On 12/3/06, Hari Sundararajan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hello everyone!
A brief introduction, I am a student, and am a regular Linux user. I have used
various distributions, and am very comfortable with all aspects of it (though
mainly the server side administration aspects and development side. I still use
Windows for media related activities).
My research work focuses on high performance computing, and I know Sun does a
lot of work in that area. I recently attended the Super computing 2006
conference at Tampa, Florida, and was quite impressed with Sun's offerings (and
a free T Shirt too :D). Also, I admin a mini cluster of 8 SunFire X4200s dual
processor dual core Opteron machines, running Linux on them.
Now, I was pretty impressed with Sun's offerings at the conference, and am keen
to try out and learn more about Solaris. Particularly stuff like Sun Studio,
Sun compilers, Sun Grid Engine and so on. However, this is where I get lost.
What exactly are Solaris and OpenSolaris? Now, coming from a Linux world I know
Linux is actually just the kernel, and the tools are available from various
sources such as GNU, X.Org, apache and so on.
opensolaris is code and a community arround it, all the answers about
the code can be answered by just looking at the FAQ [1]
What about Solaris and OpenSolaris? Is OpenSolaris too just a kernel? What
about the userland then?
At the SC06 conference Sun handed out Sun Studio CD/DVDs and also Solaris 10
DVDs. In what way are these Solaris 10 DVDs related to OpenSolaris?
Solaris will be based on opensolaris code in the future the same way
that opensolaris is based on the solaris 10 code at the moment
Now, let's assume I want to try OpenSolaris. With Linux distros, I am used to
downloading an ISO, burning it, and booting with it. What should I download
here?
an opensolaris distribution of course! :)
and you have several to pick from already, the community edition,
nexenta, schillix, belenix and martux
Again, is OpenSolaris a complete distribution by itself, including the kernel
and the user/developer tools? Do I get a Gnome/KDE and a Bash shell at boot
stage?
Or is OpenSolaris not a distribution at all, and I am completely mistaken in my
understanding?
yes, you get gnome and bash and many other nice things you will not
find in linux like dtrace, zones, branded zones, zfs and a lot more
Finally, what about support? Again, as a regular Linux user I post queries and
replies in various distribution specific forums/IRC, and in general have a
great opinion about community support. Do I get something similar with
OpenSolaris? And how does one contribute back?
support? the same way, there is #opensolaris at freenode and a lot of
lists you can join in the opensolaris web page [2] . There are also
lots of ways to contribute and a lot of projects and communities
hosted at the same site, join, read the mails and see what you can do,
there are never enough contributors.
Feel free to answer with as much technical jargon as you want. I am not your
average desktop user who knows nothing beyond word processing, emails and web
surfing. I am just curious to learn more about the Solaris platform, especially
considering I use so much and so many of Sun's products.
This message posted from opensolaris.org
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
[1] http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/general_faq/
[2] http://www.opensolaris.org
nacho
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
