Korona Brings KDE 4.3 To OpenSolaris

While Sun Microsystems puts their weight behind the GNOME desktop environment for Solaris and OpenSolaris, there are developers that do work on providing a quality experience for KDE on OpenSolaris. However, getting KDE to run on a clean OpenSolaris installation can require building KDE from source and taking various other steps. Fortunately, for KDE fans, there is now the Korona distribution, which brings KDE 4.3 as the default desktop environment to an OpenSolaris stack.

The current version of Korona is version 0.0.2. Korona 0.0.2 provides the KDE 4.3 package set with an OpenSolaris 2009.06 base and all of the programs that it provides. With the addition of KDE 4.3, the ISO size for this distribution is approximately 1.5 Gigabytes. Like the official OpenSolaris releases, Korona can be run from a live disc without needing to be installed.

Our initial testing of Korona 0.0.2 was positive overall, but there were a few problems with different KDE applications crashing and some other bugs. Those interested in using KDE 4.3 on OpenSolaris via Korona can download the latest ISO from Genunix.org.