS to play with and enjoy. |
| Summary: | OpenSolaris is a pleasant alternative to the usual array of Linux distros, Mac OS X and Windows. While it has a few drawbacks, it also provides a significant amount of value for desktop users.
Alas, this is clouded by sound problems and the lack of flash inclusion in the install routine. Still, it’s worth a look if you’re a distrohopper or a tinkerer looking for the next OS to play with on your system. |
| Rating: | 3.5/5 |
(5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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(4.83 out of 5)
Pretty bland review. You missed out any of the features unique to Solaris, such as ZFS (and its Time Slider GUI), what boot environments actually are and why they’re useful (rather than a brief mention in passing), dtrace, zones etc.
Incidentally, the best way to install Flash is via the Extras repository at http://pkg.sun.com (which contains this and a bunch of other stuff that isn’t freely-distributable), not by downloading tarballs.
i agree with Numpty, being a desktop user does not automatically mean, i am only interested in music players, email clients and games.
sure, you need this games and stuff to attract users, but opensolaris with its strong engeneering background should be reviewed from the view of a techician.
What i missed: something about the virtualisation posibilities, for example VirtualBox, wich works flawless on opensolaris.
The next OpenSolaris release is (hopefully) just around the corner. Since the 2009.06 release they’ve integrated the OSS drivers for better sound compatibility and enhanced much of the existing features.
Hardware support is lacking compared to Linux, but that’s changing at a decent rate.
Where OpenSolaris will shine, is as a server OS. Solaris has always been one of the best versions of Unix out there, bar none. It is stable, has one of the very best journaling file systems (ZFS), comes with superb monitoring tools (DTRACE, etc) and is super stable and scalable.
I worry about what will happen to Solaris and Open Solaris with the Oracle take over. From what I read, Oracle does not seem to have the affection for Solaris that Sun had.
This is really sad, actually. Some of the Unixes deserve to die, and Linux is definitely the future. However, both Solaris and AIX have been running the back end Enterprises for years! Stability, Security, and Scalability have not been issues with either of these excellent Unix OSes for a decade!
I wonder what would have happened if Sun had seriously pursued Solaris on x86 back in 2000 and had made the entry price cheap, or better, created Open Solaris back then? I know Sun was making serious money on Solaris/SPARC back then, but if they had an eye out for the future, we may not even be having the Linux verses Unix discussion at all.