Having tried many versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse and PCLinuxOS, I thought of trying Solaris, but it was never easy. I ordered a free Solaris DVD from Sun but it would never install inside VirtualBox. I always viewed Solaris as something very complex to setup and needs extensive knowledge about it. My experience of installing it . . . → Read More: Stunning OpenSolaris running on VirtualBox]]> With VirtualBox in hand, installing operating systems is just like installing firefox or 7zip. It’ so easy. Previously I use to shy away from trying linux, but now, I never miss to install my favourite linux distros in my windows xp machine. Thanks VirtualBox.

Having tried many versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse and PCLinuxOS, I thought of trying Solaris, but it was never easy. I ordered a free Solaris DVD from Sun but it would never install inside VirtualBox. I always viewed Solaris as something very complex to setup and needs extensive knowledge about it. My experience of installing it on VirtualBox reinforced it. I kept trying few times and eventually gave up.

But this is history now. As Sun took over VirtualBox from innotek, I hope the first thing they did was to provide excellent support for Solaris in it. Recently as I was pondering the VirtualBox website, I saw that they are providing good integration with Solaris in their latest version. What do you think I would have done…?

You are right. I straightaway dowloaded the latest version of VirtualBox along with OpenSolaris. (OpenSolaris iso image was only 686MB). What happened next was simply stunning…

Armed with the experience of installing many operating systems on VirtualBox, I was able to proceed straightaway until I reached the point of installing VirtualBox guest additions. Fortunately I came across this great article about installing OpenSolaris in VirtualBox.

And I had minor problems in configuring network until I understood about it. Otherwise OpenSolaris worked like a champ and I was thrilled. Just have a look at the following screenshots…

Starting the OpenSolaris virtual machine installed in VirtualBox

OpenSolaris booting up

Login Screen

OpenSolaris desktop (1280 * 800 resolution)

(One of the main nuances I faced in installing Ubuntu as a guest in VirtuaBox is that I found it very difficult to configure the screen resolution. I spent so much time in something which should have been a easy task. I even wrote a blog entry about increasing the screen resolution in Ubuntu. But in OpenSolaris, I got the maximum resolution just by installing the guest additions.)

And access to the screen resolution setting cannot be this simpler. Just right click anywhere in your desktop and you are there.

And here is the actual screen resolution user interface…

Some Applications pre-installed in OpenSolaris

Disk Usage Analyzer

(Just have a look at the look and feel of OpenSolaris, very clear, very attractive. I simply love it…)

Package Manager

(One good thing about OpenSolaris is that it comes preinstalled with most apps needed for a Java developer)

Browsing

Locking the system

Conclusion:

Overall, I was very impressed with OpenSolaris and looking forward to use it for my java development. The user interface is slick

and easy to use. Have you tried OpenSolaris…? Why not try it today..?