StormOS Enters Beta

A beta version of StormOS has emerged, which is a desktop distribution that is based upon the Nexenta Core Platform that in turn is derived from OpenSolaris but with an Ubuntu user-land. The StormOS project emerged out of the an OpenSolaris user being dissatisfied with the slow pace of OpenSolaris on netbooks and preferring the APT packaging system to Sun's Image Packaging System. The beta version of StormOS is shipping with an Xfce 4 desktop and -- unlike the current releases of OpenSolaris -- even ships with a word processor.

The current release of StormOS is codenamed "Hardy Hail" and while there are Nexenta Core Platform 2 packages providing the OpenSolaris side of this operating system, the Ubuntu side is based upon Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which was codenamed the Hardy Heron. OpenSolaris currently ships without any word processor (though there are some available via the Image Packaging System for installation by the user) due to CD size constraints, but with the lightweight Xfce desktop, StormOS developers were able to fit in AbiWord 2.4 for word processing needs.

Along side AbiWord on the Xfce 4 desktop is the Gnumeric spreadsheet program, The Gimp image editor, Rhythmbox Music Player, Ristretto image viewer, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, the Synaptic Package Manager, Transmission Bit Torrent client, and the Evince PDF viewer.

The current release of StormOS Hail is available at StormOS.org. We have been testing out this release for a short while and so far it appears to be nice for those who want to benefit from OpenSolaris technologies but prefer a GNU/Ubuntu user-land. StormOS is also compatible with the Phoronix Test Suite for those looking at some system benchmarking.

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