A few days ago OpenSolaris 2008.05 was released. It is the first stable release of Project Indiana and may the considered the first major OpenSolaris release since Sun announced Solaris was going open source a few years ago. Personally I never expected OpenSolaris to work, considering the immense momentum GNU/Linux was gathered. However with Ian Murdock(Debian’s creator) in charge and Sun’s financial backing Project Indiana was bound to deliver us some impovements… With the advent of IPS(Image Packaging System), the polishing done on the desktop side and the inclusion of some very helpful software packages(like the radeonhd driver for example) in the main distribution OpenSolaris has become a serious contender for a workstation OS. Especially for Java developers… There are many reviews of the new OS on the net, most of which are favourable. All of this got me considering to try OpenSolaris 2008.05 on one of my computers at home and see for myself if it is a viable alternative to GNU/Linux. If you are considering like to me to take OpenSolaris 2008.05 for a spin you may find this short article, containing a few tips for common post installation tasks, helpful.
Tags: OpenSolaris
