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20070301 Thursday March 01, 2007

Get OpenSolaris

I'm in Berlin today opening the very first OpenSolaris Developer Conference. I'll be announcing that the new Get.OpenSolaris.org site that allows anyone in the world to order a kit containing DVDs of OpenSolaris distributions, documentation and source.

With a nod towards the good folks at Ubuntu, Sun is sponsoring the kits so that they are completely free of charge, including global delivery. Hopefully this will mean even folks without the bandwidth to download DVD ISOs will be able to join the OpenSolaris community.

Update: If you'd like you'd like a banner graphic like the one above, check out the selection.

Posted by webmink ( Mar 01 2007, 12:34:21 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [8]
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Comments:

Thank you Sun :)

Posted by Irwan on March 01, 2007 at 08:20 AM PST #

That's a really great idea!

Posted by 12.159.141.30 on March 01, 2007 at 09:15 AM PST #

As a person who has wanted to try OpenSolaris but has found the idea of downloading all those bits over 56k intimidating -- especially through the not-exactly-friendly-to-wgetting-over(-several-)night(s) Sun Download Center, I'm very happy to see this.

BTW, half the links on get.opensolaris.org go to /register.jspa instead of /kits -- and the half that go only to the create an account page are the most prominent links too. On a related note, you might want to look at the opensolaris.org account creation captcha functions -- it cropped off half of the last letter, making a Q look like a C.

Also, you aren't completely clear on whether you need a mailing address or a physical address. In my town, the USPS will not deliver to anything but a rented PO Box (and everyone but the USPS can't deliver to anything but a house), making the two addresses mutually exclusive in my case. I guessed from the mention of PO Boxes that you needed a mailing address, so I hope you're using the postal service to mail the kits.

The other bit of info that I think would be great to tell folks is if you mentioned what architecture(s) the starter kit supports. I know OpenSolaris exists for both x86 and SPARC, but I can't tell if the DVDs will include both versions -- you mention the compilers support both, but maybe you mean it is hosted on one architecture but can target both architectures? If it only includes a single architecture I probably am like most people and would prefer x86 but it would be cool to try it out on my E250 also :)

But anyway, this is a generous offer on the parts of OpenSolaris and Sun, and I look forward to trying this OS out.

Posted by Nick on March 01, 2007 at 01:50 PM PST #

@Nick: Great feedback, thanks. I've passed them to the website team. The kit contains only the x86/x64 architectures I think, that's what most people trying it for the first time will have available.

Posted by Simon Phipps on March 01, 2007 at 02:44 PM PST #

Great news! One snag with it though: I had to hunt around your request form for my country. Great Britain is *not* a country! The country is called the UK, and there are constituent countries called England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I only found Great Britain because I scrolled through the whole list.

Posted by Jim on March 01, 2007 at 04:13 PM PST #

I really hope that Sun isn't going to badly underestimate the demand for this, like they did with the pre-Christmas Free Solaris10 offer. Friends of mine are still waiting.......

Posted by James McPherson on March 02, 2007 at 08:36 PM PST #

I went to get.opensolaris.org but it required some ridiculous registration scheme. There was another download link on the left, but it didn't end up any better. The reason I'm posting a comment here is 1) I couldn't find a decent feedback method there; and 2)because this is where I first saw the link. If Sun wants to include an optional registration method, that's great. But please don't make it mandatory.

Posted by James Stansell on March 05, 2007 at 11:34 AM PST #

I was in a bit of a hurry when I was looking at the get.opensolaris.org page earlier. Reading the comments here tonight and reviewing the page I realize now that this is focused only on mailing physical disks. Obviously for that some sign-up will be required to collect a mailing name and address. Part of my confusion was that the main page didn't say much so I expected the kits/ link to have more information. When the unexpected login screen appeared I became somewhat disoriented. I assume that Sun and OpenSolaris are well-meaning but just not spreading the message the way I'm used to. http://www.netsplit.com/blog/articles/2007/03/05/think-about-things was another post which I read today. Change 'braille' for 'open-source' and it will give you some idea of why the larger community is confused (or sometime outright derisive) about OpenSolaris.

Posted by James Stansell on March 05, 2007 at 09:37 PM PST #

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