OpenSolaris 2008.5 Isn't So Bad

OpenSolaris has come along way from that nasty red and blue console based installer I remember using back in the 90s. A nice GNOME based LiveCD. 32/64 bit. GRUB & GNOME. Tolerable package management although there must be some other repos somewhere. Imagine, having to have to built pcap and tcpdump from scratch in 2008, the horror. But it worked!

What didn't work (on my T-61):

• Xen Dom0 (this is a known issue)
• Sound
• Intel 4965 has been sporadic
• Novatel 727 EVDO card (probably just haven't figure it out yet)
• VirtualBox/xVM (problems with kernel modules. probably fixable)
• Compiz (totally hangs the box)
  

Sort of weird that the JDK isn't installed. But overall they did a nice job with the GNOME theme. Fonts look better than most Linux distributions and seems quite snappy. And of all things nmap (4.20) and NmapFE are in default install. Funny.