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Solaris/OpenSolaris distributions - an overview

Posted by Lenz Grimmer on

OpenSolaris LogoThere have been several similar articles to this one, but I find it pretty amazing to see all these emerging and established Solaris/OpenSolaris distributions. It's a good sign of a healthy community!

So here is my collection - please let me know if I forgot one.

Maintained by Sun Microsystems:

  • Solaris 10: The commercial, production-ready and full supported version, similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES).
  • OpenSolaris: This is the "official" OpenSolaris distribution, developed & supported by Sun. Can be compared to Fedora or openSUSE Linux - this is the version which will become the basis of future "Enterprise" releases with a different support and maintenance model. The developers aim on publishing a release roughly every six months.
  • Solaris Express: Community Edition (SX:CE): is Sun's periodically built unsupported distribution of OpenSolaris (along with many additional open-source and a few closed-source components necessary to make a complete installable system). However, it looks as if Sun plans to discontinue the production of this version soon.
  • Solaris Express: Sun's official distribution of OpenSolaris. These are provided primarily for customers interested in trying out new features of the Solaris release currently under development without the total cutting-edge-ness of the Solaris Express: Community Edition

Third-party distributions (in alphabetical order):

  • AuroraUX: A core operating system for high integrity scientific computing. AuroraUX is a Solaris-derived kernel- and user- land. The core of the project are its utilities written in Ada. When necessary, poorly implemented features get fixed or rewritten, as well.
  • Belenix: BeleniX is an OpenSolaris Distribution with a Live CD (runs directly off the CD). It can be installed to harddisk and is free to use, modify and distribute.
  • Embedded Operating system/Networking (EON): A RAM-based live ZFS NAS appliance (CIFS/NFS/Samba) that boots from USB.
  • Jaris: An OpenSolaris derivative suitable for Japanese users, providing a windows-like environment. (The web site is available in Japanese only)
  • Korona: A live DVD distribution based on OpenSolaris, but using KDE 4.3 as the default desktop.
  • Martux: A barebones OpenSolaris distribution for SPARC
  • MilaX: MilaX is a small size Live CD distribution which runs completely off a miniCD, bootable business card or USB flash drive.
  • Nexenta Core: Basically an OpenSolaris Kernel with an Ubuntu/GNU userland (including an improved version of apt-get that utilizes ZFS snapshots to perform rollbacks of failed upgrades)
  • SchilliX: The very first independent OpenSolaris-based distribution (seems like it's not maintained anymore)
  • StormOS: an OpenSolaris desktop distribution, based on Nexenta Core

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