OpenSolaris: Your Opinions

[ninjaslim]

What's everyone's opinion on OpenSolaris?

I never really liked OpenSolaris 2008.05, but today I tested 2008.11-RC2, and it's very polished. It reminds me very much of Mac OS X in terms of usability and features (particularly the frontend for ZFS backups akin to Time Machine). I think it has real potential in the desktop market, at least as a desktop Unix.

[tomh009]

How is the breadth of device support on OpenSolaris? I remember from my Solaris 10 investigation that the hardware support was a show-stopper for me at the time.

[ninjaslim]

I haven't really tested it much on real hardware. It works well on my Dell Optiplex GX620, but that's a relatively old machine. It works on Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMWare Fusion, if that counts for anything.

According to other people's experiences, OpenSolaris has expanded hardware support. For example, the Acer Aspire One is almost entirely supported with the exception of a couple of things, which I can't name off the top of my head. I doubt it'd be much of a problem.

[rliegh]

Hardware support has improved drastically over the last 3 years. I last tried it with Solaris Community Express build 99 and it was ok, but it feels sluggish.

It's decent -it does automount a LOT better than FreeBSD currently does. My main problems were with performance (subjectively speaking, it feels slugging) and the fact that it was a LOT more difficult to build from source than NetBSD and FreeBSD are. Also -from a GNU/Zealot viewpoint it's disturbing to have such large parts of the system be distributed 'binary only'.

It's a good Unix; I prefer it to Linux -but I prefer *BSD.

[Weinter]

Yeap I think their Hardware support has reached BSD levels but not yet Linux levels too

I agree it looks rather nice and responsive but I still prefer BSD
Except the ZFS part looks really tempting

[hitest]

It looks very interesting. Yes. It does have the potential to make inroads into the desktop market. Competition is a good thing it makes everyone better.

[cloud]

I liked Solaris which is a system in the same spirit than freebsd but wich tools very powerfull like zone or the admin console. The system to manipulate services is also interesting.

So I have tried the lastest OpenSolaris given at the RMLL this summer and I was impressed ! All works fine without configuration and there are the same tools than Solaris so it can be a very powerfull system for servers hoping there are not the same vulnerabilities than Solaris ...

[ericturgeon]

Mmm for me :(:(! I install 4 times in my dell dimension and I cant be able for setting solaris 10 to go on internet. long live to FreeBSD the freedom of my pc.

[rwatson@]

OpenSolaris is quite an interesting system. One of the interesting things about it is that, although FreeBSD's adoption of several OpenSolaris technologies has been well-publicized (ZFS, DTrace), OpenSolaris has also quietly been adopting a number of FreeBSD technologies over the last few years. This includes our smbfs implementation, Atheros and other wireless device drivers, 802.11 framework, and a number of other device drivers, including Adaptec storage controller driver. Sounds like both projects are getting a good deal :-).

[Oko]

It would be interesting to see how this relationship would develop untainted by serious problems which SUN is facing. I honestly do not see either of sides benefiting so much of each other. Solaris has OpenSolaris as a test bed so it doesn't really need FreeBSD.

At this point however it looks like SUN is destined for a slow painful death already seen by most proprietary Unix hardware and software vendors I grow up to know. Porting Solaris to i386 seems like a white flag to me. It is already impossible to buy new workstation based on sparc chip-set and the number of sparc based servers is shrinking. Without sparc, IMHO, SUN is just another vendor of the expensive Wintel junk.
My personal experience in running Open Slowwwwlaris on Wintel hardware is that it has very little to offer to an average desktop user comparing to CentOS (RedHat) for instance. On the contrary SUN has to do some serious catching up when it comes to drivers and proprietary software support. I just do not see how FreeBSD can be of any help?

In late seventies and eighties when BSD was the most popular OS in academia sea of bright students were sharpening their programming skills hacking BSD. Presently I know of handful departments in U.S. who have running BSD machines and I can confess that non of my students for the past 5-8 years have not even heard of BSD and just a few heard for Solaris. So who is going to write drivers or put the pressure on software vendors to release their code for Open Solaris let alone FreeBSD?
Even if I wanted to deploy FreeBSD as a workstation at my department of mathematics MatLab and Maple would be show stoppers. Even assuming that newest versions of this software can be installed on FreeBSD by a very skilled FreeBSD system admin (not really sure that it is still possible) how could I justify running thousands dollars worth of software on unsupported platform?

Could Dr. rwatson comment on this?

Cheers,
OKO

[rwatson@]

It seems fairly clear how FreeBSD helps OpenSolaris, and vice versa: since they are both open source, source code can (and is) moved between the platforms, allowing each to accomplish more than they would alone. Would OpenSolaris have such a capable 802.11 framework without being able to borrow it from FreeBSD? Would FreeBSD have a file system like ZFS without OpenSolaris?

Especially in the current economy, it's easy to subscribe to a doom-and-gloom view of the world, but let's be honest: the computer industry is, and has always been, a highly dynamic place. Twenty years ago, do we think many of the "visionaries" of the industry could predict many of the things that have happened in the last twenty years? It's also easy to ignore the facts on the ground: if you look at the rather extensive world of FreeBSD (and BSD) use generally, there has been a massive increase in FreeBSD deployment around the world. Market share is hard to measure, FreeBSD was and is a strong player in the ISP world, does get heavy use in other service areas, but adoption of FreeBSD in part or in whole by companies like NetApp, Juniper, Apple, Citrix, Cisco, Nokia, Isilon, etc, mean the reach of the platform is incredibly broad. We see significant contributions coming back from these places -- be it work on network stack virtualization, Xen platform support, NFS lock manager support, significant work on network performance, SMP scalability, security audit support, or a variety of other things that have come in in the last few years as a result of these consumers becoming contributors.

I think you're right, though: we need to work harder to increase mindshare, and especially to help universities teach computer science using FreeBSD. For example, can we make teaching operating system courses easier on our platform by providing course material, exercises, etc, and will this let programs that previously couldn't do an OS course now do one?

[gilinko]

I like Opensolaris. It is a very capable operating system, having tried both the 2008.11 release and the latest build(b104). I would however not classify is as a stable distribution just yet, as there is quite a few things left fix before I would replace my current desktop with it(which is linux).

The thing that I see as Opensolaris has in its favor is that it's young. For example the new package system do take advantage in new and improved checks and balances without the need for backwards compatibility(as it's brand new). There are quite a few thing you can change when starting out fresh, and with SUN's history of planning(best viewed in it's backwards compatibility in ABI/API) it is a serious contender in the desktop distribution race. Also things like ZFS has impressed on me very much, as it's one of the major headaches I have with any current system.

Give Opensolaris another year to mature, and it will probably be close to other "desktop distributions" out there like Fedora and Ubuntu.

[danger@]

The last paragraph about providing a course material for universities is a perfect idea. I would really like if my university teached us by following such material, as we had a basic operating systems course that was partly based on FreeBSD (interestingly the machine we were doing our excercises was some 3.x version :-))

[estrabd]

snip..

I think you're right, though: we need to work harder to increase mindshare, and especially to help universities teach computer science using FreeBSD. For example, can we make teaching operating system courses easier on our platform by providing course material, exercises, etc, and will this let programs that previously couldn't do an OS course now do one?

Our department supposedly has a FreeBSD network, but I've never seen it. I'm quite the evangelist around my neck of the woods, though.

And I think that providing course material on traditional OS aspects wrt FreeBSD would be extremely helpful - even for those of us who have mostly gotten through their classroom hours.

Brett :stud

[rliegh]

My personal experience in running Open Slowwwwlaris on Wintel hardware is that it has very little to offer to an average desktop user comparing to CentOS (RedHat) for instance. On the contrary SUN has to do some serious catching up when it comes to drivers and proprietary software support. I just do not see how FreeBSD can be of any help?
I've only used these in a desktop capacity, which limits my experience. That said I've noticed that Solaris' device driver support appears to have gotten a lot better over the last three or so years.

It feels slow as hades though, and if you're talking as a desktop it doesn't seem worthwhile.

I tried using it in a vm to set up a personal site (again, I'm a desktop user) and gave up and now I'm using FreeBSD for it -because I can go into /usr/ports and the software is there, whereas with Solaris I couldn't get gallery set up properly (gallery is in ports; I'm going to have to tinker with it still, but at least the ports system has set everything else up for me).

It seems like Solaris has been passed-by in terms having software written for it and/or ported to it. That's just my (ameteur) impression, at least.

I'm also worried that the company may not be around this time next year so I don't really want to put a lot of energy into learning how Solaris does things.

[jok3r]

My experience on this is mixed. First some background, I've been a long time user of solaris, and a freebsd zealot, and somewhat dabbled in program writing.

I've had luck installing PcBSD on my laptop because I was looking for a good freebsd desktop OS, which, it is. But I wasnt totally pleased. So I was curious to see what was so great about opensolaris that they would have a link on there Home Page to a link on the FreeBSD forums. Strange, are they calling each other out?

My first experience of open solaris was ordering the CDs online and receiving them in like 2-3 days. I was excited to try it.

I have two laptops from different manufacturers. One has a broken screen and the other has a broken cdrom drive. And I have no money to buy new parts.

So I booted up off the live cd and quickly wanted to install it. Here is the deal it installed beautifully on My Toshiba Satellite 135 with dual-core cpu. Thats the one with the broken screen. The only complaint I have is the power management or whatever that subsytem is blanks the screen after some time and I have to power cycle. But that I can figure out and change. Overall it is reall nice, especially on a dual cpu machine. And its currently running fine with 512 MB ram. One bad thing though is that I believe that it does not see the internal wireless. I am using a pcmcia card netgear adapter for wifi. - :-(

Now the bad news. On the laptop with the broken cdrom, (Sony Vaio) I tried several times to get it to work with the cdrom, it kind of hobbles along at times. But it never finishes and always hangs. So I took out the hard drive and put it in the toshiba and installed it. I put the hard drive back in my Sony Vaio, but before that I did touch /reconfigure . Now my laptop constently freezes up and hangs. The only thing you can do is power cycle. I can say that my opinion on this end is really really bad. On top of that constantly happening, I am now completely locked out of the system. How the heck am I supposed to give a good rating to that. How the hell do you boot up into single user mode so I can edit the password file if my cdrom doesnt work. Looks like the only option I have is going back to freebsd because at least they have a way of installing and at least somewaht working.

So on that note I am going back to FreeBSD and GNUStep.
I wish this post was more positive for OS but it is what it is. Long Live the FreeBSD!
One more thing I wanted to say to Sun. What happend to OpenStep? That was the best desktop environemnet ever. Simple yet elegant! Why dont you use that as the default for OS. Hey I'm just a little guy! I hope you dont get mad at me i still love your products.

Still many kudos to Sun for getting it right on the Toshiba, even if its with an external wifi. I like the desktop and I like the OS. I am looking forward to practicing my corporate sys admin duties on open solaris and building a great website with it.

Peace!

[ctaranotte]

Here is a brief of my contact with OpenSolaris:

Pros: good installer, good hardware recognition (at least of mine), fast Firefox and OpenOffice, decentralized repositories, all the perks of solaris: 64bits kernel, dtrace, zfs...

Cons: limited availability of up-to-date packages (vlc, mplayer, kde), no reference or master repository, no source repository, building/compiling of ports, world & kernel almost impossible (where's the fun?), "/usr/opt" exponentially-growing, still problems with plug & run (bad experience with a new NIC), persistent bugs ( shutdown -p not working ...).

In summary, very promising alternative to desktop linux distros.

[jemate18]

I have just tried OpenSolaris 2008.11. My impression was it is becoming to be a very "linux-like" or should I say "ubuntu-like" OS plus the DTrace and the ZFS. Much of my devices where recognized except for my sound and modem. I installed it in my Laptop Intel Celeron 1.5, 40GB Harddisk, 768MB RAM. Desktop works fine, except that, I think it runs slower than my previous OS installed (Ubuntu 8.10).

Overall, GUI is so nice.....

Is Ian Murdock of the Debian heading the OpenSolaris project? may be this explains why OpenSolaris is slowly transforming in appearance like the GNU/Linux.

jemate18

[trash]

ive found solaris is very fussy on hardware, a massive memory hog of course and very focussed on more business end solutions, not an OS for the home user i think. although saying that a friend has a production machine that broke just by updating it and he was none too pleased, was a real pita to fix as well.

[oliverh]

ive found solaris is very fussy on hardware, a massive memory hog of course and very focussed on more business end solutions, not an OS for the home user i think. although saying that a friend has a production machine that broke just by updating it and he was none too pleased, was a real pita to fix as well.

Well, that is the purpose of Solaris (and OpenSolaris): business solutions. Many people are confused by the fact of a desktop environment, but that is the "Solaris way" of coping with servers and workstations. Of course you can do whatever you want with it, but do not compare it to the expectations for some consumer desktop.

[trash]

yeah exactly... i hate solaris personally - its fine till it breaks :) and its impossible to get data off of it afterwards. even to freebsd it seems.

[vermaden]

yeah exactly... i hate solaris personally - its fine till it breaks :) and its impossible to get data off of it afterwards. even to freebsd it seems.

Solaris/OpenSolaris allows you to create miniroot image with whole rescue system on it, you may use that for rescue also. Some people use it on embedded platforms like Soekris.

sources:
http://www.lildude.co.uk/howto-create-a-solaris-10-ram-disk-image/
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=45594&tstart=0
http://blogs.sun.com/setje/entry/post_new_boot_solaris_on

[trash]

that wouldnt have been relevant even if i had done that on my system, i have a problem that nobody seems to know how to fix, involving GPT tables corrupted which stops the zfs drive being imported into freebsd. solaris is very flaky - i have a computer on which every operating system in the world works except solaris! bizarrely though - it had solaris running on it for 6 months before it suddenly decided it wouldnt work...i cant understand how that is possible.

[Graaf_van_Vlaanderen]

Before coming to FreeBSD I used OpenSolaris and Solaris 10. I used to work with Solaris 8 and 9 mostly with Cadence IC design tools. I like Solaris 10 mostly for its stability. I have also worked and tested very often OpenSolaris. From my experience it is defintely more stable than any Linux distribution. For instance Solaris flash player is superior to the Linux version. And then there is of course ZFS which allows you to do great thinks with your harddisks.
What I don't like about OpenSolaris and Solaris 10, is the lack of recent software that runs on the OS. That's the main reason why I moved to FreeBSD.

[allbanddxer]

I liked 2009.06 but I really wish it had better support for USB printers... only a few models are supported. And I am not just referring to the limitations of CUPS having a few drivers, I mean the hardware is not recognized... :(

[davidgurvich]

I've been using the 2009.06 livecd as a hardware detector and tester. When there is 1gb+ ram and the hardware is supported everything works well. With 512mb the system is a slug, even installed on the bare hardware.

The main issues were poor support for generic hardware and annoying multimedia configuration/installation. Once installed everything worked well.

My main gripe was a truly trivial one, lack of scrolling on a touchpad.

[vermaden]

Another thing that I do not like about OpenSolaris is the IPS and its 'Linux focus'.

I once considered OpenSolaris as my main system, later only for a laptop, now after FreeBSD replaced all my OpenSolaris installations I start to think, why I wasted all that time trying to use OpenSolaris Package Manager called IPS, also comments on this blog sums a lot about it: http://cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=1115#comm

... like these:

"Ian Murdock has taken a superb enterprise O/S and turned it into Linux circa 1998."

"Maybe i’m old-fashioned, but shouldn’t core O/S tools be written in C? If you can’t code in C, I don’t want you writing my O/S."

I do not want to bash OpenSolaris (from which we have great ZFS for example), OpenSolaris just wants to be Linux too much (like taking Ian Murdock for the job).

PS. 1. Draft of "What's New in OpenSolaris 2010.03" is available here: http://cr.opensolaris.org/~gman/opensolaris-whats-new-2010-03/ I have read some rumors that they are rebranding 2010.03 from OpenSolaris to Oracle Solaris Express.

PS. 2. Solaris will not be free to use anymore: http://www.osnews.com/comments/23077

[oliverh]

>OpenSolaris just wants to be Linux too much

No they do want the plethora of Linux users to gain momentum. Well, everyone needs to sacrifice something to survive in a Linux world. Have a look at FreeBSD and its expanding Linux compat layer (applications, Flash, webcam/dvb-drivers etc.), some people already have got an almost complete Linux next to their FreeBSD installation.

[vermaden]

@oliverh

Its just linux_compat which can be disabled (or should I say not installed as its not enabled by default as in NetBSD), and You can do everything without it, it would not be needed if only pricks at adobe would release at last flash for FreeBSD, OpenSolaris does not have that problem.

OpenSolaris in contrast incorporated whole GNU coreutils into its 'base system' and hired Debian creator to make the job the Linux way.

For example, I use linux_compat ONLY for flash, nothing else.

Other thing is that as FreeBSD is binary compatible with Linux, some nice things can happen, like creating "The Matrix" movie under FreeBSD with tools/applications in linux_compat instead of 'native' Linux because they were running faster under linux_compat on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.org/news/press-rel-1.html

[oliverh]

>Its just linux_compat which can be disabled

Yes I can, but that's not the point. For most users it's the only possible solution to get certain technologies, so it is indeed a must nowadays.

>For example, I use linux_compat ONLY for flash, nothing else.

And you have to install a bunch of Linux software to do so.

>like creating "The Matrix" movie under FreeBSD

... resting one's laurels so to speak ;-) Btw. if you want some more documents of a great past: http://desktopbsd.net/wiki/doku.php?id=doc:useful_information ( I gathered some of those documents while working in the DBSD team).

>OpenSolaris in contrast incorporated whole GNU coreutils into its 'base system' and hired Debian creator to make the job the Linux way.

Well, I would be happy to see Murdock even today developing Debian - it would be a way better distro in my opinion. Apart from that, we shouldn't cast the first stone as long as we aren't free of Linux ourselves - have e.g. a look at OpenBSD, they're working hard to get to this point.

I don't have a problem with OpenSolaris or some Linux tools, it's just a pity to see the "last UNIX" die in vain.

[swirling_vortex]

I don't know if I would say Solaris is dead yet. The problem is that the linux media started spreading rumors that Oracle was killing Solaris when they said they that they would be only allowing it for a 90-day period. So I went to look at the license agreement and it's a little confusing. On one part it says:

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/licensing/policies.xml
In order to use the Solaris 10 software for perpetual commercial use, you must obtain the Entitlement Document. The Entitlement Document is delivered to you either with a new Sun machine, from Sun Service as part of your service agreement, or via email when you register your machines through the Sun Download Center. For this reason, ensure that you have the correct email address in your Sun Download Center account before trying to register your Solaris 10 machines. If you do not receive the Entitlement Document, you are only allowed to use the software for 90 days of evaluation usage.
But on the d/l page it says:
Please remember, your right to use Solaris acquired as a download is
limited to a trial of 90 days, unless you acquire a service contract
for the downloaded Software.
So, which is it, a service contract or an entitlement document? Also, Oracle doesn't mention what happens when you go beyond the 90 day trial period. Does the operating system stop working as with Windows XP and WGA, or does it give Oracle the right to sue your balls off?

Personally, I think what's going to happen is that Solaris/OpenSolaris is going to follow the RHEL/Fedora model. The new technologies go into OpenSolaris and the stable, enterprise level operating system will become the next version of Solaris. Keep in mind that Sun wasn't doing a good job turning in $$$ with this, so considering that Solaris was already targeting the enterprise market, this will only affect the hobbyist group who's probably already running OpenSolaris anyway. Oracle could do a better job at giving out more info on this and cleaning up the license agreement instead of leaving it up to media speculation, but I think that OpenSolaris is still going to be around. I don't think it would be in their best interest to kill it since it gives Oracle a more all-in-one package to sell (hardware, software, support, and the OS).

[davidgurvich]

The 90 day trial only refers to Solaris, not opensolaris. Last time that I checked, Sun offered a Solaris free trial for 60 days. I don't know if Sun had increased that before the Oracle announcement. Opensolaris is still a free download.

[Carpetsmoker]

I use OpenSolaris on my laptop, it works fairly well. The main advantage it has over FreeBSD and OpenBSD is that Xorg works at a decent speed. With Free/OpenBSD I can't it any faster than vesa-driver speeds with the intel driver (Drawing xterms can take seconds!).

Native flash and VirtualBox is also nice at times. (Although FreeBSD also has vbox support now, not sure how good/fast it is though?).

When you pop the hood, it does have a sort of "Windows/Linux" sort of feel to it at times though ...

OpenSolaris just wants to be Linux too much

Some might say the same about FreeBSD ;)

[gpatrick]

(Although FreeBSD also has vbox support now, not sure how good/fast it is though?).

I've used VirtualBox on both OpenSolaris and FreeBSD, and VirtualBox performs much better on FreeBSD. Resource usage is too high on OpenSolaris.


Personally, I think what's going to happen is that Solaris/OpenSolaris is going to follow the RHEL/Fedora model. The new technologies go into OpenSolaris and the stable, enterprise level operating system will become the next version of Solaris.

That seems plausible except for the fact that I've read where Oracle states that some technologies from Solaris are not going to be included in OpenSolaris; meaning Oracle will be developing Solaris independent of OpenSolaris.

[Oko]

The 90 day trial only refers to Solaris, not opensolaris. Last time that I checked, Sun offered a Solaris free trial for 60 days. I don't know if Sun had increased that before the Oracle announcement. Opensolaris is still a free download.

That is grossly inaccurate statement!

Solaris 10 was absolutely free until couple days ago when Oracle announced their decision. You must have checked 2004 or 2005 if you claim that SUN was giving it away only for 60 days.

OpenSolaris looks dead to me. The last time I checked the final release was re-scheduled for 03/26/2010. As we all know there is no new release as of now and to my knowledge nobody knows if and when OpenSolaris will be released. The only thing I noticed is bunch of posts on OpenSolaris mailing lists in which people are talking about their experience in installing FreeBSD and OpenBSD (I have not noticed anybody talking about NetBSD).

The only good news in all of this is that it seems that Oracle has decided for now to keep Solaris alive. On another hand until I see announcment for Solaris 11 release my working
assumtion is that Solaris is going belly up.

[Carpetsmoker]

From what I can find is that 2010.03 is delayed for technical reasons ...

[fronclynne]

my working assumtion is that Solaris is going belly up.

Given that Oracle owns it now, I'd not bet against you.

[gpatrick]

From what I can find is that 2010.03 is delayed for technical reasons

They've had serious technical problems since build 129. Apparently they decided to delay the release to fix them, although I question why they were never addressed earlier. Some have been around long enough they should have been fixed in later development releases.

For example, the warning about "no randomness provider for /dev/urandom" has been around since late 2007 and supposedly going to be fixed in build 89, yet it still exists in build 129 and forward.

http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=38
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=13547

We'll pick this up when we resync with build 89.


Since this looks similar to bug 38, I'm reclassifying to match that bug.


My usb ethernet device doesn't work in OpenSolaris although it works with FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and OpenSolaris also doesn't recognize my wireless adapter. VirtualBox uses too much CPU and memory on OpenSolaris. Although I really like the network virtualization with Crossbow and their Zones implementation. Installation is very slow, you really need to go do something else while it grinds away ever so slowly (but it isn't any slower than Solaris!). If they would ever fix the building of Zones so they don't need to download from a repository, but instead are built from the global zone (like Solaris 10) I'd be very happy.

[davidgurvich]

Looking over the news reports from 2007, that looks like the free 60 day trial was for sun hardware with Solaris. I'm not sure what the situation was then for Solaris updates+support.

[gpatrick]

Gave OpenSolaris another try with the current dev build and it lasted one day. I'm back to FreeBSD on that server. The current dev build was slower than the last stable dev build and still has bugs. It just seemed like too much work, so I gave up on OpenSolaris.

[davidgurvich]

Milax-0.5, livecd based on opensolaris, worked well on a system with limited ram and seemed snappy overall. That means opensolaris can be much more responsive and use less resources.

[vermaden]

I also find Milax very light and snappy in contrast to 'default' OpenSolaris, but that does not solve lack of packages problem (comparing to ports/apt/yum).

[gpatrick]

IPS is very memory consuming. OpenSolaris build 134 also has a problem when the screensaver is activated, simply moving a mouse doesn't bring up the login screen. I just started typing the password blind on a blank screen, unaware if the machine was actually running, and the desktop came back. Was also unsuccessful in disabling the graphical login even following Sun aka Oracle developers 'svcadm disable gdm' advice, and, alas, no text. I'm also unsure how to tweak xorg in OpenSolaris because Sun developers say the xorg.conf isn't used (and I can atest to that).

[f-andrey]

I also find Milax very light and snappy in contrast to 'default' OpenSolaris, but that does not solve lack of packages problem (comparing to ports/apt/yum).

How to use IPS pkg (http://www.milax.org/?p=23)

Use alternative repo
http://blastwave.network.com:10000/ (Blastwave IPS repo, has at least 1000 packages)
http://pkg.sunfreeware.com:9000/ (Companion project IPS repo, currently 686 packages)
http://pkg.opensolaris.org/contrib/en/index.shtml
http://blogs.sun.com/frontline/entry/using_opensolaris_extras_support_repositories
http://ips.homeunix.com/?q=node/35
and any http://www.google.com/search?q=opensolaris+repositories ;)

[vermaden]

@f-andrey

A lot of things are missing even with all these additional reposirotires (I used them when I was on OpenSolaris).

[Carpetsmoker]

^ Indeed, I have to compile quite a few things for myself :-/

[gpatrick]

Some of those repositories have old software (Blastwave) and additionally, there are times when repositories are unavailable. Why this occurs when OpenSolaris forces you to use their network repositories is unknown. There have also been times when one has been unable to create Zones for a day or two because Sun had some problem and you can't build. Of couse, Zones are built from downloads from Sun repositories (assuming you don't build a local repository).

OpenSolaris as a VirtualBox guest needs 768MB of memory which is amazing, considering that OpenBSD uses 64MB and FreeBSD can also work on 64MB.

[Oko]

OpenSolaris in contrast incorporated whole GNU coreutils into its 'base system' and hired Debian creator to make the job the Linux way.


I just noticed this post. In contract to what? NetBSD and OpenBSD? As far as I know FreeBSD uses GNU tar, GNU diff and path, GNU grep, GNU Troff. This list goes on and on.

As you know even NetBSD and OpenBSD still use GCC. Even if the PCC was capable of replacing
GCC the GNU binutils can not be replaced by anything else. Actually PCC will include assembler but at this point only guys from AerieBSD are working on the new linker.

Unlike BSDs, Solaris does have a complete non-GNU tool chain. It has GUI as well (CDE) but it lacks wide software base.

[phoenix]

I just noticed this post. In contract to what? NetBSD and OpenBSD? As far as I know FreeBSD uses GNU tar, GNU diff and path, GNU grep, GNU Troff. This list goes on and on.

FreeBSD has used bsdtar for a couple releases now. GNU tar has been relegated to the ports tree. (And bsdtar is now available in Debian repos.)

GNU grep is about to be replaced by a BSD-licensed grep. There are patches available for testing that replace gnugrep with bsdgrep in 8-STABLE. It might even make it into 8.1-RELEASE.

GNU diff is being worked on. It should, hopefully, be ready to replace GNU diff in 9.0 if not 8.1.

A handful of other GNU tools have BSD-licensed replacements under development.

As you know even NetBSD and OpenBSD still use GCC. Even if the PCC was capable of replacing GCC the GNU binutils can not be replaced by anything else. Actually PCC will include assembler but at this point only guys from AerieBSD are working on the new linker.

ClangBSD is now self-hosting, bringing us one step closer to a GCC-less BSD. :)

IOW, the days of GNU userland tools in BSD systems are numbered. :D

[f-andrey]

OpenSolaris as a VirtualBox guest needs 768MB of memory which is amazing, considering that OpenBSD uses 64MB and FreeBSD can also work on 64MB.

FreeBSD - rootFS on ZFS and Gnome work on 64MB? you seriously? ;)

[graudeejs]

it's UFS

[vermaden]

OpenSolaris as a VirtualBox guest needs 768MB of memory which is amazing, considering that OpenBSD uses 64MB and FreeBSD can also work on 64MB.

FreeBSD, same as NetBSD or OpenBSD can work even with 32MB RAM, but OpenSolaris also can be tweaked for 'embedded' hardware.

I have read about OpenSolaris runining on Soekris hardware with 128MB RAM, but that was without all that 'desktop experience' ;)

Its without ZFS of course, but on FreeBSD it also requires larger amount of RAM.

Check this blog for some nice recipes how to install 'small' OpenSolaris.
http://alexeremin.blogspot.com/


@Oko

Good that phoenix already post the reply, so I do not need to write this again ;)

As for OpenSolaris vs BSD difference here, 'we' use several GNU tools that will be replaced soon while OpenSolaris have whole sysutils/coreutils package under /usr/gnu/bin and even in front of PATH. They only port that to Solaris and left in the base.

[vermaden]

Another reason that always pushed me away from OpenSolaris:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=78819&postcount=5

[hawkdsh]

Another reason that always pushed me away from OpenSolaris:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=78819&postcount=5

FUD.

The price of codecs is rolled into the price of for-pay operating systems, like Windows and OSX. Neither do Linux distros distribute codecs, except those hosted in countries that allow it. They generally provide information on where to get such "free" codecs, with a warning that doing so may be illegal in your country. A quick google search on codecs for OpenSolaris will reveal the existence of package repos stood up for this very purpose (similar to Medibuntu). The (non)distribution of codecs is a legal issue, not a profit issue.

[hawkdsh]

A bigger issue for me is the fact that, while the *BSDs seem to be trying to move away from the GNU userland, OpenSolaris seems to be rushing toward it. While the tools and the (Gnome) desktop seem stable, I would have preferred to have seen something a little more innovative and under a BSD, MIT/X11, or CDDL, maybe a modernized version of CDE, or a polished up e16 or e17, with the addition of some handy utilities (like maybe a wifi networking tool for laptop users). Keep the GNU ports segregated (well, they are, to a certain extent, but it would have been nice to be able to start with a GNU-free install and pick whether you want the ports or not).

[sk8harddiefast]

I dont like opensolaris for 4 reasons.
1)have default gnome
2)Is like debian but solaris based (gnome-graphical file package manager etc)
3)I dont like linux or anything wants to be linux or like linux
4)I love bsd (and pure solaris but is almost impossible to have it for desktop and have everything working (cameras,lcd panels,a lot of tools like conky etc))

[davidgurvich]

I like opensolaris for the following 4 reasons.
1)Excellent drivers for supported hardware
2)Solid network and wireless stack(see 1)
3)Great documentation
4)ZFS and friends.

[sk8harddiefast]

Also i will agree with davidgurvich because maybe i don't like opensolaris but this doesn't mean that haven't some great stuff like ZFS or good hardware support

[vermaden]

1)Excellent drivers for supported hardware
Quality as everywhere else, for example Intel Q35 should be supported, but OpenSolaris 2009.06 could not boot from mine Q35 ...

2)Solid network and wireless stack(see 1)
Have you tried using it with 3945abg?

I have tried, even (not so good working) driver on FreeBSD is far better then the one on OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD driver for that forks flawlessly ...

3)Great documentation
Not bad but not great, but at least better then Linux ;)

[jdereus]

I think OpenSolaris has very nice features that we can also enjoy see in FreeBSD these days; Container, Dtrace, ZFS, etc. And even it's own java-webserver. Luckily we have plenty of alternatives.

Currently, I don't think OpenSolaris is good enough regarding hardware support. Furthermore, now Oracle has the stocks and copyrights of SUN, there won't be much more commitment and contribution of CDDL licensed features to OpenSolaris. I'm afraid it will be all commercial for as long as it takes to realize that an actively participating community is a rich resource for the future.

[davidgurvich]

I've been testing openindiana. It's a fork based on snv_134 and is up to snv_148 right now. There is a lot of permissions flakiness which I think is connected to the install being a clone of the live media as that disappeared as soon as I powered off (not rebooted) then booted into a new environment.

Otherwise works well but definitely requires 2GB of ram or more. Ignore the system requirements that this will work with 512mb. Systems crash and freeze with 1GB of ram and work well with 2GB.

Seems more responsive than the last version of opensolaris I tried. Still the same issue with hardware. Great drivers for supported hardware and bad or no drivers for unsupported. As an example hardware acceleration didn't work with an ATI/AMD HD4850.

[gpatrick]

OpenSolaris had the most downloads of any of the branches, because it was built by Sun. Since Oracle has killed OpenSolaris and is taking an approach toward Solaris like IBM does with AIX; and that is large customers only with money. Which works for IBM because they control the Power hardware and don't have to worry about creating drivers for everything out there, and they don't need to spend money developing for different architectures. Suffice it to say, AIX is extremely stable and has excellent FFDC, and RAS features that are not available with other operating systems.

I really don't see people flocking to OpenIndiana or any of the other forks that were created like Belenix, Milax, NexentaOS, or Schillix. Some of them may have their following, but won't have the user base like the Sun-based OpenSolaris. I ran OpenSolaris and liked it, but by June I was saying that OpenSolaris was dead, something that was considered FUD on the opensolaris.org forums (but turned out to be true). I have no interest in running OpenIndiana because it is really an alpha product release, and I don't see where they have the resources to make a go of it like Sun was doing with OpenSolaris.

I'd like to download Solaris 11 Express, and may do so, but their license will keep me from running it, because I'm not going to pay a minimum of $1000/year for support.

[swirling_vortex]

I'd like to download Solaris 11 Express, and may do so, but their license will keep me from running it, because I'm not going to pay a minimum of $1000/year for support.
The download is free, however, you can't get any updates unless you pay for support or wait until the next release. The repository that comes with it is extremely limited in that the stuff that's in there are the same packages that's on the CD-ROM.

[sk8harddiefast]

Oracle Sucks!!! I am afraid for Solaris!!!

[Carpetsmoker]

Oracle Sucks!!! I am afraid for Solaris!!!

Very informative. Thank you for your meaningful insight!

[sossego]

What I had mentioned earlier- If I could get it to work. I'd let you know. That post is gone now- was and still is true.
Console drivers are missing from the express install. If you have SPARC/UltraSPARC systems, then you need a lot of standard Sun hardware including video, sound, and network cards. I had tried it a few years ago on x86 hardware and lacked the sufficient memory and a supported graphics card. No, I am not talking off of the top of my head. I've tried a few of the projects based on it; and, again, I lacked sufficient memory to run the systems.
OpenSolaris isn't dead. there are still active projects based on it. Oracle and Fujitsu are not planning on dropping the SPARC/SPARC64/UltraSPARC platform, they're improving on it. What's missing are enough people with the initiative and resources to return it to the Desktop/Workstation market. Someone had mentioned that there is no reason to fear a corporation because it is a mass of buildings, assets, and land. The statement remains true.
People are the only evil; and, in our own eyes, each one is innocent and pure. (This is a general statement to prove a point and not to pass judgment on all people.)
Again, if I get the proper equipment, I'll try it and tell you what I think of both the older and newer releases.