Welcoming OpenIndiana

“Solaris holds a special place in my heart. It was my first
taste of UNIX, back in my school days, and I probably wouldn’t have
become involved with the Linux community if I hadn’t been searching
for a free version of “this UNIX thing” so I could practise my
shell scripting at home. I was thrilled when Sun announced they
were releasing OpenSolaris for the community to play with, even if
it was several years too late to help me with my homework. And I
was very disappointed when Oracle executed OpenSolaris earlier this
year. Fortunately for Solaris fans the OpenIndiana project is
picking up where Sun left off. I had been itching to try a new
version of OpenSolaris since February (when the last release was
scheduled) and so I quickly grabbed the newly launched OpenIndiana,
development build 147.

“Installation and hardware support

“Before diving into the contents of the DVD, first let me say
that the project’s web site is very much a work in progress. Many
pages haven’t been posted yet and the site is mostly an
introduction to the project and a download page. No doubt these
will be filled in later, but for now the web site is mostly bare.
What we can learn in those few pages is that OpenIndiana is working
with the Illumos project to make a binary compatible fork of
OpenSolaris. Or what used to be OpenSolaris. Maintaining binary
compatibility will allow people to freely test their systems and
software with OpenIndiana prior to trying an official Solaris
product.”

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