Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 20th Jul 2009 19:16 UTC

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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).