Sun Enhancements to OpenSolaris Take Aim at Linux

"OpenSolaris 2008.11, the second major release of Sun Microsystems' freely-licensed, Solaris-based operating system, hit the Web late last year packed with feature enhancements that illustrate that Sun isn't about to cede the platform stage to Linux, as brothers-in-Unix such as IBM's AIX and Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX have done.

"Taking a cue from popular Linux distributions, Sun's OpenSolaris improvements center around a bolstered software package management framework that includes both client-side tools for installing and updating applications, and back-end facilities for channeling community packaging efforts into the project.

"In my tests, I found Sun's package management framework, which is anchored by the still-young Image Packaging System, much improved from the facilities that shipped with Solaris 10. However, while Sun is on the right track here, I found the software tools less streamlined and the breadth of available software packages less broad than what I've come to expect from Linux distributions such as Ubuntu."

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