TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

This is one OS that pretty much came out of the blue. The last time I looked at Sun Microsystems' Solaris was waaay back when the only free option was Solaris "Express" beta builds.

Back then obtaining Solaris required several click-through license agreements, several strangely-divided pieces you had to merge together, and a lot of work to install, all for a system that looked cutting-edge for 1989.

When I heard that Debian founder Ian Murdock was on board for a more desktop-oriented version of Solaris, I simply had to give it a try. Solaris is a UNIX-derivative, a direct descendant of System V. It's just different enough to be interesting to me.

Sadly, I was only able to rant on this using a virtual machine, because my serial ATA harddrive controller wasn't recognized by OpenSolaris. There was a pretty little Driver Utility on the disc that cheerfully told me it couldn't detect my harddrive.

The utility was actually pretty useful for determining whether or not OpenSolaris would work on a machine. I booted the CD in Rig 4 and it told me it could install, but I wouldn't have any sound.

Install:

A graphical GRUB prompt greeted me and after some time booting I was asked via a text menu to choose my keyboard layout and language.

That brought me to a desktop whose prominent feature was a very large End-User License Agreement. Apparently Sun hasn't disposed of those. I read through it. It was basically just Sun's CDDL license, which is similar but not identical to the GPL.

The installer itself reminded me of Redhat's Anaconda, with more of a Java 7 look and feel to it. (Yes, I meant Java 7, the beta.)

This is probably an odd thing to notice, but the time zone selection screen was pretty to me. What can I say, I guess I'm just used to the same old time zone screen from Ubuntu and the like and I was glad to see something different.

I set up the root password, regular user and hostname, chose to use the entire disk, and I was off. After the install I was asked to reboot.

Interestingly, although I was asked to create a regular user, the system automatically logged me in as a "Default User" named Jack. I wasn't given the option to log in as anyone else during the boot process.

I logged out and attempted to log in using the regular user I set up during the install, but I was told the username/password was invalid. I decided to reboot and try to delete and re-add my regular user while logged in as "Jack."

I've received one rather rude email suggesting that the reason for this was that I hadn't removed the LiveCD. This was not the case. I noticed that the default user was Jack on the LiveCD and made it a point to take out the disc before rebooting. I was still logged in as Jack by default.

I would also like to address the fellow who wrote this email and told me to "go back to Windows." If you would be so kind as to read my site a bit more you'd realize I do not use Windows at all on my personal computers. If anyone else is so inclined as to write me an email saying something to this effect, I suggest you "go back to the rock from under which you crawled."

I discovered via the "Users and Groups" window that my regular user hadn't even been created. Perhaps there was a button I missed during the install? I re-created my regular user.

Another annoyance I ran into was that for some reason every time I rebooted, I kept getting asked for my keyboard layout and language, as though they weren't being persisted.

I understand the need for this on the LiveCD, but once it is installed this shouldn't be necessary. The EULA displayed every time I rebooted as well.

I noticed the return of something that disappeared from GNOME a while back and I greatly miss: the open terminal command in the right-click menu.

When I attempted to shut down I was informed that my newly-created user didn't have permission. This was probably my fault, since I created the user from the GUI panel and I haven't the first clue how permissions work in Solaris.

Software Selection:

I was a little shocked to see that OpenOffice (based on Sun's very own StarOffice code) was not included in the default install. Most of the other applications were the default GNOME standards.

Java, but not GCC was installed by default. I'm not particularly surprised by that. One notable addition was the Nvidia control panel.

Conclusion:

It seems obvious to me that OpenSolaris was meant as a LiveCD distribution first, and a standalone OS second. There are some strange behaviors present in the desktop install that need ironing out before I can use it regularly. The fact that I can't install it *at all* on my desktop doesn't help.

That aside, it's always exciting to see a major player make a new offering to the open-source world. The much-needed visual refresh has brought Solaris out of the CDE stone age and made it look like something new, even if the code base traces its lineage back to mainframe UNIX.

Unfortunately, past the new gloss I can't see any real advantage for me in using OpenSolaris over any of the hundreds of Linux distributions already out there.

If Sun wants to make progress with me, they'll need to come up with some sort of compelling argument as to the virtues of Solaris over Linux. Without a strong differentiator, it will be easy for the Linux world at large to dismiss OpenSolaris as just another GNOME-centric distro.