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OpenSolaris 2008.05 released
I'm proud to announce that the first release of the OpenSolaris (TM) operating system, OpenSolaris 2008.05 is now available to download http://www.opensolaris.com/get/ As you'll notice, we've also launched a new site for users, www.opensolaris.com . OpenSolaris 2008.05 is a Live CD, allowing users to experience OpenSolaris immediately, without the need to install it to their systems. When ready, installation is a single click away with a new improved easy-to-use installer. This release also introduces IPS, a new network based package management system, allowing users to install additional software from the network. ZFS is also the default root file-system, allowing unique snapshot and rollback features, especially useful during system upgrade. OpenSolaris 2008.05 has a significantly improved user environment, in particular for those familiar with other Linux distributions. Try it out, report a bug and tell us what you think http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/indiana/resources/ reporting_bugs/ The download is also available through a number of mirrors, listed here - http://blogs.sun.com/sch/entry/2008_05_more_ways_to and I'd like to thank the mirror maintainers for their continued support. I'd finally like to thank each and everyone who contributed to this release, and the long hours they've put in over several months - you guys rock! Enjoy! Glynn (Log in to post comments)
OpenSolaris 2008.05 released Posted May 6, 2008 14:49 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] This is sun's former "project Indiana". So OpenSolaris is now also the trademarked name for sun's own implementation of OpenSolaris. Sun seems to still have problems with giving up control of things they claim to have set free.
OpenSolaris 2008.05 released Posted May 6, 2008 16:09 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] The prefix "open" has a long and sordid history in the Unix-like space. When AT&T and Sun finally did something about the ancient BSD/USG divide and produced System V release 4, combining BSD and System V, the other Unix vendors felt threatened and created a rival unification, which they called OSF, the Open Software Foundation, which, of course, was not open at all (and created a great deal of confusion, since this was after the Free Software Foundation had been up and running for a while). The Unix sales droids all promoted the concept of "open systems", so DEC, feeling threatened, renamed its thoroughly proprietary VMS operating system to OpenVMS, and of course it was no more open than before.So, if Sun wants the OpenSolaris name, they can have it.
Gave it a shot Posted May 6, 2008 16:35 UTC (Tue) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link] I gave the liveCD a spin. On the face of it, it's GNOME, you wouldn't know that anything other than Linux (or BSD) were running underneath. Looking a little closer, the device manager is something different, and it was quite nice actually, GUI-wise. Much better than similar programs in most Linux distros (and in particular Ubuntu). No idea how well it works on various hardware, but it seemed ok on mine (even if it did give an 'error' due to my not having a joystick). Otherwise, the liveCD seemed snappier than other GNOME liveCD's I've tried. It might be my imagination, though, so I'm curious if other people felt that as well. Regarding packages: I was interested to see how that worked, but couldn't find a graphical package manager. A little work on the commandline was testing my patience (my fault, of course, I am too used to the GNU/Linux tools), so I didn't look much into it, but I did scan the list at pkg.opensolaris.org. This is the main sticking point for my considering installing OpenSolaris, as apparently many must-have apps (must-have for me, I mean) are missing, for example LaTeX (/tetex/texLive). Obviously it isn't fair to compare OpenSolaris to say Debian, which has been in the business of maintaining comprehensive repos for quite some time now. Perhaps eventually OpenSolaris will get there, I'm willing to give it a shot once it has enough apps for me to do my day-to-day routine.
Gave it a shot Posted May 6, 2008 19:03 UTC (Tue) by mheily (guest, #27123) [Link] I tried it last night on a Dell laptop, and the results were much better than I expected. It boots quickly, the Gnome desktop environment feels very responsive, and the default theme is pleasing to look at. The Broadcom gigabit ethernet wasn't supported, but it detected the Intel wireless and even automatically joined a WPA2 network. Sound was broken also. Looking forward to trying it on a machine with fully supported hardware.
Gave it a shot Posted May 7, 2008 14:33 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] > and the default theme is pleasing to look at. Here's a screenshot for anyone who's interested: http://content.zdnet.com/2347-10532_22-199935-199980.html...
Gave it a shot Posted May 6, 2008 19:45 UTC (Tue) by evgeny (guest, #774) [Link] Is it 32 or 64 bits? I can't find any mention of arch on that page.
Gave it a shot Posted May 6, 2008 21:42 UTC (Tue) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] The sole comment in the FAQ is that it's for both. I've not seen any details as to how it knows what to do. Sun don't say what would happen if you have an AMD64 chip and want to run i386... k3n.
Gave it a shot Posted May 8, 2008 3:23 UTC (Thu) by mgerdts (guest, #27726) [Link] When Solaris added 64-bit support (Solaris 7 - around 1997), they did so by making it so that a 32-bit and a 64-bit kernel + modules exist. If the system is booted using the 32-bit kernel, it can use only 32-bit executables. If booted with the 64-bit kernel, it can run 32-bit or or 64-bit executables. Traditionally 32-bit executables and libraries have had a performance edge over 64-bit presumably because the 64-bit processors of 5 - 10 years ago were optimized for the more common 32-bit case. As such, nearly all of the executables on Solaris are 32-bit. In circumstances where an executable will benefit from being 64-bit, Solaris tends to include a 32-bit and a 64-bit variant. This tends to be things that may need to deal with data structures passed from the kernel (e.g. ps uses /proc/<pid>/* which are data structures) and as such a 32-bit or 64-bit variant is chosen at runtime based upon which kernel is booted. Google isaexec if you are interested. Beginning with Solaris 10, the 32-bit kernel was dropped from SPARC but userland is still mostly 32-bit. On x86 both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels are available. OpenSolaris is the next step after Solaris 10 and has the same characteristics as Solaris 10 in this regard, with the exception that the 2008.05 release only supports x86 (32-bit and 64-bit). SPARC support is coming, but for now you need to use Solaris Express to run the SunOS 5.11 kernel and userland. The isainfo command will tell you information about whether the running kernel is 32-bit or 64-bit and whether the system can support 32-bit and/or 64-bit executables. The file command will tell you whether an executable is 32-bit or 64-bit. If you look closely in /usr/bin, you will see that there are several files that are hard links and are actually wrappers that call the isaexec() function to run the command from the architecture-specific subdirectory of /usr/bin.
Gave it a shot Posted May 8, 2008 4:02 UTC (Thu) by mgerdts (guest, #27726) [Link] For a GUI package manager, select System->Administration->Package Manager. Or, if you are feeling old school, packagemanager is the command name. For a wider variety of free software, you could take a look at Blastwave. It provides a utility called pkg-get which is an apt work-a-like. Blastwave does not yet have a stable ips server, but the SysV packages should install just fine on OpenSolaris. FWIW, several months back I did install tetex on Solaris 10 using Blastwave. It was quite easy and the tests that I (a latex user from long ago) and a current latex user did showed that it worked as expected.
OpenSolaris 2008.05 released Posted May 6, 2008 18:03 UTC (Tue) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link] I've been studiously ignoring "OpenSolaris" because I heard once that it would be a distribution that was "non-free" in some important sense or other. Now, however, I can't remember what that important sense was. Aside from the irritation about them claiming the name "OpenSolaris", which they had previously offered to various Solaris distributions, I'm not aware of any actual Freedom problem with this distribution. On the other hand, I'm perfectly happy with my Ubuntu-derived Nexenta distribution, so I'm not going to bother investigating OpenSolaris for now.
OpenSolaris 2008.05 released Posted May 6, 2008 20:12 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] >Now, however, I can't remember what that important sense was. To build opensolaris(.org) you need some binary-only bits. You also needed to use the sun c-compiler and toolchain, which are not Free Software (although this doesn't make the codebase itself non-free). Sun should be credited though for making what seems a genuine effort to make and keep the base-system at least compilable with gcc. This is for building the opensolaris.org O/N consolidation, but opensolaris(tm) is probably based on that, so the non-free bits should carry over.
OpenSolaris 2008.05 released Posted May 8, 2008 3:35 UTC (Thu) by mgerdts (guest, #27726) [Link] The non-free bits are part of the motivation behind the Indiana project and the replacement of the packaging, installation, patching, upgrade, etc. portions. Rather than re-implement the existing tools as free tools, the Image Packaging System (ips) is improving them in ways that anyone that has used apt (et. al.) would expect. ZFS provides excellent ways to provide safe upgrades/patching with the ability to roll-back with a simple reboot. There are other non-free bits hanging around, but at least they have now eliminated enough that the non-free bits are redistributable. That is, it is legal for you to mirror the live CD. I'm not sure that is the case for the software repository being hosted at pkg.opensolaris.org as I see that Sun Studio (compilers, debuggers, IDE, etc.) has been added there. It really seems that inertia is the only thing keeping the remaining non-free bits around in the base OS. The inertia is probably a lot greater for the things that you care the least about (e.g. certain device drivers specific to a 72 processor sparc box).
other Linux distributions Posted May 6, 2008 18:29 UTC (Tue) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] "other Linux distributions"? I don't think OpenSolaris is a Linux distribution.
other Linux distributions Posted May 6, 2008 19:58 UTC (Tue) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] This was definitely the funniest part, I agree. All these Linux distributions like FreeBSD and OpenSolaris... Linux is a _bit_ too dominant as a brand, even though it's a nice brand and Tux is cute. Some "Libre software free-as-a-bird" type of brand would be a bit closer to telling the real message through. Though it's nicer to have a friendly penguin than eg. a gnu as the most known mascot, since the GNU logo does not have any more message in it, and same goes for a red Beastie etc.
other Linux distributions Posted May 6, 2008 22:14 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Years ago I knew this sort of thing was going to happen. Used to be you'd see people call Linux a Unix-like operating system when they tried to explain what it was. Another two years it's going to be Unix (BSD, Solaris, etc) that will be a Linux-like operating system. such is the effect of mindshare.
other Linux distributions Posted May 7, 2008 5:41 UTC (Wed) by pjdc (subscriber, #6906) [Link] Another two years it's going to be Unix (BSD, Solaris, etc) that will be a Linux-like operating system.Yep, that boat's been coming about for a while now.
other Linux distributions Posted May 8, 2008 7:35 UTC (Thu) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link] I see already the trend coming in popular press to call Ubuntu a Linux distribution.
OpenSolaris 2008.05 released, KDE version? Posted May 6, 2008 23:40 UTC (Tue) by csawtell (subscriber, #986) [Link] I would like to try this out, but I'm addicted to KDE. Do I have to build it? Or are there binaries somwhere?
CDDL Posted May 7, 2008 14:06 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] When they finally decide to license it under the GPLv3, as was floated some time back, I might take a look. Back in the day, when I used Solaris at work, it was almost a necessity to install GNU tools if you wanted the experience to be a sane one, so it's good to see that even Sun realise this now. And not having to manually download and apply patches finally brings Solaris into the 21st century (if we're being charitable about the timeline).
CDDL Posted May 8, 2008 3:45 UTC (Thu) by mgerdts (guest, #27726) [Link] Does the lack of a GPL license keep you from using FreeBSD or FireFox? Even if OpenSolaris goes to GPLv3, I'm pretty sure you will find that there is little or no cross-pollination with Linux. The last I heard (admittedly, I haven't looked in several months) Linus and gang were quite clear that Linux was GPLv2 only. According the FSF, GPLv3 and GPLv2 are incompatible. The biggest thing that OpenSolaris going to GPLv3 would do for the Linux world is make it clear that the Linux license is the reason that Sun's ZFS, Dtrace, SMF, FMA, etc. code can't be ported to Linux.
CDDL Posted May 8, 2008 5:44 UTC (Thu) by pjdc (subscriber, #6906) [Link] The biggest thing that OpenSolaris going to GPLv3 would do for the Linux world is make it clear that the Linux license is the reason that Sun's ZFS, Dtrace, SMF, FMA, etc. code can't be ported to Linux.That's not the conclusion I would draw from a two for two record in the willful selection of Linux-incompatible licences.
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