Ray Clark writes: > To be honest I am very confused by the many versions of solaris, and what > they are. > Since I have your ear, can I veryify the following understanding, as well as > tweek up my names, and add any "aliases"?
Don't forget the distributions from folks other than Sun! The ones you've listed are all Sun distributions, but there are several others available. > [1] Solaris 10 0807 or U4 would be the most stable, but the > oldest/clunkiest/least-featured. Not quite. S9 is the oldest you can get. S10 is the newest commercially-supported release of Solaris. If you're on one of those releases you really should be dealing with Sun's support group. I don't think anyone here would kick you out if you used those, but you might not get the best support by coming here. Those are releases that predate OpenSolaris. > [2] Solaris Express Developer Edition (current) is well tested and while it > may have its quirks, I should not be in danger of loosing data. I'd agree with that. > [3] Solaris Express Community Edition (AKA Nevada), since it comes out every > other Friday, assume that while it might be great to play with, it probably > has its moments, and depending on any given release without being on top of > what is going on in the community would be pretty risky. I don't quite agree with that. We run most of our crucial internal systems on the latest Nevada build. The rule for integration is "FCS quality all the time." Furthermore it does go through some testing (and fixes) before release. That doesn't mean that mistakes don't happen (of course), but I think it'd be an error to say that it's "pretty risky." I'd call taking the nightly BFU bits and tossing them on your system "riskier" than running Nevada. Riskier still is taking an arbitrary set of bits from some project team -- one that likely hasn't been through any reviews or serious testing yet -- and trying to run those. > [4] Indiana is very early, and should not be used other than by people who > want to play with a work in progress. It will use the gnu userland, and in > general have capabilities more like a Linux distribution. It does not appear > to show up anywhere yet. Indiana is currently just a project. If you're using Indiana bits, you should be working with that project team. Period. > Frank mentioned "Opensolaris". I don't know what to relate these comments to > on the 'download page'. Indiana is also calling itself "the OpenSolaris distribution." Not to be confused with the source code itself, I guess. > The thread might imply that since I installed SXDE that was not the live CD, > that I did not install ZFS.... any might indicate the SXDE was NOT > OpenSolaris. I don't know what the LiveCD is... There are multiple "Live CDs." One is produced by the Indiana project. A "live CD" is just one that you can boot directly and run without (necessarily) installing. > BeleniX appears to be the only one listed as a "LiveCD", is this what you > mean? I appologize if I am being thick, but to me this is not at all clear. BeleniX also offers a live CD. Actually, they were first. The Indiana project picked up some of its technology from that project. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
