On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Jason White <[email protected]> wrote: > > I am currently a Linux user but also have an interest in other > free/open-source operating systems. At some point, I would like to try > OpenSolaris. As there now appear to be several distributions under > development, is there a good summary of what their goals and priorities are? > > I've used Solaris before, but as a user rather than an administrator. > > to satisfy my preference for open-source, I would prefer a distribution which > does not install binary-only components by default, and which is entirely > built with free tools (rather than Sun's closed-source compiler). It should be > able to build itself, of course. I know a lot of work has been done on gcc > support, so this shouldn't be too far away if it isn't here already. > > An active user/developer community would be desirable. > > Are there any candidates, presently existing or under development? > > Areas of interest > > Accessibility to people with disabilities, especially through braille and > speech access. I'm well aware of Sun's Orca and Gnome accessibility work. > Getting used to the system from an administrative point of view is also > desirable before potentially having further involvement. > > My machines are all x86-64 architecture. I don't mind waiting if people are > still working on more basic areas such as the build system etc. > > Suggestions are welcome. >
You can also have a look at BeleniX (http://www.belenix.org/). It is a stable KDE based OpenSolaris environment and at present we are getting KDE 4.3.1 ready using Gcc 4.4.1. BeleniX is built ground-up from source from the kernel to userland apps. Even though there are pieces in BeleniX like Firefox and some Gnome components built using SUN Studio, our intention is to base the distro on a completely open toolchain and we are moving aggresively to using Gcc4. You can have a look at the belenix sourceforge project that has a repository with all the utilities and build recipes: http://belenix.sourceforge.net/ The base OpenSolaris OS is still built using SUN Studio since we have not yet had time to investigate a Gcc based build. There are other pieces like the libc_i18n and the emancipation project that Shawn mentioned in another email, that still need work. Since BeleniX derives sources from various places like OpenSolaris SFW, JDS for Gnome and others, the FOSS stack is for the most part integrated with the platform on par with what you will find on SUN OpenSolaris distro. BeleniX is completely self-hosting and every software delivered for BeleniX is built on the same platform including OpenSolaris OS builds. Regarrds, Moinak. -- ================================ http://www.belenix.org/ http://moinakg.wordpress.com/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
