Submitted by The first milestone of Project Indiana (part of the OpenSolaris.org community) is now available – called “OpenSolaris Developer Preview.” The OpenSolaris Developer Preview is the first milestone of Project Indiana. It is a single CD combined live/install image: a core operating system, kernel, system libraries, a desktop environment and a package management system. It is not a final release and is intended for developers to try, test, and provide feedback. Get your copy now.
Project Indiana Developer Preview Released
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Eugenia Loli
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This livecd booted in about a minute for me. Pretty good speed. I hear they use dtrace to see the order files used on boot in order to build the image in sequential read order.
This also has their new package system prototype (IPS). I see the mostly uninteresting repository information here, but at least it proves its existence: http://pkg.opensolaris.org/
I expect this thing will be pretty sweet in 4 months when they launch it. Right now it is mega-alpha quality software, but you can see the direction they’re going. (that is, the general direction of the most popular linux distro. Which is fine because that direction can also be called the “good software” direction)
Big kudos to them for getting this out by the end of October like they had said from the start.
This is an excellent milestone. Well done.
I tried OpenSolaris I must admit it. Although its desktop was/is very fancy and well designed, I don’t like the idea of being Linux-like. Being that said, I’m sticking straight to Solaris 10 11/06 sparc, why? well, I want “Solaris”. The same OS I have been working on for the last decade.
Anyway, kudos to the pkg team.
For a good review:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=899&num=1
Edited 2007-11-01 13:17
I’ve been wanting to try OpenSolaris since it was announced, but I’ve always been put off by the installation process, not least the requirement to register with Sun before I’m allowed to download anything.
So kudos to Sun for this. Although I am surprised it took an external guy to come in and tell them that behaving like a modern Linux distribution (in terms of a LiveCD and installation) would be a good way forward…
So kudos to Sun for this. Although I am surprised it took an external guy to come in and tell them that behaving like a modern Linux distribution (in terms of a LiveCD and installation) would be a good way forward…
The new installer was already being developed before Ian Murdock came in.
Interestin, i was expecting this for a while.
I’ m actually downloading it and plan to test as soon as possiblie.
This bug still hasn’t been fixed yet.
http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6332924
This shouldn’t take long to fix. They have a workaround so why not use that workaround to build the images that people download?
My other posting…
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=18562&comment_id=268540
You’ll note that the fix is marked as in progress. That means it is still going through testing, etc. There are thousands of issues being worked at any given time. Please don’t assume that issues are trivial as they may first appear. Some issues have to go through an archicectural review process, etc.
For the hobbyist, what is the benefit/drawing points of OpenSolaris?
One major selling point would be ZFS.
Someone with greater knowledge of Solaris could probably come up with some more good reasons to check it out.
DTrace and zones are another two.
Being at the front of where the action is. Thereis defenitely a lot of current projects and many to come. Instead of a project that has a solid establishment and firm hirarchy, i can imagine some people find it refreshing contributing to this project. Reminds me of linux posting his first kernel.
Except for the fact that Linus intentionally avoided the requirement for copyright assignment, or the holding the right to relicense at will. Which is probably the biggest reason that the linux kernel acquired the development contributions that it did.
Not to knock Sun, I always applaud an organization opening their code. But let’s keep it in perspective, Sun isn’t looking to build a community, they’re looking to utilize a community.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as long as the participants understand that. But let’s not make it out to be something it isn’t, rather, let’s look at what Sun is offering and figure out how best for the community to leverage it reciprocally.
My cynical side still thinks the GNU community is waiting for Sun to follow through on their commitment to dual-license under v3, so that they can fork it for their own use and try and extricate the linux kernel while spewing forth a number of different solaris spins that are incompatible with other solaris spins. Sure, linux is always criticized for “over” distribution, but incompatibilities in linux tend to be related to userland. Sun’s requirement for attribution, combined with the hints towards a dual-license CDDL/GPLv3 situation, could wind up with a number of forked, incompatible kernels combined with a common userland. Is this any better?
My even more cynical side still questions the ultimate intention here from Sun. Sorry, but I can’t help thinking Sun is simply trying to leverage the linux community, while hiding the fact that they are still predominantly proprietary corporate oriented.
Still, never look a gift horse in the mouth. So I’ll certainly give props to Sun for doing this, while still interjecting my opinion when people imply that this is the second coming of linux. Because, it simply isn’t.
As a Mac user….. that’s kinda my sentiment about Apple at the moment..
‘Utilizing’ the open source community for OS X
Although both Apple and Sun have given back quite a bit over time..
For the hobbyist, what is the benefit/drawing points of OpenSolaris?
ZFS is certainly something to try out. We have a lot of similar stuff in the Linux world through RAID, LVM and then the various filesystems, but it’s good to be able to see what things look like with all that in one bit of software.
Zones is also something to try, and although I think Sun have a lot of improvements to make with OpenSolaris, I think that the way they’re trying to get their software into the hands of hobbyists and hackers is a good thing.
I believe the first public release is slated for March, isn’t it?
I’m curious about the drivers. Will Project Indiana be distributed (on the cd or on the package repository) with drivers from vendors (such as nVidia, Broadcom)? or are they out because they’re closed source?
Even though it’s too soon to be expecting high integration with Java I’m thrilled to wait if Sun is going to find a way to boost the usage of Java Apps in the environment or something. Clearly Mono is out of this (why is that ?) and even though I use some Mono Apps it makes me glad to see this move.
Big hopes IPS
.Net (and by extension, mono) is in direct competition with Java in alot of areas, and Sun makes java. Makes alot of sense to me.
Apparently you are not that good with sarcasm.
>For the hobbyist, what is the benefit/drawing points of OpenSolaris?
Little if any benefit to the hobbyist. This is like asking, “Could I commute to work in a dump truck?”
But for heavy lifting, you really need a dump truck OS like Solaris to run your enterprise services.
the key word there was “hobbyist”
Couldnt that rationale be applied to any form of UNIX? (not counting OSX)
“Little if any benefit to the hobbyist. This is like asking, “Could I commute to work in a dump truck?”
huh?
Like Windows products are any less heavy (read bloated)? Install away, regardless of who you are! Everyone benefits OpenSolaris or any project of it’s kind. It might not be of any use to you or your organization now, but no harm in experiencing what others are doing.
I’m partial to BSD, but really, really, dig what Sun and others are doing with OpenSolaris – killer stuff, keep it coming.
I don’t think he meant bloat, I think he meant stuff like throughput vs latency. for a server, you want high throughput. for a desktop, you want low latency.
I don’t think he meant bloat, I think he meant stuff like throughput vs latency. for a server, you want high throughput. for a desktop, you want low latency.
You mean something along of these lines?
servo@bigmclargehuge:~ > dispadmin -l
CONFIGURED CLASSES
==================
SYS (System Class)
TS (Time Sharing)
IA (Interactive)
RT (Real Time)
servo@bigmclargehuge:~ >
IA (interactive): This is an enhanced version of the TS class that applies to the in-focus window in the GUI. Its intent is to give extra resources to processes associated with that specific window.
>Like Windows products are any less heavy (read bloated)?
heavy or bloated is not the issue here, hardware is cheap these days. The issue for hobbyists is out of the box usability. Most hobbyists value 1st hour look and feel experience. Solaris definitely does not win here when compared to other ‘hobbyist friendly’ OS’s.
Solaris has a steep learning curve. Appropriate for server hosting, not so much for desktop playtime.
The issue for hobbyists is out of the box usability. Most hobbyists value 1st hour look and feel experience. Solaris definitely does not win here when compared to other ‘hobbyist friendly’ OS’s.
That only applies to the current Solaris releases. And even less so, for Solaris Nevada. The installer may be a pain in the ass, but the GUI is good old Gnome. Once the system’s installed, it handles pretty much the same as Linux to the generic person, unless he decides to drop to command line.
And the installer is getting fixed, the first bits have been out in the last Solaris Express Developer Edition, and a newer version now in Indiana. If you’re trying to tell me that the Caiman installer is confusing and hard, you’ve got to be kidding me.
“heavy or bloated is not the issue here, hardware is cheap these days.”
An excuse for writing inefficient code…
My big beef with Solaris / OpenSolaris is that it is almost impossible for a Solaris newb (experienced Linux / FreeBSD admin) to get a working console only server that can actually do anything. It’s impossible to find the right package name for man pages without resorting to Google and everything has dependencies on X, etc…
I really don’t understand why Solaris can’t do a “default” install with man pages and not have all these crazy ass dependencies on X. BSD can define a “without_X11” variable so no ports or dependencies that rely on X are installed.
What I don’t understand is how you get that everything in Solaris/Open Solaris has dependencies on X? When you install Solaris 10, you are presented with six install metaclusters from SUNWrnet (Reduced Networking) to Full Distribution plus OEM Support (SUNWCXall).
The two installation clusters that you are looking for that do not install X are SUNWrnet and SUNWcore, keep in mind that there are a number of packages that are not installed as a part of either one of these two install clusters including SSH, gcc and the development libraries. I tried to come up with a minimized install for web servers with Zone and ZFS support, but after two weeks of calculating dependencies I decided on using a Full Distribution installation and simply disable what I don’t want running.
There is no reasonable way to come up with a “core without X” install that will make everybody happy. Most Solaris administrators (myself included) use a JumpStart/Flash server and create a custom install for a class of machines then create a Flash Archive to build more machines of the same class.
I think what would be far easier would be to perform a Full Distribution installation and disable X from running by issuing the command “/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d”, this disables dtlogin and X doesn’t start.
you must be crazy… (don’t take this seriously!!)
In March I was a Solaris noob, until I got “project” transfered and I got going in a breeze.
I mean, as a Linux user, I got going a lot faster than when I have to make that occasional jump to MS Windows.
So now, I’m still a noob… but at least I know where I’m standing 🙂
Looks like they went with a more ‘vanilla’ theme for GNOME.
I really hope they intend to keep the desktop theme from Solaris Express, etc. It is a really nice and clean theme.
I’m pretty sure it’s the Nimbus theme?
Yes the install is getting less worse :-), yes you now have your choice of GUI, but after the install completes what then does the hobbyist do on Solaris? What games are there? How rich is the multimedia experience? What desktop apps are there to run? How much admin is accessible completely from GUI a la Redhat?
I’m not saying Solaris is bad, it’s not, I’m just saying that Solaris is not currently geared for the hobbyist.
It all depends on what you mean by “hobby”. Is it for non tech-savvy? Definitely not. But if you are knowledgeable about how a computer runs and consider running/tinkering with the same super stable OS as >$500k Sun Enterprise boxes as a hobby. Then it’s for a hobbyist.
That’s me.
“what then does the hobbyist do on Solaris? What games are there? How rich is the multimedia experience?”
I don’t think “hobbyist” means what you think it means…
Actually, I’m kinda glad. I would much rather it be geared for the professional…
can’t get it to run in vmware server – the live install works fine, but upon reboot it just hangs after grub.
I had the same problem on my AMD box at home, but it installed just fine on my Intel box at work. What system are you trying to use it on?
Core Duo, VMware 1.0.3, Sun Solaris configuration
Im just waiting for a linux like solaris with sparc support. It would be great with a kernel that would run nicley on my e3000 6x usparc @ 400mhz. with the tools that i am used to. would lov nexenta or other debian like distro with solaris kernel. but in the meantime i guess linux will do nicely
You already have it! It’s called Gentoo, and you have the option of running many kernels for different hardware.
This is the best OS news piece since ATI opened their specs! Haiku release next eh?
I’m hoping Sun get really serious about the desktop and end up providing real serious competition for Ubuntu and OSX. Vis-wha?
I think I remember reading that you can dual-boot OpenSolaris and Linux without any trouble- how well does Indiana handle this? If I already have Linux installed on a different partition on the same machine does caiman detect this and add my Linux distro to its boot menu?
I wouldn’t be able to dump Linux until I can run JACK under Solaris, but there is no ALSA for Solaris and no plans to implement it yet either as far as I’m aware.
Edited 2007-11-01 21:55
I wouldn’t be able to dump Linux until I can run JACK under Solaris, but there is no ALSA for Solaris and no plans to implement it yet either as far as I’m aware.
Why would we want ALSA when we have OpenSound? which btw has ALSA compatability. Jack also works on OSS drivers. See this post by Dev Mazumdar: http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=149258
If there is not benefit for the hobbyist then who is Project Indiana targeting?
Unless Sun provides a relatively easy way to try out their unique and cool features like Zones, ZFS, and Dtrace then I really cannot see a reason to spend the time to make Solaris easier to install. If someone needs a mastery of the command line to use any of these tools then a slightly complicated text based install system should be no problem.
If I want to use Gnome then I will just keep Ubuntu installed. It seems to me that if Sun really want to distinguish Indiana from any other Gnome desktop then they really need to spend some quality time and build some robust GUI applications that are useful and illustrate the value of Zones, ZFS, and Dtrace.
Just my two cents.
It seems that this program has momentum
but so did Belenix and Nexenta….and they seem
to be in a perpetual alpha state
I really hope Opensolaris in some form starts
to compete on the desktop and this is why:
1) They have Flash-9 support
FreeBSD(any BSD) is struggling with Gnash
which may or may not get flash-9 working soon.
If you cannot see those cnn or youtube videos
easily(yes i know you can download them) then
that is a showstopper for most desktop users.
2) Java is stable ..on FreeBSD I am convinced
it is not so stable.
3) I’m not a big fan of linux ALSA and some bugs,
such as SDL sounding fuzzy with common
on-board sound(ac’97) have never been fixed.
Sun sound works fine(as does BSD)
Keep up the good work