Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 20th Jul 2009 19:16 UTC
The Linux desktop has come a long way. It's a fully usable, stable, and secure operating system that can be used quite easily by the masses. Not too long ago, Sun figured they could do the same by starting Project Indiana, which is supposed to deliver a complete distribution of OpenSolaris in a manner similar to GNU/Linux. After using the latest version for a while, I'm wondering: why?
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Member since:
2005-07-06
I'm curious as to what you define as 'slow' installation. For example, on three different systems I've tried installation completes in fifteen minutes or less.
If you have a time significantly longer than that, then there's a good chance you've encountered a bug. However, without more information it is difficult to assess your installation issue.
OpenSolaris is primarily targeted at developers, so if you're not a developer, I could also see why you don't believe that it doesn't offer anything beyond many GNU/Linux distributions.
However, if you're a developer, it offers a lot more:
* a free, professionally supported compiler suite (Sun Studio)
* DTrace
* complete documentation for system programming interfaces
* stable kernel API and ABI (drivers and programs written twenty years ago or more will still work on many systems)
With that said, OpenSolaris does offer a few unique things that GNU/Linux distributions don't have to users that aren't developers: time slider, low-overhead quasi-virtualization with zones, xen support, and starting with build 117 (the /dev release of OpenSolaris) a sound system that natively supports surround sound and virtual audio mixing (and doesn't rely on user-space hacks like pulseaudio).
As for the package management system, it's still under heavy development and design. There are many improvements still needed, but I think with time it will offer some unique functionality not offered by other systems (some of which can already be seen).