Still in OS land: OpenSolaris

After Ubuntu, I said I could give a chance to (Open)Solaris. I do remember Solaris from the Sparc stations we had at the University and I keep on reading about ZFS and dtrace, but I never actually used it much.

So I just went and downloaded the DVD, burned it then installed Solaris with no fuss on top of the previous Ubuntu partition. Rebooted the system and it all worked! Even had an option to switch between Gnome and CDE -- well that brings back memories...

First, OpenSolaris (Developer version) really seems a Java programmer's kit: I get NetBeans 5.5 with Sun Java Application Server. Even the installer seems Java. Plus, I have Firefox, Thunderbird and a Terminal: that about covers most of the stuff you actually need while working. Sadly, no movie player like Xine or VLC.

Of course, there was some strangeness:

• it also installs Sun One Studio which seems redundant with NetBeans but I didn't actually try it.
• even if we do have SJAS installed, it doesn't show up in NetBeans. Using the Server Manager is quite easy to add it and it took me about 3 minutes but it was strange. I guess it has something to do with the multi-user settings.
  

So, wish me luck. I kept wanting to try out SJAS clustering and doing this under Solaris seems the best solution.