OpenSolaris 2008.11 Drops from Sun Microsystems Heaven
After the second release candidate (RC) dropped late November, Sun Microsystems has now ended the development cycle of its operating system by releasing OpenSolaris 2008.11 Final. In this new iteration of the Solaris OS, besides a complete web stack, you can expect to get Firefox 3.0, OpenOffice 3, and Gnome 2.24.
Regarding the web stack feature that was mentioned above, it must be noted that it encompasses applications such as Apache web server and MySQL 64-bit version database. There is even a ZFS Time Slider Tool that helps you better manage data backups by taking snapshots at regular intervals of time. Just make sure to enable it (System -> Administration -> time slider setup) as it comes disabled by default.
Not only is the OpenSolaris 2008.11 available for download, the requirements that your machine has to comply are modest to say the least. In order for the operating system to function properly all that is required is 8GB of free space on your hard disk, 512MB of RAM, and nothing more. If you do not have that much free space available, OpenSolaris 2008.11 will also run on 2.6GB (minimum hard disk space requirement).
OpenSolaris 2008.11 is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit x86 processor machines – there is no SPARC platforms support for the time being. Here is another downer: if you want to upgrade to OpenSolaris 2008.11, it is not a possibility. During the installation process the software will delete all data stored on the selected target. The good news is that you can run Windows, Mac OS X or Linux alongside OpenSolaris 2008.11 as long as you have proper partitions set up.
Now that the Sun Microsystems team has successfully ended another six month release cycle, it is time to start work on the next iteration of the Solaris OS, namely OpenSolaris 2009.04
Regarding the web stack feature that was mentioned above, it must be noted that it encompasses applications such as Apache web server and MySQL 64-bit version database. There is even a ZFS Time Slider Tool that helps you better manage data backups by taking snapshots at regular intervals of time. Just make sure to enable it (System -> Administration -> time slider setup) as it comes disabled by default.
Not only is the OpenSolaris 2008.11 available for download, the requirements that your machine has to comply are modest to say the least. In order for the operating system to function properly all that is required is 8GB of free space on your hard disk, 512MB of RAM, and nothing more. If you do not have that much free space available, OpenSolaris 2008.11 will also run on 2.6GB (minimum hard disk space requirement).
OpenSolaris 2008.11 is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit x86 processor machines – there is no SPARC platforms support for the time being. Here is another downer: if you want to upgrade to OpenSolaris 2008.11, it is not a possibility. During the installation process the software will delete all data stored on the selected target. The good news is that you can run Windows, Mac OS X or Linux alongside OpenSolaris 2008.11 as long as you have proper partitions set up.
Now that the Sun Microsystems team has successfully ended another six month release cycle, it is time to start work on the next iteration of the Solaris OS, namely OpenSolaris 2009.04
