So you've been playing around with alternative OSes for a while and you reckon you've got this Linux thing mastered.
Maybe you're tried Mac OS X and found it a bit too restrictive (or expensive); perhaps you've kicked the Hurd's tyres and thought you'll come back to it when it's something more than just a clever name.
If you're looking for something else to play with, we humbly suggest OpenSolaris. Like Mac OS X, which we looked at recently, OpenSolaris is based on Unix; also like OS X, it's best known for running on a specific processor (in this case Sun's SPARC architecture) but now works on a range of architectures including x86. Unlike OS X though, OpenSolaris is open source, so you can download it for free and start fiddling with it.
We're not interested in a direct, head-to-head comparison, because for many people it's largely a matter of taste which one they choose. But we do want to help people see what makes OpenSolaris a little different from Linux, so read on for our quick-start guide for Linux users wanting to dip their toe into OpenSolaris and see which they prefer...
The source code to Solaris (well, most of it) was released to the community in June 2005, and to make sure that it became a usable home system rather than just a server OS, Sun hired Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian project, to produce OpenSolaris. The first release appeared in May 2008 and the distribution adopted an approximately half-yearly release cycle: after OpenSolaris 2008.05 we got versions 2008.11 and 2009.06.
Sun advertises its operating system as a full-blown distribution, including the Gnome desktop. But is OpenSolaris interesting enough for a Linux user? If you're happy with your favourite Linux distribution, why would you try OpenSolaris? In some aspects it's much like a regular Linux distribution, but in other aspects it's completely different. Do the exciting features of this operating system outweigh the trouble of learning another Unix environment with other tools?
Installing OpenSolaris
Just like most Linux distributions, OpenSolaris comes with a live CD and a graphical installer that asks you for the standard information, including your location, preferred keyboard map, time/date etc. This will be familiar for Linux users, and if you're installing OpenSolaris as the sole OS on a computer you'll hardly notice the difference, but if you want to create a dual-boot system with OpenSolaris and Linux you might run into problems at the disk-partitioning stage.
The OpenSolaris installer considers all logical partitions on the disk as one extended partition, so it can't be installed on a logical partition. If you choose to install OpenSolaris on this extended partition, all enclosed logical partitions get overwritten. Second, OpenSolaris uses ZFS instead of ext3 as its filesystem. Linux has no ZFS support in the kernel because the Free Software Foundation doesn't consider it free enough to be bundled with GPL software, so if you want to get access to your OpenSolaris documents in Linux you have to mount the ZFS filesystem with Fuse as a filesystem in userland.
A third issue is that the standard Grub version that comes with Linux distributions doesn't understand the ZFS filesystem. So when you install OpenSolaris first and then your favourite Linux distribution, you can't boot into OpenSolaris anymore. The solution is to first install Linux and then OpenSolaris, and add the section for your Linux distro to Grub's menu.lst in OpenSolaris.
Via TuxRadar.com
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free.hardware.software
September 17th
1. # paolo del bene Says:
April 12th, 2009 at 21:52
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port that consists of GNU userland using the GNU C library on top of FreeBSD’s kernel, coupled with the regular Debian package set.
The GNU C library was ported to FreeBSD’s kernel by Bruno Haible.
Get started
The base system is fully functional. For installing Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and other useful information, refer to the install notes.
There exist several mirrors. You can use the base system in the tarball to fetch packages from it. Most of the packages in Debian unstable are ported and available in this archive.
How to help
There’s still a large amount of packages that need fixing. Luckily, because we use Glibc the portability problems are very simple and most times it’s just a matter of copying a test case for “k*bsd*-gnu” from another Glibc-based system (like GNU or GNU/Linux). Look at the porting document for details.
If you want to help porting packages, look at our patches directory first to ensure you don’t repeat already done work. (Please don’t submit patches from our directory, many of them are not ready to be sent.)
Also look at the TODO file for more details on what needs to be done.
Contact
Debian GNU/k*BSD mailing list. The old Debian Glibc-BSD mailing list is now defunct.
#debian-kbsd IRC channel (at irc.debian.org).
Back to the Debian Project homepage.
This page is also available in the following languages: dansk Deutsch français Italiano Русский (Russkij)
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To report a problem with the web site, e-mail debian-www@lists.debian.org. For other contact information, see the Debian contact page.
Last Modified: Mon, Mar 30 23:26:28 UTC 2009
Copyright © 1997-2009 SPI; See license terms
Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses
FreeBSD license
This is the original BSD license with the advertising clause and another clause removed.
(It is also sometimes called the “2-clause BSD license”.)
It is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.
If you want a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, the FreeBSD license is a reasonable choice.
However, please don’t call it a “BSD” or “BSD-style” license, because that is likely to cause confusion which could lead to use of the flawed original BSD license.
ZFS can't be used in GNU/linux about CCDL License sun microsystems
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses
Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)
This is a free software license.
It has a copyleft with a scope that’s similar to the one in the Mozilla Public License, which makes it incompatible with the GNU GPL.
This means a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together.
We urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.
Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term “intellectual property”.
As alternative we got in GNU General Public License LVM and Tru64 called ADvFS watch:
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=tru64
Tru64 Unix Advanced File System (AdvFS) Now GPL
On June 23rd, 2008 with 226 comments melios writes
“In a move that could help boost the scalability of Linux for grids and other advanced 64-bit multiprocessor applications, HP has released its…
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/23/1728259
Tru64 Unix Advanced File System (AdvFS) Now GPL
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jun 23, 2008 03:51 PM
from the yet-another-convert dept.
melios writes “In a move that could help boost the scalability of Linux for grids and other advanced 64-bit multiprocessor applications, HP has released its Tru64 Unix Advanced File System
http://www.betanews.com/article/HP-releases-64bit-Unix-file-system-for-Linux-open-sourcing/1214236971
(AdvFS) source code to the open source community.
Source code, design documentation, and test suites for AdvFS are available on SourceForge.”
http://advfs.sourceforge.net
operating systems as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, can use ZFS.
In the distribution GNU/linux gentoo it is normal to use http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/LVM
one distribbution totally free software as GNU/linux gentoo is GNU/linux Ututo.
http://www.ututo.org/www
others distributions of GNU/linux totally free software are:
GNU/linux Debian http://www.debian.org
GNU/linux Dragora http://www.dragora.org
GNU/linux gNewSense http://www.gnewsense.org
GNU/linux Ututo http://www.ututo.org/www
bye bye
Paolo
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