Monday, May 08, 2006

Belenix - OpenSolaris Live CD

After Sun released Solaris 10 with tons of new features like DTrace, I always wanted to try it. My past attempt of installing x86 Solaris on my laptop wasn't very pleasant. Solaris couldn't recognize my Video and Network cards. I was always hesitant to try it again.

Few days ago I came to know that Sun Engineering has released a OpenSolaris live CD/DVD called "Belenix". So I decided to give it a try.

Since OpenSolaris platform is not targeted for personal computing use, there is no point in installing it on a laptop. But for enthusiast developers, Belonix Live CD should give an opportunity to try and learn new features of Solaris.

As of today Belonix comes with following applications/tools
# Xorg 6.9
# Supports KDE and Gnome2.14 desktops
# DTrace Toolkit Guide
# Mozilla Firefox Browser v1.5
# Thunderbird EMail client v 1.5
# ImageMagick and Gimp
# Supports ZFS

I will post more information after I try the Belonix.
Good luck

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to rectify a few points. BeleniX is *not* developed by SUN. It was developed as a hobby free time project of a few SUN engineers.

Today it is a community project to which people contribute their free time. SUN does not involve or sponsor BeleniX development in any way.

I am the primay developer who initiated this project and still devote a lot of time to this.

Also Solaris used to be targeted only at servers. But that is now old story. Solaris Express today is as much targeted at desktop users as it is to servers. It now bundles a full complement of desktop software and *is* suitable for using on a laptop. I am using Solaris Express on a Acer Ferrari Laptop day in and day out.