Sun’s OpenSolaris Review

VirtualBox now supported

When I last tested OpenSolaris, I was disappointed to find that while Sun’s own desktop virtualisation product, VirtualBox, supported the distribution as a host operating system, OpenSolaris seemed relegated to second-class support status. Most importantly, I could not expose USB devices to guest machines, nor could I share host folders with guest machines. Both of these gaps significantly limited the usefulness of VirtualBox. I was happy, then, to see that on OpenSolaris 2009.06, USB support for guests worked as you would expect, as did shared folders.

I still found that fonts in the VirtualBox interface rendered poorly under OpenSolaris compared with Linux or Windows hosts, and I would love to see VirtualBox take fuller advantage of OpenSolaris-specific features. In particular, the combination of VirtualBox and Crossbow could make OpenSolaris the host environment of choice for Sun’s desktop virtualisation product.

I tested OpenSolaris 2009.06 on the same Lenovo Thinkpad T60 with 3GB of RAM and an ATI X1300 graphics adapter that I used to test the previous version. Unfortunately, I again experienced problems using the Thinkpad’s Intel 3945ABG wireless adapter on my home wireless network. My OpenSolaris system would repeatedly lose its connection to the access point link, requiring me to restart the system’s NWAM (Network Auto Magic) daemon or toggle the Wi-Fi hardware switch on the machine before connecting.

OpenSolaris is freely downloadable from opensolaris.com, but for those who wish to deploy OpenSolaris in production settings, Sun offers commercial support for the distribution in three levels: basic support, which starts at $324 (£200) per system per year, standard support, which starts at $720 (£440) per system per year, and premium support, which starts at $1080 (£655) per system per year. You can find the details of these support subscriptions here.