Why Important?
Of course, if students are learning Solaris in their OS courses, they will be more likely to do development work with Solaris, which in turn should increase the number of applications, drivers, and other tools which run on Solaris. This is an approach that should also work elsewhere (the US, Europe, etc.). Several of the professors are planning on using OpenSolaris starting in the spring because of what they have learned from this training.
Through the whole training, we have come to realize that:
Good
o Teachers are very interested in the program integrating OpenSolaris into OS curricula
o Teachers are impressed with the advantages of the visibility of Solaris companying with OpenSolaris source code to demonstrate the Operating Systems mechanisms
o There will be a dedicated work group of professors from top universities to organize and coordinate for this program
Bad
o Most educators are lacking of The Solaris experience and knowledge.
o They are complaining about the issues of installation (esp. in contrast with the RHLinux) on their laptops and concerning about the learning curve of Solaris (it's reasonable to have such complaints from the newbies)
And learned and lessons:
o It's necessary to et up the lab environments for the training
o Need more technical support for the educators
o More focus on OS concepts and mechanisms instead of the hands-on operations and implementation
o Comparison between Linux, BSD and Windows in kernel mechanisms
o It'll be better to have some Sun local engineers to answer some particular questions per the language difference
