How is the hardware support? Would I have to put a system together piece-by-piece AND troubleshoot it just to use this OS?

I'm running OpenSolaris 2008.05 flawlessly on a X48 based mainboard, C2Q, NVidia 8800GT, Intel PRO1000 and a Xonar. Mainstream stuff, more or less.

Well, the Xonar requires OSS, but still works fine.

But seriously, hardware support isn't as good as in Linux, but unless you use archaic or exotic hardware, you shouldn't run into much issues. The LiveCD comes with the DDU tool to check what hardware is supported or not.

There's one huge IMO f--k up though, no Marvell Yukon chip driver. A not so uncommon onboard network chip.

Opensolaris is more of a differentiating feature for Sun to sell with their products, rather than a direct linux competitor. And this isn't a coincidence, because this is exactly what Sun is trying to do with it.

You could say that the world is developing linux distros, but only Sun is developing Opensolaris. (regardless of how they spin the open source angle.) Sun doesn't have the resources to compete with all the people developing linux, and even though they're trying to share in those resources by going open source, they don't necessarily need them. I expect that Opensolaris is already selling Sun products and gaining them positive mindshare...

The Linux community plodded along, but as things gradually improved, more programmers came on board, it gained more traction and more users came as a result of that. OpenSolaris has only been open for something like 2-3 years. Given that Solaris x86 went from nothing to something, then from that something to opensource - I'm not surprised that there will be some catch up to do in terms of building community.

I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but since you brought linux into it, I feel the need to point out that there is one substantial difference. The linux kernel does not require copyright assignment for code contribution. Although people often gloss over that fact, I firmly believe that is a substantial reason why it has garned the support it has from major contributors like IBM, HP, Oracle, Intel et al.

It's a great thing that Sun did, opening their source to the community. I don't want to detract from that. But if they truly want to build a community, there has to be reciprocity.

THAT is what built linux. If Linus had a requirement that said copyright had to be assigned to him while he reserved the right to relicense at will for future releases, he would never have gained the level of support he did for his project.

I KNOW! lets all have a big f--king teletubbie doll with a touchscreen in its belly, then we can have various hotkeys located around its body. OH! i got one more stroke of brilliance going here, maybe instead of having a reset button, we just have a G-meter in its head, and if we punch it really hard in the head, it means we want a cold reboot!

YES! lets invent brand new shit, to replace what we currently have developed over the past 40 years, which works pretty damn good.

There's one huge IMO f--k up though, no Marvell Yukon chip driver. A not so uncommon onboard network chip.

You put both your copyright and a Sun copyright too. Again, what is horrifying about that? you still own your code whilst 'donating' the code to the 'community'. Which sorry to repeat it, again, leaves me confused as to the purpose of the above - because it makes no logical sense whining over something as trivial as it.

As for HP, IBM and so forth; it started from the ground level, and the ground level got into Linux because it was a cheap, good enough UNIX clone - it had nothing to do with any so-called 'community aspirations'.

Again, based on what? it seems to be that your arguing semantics without actually explaining why it is important. Yes, you retain copyright whilst assigning copyright to another person, what is wrong with that? lets say you contribute some code, substantial amount. In 5 years time you're hit by a steam roller and it just so happens the project wishes to relicence to Widget version 2.0 - the whole project grinds to a halt because obviously you can't vote one way or another from beyond the grave.

When you're using 30 or nearly 40 year old computing principles, there's always copying to be done. Linux, Solaris and BSD are all derivative of Unix, which began in 1969.