It’s hip2b2

I have a copy of Solaris 10 lying on my desk since August of 2005. I was not really able to get around to checking it out until lately. However, while searching for new things to run in my VMWare system I bumped into Belenix.

BeleniX is an OpenSolaris distribution which is currently in the form of a LiveCD (runs directly off the CD). It includes all the features of OpenSolaris and adds a whole variety of open source packages. It can be installed to hard disk as well. BeleniX is free to use modify and distribute.

It now comes with the Sun Java Development Kit 1.5. This is made possible because of Sun’s new Distribution License for Java. I tried out Belenix in my virtual machine and didn’t really find it interesting. Primarily because it came with the stock Linux-looking Xfce and KDE. So I wanted to try out the real thing. So I grabbed by Solaris 10 CDROMs and started installing.

The system took more than three (3) hours and multiple reboots to install. The installation took a really long time to install but it was definitely worth the wait. The new Java Desktop System has a really good and polished interface. Gnome users will have no problem getting used to it since it is based on Gnome. Of course, CDE is still available for those who like the “old-school” Unix feel. The system comes standard with StarOffice 7 and JDK 1.5. It has a number of open source applications like Mozilla Firefox for the end user. New Solaris goodies such as Dtrace and Zone support (aka Jail) are also built in. Some annoying things:

• The default shell is still brain dead ’sh’. Why not just use ‘bash’ or ‘tcsh’ by default.
• Default pager is still ‘more’. Less should be more.
• The installation process required a number of reboots. At least one per CDROM.
• Solaris still does not come with decent text GUI configuration tools such as the linux system-config-*-tui commands. This is particularly useful for network configuration.

Here are a few screenshots:

Notice that StarOffice 7 really looks like OpenOffice.org 2.0 already. In the earlier days, there were significant differences between the commercial and community products. But, now the different seems to have entirely disappeared. Of course, there are certain commercial components bundled into StarOffice 7 that are not included in OpenOffice.org 2.0 such as its Migration Tools and support services from Sun Microsystems via SunSolve.

Lastly, I like the new Solaris Management Console (SMC). It is a pretty fat Java-based application but it is pretty comprehensive and it allows and administrator to centrally manage multiple servers. Most of the common systems administration tasks can be done from this interface already. So when in doubt, load SMC. But, the best way to get things done is still via the command line.

Overall, I find Solaris 10 with the Java Desktop System (JDS) a “pretty” operating system. I was not really able to do any system related tests to compare it as a server operating system. However, I feel that if Sun invested a bit more in JDS (updating it frequently, integrating its Java strength into it and providing an optimized X server) it can possibly be a compelling Linux desktop alternative.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 12:30 am and is filed under Solaris. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.