Hi, thanks for posting this. I was impressed with the PDF content - very good work.
The rest of this post is a bunch of semi-random thoughts and ideas, some trivial and some would be major long-term projects. Please view this as a collection of ideas that I think might be interesting or useful, not a list of demands. *) In general, I really like the idea of the Live DVD, particularly the "install without reboot" possibility. However, for people who have already installed Solaris before and know they want to install it again, particularly those wanting to install OpenSolaris, one request I have would be to try to eliminate the requirement for burning DVDs (or CDs). It seems really lame to have to download an ISO image, then burn it (hoping it went okay) then boot off it. For most stand-alone computers though, this is hard to avoid. So my idea is as follows: make use of bootable USB (and Firewire) devices - particular CompactFlash cards. That is, a simple boot program could be downloaded and installed onto such cards (something based on GRUB perhaps). The main install files would be on the hard disc. Imagine a person who has just bought a new Windows laptop and wants to install Solaris/OpenSolaris. The process would go something like this: 1) download a single install file and place it in a fixed location (eg c:\SOLARIS_INSTALL\ or something), (2) download program which creates bootable Flash card for current OS (Windows). (3) reboot computer (4) The Flash card's boot program looks at the hard disc(s) for install binaries and finds some in c:\SOLARIS_INSTALL\, and gives the user the option to install from it (and also sort out the partitions if necessary), (5) install begins. A similar process could be used for users with just Linux installed. Obviously such a function would require the Flash card boot program to be able to read various file system types. As well as removing the need (and time taken and possibility for errors) to burn a DVD, this also makes it MUCH easier to do custom installs, and also to include other software packages. ie in the c:\SOLARIS_INSTALL\ directory could include a file listing configuration options. That file could then be used instead of an interactive installer, making the entire install process automatic. *) As an side note to the above, being able to install and run Solaris itself from a USB/Firewire Flash card could be fun for the appliance market. (Some companies offer "Flash drives" that are basically Flash with a hard disc form factor and ATA/SATA interface) Eg, for server blades, instead of having a hot little hard disc, you could have a cool little Flash card to boot off. When it was announced that Niagara / UltraSPARC T1 was GPL'd, a start-up announced that it was going to create a 1 core chip for the embedded market. Imagine a little embedded system with such a chip, 512MB of main memory and a 2-4GB Flash "drive", and one or two 1 Gb Ethernet ports. Super low-power, super compact and no moving parts. It won't be long before cheaper 4GB CF cards cost $100. In a few years they'll be $25. *) Above I suggest using a pre-created file to automate installation. In general about automation, I would say that any complex task that many people will need to do frequently should be automated as much as makes sense. After all, that is one of the basics of IT - to save "costs" (time, reduce errors) by automation. For any sort of installation automation scripts, there should be a "central" (probably separate for OpenSolaris and Solaris though) repository of up-to-date examples for common scenarios. The availability of installation automation options should also be made clear in the interactive installer - and they should be hard to miss as well (not buried in some help sub-menu). It should also be clear from the website to download install files that automation options are available. The reason I say this is that it would be a shame to have a nice useful feature and then people don't realise it exists. *) A minor observation on interactive installers: Every one I've seen separately asks for locale specific information several times - eg what keyboard, what timezone and what language. Most installers simply default to assuming everyone is from the US and using US specific components. It would be nice to see installers try to smartly guess locale information from the hardware - or at least make use of previous selected options. Eg, if someone selects a timezone for the UK, they probably have a UK keyboard and want a "UK english" locale - such choices shouldn't be hardwired, but the installer to change the default offering. This minimises the amount of changes users have to make when going through the install options. Saves time and increases the chance of the user making the correct/best selections. Similarly, when forced to select the type of keyboard, it can be rather hit and miss - most keyboards don't have their type code printed on them. So it would be nice to have a way to double check the keyboard type after selecting one from a list. *) For the graphical user interface to the interactive install, I would suggest something like this: have a window with a set of coloured and labeled tabs on the left. The colouring would be based on whether information is required (coloured red say), whether changes may be required (coloured orange), and whether they're okay (coloured green). The bottom left tab would essentially be "start install". Each tab would be a stage in the install. This would be in addition to "next" and "previous" buttons in the main window. The reason for this being that if *all* you get is next and previous you can't tell how many stages you have to go through to get to the end. With the buttons, advanced users can also take short cuts through the installer in a simple way. *) It should be relatively simple to create secure (reasonably locked-down) installs, even with the interactive installer. Maybe this would better be part of post installation and general configuration - since confirming that an OS is nicely locked down right now and being able to fix common issues is a reccuring problem, though secure on install means less of a window of opportunity for attacks. At a minimum, "legacy" (ie where there are better/more secure options available) server software should not be active by default - though maybe installed by default. *) Now that Sun's C/C++/Fortran compilers are available for free, it would be nice if the Sun Studio C/C++ command-line tools (at a minimum) came with the OS as standard. *) This is more of a high-level package management comment, while I'm in the area, as it were: for any package, some nice meta information to include would be details about support (possibly including links). For example, the Apache HTTPD package that comes with Solaris should include some meta information say that it is a *supported* package - and maybe also reference forums where free support may be available. For software on the "companion CD", the packages would include information about it not being supported, but could obviously provide links which may help. *) How well can Solaris x86 live with MacOS X on x86? 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