OpenSolaris Release

Just a note here to myself.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 is only for X86

OpenSolaris 2009.4 will have support for SPARC

Download site: http://www.genunix.org/

The following article is from Softpedia.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 ReleasedPowerful, secure OS powered by Solaris

Two days ago, Sun Microsystems announced the second stable release of its OpenSolaris project. Not only is this release much better, faster and powerful than the previous one, OpenSolaris 2008.05 (announced at the beginning of May 2008), but it also includes all the latest technologies and applications, such as OpenOffice.org 3 or wireless drivers that "just work." OpenSolaris is now a stable, open source, secure, highly scalable, freely re-distributable and reliable operating system.

The new release, OpenSolaris 2008.11, has a wonderful and highly customized GNOME 2.24, patched with many improvements requested by users, which offers you a lightweight but very powerful desktop environment. The amazing ZFS filesystem will automatically create snapshots of your files, and they can be browsed using the Time Slider feature from Nautilus.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 introduces limited suspend and resume from RAM on the Toshiba Tecra M8, Tecra M10, Tecra M9, Tecra A9, Portege R500 and Satellite A205; Lenovo 889703U and 64608VU; Dell Precision M4300 and Latitude D630 and Sun Microsystems' Ultra 24, Ultra 20 Workstation, Ultra 40 Workstation laptops. Moreover, support for the following languages has been added in the new release of OpenSolaris: Indonesian, Malay, Kazak, Vietnamese and Ukrainian.

Highlights of OpenSolaris 2008.11:

· ZFS Filesystem (with snapshot support);
· GNOME 2.24 - Powerful desktop environment;
· Mozilla Firefox 3.0 - Award winning web browser;
· OpenOffice.org 3.0 - Open source office suite;
· NetBeans and Eclipse - Powerful Integrated Development Environments;
· Songbird - Powerful music player;
· Transmission - Popular BitTorrent client;
· Gobby - A collaborative editor;
· Tracker - Desktop search tool;
· Improved printer manager;
· Improved package manager;
· Software updates notifier;
· New software repositories;
· Better wireless drivers;
· Improved hardware support;
· Improved Web Stack;
· Storage profiles;
· Automated installer - Supports local and network installations;
· COMSTAR - Turns an OpenSolaris host into an SCSI storage device or target;
· Distribution constructor - Build bootable and pre-configured OpenSolaris images.

With the OpenSolaris 2008.11 being released and all that, Sun Microsystems has already started to work on the next version, OpenSolaris 2009.4, which will introduce support for the SPARC architecture, a new tool for resource control and network virtualization, called Crossbow, and virtual consoles. Users should also expect improvements to the package management, automated installer and network auto-magic projects, along with new applications. OpenSolaris 2009.4 will be released in April 2009. Until then, download OpenSolaris 2008.11 right now from Softpedia.