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OpenSolaris 2008.11 PreInstalled.

110 points posted to New Product Ideas, Operating Systems, Desktops and Laptops by evocallaghan Jul 26

"Why use the OpenSolaris OS you ask? It's pretty simple, you'll find it full of unique features like the new Image Packaging System (IPS), ZFS as the default filesystem, DTrace enabled packages for extreme observability and performance tuning, and many many more. See OpenSolaris datasheet for more details. We think you'll be quite happy you came by to take a look!"

Many developers are on the move these days and OpenSolaris is a great platform to use over Linux.
More info here : http://www.opensolaris.com/

Could Dell provide a model of a Desktop Workstation and a Laptop Workstation replacement that supports OpenSolaris out the box with it preloaded as a option.
I am sure Sun would be willing to help.

Thanks!

aikiwolfie
Jul 26		 Dell already offers Solaris for some systems. OpenSolaris doesn't make a nice desktop OS though. It's a huge OS. A lot more than the vast majority of desktop users need. It's too much. Overkill even.

It does make a nice option for servers and workstations though. Especially workstations that are really put under a lot of strain.
chekr
Jul 26		 @akiwolfe

OpenSolaris as in the "Indiana" project is not "huge"...head over to opensolaris.com, download the 650 meg live cd and see for yourself.
jmansion
Jul 28		 I think it would be a good step to offer OpenSolaris - its a handy developer environment and it offers a manufacturer like Dell an opportunity to ship a system with well enginnered drivers to kernel binary ABIs even where the drivers are closed source, which may enable better support for some hardware and a 'just works' user experience. It *will* need some OEM polish adding though.
aikiwolfie
Jul 28		 Good point.
mikelambert70
Jul 30		 It would be nice but I feel that OpenSolaris, at this point, is not yet ready for prime time. 200805 has bugs, worst of all in the boot and update sections themselves, rectifying which is not end-user easy. Yes I use OpenSolaris, 0.93 right now, but we need a more stable and well tuned build before it would be a reasonable option. Even the PDF reader (Evince) cannot display man pages for OS properly, small things like that still abound.

But for the future, Sun + Dell would be an absolutely great combination.
aikiwolfie
Jul 30		 If they've gotten the size down and fix the aforementioned bugs. I see no reason why not.
mikelambert70
Jul 30		 I believe they're gearing towards an 1.00 release which should be prime time ready. It'd definately be nice to be able to order a computer with that. OpenSolaris definately has a more professional feel and capability to it than linuxes, and the current Sun network stacks are second to none.

Sizewise, OpenSolaris never was huge, the OS still fits on a CD-ROM (current 0.93 release), developer versions of it were larger and needed a DVD but that's not exactly huge today, even Vista and many linuxes need a DVD today. The package management system is great, very unfortunately though the graphical package management system is one of the bugs, only the command line version (pkg) works right now.
codestr0m
Aug 24		 As a person who has switched his M2300 and M4300 laptops from Linux to OpenSolaris I can say it will take more work for this to be ready, but when it's ready it will be great.
1) Sun is very dedicated to OpenSolaris
2) OpenSolaris runs more quiet and overall as a desktop better than Ubuntu or any other version of linux I've used (I'm guessing because of better kernel context switching)
3) Sun is paying very close attention to usability
4) Sun will probably provide support for this some day (which would allow some sort of shared revenue between Dell)
Problems:
1) the volume buttons are hw controlled and don't work *yet*
2) IPS while a better package manager is still crap and doesn't handle a desktop use case very well
3) Playing mp3 and a lot of other media out of the box is going to take some work and is currently a complicated licensing issue.
4) You'll need OSS drivers which aren't included by default

Bottom line: I'd pay up to $100 for Dell to include OpenSolaris
 
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