Kurchi Subhra Hazra---SUN CA: NIT Durgapur

Sun Microsystems has been a global brand  name since past twenty five years. It has a lot many endeavors ranging from hardware to software solutions, those that are gradually becoming a part of our everyday life too.

One of the fields where Sun has been shining for quite sometime now is that of open source development. The entire open source community has seen Sun donating away a million dollar for the noble cause of open source development. Sun Microsystems is the backbone of projects like Netbeans, Glassfish and Open Office, those that are slowly but steadily becoming necessities for any open source developer.

One such name that the software community is being forced to turn its head to is Open Solaris. Solaris, as we know, is Sun’s own operating system, and Open Solaris can be termed as the corresponding open source version. It is an operating system and with efforts of developers from around the world, it is striving towards completeness.

Recently, about a month back, Sun Microsystems announced the availablility of Open Solaris 2008.05 . And I managed to get hold of a copy of a live CD and experience the operating system, the new buzz in software community. I would like to explain my experience in simple layman terms, so even if you are a newbie, just read on!

So, what is this Open Solaris 2008.05? It is a live cd that is freely downloadable from www.opensolaris.com, the official website of the release. Alternatively, you could also order a copy of it online. Now what is a live cd? Well, to answer that in simple layman language, I would say , it is an operating system that is not installed on your hard drive. Yes, you can simply insert the cd into your drive and reboot your system and you get a grub menu. ( Grub?...Well, in systems where you have a choice of booting from more than one operating systems, this software gives you a menu to allow you to begin at the right OS!).

That done, you can go for booting into the Gnome Desktop or into a text console. And if you feel that inserting the cd into the disk drive was a runtime error, yes, you can also boot from your hard disk.

The Grub Menu

Then, of course, you should hold your patience for the desktop screen to appear( assuming that you go for that option).

Once there, you will bless yourself for your patience. You would like to thank your laptop( or desktop) manufacturer for the treat to your eyes, but should I interrupt, you should thank the Open Solaris Developer Community!

Yes, you will land into an elegant and neat Desktop. The desktop can be your starting point to explore further into the Operating System. Visible on the desktop will be your favourite browser Mozilla Firefox ( since you are reading this, I assume you are an open source patron!). Of course, Mozilla Thunderbird as an email client is docked right beside it. The desktop also gives you access to a Device Driver Utility, with the help of which you can use to analyze the devices on your system and find out which are supported and which are not. Besides, you will find many tabs in the task bar to take you to other applications, system administrator tools etc. Last but not the least, you have an option to install this operating system right to your hard drive. I wont kill your adventurous spirit by giving you a thorough guide on exploring Open Solaris 2008.05!...Its time for you to go ahead and explore!

The Default GNOME Desktop Environment

Coming down to some of the more technical details, the advantage of this release that I feel could be an added bonus to even a layman user, is the new GUI package manager. I must say that the addition of an easy-to-use graphical installation experience, ZFS as the default root file system ( yeah..its a new kind of file system, and its discussions are not within the scope of this blog!), a network-based image package management system (IPS) with access to a full suite of software, the ability to more easily update between releases of the operating system, and a more familiar environment for those used to Linux based operating environments are the extra scoops of goodness that this release offers.

I also feel that the large community that lives at the forums of Open Solaris can always help you out wherever you get stuck, which is a real big advantage!

However, possible arguments against its use could be the lack of support of certain drivers, network configurations problems to name a few. For developers, I do not think such a question should arise, knowing the advantages that Open Solaris can provide you with. For newbies, I personally feel that Open Solaris is a striving community, one that is still at its infancy. Thousands of developers are working day and night to improve the OS so that tomorrow it can grow into a complete and independent being, and at this rate, tomorrow is not far away. Do not compare it to adults like Microsoft Windows and older distributions of Linux, but do look at it as a mature kid and you will know the difference!

Of course, as a last word, use www.opensolaris.com as a complete reference for the release, including downloading the live cd image. You could also get back to www.opensolaris.org for some of the technical problems.

The OS is available in many languages except English! Do check out for your own mother tongue.