Few days ago, I got OpenSolaris DVD from a friend containing various developer tools and I decided to try it out.

The DVD I got is released quarterly and can be found here.

I dediced to try it out. The install process was simple but it lasted forever, I couldn’t believe it was over when it finished. Well actually it wasn’t really finished, because after booting it for the first time it took like 10 minutes to actually start the GUI.

OpenSolaris really isn’t a polished product. At least from a standpoint of a desktop user.

My screen was in the correct resolution, and the nvidia drivers were there but the refresh rate was like 50 Hz instead of 60Hz.

Next, I found out my network card was not working… I searched the internet for VIA Rhine II and found drivers here. Next, I found out resolv.conf file did not even exist

I created one, populated some name servers and set up the default gateway to my router.

But again I was out of luck, dig tool was working but I couldn’t connect to any site on the net. With some googleing I found out I had to copy nsswitch.dns to nsswitch.conf

Wow, talk about a user friendly OS

I found a good package repository run by the Blastwave guys. Check it out.

I named my OpenSolaris Horus. Horus was the Egypt’s Sun God at the time the pharaohs ruled.

Now, I’m running vncserver on Solaris that I use via vncviewer from my Ubuntu GNU/Linux laptop.

Here’s a picture of it through my vncviewer. I’m running fluxbox window manager btw