Sun tries to flex R&D muscle with homegrown package manager

By the end of this month Sun Microsystems will release the first developer version of OpenSolaris in its "Project Indiana" incarnation. Up to this point, customers have had to work for Sun's open source Unix operating system by being forced to download the code and then build the OS. With Project Indiana, Sun wants to dish out …

[Anton Ivanov]

@It seems tough to get too excited about a package manager,

No, it does not.

Packaging is Sun's biggest weakness and one of the main reasons why Linux is beating it.

It does not matter how great the internals of an OS are and how many cool features does it have. It will not penetrate beyond the organisations which can afford 50K+ sysadmin packages if its packaging sucks so bad that people are willing to port other OS package managers to deal with its failings (people used to port debian package manager to do manage solaris in the past).

[Numpty]

Package manager? Nah, installer.

To be honest, I'd hardly call the new package manager the most interesting aspect of Indiana; there's nothing wrong with Sun's current SVR4 package management that a decent GUI wouldn't fix. The new installer, however, is wicked-- Solaris installations have never been for the faint-hearted, but now it only takes a handful of clicks.

Agree with your comment about Murdock, though, seems ridiculous that Sun have never produced a Live CD before.

[Greg]

homegrown?

Is IPS new and homegrown or is it at least in part what Sun bought when they acquired Aduva last year? (see: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1931164,00.asp)

[Uwe Dippel]

Ashley ...

... as usual making headlines with half-brew stuff.

Here is some truth:"Up to this point, customers have had to work for Sun's open source Unix operating system by being forced to download the code and then build the OS".

There have been binary 'Express' and 'Developer' Editions ready for install available since some time mid 2006.

"What, after all, is the point of crafting something meant to compete with Linux if you're not going to make it easy to download and install."

I am writing this off a Solaris nv70, which did need close to six simple, GUI-based input info: Language, Partition to install it on (or whole disk), Timezone, keyboard layout. Root password, user account and password for that user. Reboot.

http://developers.sun.com/sxde/images.html

demonstrates the fantasy of the author.

How boring would ElReg be, were the articles based on sound research ...