OpenSolaris: Some questions

[Luke has no name]

1) Is there a web based software repo listing? (Like packages.ubuntu.com)

2) How is it compared to Ubuntu? This is very general, but for those who have used it, tell me your experience with it compared to Ubuntu.

My only comment on it so far (haven't used it yet): Its website and marketing sucks compared to Ubuntu... Ubuntu's wiki, homepage, package list, etc. are easier to navigate than osol's pages.

Also, Solaris should have its own sub forum.

[DeadSuperHero]

1.) Blastwave.org has a lot of packages, though it's not technically an IPS repo, I think.

2.) For me, it's great. Although it ships with an outdated version of Gnome, and there's a few key GStreamer plugins missing.

But, some good points:

-Flash plays really well.
-Firefox is somewhat faster.
-ZFS is a plus, as well as DTrace
-Your OS "Clones" an image of itself and adds it to your boot list before an update/upgrade. Meaning, if you severely screw something up, you can roll back a version.
-All Java apps can run on it. (Frostwire and Azureus, for example)
-Backwards-compatible with Solaris apps all the way back to Solaris 2-compatible apps.

Bad points:

-Old Gnome
-Missing GStreamer plugins.
-The IPS package manager frontend is slow and buggy.
-Less hardware support, although compiz fusion worked great on my Nvidia card.


Somewhat interesting footnote:
-KDE 4.1 is almost completely ported over to Solaris now.

[SunnyRabbiera]

I would not use solaris as a desktop OS, its just not there yet, even BSD fares better then it.
But in a few years who knows, solaris has a great future ahead of it if people are willing to work with it.
The main thing holding it back was its sparc only support but now its beginning to get into the intel market only the future can say if it will surpass linux or BSD.

[cardinals_fan]

OpenSolaris works great on my hardware. It has awesome Flash and Java support, a battle-hardened kernel, and some cool features (ZFS, DTrace, etc.). On the downside, package management is a disaster at the moment. The official repos have little software, the Blastwave repos seem very outdated, the CLI package manager is almost impossible to understand, and the GUI package manager is a buggy mess.

Overall, OpenSolaris is going really well. Once they get their package management woes sorted out, I'll strongly consider switching over from Arch.

[init1]

1) Is there a web based software repo listing? (Like packages.ubuntu.com)

2) How is it compared to Ubuntu? This is very general, but for those who have used it, tell me your experience with it compared to Ubuntu.

My only comment on it so far (haven't used it yet): Its website and marketing sucks compared to Ubuntu... Ubuntu's wiki, homepage, package list, etc. are easier to navigate than osol's pages.

Also, Solaris should have its own sub forum.
OpenSolaris doesn't run well on my computer. From what I've heard, it runs great on some, and not all all on others. Worth a try anyway. As for the environment, it looks and acts a lot like Ubuntu.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=822083

[D-EJ915]

If you have a wholly-nvidia system solaris will run perfectly, much better than any verison of windows actually, lol, especially with wireless. At least in my experience (I ran opensolaris on my quadro/nforce pro system last year during the summer).