OpenIndiana, the Illumos distribution for general use, has released its latest snapshot release, and there’s some really interesting things in there. To refresh your memory: Illumos is a fork of the final OpenSolaris release, based on Solaris 11, before Oracle closed Solaris back up. It’s been in development ever since that fateful day back in 2010, and several Illumos distributions with unique identities have sprung up around the project. OpenIndiana is one of them, and functions like a rolling release with a snapshot release every six months.
OpenIndiana 2025.10 was released today, and this snapshot’s changelog covers changes over the past six months. It comes with all the latest open source packages you would expect, like the latest or at least very recent versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and much more, but the GNOME version (44.4 from 2023) is definitely a bit outdated. There’s a ton new utilities written in Rust, and the usual bug and security fixes as well, like for crucial utilities such as OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and things like Python versions 3.14 3.13, 3.12, and 3.9.
A particularly interesting bullet point is maintenance work and improvements for Sun Ray support, and the changelog notes that these little thin clients are still popular among their users. I’m very deep into the world of Sun Rays at the moment, so reading that you can still use them through OpenIndiana is amazingly cool. There’s a Sun Ray metapackage that installs the necessary base components, allowing you to install Sun’s/Oracle’s original Sun Ray Server software on OpenIndiana. Even though MATE is the default desktop for OpenIndiana, the Sun Ray Server software does depend on a few GNOME components, so those will be pulled in.
I’ve definitely put this on my list, once I’m done with my current Sun Ray deep dive on Solaris 10.
If you’re interested in SPARC support, there’s quite a few machines that do work with the SPARC version of OpenIndiana, and recently, there’s been a lot of progress on this front. Running the SPARC version on various servers can work, but desktop use, say, on a Sun Ultra 45, is a bit more problematic due to boot issues and a lack of graphics drivers. The work is ongoing, though, and there’s been a ton of renewed interest.
as the author of the previously featured Sun Ray article (https://www.osnews.com/story/142677/servers-and-thin-clients-in-every-home-is-the-future-they-stole-from-us/), i am incredibly happy to see the OpenIndiana team make setting up the Sun Rays even easier!
GNOME? Why?
Solaris used to do GNOME since day one (of going open source).
I’m not sure they would have the resources to switch now.
But that was pre Gnome3, right? I mean, Current gnome is totally different from gnome2.
Yes,
This might be another reason why they stayed with that branch of desktop.
(Personally, I prefer GNOME2 over GNOME3)
MATE is the default desktop for OpenIndiana 2025.10 though
Isn’t MATE just Gnome 2.0 preservation?
More continuation of Gnome 2. Mate is getting ported to GTK3 and Wayland.
That is great. I will download it then.
But it was already said that starting GNOME 50 there will be only Wayland support.
GNOME 2 (now known as MATE)
Was OpenSolaris really based on Solaris 11? I thought it was only compatible with Solaris 10.
@Unopposed0108
> Was OpenSolaris really based on Solaris 11
The other way around. OpenSolaris was the development branch for Solaris and the “2.0” branch of OpenSolaris is what became Solaris 11. OpenSolaris was discontinued more than a year before Solaris 11 launched though so the finished Solaris 11 code was never public or Open Source. However, OpenSolaris and Solaris 11 are are very similar. For example, Solaris 10 uses the old SVR4 package format while both OpenSolaris and Solaris 11 use IPS.
OpenIndiana was announced before Solaris 11 was released. OpenSolaris was discontinued in August of 2010 with OpenIndiana being announced a month later. Solaris 11 was not released until November 2011.
OpenIndiana was not derived directly from Solaris 11 but rather from the last release of OpenSolaris. It is hard to know how much Solaris changed after OpenSolaris was discontinued.
The initial OpenIndiana announcement said “Our primary goal is to be a binary and package compatible drop in replacement for the official OpenSolaris and forthcoming Solaris 11”. Again though, they said that before Solaris 11 was released.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160729202718/http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/Press+Release
So, OpenIndiana is “based on Solaris 11” in that Solaris 11 compatibility is the goal and given that the last OpenSolaris code is likely very close to what shipped in Solaris 11. But OpenIndiana never had access to the actual Solaris 11 source code.
Does anybody know if this would run on an Ultra 5?
From what I understand, while Solaris 11 dropped support for all SPARC-based Sun workstations (since it dropped support for UltraSPARC IV+ and earlier and even the most recent SPARC-based Sun workstations top out at UltraSPARC IIIi), OpenSolaris and even Solaris 11 Express kept support:
https://www.theregister.com/2011/06/28/oracle_solaris_11_old_iron_mia/
What’s going on here?
Anyway, sad to see OpenIndiana failing to boot on even the most recent SPARC-based Sun workstations, this makes it yet another Unix without tailor-made RISC workstations to run on, which means you are better off running it in VirtualBox (preferably the x86-64 variant). So, the last actively-maintained Unix with a tailor-made RISC workstation is… MacOS. Now go back in time and tell someone that this weird “Rhapsody” Unix from Apple would become the last Unix OS to have tailor-made RISC workstations,