By Ryan Paul
May 12, 2008 - 10:51PM CT

The OpenSolaris project, which has been slowly gaining momentum over the past year, issued its first official release last week. Designed with an emphasis on usability and easy installation, OpenSolaris aims to provide a complete desktop platform for users and developers built on top of Sun's Solaris kernel.

We have been testing OpenSolaris 2008.05 in order to see how it compares to modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE. When the OpenSolaris concept first emerged, there was a lot of confusion about the scope and purpose of the project. This was initially a serious impediment that made it difficult for a community to grow organically around the technology. That changed when Sun brought in Ian Murdock to build a real platform strategy for OpenSolaris.

He envisioned OpenSolaris as a cohesive desktop software stack that would enable users to download and install a complete environment that would be practical for regular use. The OpenSolaris community has attempted to fulfill that vision by bringing together the OpenSolaris kernel and a multitude of open source software components that are commonly found in desktop Linux distributions.

The developers sought to adopt some common Linux idioms in order to ease the transition for Linux users and make the experience as seamless as possible. Viewed in the context of those design goals, the first release of OpenSolaris definitely delivers on much of what it promises. I began my testing with considerable skepticism, but soon found that it exceeded many of my expectations.