[ale] Sorta-OT: Solaris-10 vs. openSolaris

[Scott Castaline]

John Mills wrote:
> ALErs -
> 
> I'd appreciate reflections and comparisons of Solaris-10 of 01/2006 and 
> the current openSolaris.
> 
> Background:
>   I'm on the edge of installing some flavor of Solaris for in-house
>   learning use and want to choose a path. Box is a curb-pick Dell
>   Inspiron-2400 (single P4). Other than for my general background, I may
>   set up a few services on that box for my home network and may expose one
>   or more services to the wider net.
> 
> Candidates:
>   I have a DVD installation package for Solaris-10/Jan.2006 from Sun,
>   including docs, received as user-group meeting swag, and (naturally) net
>   resources are available for openSolaris.
> 
> Trade-off (as it looks to me):
>   1. The Solaris-10 set is quite complete and includes some non-free
>   components. Sun's license is appropriate for my intended personal use.
> 
>   2. Jan.2006 to Sep.2008 is aeons on the software-development time line,
>   so I could have better and newer code on the openSolaris path.
> 
> Your comments and comparisons?
> 
> TIA.
> 
>   - Mills
> 
> 
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The little bit I've played around with them OpenSolaris is just a 
desktop as is with a default gnome desktop mgr. Basically once you boot 
up and login it's just like either F 9 desktop or Ubuntu with a 
different font/window color themes. Default pkges is FF T'bird and OOo 
and I believe they load Rhythmbox. Solaris10 defaults to a JRE(? Java) 
desktop. This version is more appropriate for tuning to an acceptable 
server. OpenSolaris could possibly be tuned for use as a server but is 
more appropriate to be used as a desktop.