Since Sun decided to move toward Open Source (by releasing a free version of the Java Development Kit, or hiring Ian Murdoch, the founder of the Debian Project), my interest for this company’s products is growing (even though I write some programs in Java for about two years). Moreover, Solaris is installed on most of the computers of my University and my teachers seemed to enjoy working with it.
So when Sun announced to ship DVD-kits of the free version of Solaris, I ordered a kit and tried it on my machine.
The distro I chose is Belenix and, well the result is not bad, but it is not very good either !
First of all I must admit that my hardware is a little exotic. I have a Shuttle SK22G2 which is very practical, but almost all components are integrated on the mainboard and I can add no other one (except graphic cards), so that when my computer does not detect some chips (such as my sound chip or my network interface) I can do anything but searching some drivers on the web…
OpenSolaris detected almost all my hardware, except my my webcam, sound chip and my network card which did not work out of the box, but I fortunately found some drivers for the two latter. Nvidia propretary drivers allowed me to have a decent graphical interface and as soon as I get an Internet connection, I will even install Compiz on it !
Fact is, that I enjoy discovering a new environment (even if it is not a radical change as a switch from Windows to a *NIX system) and I learn a lot of things about this operating system, which is pretty popular in a professional environment.
I created a OpenSolaris category, so, I will probably write other articles about it 
May 17th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Hi Hervé,
Can you please explain me why you choose Belenix and not an other distribution like Nexenta OS or SchilliX ?
What is the desktop environment you use ? Gnome ? What can you say about performance ?
May 18th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Hi Gizmo, welcome here
I installed Belenix because I wanted to experience a new graphic interface.
Even though I tested Nexenta OS, I found, that it really looked too much like Ubuntu. As I wanted to discover an other window environment, I chose Belenix, which is installed with KDE by default.
Schillix had the ugly C Desktop Environment on the Live-DVD, so I gave up at once !
About the performance : I found my computer a little more reactive than with Linux even though it would be more scientific to make measured tests.
Something I forgot : the man pages miss after the installation and it really sucks when you have to use the POSIX fdisk and not the GNU one, for example.
As I said, Ubuntu will remain my productive environment but I think the development of OpenSolaris can be pretty interesting in the future, especially because of the support Sun can bring…