I used blastwave to install the nano editor (so non-vi guys could use their accounts) and Wireshark on my OpenSolaris test machine at work and everything worked fine. I also used this Japanese site:
http://lifewithsolaris.jp/modules/about/ to install VLC video player, mplayer, and a few other video and music players that I needed and everything worked fine. However I think you're better off using the official opensolaris.org IPS repository for the "big name" officially supported IPS packages like OpenOffice (pkg install openoffice), foreign language support, rdesktop (pkg install SUNWrdesktop) and Sun Studio. The only thing that kind of stinks about the way that blastwave installs things on my computer is that it doesn't install any icons on the Gnome desktop, so I had to google around for a cool looking "Wireshark" icon and then manually add the icon to my desktop and configure it the icon to start up wireshark from the /opt/ directory when I double clicked on it. Same thing when I installed RealPlayer from the official RealPlayer- no GNOME icon, I had to google around and make my own icon from scratch. That lifewithsolaris.jp site is brilliant though, installs the icons and everything for you- much less work for me. Hopefully, we'll get basic free software like Nano and VLC media player and Wireshark available in the IPS respository soon (*hint* hint*). -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
