The initial release candidate (rc1b) for OpenSolaris 2008.11 (based on nv101a) is now available for download and testing. Additional (larger) images are available for non-English locales as well as USB images for faster installs. If you have not played with a USB image you will be dazzled at the speed of the installation. Amazing what happens when you eliminate all those slow seeks.

The new release candidate has quite a few interesting features and updates. The items that caught my attention were

• IPS Package Manager
• Automatically cloning root file system (beadm clone) during image update
• GNOME 2.24
• Evolution 2.24 for those of us that are stubborn enough to continue using it
• OpenOffice 3.0
• Songbird - an iTunes-like media player. Still needs lots of codecs (like the free Fluendo MP3 decoder) to be really useful
• Brasero - a Nero-like media burner

Our own Dan Roberts has more to say on the subject in this video podcast.

Using the graphical package manager it only took a few minutes to set up the installation plan for a nice web based development system including Netbeans, a web stack (including Glassfish), and a Xen based virtualization system.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 is shaping up to be quite a nice release. Now that I have figured out how to make it play nicely in a root zpool with other Solaris releases, I will be spending a lot more time with it as the daily driver.

Download it, play with it, and please remember to file bugs when you run into things that don't work.

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