OpenSolaris Has Come On The Scene!

[Theoden]

Sun developers in their India division have come forth with a LiveCD version of the recently freed OpenSolaris OS called BeleniX. I am currently downloading the ISO as I write and will give it a run and write a short review in days to come.

If you are interested yourself, you can read about it here (http://belenix.sarovar.org/belenix_home.html), and get the ISO here (http://belenix.sarovar.org/belenix_download.html).

Isn't it great how *nix options continue to grow? Stayed tuned for more to come. ;)

--Theoden :cool:

[Theoden]

Tried it out ... it works!

More to come,

--Theoden :eek:

[AcidMeister]

YAY! ltrace to your heats content!! Oh wait they ported it to FreeBSD,,, although I wouldn't mind a sexy new sparc to run it on....

[natas]

I am very curious to see how well it performs as a server :)

[AcidMeister]

When I worked at an ISP (8 years ago) we were running Solaris, but honestly there is no point in running solaris unless you are on Sparc hardware the performance is unparallel where soalris is concerned.... I have used the X86 versions (last one was 10 i believe) and well I'm not too impressed... But it all depends on application I suppose, I may be implementing a SunRay server soon, should be kind interesting I really like sun's thin client model it works better than anything else I have seen.

[BobWoodshed]

I'm just curious as to what good a live Solaris distro really does? Yeah I guess you can see if it detects your hardware and loads XFCE, but what after that? OpenSolaris isn't exactly aimed at the desktop. I popped in Belenix a couple weeks ago and it hit me after taking an incredibly long time to load that I really couldn't find a use for a live OpenSolaris distro.

[AcidMeister]

It's a good O/S for servers that are expected to have a long lifespan, also it has some really neat tools and utilities for system administrators such as ltrace which has now been ported to BSD as long as another slew of tools since they went open source... But as a desktop disstribution, good luck... But seriously Solaris runs good on Sparc hardware, I suppose thats what happens when you build an operating system and processor around each other.

[Theoden]

The problem with you guys is you have no imagination. All of life is not 0's and 1's. Imagination moves beyond binary logic. :rolleyes:

You gotta think out of the box. I would suggest that if you can't think of any use for a LiveCD of OpenSolaris, or if you think you can't learn anything from booting up such a LiveCD ... well ... Welcome to "Field of Dreams." "If you build it they will come." :eek:

Now - go sit in the corner and think about that until you get it. :p

--Theoden ;)

[BobWoodshed]

Don't get me wrong, by no means do I think the creation of Belenix was a waste of time. However, Solaris in its current state isn't very useful as a live CD. If somebody wants to take OpenSoaris and turn it into a desktop system much like PC- and DesktopBSD did with FreeBSD then awesome. A live CD makes sense. Nobody is going to pop in a live CD and hope to run a server for 400 days at a time though.

So I guess on a related tangent, who thinks this could or is going to lead to an OpenSolaris desktop movement?

[Theoden]

I most certainly do. There is already a considerable user community for OpenSolaris and it isn't even available as a complete OS yet. If you read BeleniX's statements on their website, their goal is to take BeleniX from a LiveCD to a HD install version and on to a complete desktop.

LiveCD's however, have revolutionized the way open source enthusiasts have been able to demonstrate to skeptics and n00bs the true ability and quality of open source software.

Don't knock the BeleniX folks. They are doing the right thing here in order to try and build a true OpenSolaris Desktop community.

Come on Bob ... not 'everything' is a BetaMax!

--Theoden :rolleyes:

[BobWoodshed]

Hey like I said, it's by no means a waste of time. I understand the incredible amount of time these guys must have put into the project to make OpenSolaris a live CD. I'll probably test out every version they release to check out their progress. It's just that past booting it up and dicking around for a couple minutes there's no other use in it's <I>current</I> state unless you want to run it as some sort of statement or just report as many bugs as possible.

Honestly though, I hope in time this site can maybe become Linux/BSD/Solaris Gangsters. Another choice is always a good thing.

[Theoden]

Now that LAST I can agree with!

-Theoden :D