A Very Early Look At OpenSolaris 2010.02

OpenSolaris 2009.06 was released earlier this year, but unlike in years past and contrary to their original six month release cycle, there will not be another OpenSolaris distribution release in 2009. Instead, the next slated release is OpenSolaris 2010.02, which should be out in early February of next year. It is far too early to speculate everything that this next Sun operating system will have in store, but we do have some screenshots off a recent SXCE build and other details.

Sun Microsystems will stop shipping new SXCE ISOs next month, but to date with each new build of SXCE there is a new OpenSolaris 2010.02 preview release based upon the latest code, which is housed at Genunix.org. The latest build at the time of publishing is OpenSolaris 2010.02. Some of the features that have been talked about for OpenSolaris 2010.02 include offline IPS (Image Packaging System) support, an updated GNOME stack, ZFS enhancements, cloud computing integration, and installation improvements for SPARC. Shipping in the latest OpenSolaris 2010.02 preview is GNOME 2.26.3, while GNOME 2.28.0 will be released next month with sufficient time for it to make its way into OpenSolaris before the next release. GNOME 3.0 with its overhauled package set will be released a month too late to make its way into OpenSolaris 2010.02.

Available in the latest OpenSolaris 2010.02 builds is also an updated X.Org stack with X Server 1.6.3. X Server 1.7 as part of X.Org 7.5 will be out later this month or early next month, which would allow plenty of time for Sun engineers to pull in these new X packages that provide Multi-Pointer X support and other new features. However, based upon Sun's past delays with pulling in new X.Org packages, they may not hit in time for OpenSolaris 2010.02. Likewise, seeing updated Mesa and DDX drivers would be great and provide better hardware support on OpenSolaris. We also know that kernel mode-setting is coming to OpenSolaris, which we will hopefully see in time for the 2010.02 release for at least Intel hardware.

OpenSolaris 2010.02 also has Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1 for its web browser. Firefox 3.6 should be released in time for the release of OpenSolaris 2010.02, which we will hopefully see in there since traditionally Sun has been faster with pulling in new Mozilla packages. We are continuing to explore the latest OpenSolaris 2010.02 packages and will have more information on this Sun (soon to be Oracle) operating system shortly. In 2010 we will also likely experience the release of Solaris 11.