Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 5th May 2008 17:12 UTC, submitted by Dale Smoker
OpenSolaris 2008.5, the new distribution based on the OpenSolaris operating system, has been released into the wild. This release follows the conventions set by many of the popular Linux distributions, such as being based on a single live CD with installer, but also adds a load of OpenSolaris-specific features such as ZFS, DTrace, Containers, and a new package management system, IPS. OpenSolaris 2008.5 is the fruit of Project Indiana.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
We've been through ZFS before. Some of its features are a bit neater than existing solutions, but alas, a lot of Solaris folks think it's the second coming of Christ. It isn't, and they get mighty upset at anyone who thinks that it isn't.
As I've pointed out before, snapshotting isn't as free as the ZFS folks want to make it look because you still need to account for differences between the original and the snapshot. If you don't have the space to safely account for a snapshot, and changes between it and the original, you will have trouble. On a desktop, that is nearly always the case.
You're going to need a lot more than that to attract users, because people would rather updates just, you know, worked. It's a transparent thing.
Blah, blah, blah, Mac OS X crops up. Shock, horror. Linux is used on more desktops than Solaris is, and the bottom line is, if you want to sell Solaris to those people (which is why OpenSolaris exists) then you're going to have to fix various things that Linux distros did years ago.
If you believe that educating users that a backspace doesn't delete text is acceptable then you need a padded cell. Seriously.
You're very, very anxious about specifics, and people who do that don't want to face the bigger picture.
Bottom line is that if you are selling OpenSolaris to some people already using Linux, and expect them to contribute to OpenSolaris (which is what Sun is hoping), then giving people less functionality than what they have now with much the same software isn't really going to work.
I am somewhat suspicious of a company who runs around telling everyone that OpenSolaris is an open source project and is just like Linux, when it just isn't:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/ogb-discuss/2008-February/004...
It just smacks of marketing. It's OK. I don't expect you to read it.