opensolaris

Testing Oracle Solaris 11 Express

/ bronto / Leave a comment

I've been testing Oracle Solaris 11 Express recently. For those who don't remember it, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems :rip: and killed OpenSolaris :rip: with no official statement, the only information about the process was a leaked internal note (I leave it to you to decide whether that that leakage was real, and if it was intentional or not).

Solaris 11 Express is what remains of OpenSolaris after Oracle decided how they should move forward with it.

The immediate change you may notice in case you want to download and test it is that the license has changed, and that you are not allowed to download it unless you explicitly accept the license. Up to my knowledge, the license allows you to use it for free for personal use, otherwise you need to buy some sort of support; I didn't investigate this further because, well, I am interested in it for personal use at the moment. Why? Well, many reasons. … Continue reading →

Advertisement

OpenIndiana to release soon?

/ bronto / Leave a comment

As you may know, after Oracle sunk OpenSolaris :rip: a couple of new project arose: one was Illumos, which took the development of the core from where it stopped, and started with rebuilding the "less open"-licensed stuff, and OpenIndiana, which focused on a whole operating system; OpenIndiana starts on the OpenSolaris base, but will eventually use Illumos for the core stuff.

Well. After about 6 months that OpenSolaris was unofficially declared dead, project OpenIndiana is planning its first official release.

Let's see what happens 🙂

:bye:

The end of OpenSolaris (as we know it)

/ bronto / Leave a comment

I don't know if this is a real document, and if it is, I don't know if it actually leaked or if it was "left around" intentionally to be disclosed, so that Oracle didn't have to make any official statement about OpenSolaris. If we assume that it is true, then OpenSolaris (as we know it) is dead:

All of Oracle’s efforts on binary distributions of Solaris technology will be focused on Solaris 11. We will not release any other binary distributions, such as nightly or bi-weekly builds of Solaris binaries, or an OpenSolaris 2010.05 or later distribution. We will determine a simple, cost-effective means of getting enterprise users of prior OpenSolaris binary releases to migrate to S11 Express.

So, those who used and liked OpenSolaris before have to wait the end of the year, and clearer announcements from Oracle, to know if they'll really be allowed to use Solaris 11 Express as an Open operating system. Yes, I know what's written above here, but we don't know if it is a real internal document from Oracle, so any conclusion must be drawn with care. … Continue reading →

Illumos: not what I was waiting for (at least: for now)

/ bronto / Leave a comment

So, the Illumos announcement was made. The best analysis of the announcement I read so far is The Register's.

For the moment, I am not impressed at all. What I was hoping in was a "real" Solaris-like system, not a mix of Solaris and Debian/Ubuntu Linux. That's what Nexenta is, after all, and that's what it will still be if it will switch its base to Illumos.

Time will tell if this effort will bring us something decent. I still hope (but less and less each day) that Oracle will keep on investing in an Open-Solaris official distribution. Yes, Open-Solaris, with that dash in between: something that is both a real Solaris, and Open source.

OpenSolaris: other good signs….

/ bronto / Leave a comment

A OpenSolaris Hackathon was just announced. The event will take place in London, and the way the announcement was made seems to open up for good hopes:

Apologies for the late notice, I'm proud to announce what will hopefully be many OpenSolaris Hackathons!

even though they feel the need to say:

This is a community event held by community members and is in no way affiliated with Oracle.

Keep your fingers crossed…