OpenSolaris 2008.5 was released on May 05, 2008. It's the first official release from the Indiana project, which is Sun's effort to push Solaris Operating System to desktop users. Since Ian Murdock was hired by Sun to oversee this project, it's reasonable thinking that this release should be a lot similar to Linux, or more preciously, Debian distribution. What does this statement mean? Decent performance, secure, nice hardware support and easy to use. At least this is my expectation from OpenSolaris 2008.5. Does it stand to my expectation? Let's find out.
First off, the testing machine is an old (or not that old) Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. Here below is the specification:
Intel Pentium M Processor 730 (1.60GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
15.4 inch WUXGA LCD Panel, 1680x1050 display
2GB, DDR2, 400MHz 2 Dimms
Intel 915 Video Card
40GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem,
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 (802.11b/g) Internal Wireless
Installation
OpenSolaris 2008.5 follows other modern Linux distributions in terms of installation: feel and then decide, which allows you to feel the system first and then decide whether or not to install. It comes with a single LiveCD that can be used to boot the PC without installing it on the hard drive. By double-clicking the installation icon on the desktop, the installation starts. Generally speaking, the installation process is pretty simple. Only a few questions are asked: keyboard layout, locale and language. When it comes to the hard drive partition, you have the choice to use the entire hard drive or to use the spare space on your hard drive. Please note, if you intend to do a dual-boot installation with other existing OS, be careful. The grub, lilo or any other boot loader program needs to be modified manually later. To make it simple, I chose to use the entire disk. The installation is pretty lengthy. It took about 45 minutes to one hour to finish. Comparing with other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS, that usually only take 20 minutes to complete a fresh installation, plus I found out a lot of packages, for example, OpenOffice are not included in Solaris installation, this installation process is not efficient at all.
Another thing worth mentioning here is that OpenSolaris 2008.5 uses ZFS as its default file system. I will talk about it a little later.
Appearance
OpenSolaris 2008.5 uses Gnome 2.20 as its Window Manager. The blue background image and Nimbus theme are much more pleasing than the dull brown them used in Ubuntu.
The font rendering is nice but not as good as in modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse.
The Desktop Menu is pretty much the default setting from Gnome. The only difference is that Sun always tries to integrate its Java into the desktop. There's no exception in this release. The Service and Hardware List are replaced by the Java applications. Personally, I hate Java on my desktop. It's slow and ugly. Sun has failed badly in previous efforts to convince people to use its so-called JDS (Java Desktop System). It's just slow like a snail and not intuitive at all. So, here is my wish list for OpenSolaris' future releases in this area: no Java, please.
Packages
OpenSolaris 2008.5 comes with very limited packages installed by default. I was very surprised to see OpenOffice is not installed by default. GCC and GIMP are not installed, either. Considering the lengthy installation process, you have to wonder: what is it doing during that one hour period? The good thing is that OpenSolaris 2008.5 comes with a package management system, IPS. It's the effort from Ian Murdock, clearly. IPS is similar to Synaptic, which is widely used in some Linux distributions like Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS. IPS allows users to install new packages from internet and to update the system online. The repository currently only contains about 1,200 packages, comparing with close to 20,000 package in Debian/Ubuntu's repository. Nevertheless, I had no trouble to install packages like OpenOffice, GCC and Gimp. At this point, although the repository doesn't have many packages and the installation is slow, I am OK with that. I believe with time going on, they will be improved.
Hardware Support
I should say I was impressed by the hardware support in this release. I was expecting much more unidentified hardware in my system before. After the system came up, my video card was identified, Intel i810 driver was loaded. The natural resolution, 1680x1050 was used. ipw2200 driver was loaded out of the box, which means my wireless card was configured. The touchpad, along with many other hardware components all worked out of box. Thanks for HAL, all USB devices and CD/DVD devices worked. I didn't test PCMCIA devices, but expect they will work as well. The sound card, which many people had troubles with in this release, however, worked fine in my system. One thing in the hardware list: the eithernet card is not supported. This is weird. I would expect the other way around, eithernet card is supported while wireless is not. Another thing is that ACPI is not supported, which means you will have trouble on laptops in terms of suspend/hibernate and power control.
Usability
Generally speaking, OpenSolaris 2008.5 is usable for normal desktop users. The system is very responsive. Programs are launched quickly and run fast. However, there are some little details which are annoying. When the system comes up, a little daemon called Network Auto-Magic (NWAM) is in charge of the network configuration. Unless your network is very simple, it's very hard to use NWAM to configure your system. The default Network Configuration program in Gnome is disabled because NWAM is running. To make it work,
% svcadm disable svc:/network/physical:nwam
will disable NWAM. First of all, I don't know why Sun introduced this problem to take over the default Gnome program. Is it easier to use? I didn't investigate since I didn't want to. Why should I abandon something which works perfectly? OpenSolaris 2008.5 adopts Gnome as it window manager but tries to drag people away from what they are familiar with?
They story with the network doesn't end here. After I configured the wireless card, I still could not browse any pages in Firefox. I checked the routing table, DNS settings, IP address, etc. Everything seemed fine. I realized that it's a Solaris system. So, by adding "dns" in the hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf, all dns names were resolved. This is my second question: why does that file come with settings which only allow to look up in the local hosts file? If it expects to be updated by the dhcp client, why don't make it happen by default. For normal users without Solaris background, that will leave a system not functioning by the first hand.
I was left in the middle when trying to update the system using IPS. No warning, no errors, it just stayed there forever.
I am sure problems like above can be resolved easily if more time and efforts are invested in the system. But, since OpenSolaris 2008.5 is targeted as a Desktop system, if the learning curve is fairly long, why should people switch from some other more user friendly systems?
Final Thoughts
I only spent two days with OpenSolaris, so my expose to this release could be very limited. What I have seen in this release is a superb kernel. What else can I say? Solaris is still Solaris. Solaris provides a lot of unique features which are not available in other Operating Systems. Two outstanding of them are ZFS and DTrace. That's probably the reason why people like me are still love Solaris. However, in this release, they are almost transparent. For normal desktop users, why do they need an 128-bit file system? Why do they need to trace the system performance and each program running in the system? How to present these unique features and integrate them in the Desktop Manger is what the OpenSolaris developers need to think about in the future. Without ZFS and DTrace, I don't see the reason why Linux and BSD users would want to switch.
Sun has missed the golden opportunity to have the second life when the market went south. When companies tried very hard to save expenses, Sun didn't believe the open source model could be the answer. So they stayed close-sourced. In their mind, they invested resources to develop the software, so they should sell the software. Later, companies have largely embraced Linux and signed contracts with Redhat, Novell and IBM. Sun suddenly realized the are left behind. So, they are forced to open their Solaris. But, under another license, not GPL. From what I have read, the OpenSolaris project is not open like its name suggests. It's still tightly controlled by the company. These have created another problem for Sun. They are already late, which means in a lot area like hardware support, device drivers, software integrations, vendor support, etc, they are way behind of Linux. They need to port a lot code to Solaris. However, not to open like Linux community does, Sun can not have thousands, even millions developers worldwide to work for you.
Finally, I would like to see Sun adopting widely used standards/technology/programs. They are proven and people like them. That's the most important part. This will shorten the learning period for users and make the decision a little easier. Make the system simple and make it work.
Did I say "drop Java from Desktop"? ;)
First off, the testing machine is an old (or not that old) Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. Here below is the specification:
Intel Pentium M Processor 730 (1.60GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
15.4 inch WUXGA LCD Panel, 1680x1050 display
2GB, DDR2, 400MHz 2 Dimms
Intel 915 Video Card
40GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem,
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 (802.11b/g) Internal Wireless
Installation
OpenSolaris 2008.5 follows other modern Linux distributions in terms of installation: feel and then decide, which allows you to feel the system first and then decide whether or not to install. It comes with a single LiveCD that can be used to boot the PC without installing it on the hard drive. By double-clicking the installation icon on the desktop, the installation starts. Generally speaking, the installation process is pretty simple. Only a few questions are asked: keyboard layout, locale and language. When it comes to the hard drive partition, you have the choice to use the entire hard drive or to use the spare space on your hard drive. Please note, if you intend to do a dual-boot installation with other existing OS, be careful. The grub, lilo or any other boot loader program needs to be modified manually later. To make it simple, I chose to use the entire disk. The installation is pretty lengthy. It took about 45 minutes to one hour to finish. Comparing with other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS, that usually only take 20 minutes to complete a fresh installation, plus I found out a lot of packages, for example, OpenOffice are not included in Solaris installation, this installation process is not efficient at all.
Another thing worth mentioning here is that OpenSolaris 2008.5 uses ZFS as its default file system. I will talk about it a little later.
Appearance
OpenSolaris 2008.5 uses Gnome 2.20 as its Window Manager. The blue background image and Nimbus theme are much more pleasing than the dull brown them used in Ubuntu.
The font rendering is nice but not as good as in modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse.
The Desktop Menu is pretty much the default setting from Gnome. The only difference is that Sun always tries to integrate its Java into the desktop. There's no exception in this release. The Service and Hardware List are replaced by the Java applications. Personally, I hate Java on my desktop. It's slow and ugly. Sun has failed badly in previous efforts to convince people to use its so-called JDS (Java Desktop System). It's just slow like a snail and not intuitive at all. So, here is my wish list for OpenSolaris' future releases in this area: no Java, please.
Packages
OpenSolaris 2008.5 comes with very limited packages installed by default. I was very surprised to see OpenOffice is not installed by default. GCC and GIMP are not installed, either. Considering the lengthy installation process, you have to wonder: what is it doing during that one hour period? The good thing is that OpenSolaris 2008.5 comes with a package management system, IPS. It's the effort from Ian Murdock, clearly. IPS is similar to Synaptic, which is widely used in some Linux distributions like Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS. IPS allows users to install new packages from internet and to update the system online. The repository currently only contains about 1,200 packages, comparing with close to 20,000 package in Debian/Ubuntu's repository. Nevertheless, I had no trouble to install packages like OpenOffice, GCC and Gimp. At this point, although the repository doesn't have many packages and the installation is slow, I am OK with that. I believe with time going on, they will be improved.
Hardware Support
I should say I was impressed by the hardware support in this release. I was expecting much more unidentified hardware in my system before. After the system came up, my video card was identified, Intel i810 driver was loaded. The natural resolution, 1680x1050 was used. ipw2200 driver was loaded out of the box, which means my wireless card was configured. The touchpad, along with many other hardware components all worked out of box. Thanks for HAL, all USB devices and CD/DVD devices worked. I didn't test PCMCIA devices, but expect they will work as well. The sound card, which many people had troubles with in this release, however, worked fine in my system. One thing in the hardware list: the eithernet card is not supported. This is weird. I would expect the other way around, eithernet card is supported while wireless is not. Another thing is that ACPI is not supported, which means you will have trouble on laptops in terms of suspend/hibernate and power control.
Usability
Generally speaking, OpenSolaris 2008.5 is usable for normal desktop users. The system is very responsive. Programs are launched quickly and run fast. However, there are some little details which are annoying. When the system comes up, a little daemon called Network Auto-Magic (NWAM) is in charge of the network configuration. Unless your network is very simple, it's very hard to use NWAM to configure your system. The default Network Configuration program in Gnome is disabled because NWAM is running. To make it work,
% svcadm disable svc:/network/physical:nwam
will disable NWAM. First of all, I don't know why Sun introduced this problem to take over the default Gnome program. Is it easier to use? I didn't investigate since I didn't want to. Why should I abandon something which works perfectly? OpenSolaris 2008.5 adopts Gnome as it window manager but tries to drag people away from what they are familiar with?
They story with the network doesn't end here. After I configured the wireless card, I still could not browse any pages in Firefox. I checked the routing table, DNS settings, IP address, etc. Everything seemed fine. I realized that it's a Solaris system. So, by adding "dns" in the hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf, all dns names were resolved. This is my second question: why does that file come with settings which only allow to look up in the local hosts file? If it expects to be updated by the dhcp client, why don't make it happen by default. For normal users without Solaris background, that will leave a system not functioning by the first hand.
I was left in the middle when trying to update the system using IPS. No warning, no errors, it just stayed there forever.
I am sure problems like above can be resolved easily if more time and efforts are invested in the system. But, since OpenSolaris 2008.5 is targeted as a Desktop system, if the learning curve is fairly long, why should people switch from some other more user friendly systems?
Final Thoughts
I only spent two days with OpenSolaris, so my expose to this release could be very limited. What I have seen in this release is a superb kernel. What else can I say? Solaris is still Solaris. Solaris provides a lot of unique features which are not available in other Operating Systems. Two outstanding of them are ZFS and DTrace. That's probably the reason why people like me are still love Solaris. However, in this release, they are almost transparent. For normal desktop users, why do they need an 128-bit file system? Why do they need to trace the system performance and each program running in the system? How to present these unique features and integrate them in the Desktop Manger is what the OpenSolaris developers need to think about in the future. Without ZFS and DTrace, I don't see the reason why Linux and BSD users would want to switch.
Sun has missed the golden opportunity to have the second life when the market went south. When companies tried very hard to save expenses, Sun didn't believe the open source model could be the answer. So they stayed close-sourced. In their mind, they invested resources to develop the software, so they should sell the software. Later, companies have largely embraced Linux and signed contracts with Redhat, Novell and IBM. Sun suddenly realized the are left behind. So, they are forced to open their Solaris. But, under another license, not GPL. From what I have read, the OpenSolaris project is not open like its name suggests. It's still tightly controlled by the company. These have created another problem for Sun. They are already late, which means in a lot area like hardware support, device drivers, software integrations, vendor support, etc, they are way behind of Linux. They need to port a lot code to Solaris. However, not to open like Linux community does, Sun can not have thousands, even millions developers worldwide to work for you.
Finally, I would like to see Sun adopting widely used standards/technology/programs. They are proven and people like them. That's the most important part. This will shorten the learning period for users and make the decision a little easier. Make the system simple and make it work.
Did I say "drop Java from Desktop"? ;)
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