OpenIndiana: Build 151 Prestable 8 Released

[OpenIndiana Logo]

OpenIndiana Build 151 Prestable 8 Released

[OpenSolaris Logo]

Abstract:

Sun Microsystems had open-sourced it's Solaris operating system during the process of building Solaris 10. The open source project became known as OpenSolaris, with the first Intel & SPARC distributions being also known an OpenSolaris. Oracle purchased Sun and updates to OpenSolaris stopped. A fork called Illumos was created, containing some of the source code. OpenIndiana became well known with their oi_151a0 distribution. In August 2013, the OpenIndiana team had released their latest update: oi_151a8.

[OpenIndiana Build 147 Screenshot]

First Impressions:

The OpenIndiana & Illumos teams have been unable to deliver on their SPARC commitment, but they were able to get their 9th binary Intel based release out. The installation was done against a Gateway Desktop with 1.5Gig of RAM. A pair of dual enterprise grade 250 SATA drives were recognized. No option was noted during the installation to create a mirrored pair, as was available with the most recent Solaris 10 updates. The GUI installation was marvelous, installing on the 32 bit Pentium 4 platform. The hyperthreading normally available in the Intel Pentium 4 did not look like it was available, as a second virtual CPU. A USB keyboard and mouse from a SunRay was recognized without any problems. The network card was not recognized, making the distribution less useful that I hoped.

[OpenIndiana Build 147: Package Manager]

Final Thoughts

The inability to use the built-in Network Card on the Gateway was problematic. Honestly, the reason this platform was being spun up was to test some Network Management software, normally run on SPARC platforms. This will start the process of determining what can be done next, to build out a supportable Intel platform. Off to the mailing lists!