OpenSolaris

[Mr. Psychopath]

So, a week ago I downloaded OpenSolaris. I've got to say, it's pretty neat. It's the only Open Source derivative of System IV Release 5 (or is it the other way around?), which was a consolidated merge of several large codebases contributed by the largest Unix corporations of the day.

 

Upon booting it, I was surprised with the amount of polish. It didn't have amatuerish artwork, and it booted up quickly.

 

The Good:

-Nice artwork!

-Commercially supported drivers!

-Solaris Flash Player is much better than Linux Flash Player!

-The Community is teeming with developers who are willing to teach you the ins-and-outs of the system.

-Supported by Sun Microsystems, creators of Java, OpenOffice, Neatbeans, etc...

-Compatible with Solaris apps all the way back to Solaris2! (OpenSolaris is based on Solaris 10, in comparison)

-Powerful implementation of UNIX!

-Comes with BASH, thus making everything a lot easier!

-Free SunStudio and SunStudioExpress packages!

-ZFS and DTrace!

-A handful of nifty ported FOSS apps! (Gimp, Firefox, Evolution, SoundJuicer, RythmBox)

-Special configurations to GNOME to make it friendlier!

-Takes a snapshot and clones your system every time you do a major upgrade! (Insanely useful if you screw something up in the future, you can just roll back a version and fix everything from there. And your configuration files somehow transfer backwards as well as forwards, so you never lose important files!)

 

 

The Bad:

-It took awhile to set up GStreamer's plugins, which I had to get from blastwave.org

-Even after setting up GStreamer plugins, I still couldn't play .wmv's, and the FFMPEG layer only played sounds.

-You have to compile alot if you want specific apps. (Banshee, KDE4, better GStreamer plugins that you couldn't find.)

-Bad Package Manager frontend. The GUI is slow, unresponsive at times, and sometimes didn't install anything.

-Some drivers are completely incompatible.

 

Luckily, there weren't any real showstoppers for me. I'm planning on wiping it, and then setting up a dual-boot with OSX86 and OpenSolaris. Then, I'll be completely happy.

[fatshitcat]

I can't see a real reason why I should use Opensolaris on my desktop. Nice review tho.

[lord_muad_dib]

solaris x86 is not as nice as its sparc counter part

in both cases.. it's not a nice desktop os

[Mr. Psychopath]

solaris x86 is not as nice as its sparc counter part

in both cases.. it's not a nice desktop os

 

I dunno, they've made leaps and bounds with the latest version...

[vaporATX]

It's a really excellent server OS, but NetBSD is faster, better, and has more comprehensive hardware support. Of course, if you can find a good deal on a used Sparc Server OpenSolaris would really be great. As far as desktop use... I'd rather shove sharpened bamboo slivers under my fingernails.

[FrankOS_Scripting]

I tested and I feel very normal. Yes ZFS is great but at all, I found this very similar to Ubuntu and I prefer openSUSE

[Alessandro17]

As far as desktop use... I'd rather shove sharpened bamboo slivers under my fingernails.

 

Well, Linux got where it is now in (almost) 15 years. Even in 2002 it was a lot different than now.

Before OpenSolaris catches up with Linux in drivers and applications it is going to take several years.

But I am all for choice.

[SDRacer48]

I tried it a few months back. It is still very very young in terms of desktop use.

 

I will continue to stick to playing with Ubuntu and Fedora for now...

[Mr. Psychopath]

Yeah, I think it'll be awhile before it really catches up to Linux. Nevertheless, I think it's at a good start. And for general desktop use, it's not bad at all.

[snakeeyes]

I haven't tried it but is it very stable cause it is Unix right?

[Mr. Psychopath]

It's extremely stable. Not only that, but it's backwards-compatible all the way to Solaris v. 2.0

 

Also, it clones your OS and mounts it when you do major updates. So, if you do something to get unsolvable dependency errors, you just roll back to a previous version. Kind of like a predecessor to Time Machine, except it's the actual system you're rolling back, and not your documents, music, videos, and bookmarks.

[khaled_acmilan]

OpenSolaris still a good OS at all but i heard from my friend that Sun Microsystems have a Computer to work with it's OS as Apple did Mac OS On Mac Hardware too.

 

well,At all i think this OS hasn't that support (Programs,Games) it doesn't have a lot of things too maybe it's not to normal people maybe for Server or for Sun Microsystems itself like Google it has an OS too they made Gubuntu and gOS too to itself (i don't if they will make it for public or not).

 

this is my opinion at all and hope to hear more from you.

 

Nice Topic.

[snakeeyes]

It's extremely stable. Not only that, but it's backwards-compatible all the way to Solaris v. 2.0

 

Also, it clones your OS and mounts it when you do major updates. So, if you do something to get unsolvable dependency errors, you just roll back to a previous version. Kind of like a predecessor to Time Machine, except it's the actual system you're rolling back, and not your documents, music, videos, and bookmarks.

 

thanks for the info, I will try it when I have the time now

[gizmoarena]

I really liked it! I liked it over ubuntu.

 

IT IS stable. You'll feel it, guaranteed.

I liked the polished gnome theme. Nothing exclusive but really nice.

 

but three things really bothered me.

1. The new network manager (forgot the name, INET or something) is buggy

2. No OpenOffice.org comes with the installer

3. Repository totally sucks (+ Availability of software)

[Mr. Psychopath]

Yeah, the Auto-Magic Network thing isn't too great yet.

 

You can get a special OO.O package directly from the site for Solaris, or through the repo + CLI

And the package manager was totally busted for me. However, the upcoming version due out in November (codenamed "Jericho") is aiming to fix all the IPS bugs.

[InorganicMatter]

Interesting. I've always seen FreeBSD as the OS of choice for a big-iron Unix server that needs rock-solid stability and security. Linux is nice (it has great community support and a broad selection of software), but it still doesn't offer the proven security and stability of BSD. How does OpenSolaris compare?

[Alessandro17]

Interesting. I've always seen FreeBSD as the OS of choice for a big-iron Unix server that needs rock-solid stability and security. Linux is nice (it has great community support and a broad selection of software), but it still doesn't offer the proven security and stability of BSD. How does OpenSolaris compare?

 

Solaris is your typical Unix server OS, thus it is bound to be stable and secure:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)

 

When comparing Linux as a server OS to the *BSDs, you should only consider the enterprise grade distros like RHEL and SLES. Then you'll notice that they are as stable and secure as any other *nix.

They are not free, but RHEL has a few free clones.

[sxjthefirst]

I used Solaris a lot at work till recently and its a good OS for enterprise use support for NFS , NAS etc is really good. As a desktop OS it's not bad but not worth dumping your existing OS. I might run it as an VM just for bragging rights.

[cybercow]

... they want it to be a nice desktop, but is an enterprise server with an big "E". although the new version has revised the gnome desktop (like ubuntu) you have to compile much of things because blastwave.org is not always the way to go ...

 

... we used solaris 10 on plain x86 system for 1.5 years for media/file/web serving purposes and never crashed, one single time, was reliable, fast`n secure, we are now on ubuntu server only because the hw requirements are quite on the HIGH side of the moon ... you can put it on some garbage PC, but don`t come here telling the desktop is slow and the system is un-responsive ...

 

... its power is not the shine`n`glowy-hype-trendy desktop but rather under the hood. there you`ll find so complex and extensive virtual containers / pools / zones management system and corresponding tools, that EVERY other OS compared in such domain - seems a basic child play ...

[(MoC)]

Solaris was purely designed to be a server and Java development OS. Nowhere did Sun have in mind to make a distro for kids to write word documents in. I still have an old Sun Sparc Ultra5 and it is the best server ever, nothing could beat it at that. Sun makes servers for really serious companies who need stability when not even a rock-solid IBM blade can handle the job. Solaris is good when used for it's purpose in a proper manner.

[nli]

I've used it; the integration of the desktop is a lot better than on any of the three BSDs I've tried (free,net and open); but it's got a lot of catching up to do to reach the standard set by Ubuntu and Fedora.

 

They've given up on developing quarterly dvds (community express editions) which is a shame -those were really cool. They came with proprietary video drivers (for NVidia at least), star office (the branded version of OOo) and Sun Studio and flash. You had everything right there on the DVD (which is perfect for VMs and/or frequent installs) but now with "indiana" they've gone to a more Ubuntu style of installation where you get a base install and then pull in the rest off the net (yuck).

 

It is dog slow, however; particularly in comparison to NetBSD (ironically NetBSD is the only *nix I cannot get to properly work on my hp desktop). I wanted to use opensolaris to play with Xen (they seem to have the most stable implementation of it -at least it's the only one I've come across that allowed me to boot into X in a Dom0 using my NVidia drivers) and to play with Sun Studio -but I could never get past the feeling that it was like driving a tank; it can be laggy and slow in weird areas.

 

I think it's one of life's most amusing ironies that the Macintosh OS (Leopard) is an official Unix -but the latest editions of Solaris aren't

 

(Solaris 10 -the release before they went open- may be officially Unix, but none of the things released as OpenSolaris have been certified. ).

[Mr. Psychopath]

Actually, they're both Unix-to a point.

 

Mac OSX runs atop Darwin, which is forked from FreeBSD

 

Solaris is a polished product that was a merger between the top unixes of its day.

 

In a way, though, they're both the only remaining successful commercial unix companies that I know of.

[nli]

Mac OSX runs atop Darwin, which is forked from FreeBSD

The only relationship between Darwin and FreeBSD (beside the fact that Apple hired FreeBSD's founder, Jordan Hubbard) is that when they wrote Darwin they lifted a bit of the kernel infrastructure off of FreeBSD, but FreeBSD is something completely different. Saying that OS X is a fork of FreeBSD is like saying windows 98 is a fork of bsd because some of the bsd code was used in the networking stack. To put it more bluntly (since I keep seeing this meme around here -from people who should know better), the kernel of Darwin is called XNU which is closer to Mach than it is to BSD.

 

That's not a fork. A example of a fork is Dragonfly BSD which took the entire codebase (including the kernel) and started a brand-new OS and developed it their own way. The core of Dragonfly BSD was FreeBSD; the core of Darwin has never been (purely) FreeBSD.

 

And yes, I've kissed a girl.

 

As far as it goes, with IBM ditching AIX in favor of Linux (and god only knows what has happened to Irix) Solaris is the last Unix-derived OS to still be currently developed (and signifigantly used).