Anybody try Open solaris yet?

I was reading the front page, and decided to "click thru" an add for Sun Microsystems, and found a free download of Solaris called Open Solaris, and was just wondering if it is comparable to Linux....I know it won't be completely compatible as Solaris is Unix and linux isn't.
But would some of the desktop utilities work in Solaris like it does with so many flavors of Linux...like KDE, or Gnome or what have you?

I'm just killing time, and am a little curious about ANY os that can be used effectively without having to pay thru the nose for it.....there is even a live cd to try it out.
I think I will D'L it and play...couldn't hurt....much.

I have messed around with it.
I have the KDE desktop on it, its clean and quick but only because I couldn't load a bunch of stuff on it. I was excited to try out the Linux binaries as it supposedly runs them natively. However, I was screwed via the networking as I tried it on my laptop which uses broadcom chipsets for both wired and wireless so I couldnt really do anything in Solaris unless I wanted to continue using my usb drive to port files back and forth which was just a pain.

On a seperate note VM doesn't handle solaris well either as you cannot cut and paste (as of yet) between the host and the guest OS's. Also I was unsuccessful bridging the networks this way either. If I was home more I would consider trying it on my desktop(s), for learning however I use my laptop as I tote it with me almost everywhere

Kewl, just as I was d'ling Opensolaris, I clicked on the back button on another tab, and got a blue screen...first time on this box that I can remember.
so I had to start all over again....only took about 1 1/2 hrs to D'L on a dsl connection.
So now I have Ubuntu, and Open Solaris ISO's so now I just need to burn them onto cd, and get ready for the re-install of XP, and while I'm at it, will also install Ubuntu.

personally I would reccomend 7.1 over 8.04 at this stage. The reason?
I like 8.04 but after trying it on 3 different computers all of them Nvidia based graphics... all of which fail to get out of low graphics mode. While the restricted drivers work, I cant get my res past 800X600 (and in 1 case 640X480).

Compiling the Nvidia drivers from their cite is a no-go because it reads a different version of the kernel then it is expecting and thus it exits.

Once they get this straight it should be good from what I can tell.

Slowlaris is a bondage-and-discipline OS...

Oh, and Stratus: You MUST build kernel modules with the SAME version of gcc that built the kernel you're running. That's your problem.

Captain Newbie said:

Slowlaris is a bondage-and-discipline OS...

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Agreed. It's also bad for your health.

Cheator said:

Agreed. It's also bad for your health.

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So is Windows. But I wouldn't have a job without Windows, so I guess I can learn to tolerate it.

Captain Newbie said:

So is Windows. But I wouldn't have a job without Windows, so I guess I can learn to tolerate it.

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Yeah, i guess to each their own though. To me, windows is tolerable. And Open Solaris is a higher being's way of punishing man kind.

It's worth giving a try at least to see if you like it.

I hope OpenSolaris is more "open" than Solaris 10; very restrictive(good for corporate...bad for cubicle creature).

I didn't care for CDE, but hear that Gnome is available.

ihrsetrdr said:

I hope OpenSolaris is more "open" than Solaris 10; very restrictive(good for corporate...bad for cubicle creature).

I didn't care for CDE, but hear that Gnome is available.

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Java Desktop = Gnome.

I have a laptop I run Solaris 10 on and have no major problems with it. I also have an Ultra 2 Sparc machine that I am setting up as a server running Solaris 10. One thing I have to say is that setting up software RAID is a HUGE pain, haven't got around to test and see how well it works yet though.