[OpenIndiana-discuss] replacing an open solaris box

[Edward Ned Harvey (openindiana)]

> From: Nikola M. [mailto:minikola at gmail.com]
> 
> On 05/24/13 02:46 PM, Edward Ned Harvey (openindiana) wrote:
> >> From: Kristoff Bonne [mailto:kristoff at skypro.be]
> >> Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 5:27 AM
> >>
> >> What Operating System would you now advice for a personal workstation
> >> for "simple" work (telnet/ssh to other devices, perl, firefox,
> >> thunderbird, ...). Also important is the ability to run VirtualBox.
> > For personal workstation, openindiana desktop.
> And it is called illumos ;)

Ummm...  Illumos is the open source fork of the core of the opensolaris operating system.  But illumos itself is not an installable or usable OS.  It needs to be packaged into a distribution.  There are several distributions based on illumos - The one that most closely resembles opensolaris is called openindiana.  Openindiana has both a full GUI desktop version, and a server version.  (I always use the desktop version, even on servers, because I use VirtualBox, which has difficult to satisfy dependencies if installed on the "server" version.)  There are some other distros - most notably, SmartOS.  This one is specifically designed for specific functions in the server room, and if you don't know it, I suggest checking their webpage for more info.

For upgrading from opensolaris to openindiana, please see here:
http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/OpenIndiana+Wiki+Home
Type in "opensolaris" into the search bar.