Solar Flare

Project Indiana

Just got my first taste of the new OpenSolaris™ Operating System developer's release from Project Indiana over the weekend. First thoughts? Indeed impressed. I downloaded the live CD image (link below), burnt it to a CD, inserted, rebooted and fired it up.

One of the first things I noticed upon logging into the live disc was the cleanness of the GUI desktop. Anyone who has ever purchased a pre-built x86 machine has experienced the headache of "bloatware". Translation: a virtual cornucopia of half-baked applications, program trial versions, borderline adware/spyware and other software that serves little purpose but to clutter the desktop and cause users trouble during removal (I won't mention any names; they know who they are). Don't get me wrong; there is no lack of software within the bounds of Project Indiana. It's just that the lion's share exists to serve a truly useful purpose! And it's not sprawled all across your desktop like the floor of a messy dorm room either :)

For example, Mozilla Firefox® (web browser) and Mozilla Thunderbird™ (mail client), two of my personal favorites, come pre-installed. In addition, the universal instant messenger client Pidgin (formerly Gaim), which covers 13 different IM protocols, including Google™ Talk, AIM®, MSN® and Yahoo!® is inside as well. I could go on about the networking daemon NAM (Network Auto Magic) or the disk partitioner GParted, but I'll leave those to a later post.

I'll be holding seminars and presentations regarding the OpenSolaris OS on the University Park campus during both the Fall and upcoming Spring semesters. Wanna get started right away? Here are a few links to get you started:
Project Indiana Home Page
Get the OpenSolaris Developer Preview
Hardware Compatibility Tool
Documentation

Posted at 12:27AM Nov 13, 2007 by Gregory Corbin in Sun  |  Comments[1]