“After some gap due to a busy few months for many of the BeleniX folks a new release is now available. Get it from the download page. Lots of changes have happened and here is a summary: Based on OpenSolaris build 60, fully modular Xorg 7.2, Compiz 0.5.0 3D manager integrated into Xfce and KDE, and much more.”
This looks extremely cool – the problem is that it requires a primary partition – bugger
And where’s the problem?
I haven’t got any primary partitions.
You can press p
I think I’m going to try this. ON is outdated at 60 but I’ll look into upgrading to latest.
Nexenta is in very pitiful shape; BeleniX is both a LiveCD and installable plus has new packages.
This might be the mini (1 CD) OpenSolaris distro I’m looking for. That would defiently be a plus over downloading 6 CDs or one large DVD and installing all that Solaris Express bloat.
Can I install the non-free software from Sun on it? It would be nice if I could use Sun Studio. It’s one great professional IDE.
I know there’s a Linux version available, but it only supports RHEL4 and SLES9.
There’s absolutely no problem doing this on Nexenta (GNU/Solaris) so I highly doubt there will be a problem with BeliniX.
BeliniX is fully binary compatible with Solaris (since it IS Solaris) so the only problem I could foresee is the possible need for either Gnome or Sun’s Java desktop System which is also Gnome, albeit a Sun branded Gnome version, since it comes with KDE and Xfce instead.
Basically, since Sun Studio runs on OpenSolaris it’ll run on BeliniX, I’m sure!
Still a bit rough around the edges, but still as close as you can get to Desktop Solaris…
BeleniX is the most feature packed distro of OpenSolaris and has many good features. One of the most important part of a LiveCD is the boot time and BeleniX boots up real fast. Can’t wait to download and try it out soon.
http://osgeek.blogspot.com
And better still, its 100% Solaris, it isn’t like GNU Solaris which, quite frankly, uses butchered GNU userspace ontop of a Solaris kernel. IMHO, if one is going to do that, one might as well run Linux and be done with it.
“it isn’t like GNU Solaris which, quite frankly, uses butchered GNU userspace ontop of a Solaris kernel”
Well, according to BeleniX roadmap they are planning to try to have both: a fully OpenSolaris-based version of BeleniX but also another version of BeleniX that does run a GNU/OSS software stack (including most daemons) on top of the OpenSolaris Kernel, just like Nexenta (=GNU/Solaris) does:
http://www.genunix.org/distributions/belenix_site/?q=roadmap
As OpenSolaris and its “distributions” are still quite new, I suppose that developers still want to experiment a lot and try all sorts of alternatives.
I like the BeleniX choice of using pkgsrc as their software management framework. Although deb/apt-get chosen by Nexenta may be a good choice too, Pkgsrc (developed by NetBSD) might suit Solaris better as it is very OS/platform neutral and may be more advanced (both binary packages and building from source, good security framework etc.).
By the way, there’s a good introduction to Pkgsrc in this short pdf
“Pkgsrc – A Framework for Portable Software Management”:
http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/advocacy/sschumacher/a4-pkgsrc-en.pdf
Edited 2007-05-23 19:48
The good thing about Belenix is that it has a lot of GNU userland which is very good for someone transitioning from Linux to Solaris. I have used a stock Solaris system and it is very ‘unfriendly’ (sh with no tab completion totally sucks)
But at the same time it is unwise to simply replace something with a GNU equivilant simply because applications written against the GNU library is fundamentally broken; case in point being libc – why replace libc with GNU libc when the more prudent step would be to encourage developers to use proper calls rather than hack extensions to the standard.
Bring in parts which aren’t available, extend existing components to include features, but don’t simply replace something to make it compatible with a poorly written application – because ultimately it ends up being a slippery slope – where does it end?
Yes it is 100% Solaris which is 100% Unix. And my previous comment got modded down for some unknown reason.
http://osgeek.blogspot.com
What version of KDE? Same as in opensolaris?
Yes the same. I believe it is 3.5.1.
Belenix is definitely the best OpenSolaris distro because it uses KDE
. I have used Solaris Developer Express and that looks very sleek too. Although I have Solaris installed I switch from my Linux box as there are no compelling reasons for doing it apart from learning a thing or two.
Maybe I should learn to use DTrace
Belenix has KDE 3.5.1 as does Nexenta but Belenix’s actually works whereas Nexenta’s craps out with a Konqueror errors all over.
I think it’s possible to get KDE 3.5.6 on Solaris and it’s distros too:
http://public.enst.fr/pkgsrc/packages/SunOS-5.10/i386/pkgsrc-essent…
That said, this version of BeleniX comes with build 60 and cannot see my hard drive; I think build 61 is the first to recognize my ICH7 SATA controller. I dont think their is a way to do a BFU from a ramdisk because a reboot is required.
So I’ll just have to wait for the next update and hope it comes with the latest ON build.
Edited 2007-05-24 17:12
Thats strange, I’m running a ICH7 SATA controller in this laptop, and I can run Solaris from build 55 and up; I think it would be best to make sure that you have AHCI enabled as most motherboards default to EHCI (RAID enabled).
I can’t see me switching to it from Debian or FreeBSD, but it’ll be good to learn the Solaris way, I hope