A Visual Preview of Oracle Solaris 11 Express

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Visual Preview of Oracle Solaris 11 Express

Earlier today there was the unexpected surprise of Oracle releasing Solaris 11 Express. There wasn't any public betas or preview releases of Oracle Solaris 11 Express and the last time we got to look at anything new from the OpenSolaris code-base was months ago before Oracle decided to dismantle that once promising open-source Sun project. In the hours following the release of Oracle Solaris 11 Express we tried it out on a few different test systems. Here is a brief, visual tour of Oracle Solaris 11 Express for those interested.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15454

[le grand fuzzy]

Solaris 11 is still using GRUB 0.97 and not the newer GRUB2 now being used by most Linux distributions.

Slackware is still on LILO, and a lot of signifcant distributions still default to GRUB such as Arch, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, openSUSE, and PCLinuxOS. The biggest movement to GRUB2 is by Ubuntu derivatives.

[crazycheese]

Good review!

But, whats the point of this distribution today?

Run on Oracle hardware, using Oracle license within Oracle company?

I think it will not make to top ten on distro watch. Very possibly not even top100.

[FunkyRider]

Piece of crap OS

Do no evil, stay away from Oracle.

[Atolstoy]

I don't see any Oracle's contribution here. Everything is from Sun, Oracle has just re-branded it.

[oneman]

Wow this is so exciting. BZZZZZT slowaris is long dead. Its a cool name, and it was way rad in the 90's, but it over, linux ripped its ass open.

[Dubhthach]

Good review!

But, whats the point of this distribution today?

Run on Oracle hardware, using Oracle license within Oracle company?

I think it will not make to top ten on distro watch. Very possibly not even top100.

It doesn't just run on Oracle hardware. It runs on most modern x64 hardware from Laptops to servers. The main purpose of the "Express" release is so that developers can ensure that their commercial applications which are certified to run on Solaris 10 run correctly on Solaris 11.

The company I work for recommends Solaris 10 as the default OS for one of it's key products. They also release for Linux but Solaris is the most common platform for our customers of that product. As a result the devs are gonna be creating a whole set of VM's in VMware Labmanager so that they can ensure that everything works fine before Solaris 11 is released next year.

The other key market for "Express" releases are Sys Admins. It gives us time to pick up any new skills required for Solaris 11 before we have to put it into production.

[XorEaxEax]

I was hoping to see Solaris Express in future benchmarking tests against Linux/BSD/Windows but seeing the following line in the licence:

'- disclose results of any benchmark test results related to the Programs without our prior consent.'

makes me doubt that will happen.

[PGHammer]

Slackware is still on LILO, and a lot of signifcant distributions still default to GRUB such as Arch, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, openSUSE, and PCLinuxOS. The biggest movement to GRUB2 is by Ubuntu derivatives.

One surprise there is Sabayon 5.3 and 5.4 (a Gentoo derivative); like the 'buntus, it uses GRUB2.

I think of Sabayon as almost a cross between Gentoo and Ubuntu, except that despite it being based on Gentoo, it goes further out than base Gentoo does (let alone base Ubuntu); for example, Sabayon is using kernel 2.6.36, which neither Gentoo or Ubuntu has adopted yet (except for test-case builds). However, like Ubuntu (and unlike Gentoo) it actually has a relatively friendly graphical installer.

[kebabbert]

I don't see any Oracle's contribution here. Everything is from Sun, Oracle has just re-branded it.

Exactly. OpenSolaris (which stopped on build 134) is not dead, as people say. It is just rebranded as Solaris 11 Express (which is build 151a).