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, 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.

UPDATE - I've decided to give OpenSolaris a little fairer shot by dusting off my old IDE Western Digital harddrive and installing it on Rig 2. It loses points for not working with my more modern hardware, but I was curious how it would do otherwise.

Install (VM):

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.

After logging in, I was brought to the default desktop. It's pretty much a slightly-rebranded version of Gnome. There wasn't much to report there.

UPDATE - After revisiting this section for the Rig 2 redo, I realized that I had accidentally left the ISO mounted the first few times I played with this OS.

In my own defense, it's easy to do in a VM when there's no physical disc or tray to pop out. Nevertheless, it was a mistake. I've removed the sections regarding my difficulties due to this.

Install (IDE Rig 2):

With an IDE harddrive plugged in, OpenSolaris had very few qualms with Rig 2. I checked the Driver Utility and it showed only two things that would give me issues: the SATA controller (which is what grounded my first attempt) and my Broadcom wireless card (which even Linux has issues with sometimes).

The install went about the same as on the VM with two exceptions: OpenSolaris contains both a 32-bit and 64-bit kernel on the disc, and will install whichever it detects as appropriate.

For my VM it did 32-bit, and for Rig 2 it did 64-bit. This is a neat feature. It's not new to Solaris (Solaris Express 11 had it too) but it's still neat.

The other difference was that I saw the Nvidia bootsplash when the LiveCD loaded. I was curious if this would carry over to the install. It did.

On reboot I timed the period from GRUB screen to graphical login at one minute twenty seconds. That's pretty long compared to some Linux distributions I've used.

For a server that's only down fifteen minutes a year that's probably acceptable. End users aren't so forgiving.

Nvidia drivers were installed, but the only thing I could find to test them with was Compiz, which wobbled and zoomed and faded in and out as expected. There were no media codecs at all that I could tell (no MPG, MP3, or WMV), which meant I also wasn't able to test my sound.

The Driver Utility indicated no issues with it, so I imagine it probably would have just been a matter of finding an OGG or WAV somewhere.

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.

Compiz Configuration Settings Manager was also installed, which is something all distributions that use Compiz should include (hear that Ubuntu?).

Conclusion:

OpenSolaris suffers from a couple major issues right now: device drivers and obscurity. The fact that I can't install it *at all* on my desktop (without digging up an old harddrive) doesn't endear it to me, nor will it anyone else who has my Serial ATA chipset. I can't speak to how well it works on others.

It's also yet another OS for which you'd have to rally support, be it for commercial software or hardware drivers. Sun alone doesn't have the muscle in my opinion to get as many companies to write drivers for it as the combined commercial Linux vendors.

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.