During the early to mid 90's I was a student in a Computer Systems Engineering program. It might sound a little silly, but I don't think anything in the world has made me feel as much like a computer geek as working on projects that took place in the Solaris/SPARCstation lab on campus. There was just something special about it. I'm sure a big part of that special feeling was due to SPARC hardware. But, the fact remains that whenever I hear Solaris, I think of those days. The campus had a few of your standard mixed Windows/Mac labs where all the non-engineering types did what it was they used computers for in the early 90's, like writing term papers, blah. And then there was the Solaris/SPARCstation lab, ah...
Sadly, enough I haven't personally used a Solaris kernel since those days. I now make a living writing software, mainly web based business applications; but, that real engineering edge isn't as much a part of my current existence as it was when at school. I used HP Unix for a tiny short period after those school days, and I occasionally used some Linux (Red Hat distro). But, since those geeky cool days of working on CSE projects in the Solaris lab, my life has instead been filled almost exclusively with a lot of different Windows OS's, blah.
But, there is hope. I've been running Linux (Ubuntu distro) on and off since 2005, and now exclusively on my personal development machines (a laptop and a desktop) since the end of 2006. I still use Windows OS's on a contract project, but the tide is definitely turning for me. Why did I choose the Ubuntu distro? Well, because it was a walk in the park to get running. When I first toyed with the Ubuntu, probably sometime 2005, I was amazed at how easy it was to get up and running - really in no time. And booting from a single CD to see what it was all about was just too sweet. Slowly, it has infiltrated into my daily life, and as I mentioned, by the end of 2006, I've been personally Ubuntu exclusive.*
But, I would be lying if I said I'm not still longing for a bit more geek sex appeal then I get from something like a Ubuntu distro alone. So, I've been eying OpenSolaris on and off for a few months, thinking if I could only find a little spare time, I would love to give OpenSolaris a test drive. I want the technology; Dtrace, ZFS, etc. I want it for that feeling I remember sitting in the Solaris workstation lab, but I want it on my desktops/laptops. I want Solaris to become a part of my daily development life, and more then an occasional production deployment server that my code might be lucky enough to end up running on. But, I don't think the current “give it a try path” is really all that paved yet, or at least how to get to the path hasn't been all that clear to me.
I've been watching what Ian is doing and saying since joining Sun. I almost feel like he his is talking to me here. I don't exactly fit the demographic, but when he asks at the beginning “It's an operating system? The community version of Solaris? Right?” my hand went up to say, “ah, yeah thats what I thought”. I've probably poked around the Sun web site half a dozen times looking for a quick simple “here, try out OpenSolaris on this 1 easy click link”. I really feel silly now that I didn't realize myself that what I should have been looking for was maybe someone else's OpenSolaris distro, and maybe it would have helped to poke around at opensolaris and not necessarily looking for an OpenSolaris single click download from Sun; I mean talk about naive! I use Linux, I should have realized this, but it just didn't click. I'm hoping project Indiana will deliver and create a clearer path for us naive but curious Solaris seekers. I'm hoping for the walk in the park experience I've come to expect with Ubuntu. When Ian says
How many of you would take Solaris for a spin if doing so was as easy as, say, downloading the latest version of Ubuntu and installing it?my hand was up before I finished the sentence.
* I personally have been Ubuntu exclusive, but there are other OS's in my house beyond what I use for work: my wife is running a Windows Media Center release, oldest son a Mac, and two other children using XP.
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