Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 16th Dec 2005 23:13 UTC, submitted by dbprice
Sun Solaris, OpenSolaris Solaris Express 12/2005 (derived from Nevada Build 27) was posted recently, providing a variety of improvements. ZFS and the "Yosemite" UDP performance project were added. Roughly 700 bugs were fixed. You can obtain a free download. An overview of new features is also available.
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Finished downloading it.
by Anonymous on Sat 17th Dec 2005 01:27 UTC
Anonymous
Member since:
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Am now installing it. We will see if it was really worth the wait.

Reply Score: 0

ZFS
by poundsmack on Sat 17th Dec 2005 01:29 UTC
poundsmack
Member since:
2005-07-13

this is gona be good...

Reply Score: 1

Great!
by jjmckay on Sat 17th Dec 2005 01:30 UTC
jjmckay
Member since:
2005-11-11

I've been using computers for 22 years now and happen to like Solaris a lot. I've seen a lot of good operating systems and bad and think Solaris is one of the best for what it aims to do.

Thanks Sun and to the Solaris Express project! I'm excited for your work.

I'm going to play with this release and hopefully learn some things about solaris zones.

Reply Score: 1

I donno !! why they call it free !!
by Anonymous on Sat 17th Dec 2005 02:30 UTC
Anonymous
Member since:
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It takes hell of time to register ! and if you were lucky to register, you won't be lucky downloading it while the server is always down:-s

Reply Score: 0

Robert Escue Member since:
2005-07-08

In the two+ years that I have been downloading Solaris Express, this is the first time I have had any difficulty with the download site.

And the registration does not take that long, it is only one page and asks just a few questions.

Reply Score: 1

kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

Just a guess; maybe its because its the version with ZFS been made available, and thus, every man and his dog wishes to give it a 'whirl'.

As a side note, can you boot of a ZFS?

Reply Score: 1

Robert Escue Member since:
2005-07-08

No you can't, I have already checked into that.

Reply Score: 2

Duffman Member since:
2005-11-23

Yes it is too sad, I was hoping for this feature :'(

Edited 2005-12-17 17:31

Reply Score: 1

dbprice Member since:
2005-08-08

We're working on ZFS boot! It just didn't make the first version. Trust us, we want to leave UFS behind too. See Tabriz's Blog: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tabriz?entry=zfs_boot
on the ZFS boot project which is currently in the works. We also need to make a lot of changes to jumpstart, the installer, etc. to support this, so it's a big project.

Reply Score: 1

Anonymous Member since:
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Is this will be ready for the next release of Solaris (in January I think) or not ?


I want iiiiiiiiiiittttt ! :-)

Reply Score: 0

aliquis Member since:
2005-07-23

The registration process is quite fast and I already have an account, also when I downloaded it I constantly maxed my then 10mbps.

I installed it to but as workstation OS, the few problems I had is that the scheduler doesn't seem that geared for a desktop, as soon as I used the disk I got quite unsnappy performance from the desktop, also I need to have a sip-phone working, I almost got kphone working and it might be possible with a little more work but then the risk is I'll have similair problems later. Blastwave.org got quite a few packages but they doesn't have all software there is, and this might be the last problem, quite a few missing open-source apps ported/as packages.

I think I'll go with freebsd or ubuntu or something as desktop instead and use solaris for a server and run x remotly from that one instead.

Reply Score: 1

aliquis Member since:
2005-07-23

Oh, forgot to mention one thing, the nice guys in #opensolaris asked if it was an USB mouse and since it was they told me to edit some file to raise the priority of it or whatever, so I guess that thing is easily fixed, more ready to install open-source software would still be nice thought.

How many of you are actually running Solaris as desktop/development workstation?

Reply Score: 1

Anonymous Member since:
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I run Solaris with VMware on Slackware so I can learn my way around the system by doing mostly Desktop-type stuff and a little bit of OS patching and configuring.

I like it very much and might try to run it natively if I get a supported hard disc controller or another computer to install it onto.

Reply Score: 0

hmm
by poundsmack on Sat 17th Dec 2005 02:58 UTC
poundsmack
Member since:
2005-07-13

this is a little random but i hope sun makes a new GUI for solaris. something QT 4 based and simple yet functional.

Edited 2005-12-17 02:58

Reply Score: 1

RE: hmm
by zizban on Sat 17th Dec 2005 03:06 UTC in reply to "hmm"
zizban Member since:
2005-07-06

What do you have in mind? They already have the Gnome based JDS.

Reply Score: 1

RE: hmm
by The Lone OSer on Sat 17th Dec 2005 03:14 UTC
The Lone OSer
Member since:
2005-07-11

I can't see why people over-look wxWidgets as an API for a desktop, it's sooo feature packed, very easy to code for and fast. I think just because Qt is used in KDE, and Gtk in Gnome, they are all people think about... There are other GREAT alternatives to those two out there ;)

To the Sun guys...
Keep em rolling out folk, GREAT JOB ;)

Reply Score: 1

RE[2]: hmm
by poundsmack on Sat 17th Dec 2005 04:21 UTC in reply to "RE: hmm"
poundsmack Member since:
2005-07-13

actualy i really like wxwidgets.....

Reply Score: 1

RE[2]: hmm
by rayiner on Sat 17th Dec 2005 07:33 UTC in reply to "RE: hmm"
rayiner Member since:
2005-07-06

The issue is that WxWidgets is a wrapper over some other API, so the fundamental choice still comes down to Qt and GTK+.

Reply Score: 1

JDS
by Anonymous on Sat 17th Dec 2005 04:28 UTC
Anonymous
Member since:
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Which version of JDS in this release?

Reply Score: 0

Attn rayiner: re: hmm
by The Lone OSer on Sat 17th Dec 2005 07:39 UTC
The Lone OSer
Member since:
2005-07-11

Hi rayiner,
That used to be the case, now wxWidgets has what is called wxUniversal which does not rely on another API below it, iirc SciTech were the sponsors for this project as it was used to get wxWidgets over to MGL, but it runs on X, and even Win32 etc.

Reply Score: 1

Solaris benchmarking
by Anonymous on Sat 17th Dec 2005 07:59 UTC
Anonymous
Member since:
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Is one able to download Solaris Express or OpenSolaris
and use it to do performance comparisons with other
systems and publish the results?

Reply Score: 0

RE: Solaris benchmarking
by Robert Escue on Sat 17th Dec 2005 08:05 UTC in reply to "Solaris benchmarking"
Robert Escue Member since:
2005-07-08

Direct that question to the forums on opensolaris.org.

Reply Score: 1

RE: hmm
by LB06 on Sat 17th Dec 2005 08:40 UTC
LB06
Member since:
2005-07-06

That's bull. Sun/Solaris shouldn't be concerned with making some GUI environment from scratch. They should do what they do best: engineering operating systems.

Reply Score: 1

RE: hmm
by The Lone OSer on Sat 17th Dec 2005 09:58 UTC
The Lone OSer
Member since:
2005-07-11

Thats one argument.. however, dont forget SunOS is the OS, Solaris is SunOS+GUI etc in a package iirc.
I personally don't see any reason why Sun should NOT go for the more desktop user approach - Solaris is a known, supported, very good OS, and Apple made a dramatic step in to the world market with their own Unix OS and GUI; so I see no reason why Sun should not do the same... Just because it has a good UI, doesn't mean it's not a good engineering OS ;)

Reply Score: 1

Registering Problems?
by Anonymous on Sat 17th Dec 2005 10:44 UTC
Anonymous
Member since:
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Try http://www.bugmenot.com/ .
A nice Firefox extension is available too!

Reply Score: 0

RE: RE: hmm
by LB06 on Sat 17th Dec 2005 16:03 UTC
LB06
Member since:
2005-07-06

That's correct, and I think they made a step in the proper direction with JDS. But to design and implement a whole new GUI based on Qt4? I'd be teriffic if they did, but I do not think they have the desire nor the resources to do so.

Reply Score: 1

RE[2]: RE: hmm
by Simba on Sat 17th Dec 2005 18:20 UTC in reply to "RE: RE: hmm"
Simba Member since:
2005-10-08

"That's correct, and I think they made a step in the proper direction with JDS. But to design and implement a whole new GUI based on Qt4?"

They won't. Because of Qt's licensing. If they had based the standard desktop on Qt rather than Gtk, they would have locked all of their commercial software partners into having to pay extremely high licensing fees to license the Qt toolkit for each of their GUI developers.

I suspect the Qt vs. Gtk licensing issue is the main reason KDE lost out to Gnome at becoming the standard Unix desktop. It might be possible to argue that KDE is more popular anyway on Linux. And that might be true. But Gnome is the one that has all the industry backing such as Sun, IBM, HP, and Red Hat. Sun has full time developers assigned to work on Gnome, as does Red Hat of course.

Reply Score: 2

RE[3]: RE: hmm
by Anonymous on Sun 18th Dec 2005 11:06 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: RE: hmm"
Anonymous Member since:
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I think your assuming that Sun would require vendors
to compile with QT which they could still offer the
LGPL version of Gnome. Ironic that Sun ships Mysql
but dosn't require commercial vendors of databases
into a cluase of using Mysql as the database. QT
has it advantages in delivering on embedded
platforms, i.e. pda's a cell phones. GTK and Gnome
still has to come up with a strategy for these
platforms. If they ever will. KDE is really a
logical progression of CDE while Gnome is still
finding it's roots.

Reply Score: 0

RE[4]: RE: hmm
by Simba on Sun 18th Dec 2005 17:28 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: RE: hmm"
Simba Member since:
2005-10-08

"I think your assuming that Sun would require vendors
to compile with QT"

No. I'm not assuming that. Vendors could of course build applications using Gtk that ran under KDE.

What I am assuming though, is that vendors would want to produce applications that integrated well with the desktop, followed the standard look and feel of the desktop, etc. And running Gtk applications under KDE, and Qt applications under Gnome, often looks gross and out of place. As a general rule, Qt applications look and feel a lot more "correct" under KDE, and Gtk applications look and feel a lot more "correct" under Gnome.

Reply Score: 1

RE[3]: RE: hmm
by LB06 on Sat 17th Dec 2005 18:46 UTC
LB06
Member since:
2005-07-06

My original reaction was directed at poundsmack. He said that Sun ought to create an new GUI based on Qt4. I actually did not have anything to say about Qt/GTK, I just wanted to say that it is unlikely that Sun will develop one.

Reply Score: 1