While OpenSolaris, which came out last week, allows you to build a
Solaris distro from source (though you have to include a few "encumbered
binaries"), it is much more practical at the present stage to start with
Sun's already built binary Solaris Express. The current version of
Solaris Express is based on Nevada 16 (a snapshot of "Solaris 11 beta").
IMNSHO, whether OpenSolaris will be successful or not depends to a very
great extent on Sun's attitude--can Sun let go of OpenSolaris
controlship as it does with OpenOffice? This is a very difficult thing
to do, and I do not sense that Sun is very honest about it. Of course I
can be wrong, and I hope I am.
Nevertheless, within a week of OpenSolaris's debut, there are already
two very interesting developments. One is a collection of screenshots:
http://www.hup.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9065
And the other is an OpenSolairs LiveCD:
http://schillix.berlios.de/
I will get back to this later. But last week we also saw another very
significant event: Fedora Core 4. This is probably the best Linux
distro (not just Fedora) that I have seen EVER. It's not just the
distro itself, but the entire community and the supporting
infrastructure. I am seeing Warren's signatures over the places.
Fedora is getting matured--there is even a FC5 roadmap/wishlist being
openly discussed. This is exactly we want, something we can use (and
preach) with confidence.
Anyway, both OpenSolaris and Fedora have their pros and cons, something
like FedoLaris that combine their pros may be very interesting. Wayne
