Solaris Archive

The final 1.0 version of the Nexenta Core Platform has been released. "Nexenta Operating System is a free and open source operating system combining the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU application userland. Nexenta Operating System runs on Intel/AMD 32/64bit hardware and is distributed as a single installable CD. NexentaCore is a minimal (core) foundation that can be used to quickly build servers, desktops, and custom distributions tailored for specialized applications."

"In addition to Project Indiana Developer Preview 2, Solaris users can now rejoice over the next release in the Solaris Express Developer Edition family. SXDE 1/08 is the quarterly update to Sun's next-generation Solaris Operating System that is built from the latest OpenSolaris Nevada technologies. This first SXDE release of 2008 brings a host of new features for the developer such as NetBeans 6.0 and the GlassFish v2 application server. Even for those that aren't developers, SXDE 1/08 brings new features further down on the Solaris stack such as the Sun xVM virtualization server with support for libvirt, support for the 802.11n Intel 4965 wireless chipset, and a variety of new services."

Nexenta Core Platform RC3 is available for download now. Main feature is Xen Dom0/DomU platform support. Other changes in this release includes: critical fixes for native CIFS server, critical fixes for ZFS, critical bug fixes for SATA and networking stacks. CIFS client now included. The Debian apt repository is now complete, with about 2500 tested packages.

"There is no ideal software, it always has bugs. Minor, major or security issues will always exist and modern operating systems need to deal with this fact. What if any software which user installs had a capability to rollback to previously known successful point and operation itself would take no time? What if developer or user has a tool which could checkpoint operating system and capability to revert changes in no time? This is possible if we will marry two great technologies: ZFS and Debian APT. Both technologies now part of Nexenta Operating System which is core foundation for its derivative distributions. Meet apt-clone. The tool which integrates with the NexentaCP system, keeps track of upgrade checkpoints and allows to create/destroy/edit checkpoints by request."

"Build 78 of Solaris Express Community is now available. This represents the work done in the OpenSolaris community over roughly the past two weeks. The announcement with download link is available from the OpenSolaris Forums. If you're new to Solaris/OpenSolaris, you may be interested in trying out the Project Indiana Preview release."

IBM and Sun Microsystems are in the final stages of an 18-month-long project to adapt the OpenSolaris operating system to run optimally on Big Blue's z System mainframes. David Boyes, president and chief technology officer of Sine Nomine Associates, a consultancy that handled most of the integration and migration duties, told eWEEK at the Gartner Data Center Conference 2007 that the new IBM-tuned version of OpenSolaris will be ready soon. He declined to be more specific.

Erstwhile bitter rivals Dell and Sun Microsystems are set to announce that Sun's Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems will be supported in all of Dell's servers. Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz plan to make the announcement during a joint appearance at the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 conference today.

"With much anticipation by the OpenSolaris community, last night Sun had released their first developer preview for the binary desktop distribution that we have known over the past couple of months as Project Indiana. Ian Murdock and company are optimistic for this project that will address some of the existing Solaris adoption barriers when it comes to the installation, package management, and familiarization along with revitalizing the user experience. How does this first milestone of Project Indiana, which in fact will be named OpenSolaris, rank when it comes to meeting their objectives? In this review, we have a lot of information and screenshots on this long-awaited OpenSolaris binary distribution."

Project Indiana, Sun Microsystems' Linux-like OpenSolaris effort, will begin shipping to developers before the end of October, the company announced Oct. 15 at its open-source summit press event here. The developer release will include Image Packaging System, a new package manager slated for inclusion in the next version of Solaris, but won't be back-ported to Solaris 10, the most recent version to ship, said Ian Murdock, Sun's chief operating systems platform strategist, in an address to the media. All of the technology developed under Project Indiana will be delivered through OpenSolaris going forward, he said. The full release is expected in March. More here.

"Recently there's been a lot of news about OpenSolaris, more specifically in reference to the great progress made by virtualization technologies in it. In this article, I will examine some of these technologies, and compare them with the state of the art on other platforms."

Ian Murdock took the stage in one of the small rooms at the Moscone Center West to talk about the OpenSolaris Binary Distribution that is currently known as Project Indiana. We captured all of the slides Ian had shown, and while most of the information he shared was just reiterated from his past talks, there was some interesting details worth sharing. Among the advantages of Project Indiana is that it will use Sun's ZFS as the default file-system, and Project Indiana will be taking full advantage of its abilities to create snapshots and perform rollbacks if something with the system's software goes wrong. With Sun's past work with the GNOME project, GNOME will be the desktop environment in Project Indiana said Ian Murdock.

Sun seeks to apply the lessons of Linux and turn open source Solaris into an operating system to rival Linux and to be as commonly used as Java. Sun Microsystems has ambitious plans for the commercial and open-source versions of its Solaris operating system, hoping to achieve for Solaris the kind of ubiquity already enjoyed by Java. In addition, Sun released Update 4 for Solaris 10 (also called Solaris 08/07), introducing a major enhancement in its OS virtualization technology called Solaris Containers.

"OpenSolaris is possibly Sun's most significant attempt to garner relevance in a market that increasingly demands the freedom and flexibility of open-source software. Although the availability of source code under an open license imbues the platform with considerable value, broader adoption is predicated on Sun's capacity to build a strong community. Project Indiana represents Sun's latest strategy for building mindshare and expanding the reach of OpenSolaris."

BeleniX 0.6.1 has been released. This is primarily a bugfix release fixing some of the bigger bugs in 0.6 though there remains some more to fix in 0.6.2. "BeleniX is a *NIX distribution that is built using the OpenSolaris source base. It is currently a LiveCD distribution but is intended to grow into a complete distro that can be installed to hard disk."