Sun Microsystems and the OpenSolaris community just launched the first ever release of the open-source OpenSolaris operating system. The OpenSolaris 2008.05 release was a result of Sun’s Project Indiana which seeks to combine Sun’s innovation, enterprise-class capabilities and backward compatibility with Linux free, open-source, and efficient distribution model.
The main goal of Project Indiana is to reorient OpenSolaris to the general public.
OpenSolaris will install on laptops, desktops, servers and in data centers. The initial release includes a network-based package management system (IPS), a GNOME 2.2 desktop, Compiz Fusion and LiveCD technology supported on AMD64, Pentium, and Xeon EM64T platforms.
With the LiveCD, this means curious bystanders should be able to test OpenSolaris without making permanent changes to their systems. Updates, upgrades, adding and deleting software packages are done through the IPS package management system.
Taking a similar approach as Ubuntu, OpenSolaris releases are going to be delivered on a six-month cycle with bi-weekly development builds of the entire code base by the OpenSolaris community.
OpenSolaris features the Zettabyte File System or ZFS offering instant rollback and check-summing to prevent data corruption. Expect the AMP stack to be included (Apache, MySQL which is now part of Sun and of course the ever popular PHP.)
In addition, support for multiple boot and multiple OS is possible using Virtual Box.
The download is 686MB which took approximately 30 minutes to complete this morning starting at 5:30 PDT. Meanwhile, if you are curious about OpenSolaris, view Getting Started with OpenSolaris 2008.05.
A follow-up post of OpenSolaris will be in order in the next few days. Stay tuned.